I knew she was right. About me, her, us, all of it.
And I was too fucking empty to do anything but stand there like an idiot while she walked away.
Chapter Thirteen
Two days until the election, and Senator and Mrs. Reynolds are out campaigning. Noticeably absent? Miss Blair Reynolds and her sister Kate. Dare we say it? Is there mutiny in the Reynolds household?
—Capital Confessions blog
Blair
“I think I’m in trouble.”
My younger sister Kate took a sip from her mimosa. “Is this about mom and dad? Because if it is, I’ve already told you—stop taking their calls. I’m sure as hell not doing any campaign shit with them, and you shouldn’t have to either.”
“It’s not mom and dad.”
Although, Kate had a point. I’d received messages from everyone from my father’s campaign manager, to my mother, to a freaking intern, trying to get me to show up for his events.
I’d declined them all.
Part of it was just being busy with law school, the other part that I might have bitten off more than I could chew with the pro bono project. I was the first to admit that I occasionally went overboard with special events, and this had been no exception.
But more than anything, I just couldn’t see myself standing next to my father and endorsing his candidacy. Not after what he’d done. Maybe my mother could forgive his affair, look the other way at the fact that he’d fathered a daughter and refused to take any responsibility for his actions.
I couldn’t.
I understood that people made mistakes, could forgive him for slipping up. It didn’t make it right, but he was human, it happened. But he showed no remorse. It was as if he thought it was okay to treat the rest of the world as little more than inconveniences to be quashed or minions beneath his control. I was sick of falling in line.
“What’s up?” Jackie asked from her place on the couch next to Kate.
Sunday brunch had become a tradition among us. I usually hosted since my place was the biggest. I called it “sister brunch” which Kate snorted at and Jackie seemed pleased by. Mimosas were a staple, and since law school sapped me of my desire to be domestic, I usually ran down to the bakery around the corner and picked up muffins and croissants that we gorged on until we all went our separate ways in a carb-induced coma.
“There’s this guy.”
Jackie’s eyes lit up. “Okay, now you have to tell us everything.”
I winced. “It’s a little complicated.”
She made a face. “Seriously?”
I grinned. “Touché.”
Jackie and her fiancé, Will, had hooked up while she was working on his campaign. It wasn’t forbidden per se, but it had been an issue with her internship at the prestigious consulting firm that hadn’t wanted one of their consultants to be front page news, and had definitely put Will in an awkward position with his campaign. When their relationship—and sex life—had been exposed, the media had been all over it, but eventually the attention had petered out.
Jackie laughed. “If you need a resident expert on complicated, you’re pretty much set. Spill.”
It was tough when you lived your life in the public eye. There were very few people I really trusted with my secrets, and the two people I trusted most were in this room. I hesitated, needing someone to talk to. My gaze darted to Kate.
She pasted on a smile that twenty-one years of sisterhood told me wasn’t completely genuine. It was the smile she’d given me when we’d ridden our bikes and a stick had gotten stuck in her spokes and she’d fallen, skinning her knees until her jeans were soaked with blood. I knew her well enough to know she was bleeding now, even if it wasn’t visible on the outside.
She shook her head. “It’s fine.”
It was hard to not feel horrible talking about guys in front of Kate.
There was that forced smile again. “Spill.”
God, I loved her. She’d been a tough kid, and at twenty-one, she was still the bravest person I knew.
I sucked in a deep breath, ours the kind of relationship where I didn’t even need to say that this was all a secret. Sister bond and all that. They knew.
“I kissed one of my law school professors.”
Kate had the biggest reaction, which wasn’t surprising considering she’d known a version of me who definitely didn’t do things like that. Unfortunately, my announcement caught her mid–mimosa sip and the orange liquid spurted onto my dark leather couch. She grabbed a napkin from the tray on the ottoman, cleaning up the mess with a pointed smile.
I was notorious for being a neat freak.
The spill taken care of, Kate turned her attention back to me. “Sorry, but when my professors come to mind, kissing is the last thing I’d want to do with them.” She was in the final year of her political science undergrad at Georgetown. “Please tell me he’s not seventy and bald.”
I snorted. “He’s definitely not seventy and bald. He’s hot. Seriously hot.”
“So how was it?” Jackie interjected. “I need more details.”
Kate frowned. “Did he come on to you?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I kind of jumped him.”
Kate gaped at me. “You jumped him?” I nodded. “You jumped him?” she repeated.
I laughed. “You can say it as many times as you’d like, but that won’t make it any less true.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It took you six dates before you even kissed Thom.”
“I was fifteen,” I protested. “And I’d never been kissed before. And if you’re going to bring up Thom, you can also add in the fact that clearly he wasn’t dying to kiss me.”
Kate winced. “True.”
“But you like this guy, right?” Jackie asked.
“Yes. Sort of. It’s complicated.”
Kate shook her head like Martians had invaded my body. “Since when do you do complicated? By choice?”
“I don’t.”
Jackie’s gaze darted back and forth between me and Kate as if she were trying to decipher our relationship. These were the moments when I remembered that as much as Jackie had slid into the role of sister with relative ease, there was a lifetime of memories and experiences that she’d missed out on.
“But you kissed your professor,” Jackie interjected. “So ergo, complicated.”
Kate grinned. “Ergo?”
Jackie rolled her eyes, her voice teasing. “Stop giving me shit so we can get to the good stuff, please. Let’s start with what it was about him that made Blair jump him.”
That was the easy part.
“His voice. His eyes. His confidence. The way he carries himself. His great hair. How scarily intelligent he is.” I gulped down the rest of my mimosa. “I told him I was confused in my con law class and he actually explained the Commerce Clause to me. So if I’m going to go with an excuse,” for the second kiss, at least, “it’s definitely going to be, the Commerce Clause made me do it.”
Jackie snagged another mini-croissant. “Sounds legit to me. What’s his name?”
“Gray.”
“Ooh good name. And he’s cute?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t go with cute.” I searched for the right word and still felt like I came up short. “He’s intense. In a way that makes you think you have to kiss him. Even when you shouldn’t.”
“Because he’s your professor,” Kate said, her voice tinged with judgment, her eyes full of worry.
“Partly. There’s more. He’s kind of a mess,” I admitted, feeling like saying it aloud made it that much more real. I knew it, I’d seen it, I’d heard it, and yet here I was.
“How?” Kate interjected. I might have been two years older, but she had a hell of a protective streak.
“He has some baggage. He was married.” Jackie and Kate just stared at me. “Divorced now. There were some girls when they were separated. And some substance abuse issues.” I sort of ran the last words together as if that would hide the ugly truth.
Kate shot that hope down instantly.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
I winced. “I told you it was bad. He didn’t cheat when he was married, but when he was separated, and after, apparently he went a little off the rails. And before that, during, and after, he had some substance abuse issues. But he’s clean now.”
Kate shook her head. “Fuck that. You just had a guy cheat on you. At your wedding. Getting involved with another cheater, even if they were separated, even if you are just kissing one, is stupid.”
I scowled at her. “Thanks. I kind of realized that when I told you things were messy.”
She made a face like she’d swallowed something foul. “I expected you to know better.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why? Because I never get to take a risk or make mistakes? Because I’m not supposed to feel something as simple as attraction and act on it? I didn’t say I was marrying the guy. I didn’t even say I was dating him. I just said that I kissed him and things were complicated.”
“He’s going to hurt you.”
The image of Gray’s face in the car, the look in his eyes, hit me again. “You don’t know that.”
“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Kate snapped while Jackie looked on, an uncomfortable expression on her face.
She’d been raised an only child, so I figured she was completely unprepared for a knockdown, drag-out sister fight.
“You don’t think that’s a little closed-minded?” I challenged. “They were separated. They weren’t actually together.”
“Please,” Kate scoffed. “Tell me you didn’t have the same thought.”
She was right; I’d had the same thought. And now I was vaguely ashamed of it.
“He made a mistake, Kate. A huge mistake. I’m not saying I feel sorry for him or that he didn’t deserve the consequences of his actions. But at what point does that end? Should we have him in the stocks at noon? Ask him to self-flagellate? Should I really judge him for something in his past that he’s trying to put behind him?”
“A good man doesn’t cheat,” she said, her lips in the stubborn line I recognized from our childhood. “In any way. Period. If you’re willing to forgive Gray his infidelity, what would you say about Thom? He cheated on you on your wedding day, your professor cheated on his wife. How are they any different?”
“Is it really cheating if they were separated?” I countered.
“Would you call it cheating if it had happened to you?”
Kate had the strongest sense of justice of anyone I knew. She was determined to work in intelligence after graduation—I’d bought her a spy kit as a joke for Christmas last year—but if anything, she would have been a better fit for law school than I was. I hated conflict with every fiber of my being, whereas Kate jumped into battle with her sword ready.
She didn’t sugarcoat anything, not even with someone she loved, and she had an annoying habit of being right.
“Thom hasn’t apologized for what he did. For all I know, he isn’t sorry at all.”
Okay, maybe I wasn’t taking his calls, but I just didn’t know what was left to say. I figured sex on our wedding day said it all.
“So remorse makes it okay?”
Jesus, she really should reconsider her future career path. She’d kill in a courtroom. Being on the receiving end of this was kind of torture.
“I think there’s a difference between doing something wrong and being sorry for it, and doing something wrong and not giving a shit and continuing to screw people over,” I snapped, my voice rising with each word. There was something about fighting with my sister—no one could push my buttons like Kate.
When we were kids, we’d bickered frequently, the two-year age difference between us close enough to often be too close. I would have given my life for her in a heartbeat, but sometimes she really pissed me off. Probably because she knew me better than anyone.
Jackie fidgeted uncomfortably in her seat as though she wanted to be anywhere but here.
“That’s why we’re angry at Dad, isn’t it?” I added. “Because he lies and cheats and doesn’t care who he hurts? The difference between someone like him and Gray is that Gray recognizes that he fucked up. And he’s sorry. Dad isn’t ever sorry.”
Kate made a disgusted noise in her throat that was either her way of disagreeing with me, or her attempt to communicate her loathing for our father. I wasn’t sure which. Kate’s problems with my parents had begun way before news of our father’s affair and Jackie’s identity had come out. Kate had a bigger reason to hate him, one I wasn’t sure she would ever get over.
“Besides,” I continued, taking a deep breath to steady myself so I wasn’t too harsh with Kate. “I think you’re making a bigger deal out of this than it is. I just wanted to talk about it. I’m not having babies with the man. It’s not a big deal.”
“So why are you kissing him?” she challenged.
Jesus.
“Because I wanted to. Because I felt it and I’m so tired of not feeling anything. And because maybe he is the monster you think he is, but maybe he’s someone who made a series of bad decisions and now needs someone to believe in him. Maybe people deserve a second chance.”
Kate glared at me, her mouth tight. “You’re going to regret this.”
“You might be right. But he was honest with me from the beginning. He laid all of his sins, all of his secrets out for me when he didn’t owe me a fucking thing. He trusted me with that, and if he were an asshole, he could have said none of it and tried to get me into bed. So I’m going to give him a chance. Because everyone deserves to be forgiven for their mistakes.”
Kate stood up, setting her champagne flute on the tray resting atop the ottoman. She pulled up the zipper to her hoodie and grabbed her messenger bag from the floor. “I have to head out.” She turned back to face me. Her expression was still hard, and in that moment she looked like a warrior, but her voice softened slightly. “I love you. I just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”
I hated fighting with her, hated the permanent anger in my sister’s eyes. And more than anything, I hated the hurt that drove her now. I missed the sister who’d been a daredevil, occasionally a pain in my ass as only younger sisters could be. The sister who had laughed louder than anyone. The sister who’d smiled.
I reached out and gave Kate a hug, walking her out to the front door after she’d said her good-byes. “Love you,” I whispered.
She nodded.
I watched Kate walk away and then I went back into the living room where Jackie sat nursing her drink, her eyes wide.
I sank back onto the couch, wrapping a cashmere throw around my body. The one rule of sister brunch was that it was casual, so I’d dressed in yoga pants and a sweater more for comfort than anything else. I needed to go to the law library later in the afternoon to catch up on some reading.
“Is Kate okay?” Jackie asked. “She seemed . . .”
Lost. Angry. Hurt.
I sighed. Kate was never going to say anything to Jackie. For all that Kate had accepted her, there were walls that Kate didn’t let anyone past. Not even me.
“There’s something you should understand about Kate.”
“Is everything okay?” Jackie asked, concern in her voice.
“Kate was engaged her freshman year of college. When she was eighteen.”
Surprise flickered across Jackie’s face. We’d hung out quite a bit in the past few months, and not once in that time had Kate ever showed interest in a guy. Never even said anything that could make anyone think she was even interested in guys. She just didn’t care.
She was beautiful—dirty blonde hair past her shoulders, brown eyes, petite build. She wore cute, preppy clothes, but she did it for herself. I’d seen guys hit on Kate over and over again, only to be shot down before they could finish the words. She didn’t date. Didn’t have guy friends. Didn’t really have any friends. So the idea of Kate engaged at eighteen was shocking as hell. If you hadn’
t known the Kate she was before.
“What happened?”
It had been three years, and it was still hard to push the words out. As much as I struggled to talk about it, I couldn’t imagine how Kate lived it.
“Her fiancé, Matt, grew up with us. He was my age and our families were close friends. We summered together in Martha’s Vineyard, socialized during the year. When she was little, Kate used to follow him everywhere.” My eyes welled up with tears as memories flooded me. “He was special. Always. Not many eight-year-old boys would want to hang out with a six-year-old girl, but he always made sure Kate was included. Always looked out for her. Kate and I weren’t that close then, I was more interested in books and playing with my dolls, and Kate wanted to be outside throwing a ball with the guys. They were inseparable. Their names were like one word—MattandKate. I think she loved him her entire life.”
We all had. He was smart, funny, kind. He’d been class president, homecoming king, captain of the soccer team. And he had loved my sister.
“We ended up going to the same high school. Matt was a junior when Kate was a freshman. All the girls wanted to date him, but he only wanted Kate. They became a couple and that was it. They were best friends, everything to each other.” My voice cracked as I said the rest, shame filling me. “I was happy for them, but honestly, I was a little jealous, too. They just had their own private world. I was dating Thom then, but he never looked at me like Matt looked at Kate. Like she was his everything.” I wiped a tear away from my face. “When Matt graduated high school, everyone thought he would go to an Ivy. He was a legacy at Princeton and his family had big plans for him to take over his father’s security company.”
I remembered it like it was yesterday. Coming home to find my sister’s face covered in tears.
“He enlisted in the military instead. Army. He wanted to serve, to fight for his country. That was just the kind of guy Matt was. He proposed to Kate on her eighteenth birthday when he was home on leave.
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