Exposed

by Tracy Wolff

  “Go after him,” Tori whispers to me, but I’m already moving, already following him down the long winding hallway to his office. As I do, I’m vaguely aware of Tori gathering up her stuff to leave. A few seconds later I hear the front door open and close.

  “Ethan. Please. Talk to me,” I tell him as I follow him into the office. I don’t know what I want him to say, but this silence is killing me.

  The vacant look in his eyes is killing me.

  He shrugs a little. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  “Whatever you need to say. It can’t be healthy to keep whatever you’re feeling all balled up inside you.”

  “I’m fine, Chloe. There’s nothing to talk about.” He takes off his suit jacket, throws it over the arm of the couch. “I was in the middle of ruining him—why should I care what happens to him?”

  His eyes are steady on mine, his face completely blank as he says it. But his voice—his voice—is dark and shaky and off. Just off.

  “Nobody should have to find out that someone they love is dead from a news report.” I put a hand on his arm, squeeze gently. My stomach is still rolling with the horror of it. A breaking news report. What the hell is wrong with the FBI in Massachusetts? Don’t they know anything about notifying next of kin before letting announcements like that into the mainstream media?

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I despised him, isn’t it? It’s not like I care if he’s dead.”

  It’s such a blatant lie that I don’t bother calling him on it. Instead, I walk up behind him, wrap my arms around his waist. Rest my cheek against his back. And notice—for the first time—the fine tremor running through him.

  My big, strong, tough husband is shaking like a leaf.

  Before I can call him on it, though, his smartphone rings. He stiffens, one hand coming up to rest on mine as the other fishes in his pocket for his phone.

  “Let it go to voicemail,” I tell him softly. “There’s nothing so important right now that you have to take this call.”

  He glances at the screen. “It’s my mother.”

  Fuck. Of course it is.

  He accepts the call, puts the phone to his ear. And even though it’s not on speaker, I’m close enough—and his mother is loud enough—that I can hear the entire conversation.

  “Did you kill him?” she demands as soon as he answers the phone, her voice shrill and high and nearly incoherent with pain. “Tell me the truth, Ethan. Did you kill my son?”

  “What? Of course not, Mom! I’m in California—”

  “Did you have him killed?”

  “Jesus, Mom. No! I would never do anything like that—”

  “I never thought you’d do half of what you’ve done. You’ve turned against your family, humiliated us in front of the whole world, destroyed everything that was important to your brother. Why am I supposed to think it’s such a stretch that you’d actually kill him, too?”

  “Because it’s a long way from turning proof of a guy’s illegal activities over to the FBI to killing him,” Ethan tells her. There’s a pleading note in his voice I’ve never heard before, like he’s seeking absolution from her for a crime he didn’t commit.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Mom, please—”

  “No! Even if you didn’t do this, even if you didn’t actually point the gun at him and shoot him yourself—”

  Ethan flinches like he’s absorbing a hit. “Is that what happened to him?”

  “Like you care! Even if you didn’t actually kill him, this is still your fault. You did this.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You did! You pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed until someone got angry enough that they killed him. Or until he killed himself. Either way, the blame is on you. Either way—”

  I grab the phone from him then, disconnect the call.

  “What are you doing?” He turns on me, furious.

  “You don’t need to listen to that poison.”

  “She’s my mother!”

  “Yes, but right now she’s not acting like it. Right now, she’s in pain and she’s lashing out at you because she knows you’ll take it. And I’m not having it.”

  “That’s not your choice!”

  “It is my choice. Right now, it is my choice. Because, unlike her, you are the most important thing to me. You are who I’m worried about. You are who I love, and there is no way I’m going to stand here and listen to your mother systematically destroy you because she’s a selfish, bitter, angry old woman who can’t deal with her own culpability in this situation.”

  “This isn’t the time for this, Chloe. I need to call her back, need to find out about funeral arrangements. Need to—”

  “What you need is to breathe,” I tell him, taking his hands in mine and holding them to my heart. “You’ve just had an unbelievable shock. You need a little time to process it, to let your mind accept what’s happened. And so does your mom. Calling her back right now isn’t going to do anything but give her a chance to spew more poison at you. She just lost her son. You just lost your brother. The three of you were at terrible odds, locked in a horrible battle, when it happened and that makes everything so much worse. You need to let it rest tonight, just let it rest. In the morning, you can call her back and the two of you can talk. But for now, you need to leave it alone. Tomorrow is soon enough to take the weight of the fucking world on your shoulders.”

  He closes his eyes for a moment, drops his forehead down to mine as a long, slow shudder racks his powerful body. In this moment his pain is a tangible thing, so real and loud and out there that it sucks up all the air in the room.

  I wrap my arms around him, hold him to me as tightly as I can. As tightly as he’ll let me.

  It’s the only moment of weakness he allows himself. And then he’s pulling away, his face a blank mask so anathema to the man I love that I barely recognize him. “Why don’t you go eat?” he suggests as he takes his phone back from me. “I have some calls to make.”

  Get something to eat? Did he really just suggest that? Is he really sending me away like some kid who can’t play at the grown-ups’ table? “I’m not going to let you push me away,” I tell him firmly.

  “I’m not pushing you away. I have to make some calls.”

  “Can’t they wait until tomorrow? It’s late on the East Coast—”

  “No, they damn well can’t wait until tomorrow. I want to know what’s going on. I want to know how he died. I want to know what the investigation looks like so far. I want—”

  I cut him off with a kiss that he doesn’t return. But he doesn’t push me away, either, and that’s something, I suppose. “I want to help.”

  “There’s nothing for you to do—”

  “There’s nothing for either of us to do! But if you’re going to be making phone calls and dealing with this, then so am I. For better or worse, remember? You’re stuck with me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d like to know when the better’s going to start. Because, God knows, we’ve had the worse.”

  He doesn’t mean them to, but his words cut like knives. Especially considering the fact that I’m carrying his baby right now—something I’d had every intention of telling him tonight, before all hell broke loose.

  I shove the hurt down deep, though, refuse to let it affect me. Partly because I know he doesn’t mean what he’s saying and partly because this—here, now—isn’t about me. It’s about my husband. And no matter how much he despised Brandon, no matter how many terrible things Brandon did, he was still Ethan’s brother. His baby brother. That connection runs deep, no matter what Ethan says. Look at Miles, who put himself on television tonight and did a full mea culpa to help his baby sister. We may not talk much, there may be a bunch of bad blood between us now, but it is blood that’s between us. It is family.

  And so I shove my own feelings aside to be examined later and concentrate on being there for my husband. He’s giving every indication that he doesn’t need me,
that he doesn’t need anyone, but I held him in my arms. I heard that one sob he couldn’t hold back. I felt him shaking like a leaf. He needs me and I’m not going to let the bullshit of the past, all the old hurts and horrors, keep me from being here for him.

  Which is why I kiss him a second time, wrapping him up in a hug that I hope shows all the love I have inside for him and none of the turmoil that’s shredding me a little more with every second that passes.

  “Make your phone calls,” I tell him softly. “I’m going to get you some food—”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I know. But you need to eat. The calories will help fend off the shock.” At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how it works. I think I read it somewhere.

  He doesn’t say anything else. That could be because he’s lost in his own head or because he’s scrolling through his smartphone. Or it could be because he just doesn’t have anything else to say to me right now.

  As I walk back down the hall to the kitchen, I really pray it’s not the latter.

  —

  The rest of the night passes in a kind of surreal daze. Ethan spends it trying to cut through a bunch of bureaucratic nonanswers from various friends he has in various positions in the government. Though murder is usually a state crime, because Brandon was a candidate for federal office, the FBI—in conjunction with the Secret Service—has taken over the investigation. And except for the initial confirmation that Brandon is indeed dead, they aren’t talking. It takes three hours for Ethan to even get someone to admit that it definitely looks like foul play and not self-termination.

  And because he’s wearing his very best poker face, I can’t tell if that knowledge makes my husband feel better…or worse.

  The condolence phone calls start coming in. From business partners. From acquaintances. And from friends. Most of those calls come on the house phone, so I field them while Ethan threatens and cajoles every contact he can think of on the law enforcement front.

  Sebastian calls at one point, after not getting through to him on his cell phone.

  “How is he?” he asks me once he identifies himself.

  I don’t know how to answer that. I mean, I know how I’ve answered it to everyone else who’s called—he’s dealing with it, trying to make sense of the tragedy, yes, things were awkward between them before Brandon died. No one knows quite what to say, what with the current news cycle being what it is. And so they offer their condolences and accept my platitudes and we both go on our ways.

  But this is Sebastian, Ethan’s best friend. One of the very few people on the planet who know—and understand—the man my husband is. And I don’t know what to say to him.

  “That good, huh?” he says after a few seconds of silence.

  “It’s a clusterfuck, Sebastian.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much an understatement, isn’t it? He’s going to blame himself. Don’t let him.”

  “He’s already blaming himself and I don’t know how to change that.”

  “I don’t mean just about Brandon’s death—although, there’s that, too. He’s going to blame himself because even though Brandon’s dead, even though he’s paid the ultimate price for the crimes he committed, it won’t feel like enough.”

  “I don’t—I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Ethan loves you. He wanted to see Brandon punished for what he did to you more than he wanted to breathe most days. The fact that that didn’t happen—that Brandon ended up never having to pay for what he did—is going to eat at him. Which is only going to make him angrier at himself, because his brother is dead. Which should be enough of a punishment in anyone’s book.”

  It’s a relief to have him say it. A relief to have the words—the emotions—that have been tumbling around inside of me for the last few hours out on the table. Because, yes, that’s exactly what Ethan is feeling. Exactly what I’m feeling. Exactly what I’ve worked so hard to ignore from the moment we got the news.

  The ugly little voice inside of me that says Brandon got away too easily. That he didn’t have to suffer the way that I suffered. He didn’t have to face the judgment of his peers every day, didn’t have to live with the consequences of what he did. And maybe it’s sick—he’s dead, after all, which is the most dire consequence there is. And still it doesn’t feel like enough. Still it feels like I’ve been cheated out of something. Vindication. Justice. Vengeance.

  It makes me feel like a terrible person. Then again, if I am, it’s because Brandon and my family have made me that way.

  Sebastian and I talk for a few more minutes before he hangs up with a promise to call back tomorrow to check on Ethan. I promise him that I’ll tell my husband he called.

  But when I make my way back to the office to check on Ethan, he’s slumped over the desk, his head buried in his arms.

  “You okay, baby?” I ask as I cross to him.

  He sits up right away. “Yeah, of course. Just tired.”

  It’s well after midnight and besides being a long day, it’s also been an emotionally exhausting one, filled with so many ups and downs that it’s amazing we both don’t have whiplash.

  “Come to bed?” I ask him, holding out a hand to him. “It’s three a.m. on the East Coast. I don’t think there’s anything else you can do right now.”

  He nods as he allows me to pull him out of his desk chair. And then the two of us walk hand in hand to bed.

  We don’t talk while we get undressed—Ethan’s lost in his own world and I don’t know how to reach him right now—so I’m totally unprepared when, after washing my face and changing into a nightgown I almost never wear, I climb into bed and Ethan grabs on to me.

  He strips the nightgown off, and then his hands are everywhere. On my breasts, cupping my ass, between my thighs as his mouth crushes down on mine in a kiss so desperate, so brutal, that I can feel my lips bruising beneath his.

  And then he’s rolling me over, pressing my front into the mattress as he thrusts into me from behind. Again and again and again, he pounds into me, until I’m arching my back, clawing at the sheets, rocking my head back and forth against the mattress as I search for release. For relief.

  And still he keeps at me, taking me right up to the edge again and again and again and then refusing to throw me over. One hand is on my breast, pinching my nipple. The other is on my hip, the only thing holding me in place as his powerful thrusts rock me, and the bed, so hard that the headboard slams against the wall in a fast, continuous rhythm.

  It’s only after he’s turned me into an incoherent mess, after I’m begging and pleading, shaking and crying, that Ethan slips a hand beneath my sex and strokes me. Once, twice, he circles my clit and then I’m going off like the finale at a Fourth of July fireworks show, my body exploding in a million shiny sparks that fly off in a million different directions. Seconds later, Ethan stiffens against me and then he’s coming too, emptying himself inside of me with a quiet, vicious kind of power that says everything I need to know about his mental state.

  When it’s over, he rolls off me, and instead of getting up to get me a washcloth as he so often does, he just flops down on the bed beside me. Not touching me, just lying there, his big body generating enough heat to light up a small country. But when I move to get up to clean myself, he latches on, pulling me into his body. “Don’t,” he says, his voice low and gravelly and damaged. “I like knowing I’m still inside you.” He cups my sex for emphasis.

  Giving in, because there’s something sexy about being needed this much—even in the midst of all this pain—that gets to me on a visceral level. I let him pull me into his chest, let him wrap an arm around my waist and cup my breast as we both drift into fitful but exhausted sleep.

  When I wake up in the morning, he’s already out of bed and in the office making phone call after phone call. It’s a pattern that will grow eerily familiar over the next few days as he tries to cope with his rage and the pain he refuses to acknowledge that he feels. Through it all, I try to love him
, try to help him, try to set aside my own rage and confusion to be there for him.

  And when he crawls into bed beside me each evening, when he reaches for me and kisses me, holds me and fucks me so desperately in the darkest part of the night—I can’t help wondering why he can’t do the same when the sun is up.

  Can’t help wondering if he’ll ever be able to again. And if he can’t, what’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen to the baby I’ve only just begun to think about?

  Chapter 25

  “Mr. Frost, there’s someone from the FBI and the Secret Service here to see you.”

  I’ve been expecting them. It’s been three days since Brandon died and from what I’ve been able to figure out, no one is any closer to fathoming who murdered my brother than they were the day they found him. I’ve been pulling every string I can to move the investigation forward, but I’ve been blocked at every turn. It doesn’t take a genius to know why.

  “Thank you…” I trail off as I realize I don’t remember the temporary receptionist’s name. She’s just filling in while Dorothy is on vacation, but it bothers me that I’ve been so out of it that I can’t remember something as simple as her name.

  She must read the hesitation in my silence, because she says, “It’s Tamara, sir. Tamara Keegan.”

  “I’m sorry, Tamara.”

  “Don’t be, Mr. Frost.” She sounds sympathetic and kind and I know I should be appreciative, but somehow it only makes me feel worse. Probably because it makes Brandon’s death feel even more real—like two federal agents at my door and an office filled to the brim with sympathy flowers—hasn’t done that already.

  I clear my throat. “You can send them in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As I stand and make my way over to the door, I concentrate on what I’m going to say to the agents. What questions I’m going to ask and what answers I’m going to give when they start poking at me. Which I know they will—they aren’t here to pay their condolences, after all.

  Two men in close to identical black suits meet me at the door. “Ethan Frost?” the taller one asks.