by Peak, Renna
No, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about her, except for the small amount of information about her that was public. Her parents obviously kept her on a tight leash, her life neatly reined in so that only the information the Davis family wanted out in public was actually available.
The girl called over my shoulder. “Hey, John. Do you know where Jenna is tonight?”
The guy looked over at the girl and shrugged. “Not here. I think she said she was going to Seattle.”
She looked back at me and took another sip from her drink. “See? Seattle. She plays a lot.”
I knew that. That was one thing I did know. I had gone to see her play twice in the year since my grandmother’s birthday. I had looked up Jenna’s birthday after that concert and practically counted the minutes until I could find her—until she was eighteen. I knew that was only a magic number in the eyes of the law, but it just wasn’t worth the risk. I moved to Virginia a month before I knew she would be an adult. I told Krystal it was to be closer to work—closer to the political action I was so used to taking advantage of. But really, it was to be even in the same vicinity as Jenna.
It was like a lightning bolt hit my brain and I hadn’t realized it until that moment—I was stalking her. I’d found out about this party online and just assumed she would be here because it was at the house of one of her classmates. I didn’t know her or anything about her—why would I assume she would be here? I was seriously stalking her, and it was becoming an issue. Not just an issue—it was a huge fucking problem. I felt like I needed a twelve-step program to get this girl out of my head. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized it before—it was probably only because my grandmother had pointed out who she was that night in San Francisco. If I hadn’t known her name, none of this would have happened. None of it would be happening now. I wouldn’t even be here in Virginia if I hadn’t known her name. I’d become obsessed with her without even realizing it, and it was only because deep down, I must only really want to destroy her father.
I turned to the girl sitting next to me. Darlene Edwards. Taking her father down wouldn’t just be a feather in my cap, it would be a favor to anyone who cared at all about politics—and taking Congressman Edwards down wouldn’t just be a favor to my grandmother, it would be a favor to the world. It wouldn’t even be that hard—it would only take a few names from this girl, maybe some dates and times to connect the dots and get him out of politics for good. Breaking up that combination of Congressman Edwards and Senator Davis had always been a dream of my grandmother’s—so it would benefit her, too. And this girl sitting next to me was into me, I could see that in her body language. It was almost going to be too easy.
I turned to her, smiling, and extended my hand. “Where are my manners? It’s nice to meet you, Darlene, wasn’t it? My name is Brandon.”
4
Six Years Earlier
“What the hell, Brandon?”
Daniel had walked in unannounced, as usual. The prick doesn’t even knock anymore. I continued what I was doing without looking up, packing up the boxes without much care. I needed to get out of there—out of D.C. and away from the shit storm I had created.
He slapped his hand down on the counter in front of me. “I asked you what the hell you were doing. Care to answer?”
I glanced up at him, barely making eye contact. I wasn’t going to miss Daniel, either. Since starting whatever the hell job he had on the Hill now, he’d become a major pain in my ass. I was getting pretty tired of being an errand boy for the politicians around here, anyway, but now that he had joined the fold… I wasn’t going to miss it. Not at all. I put a few more things in the box and closed it up, pulling an empty one to rest beside it on my kitchen counter.
“You won’t believe what happened to me today. It’s the fucking luckiest thing that has ever happened to anyone on the face of the planet, ever. I can basically write my own ticket now.”
I nodded and shoved a few things into the empty box. “That’s great, Daniel. Have fun with that. I’m getting the hell out of D.C., so I don’t really give a fuck at this point.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “I’m going to be a fucking Hennessey, man.”
My arm froze above the box. I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the floor before every bit of my body turned to ice. There was only one Hennessey left. Only one person he could be talking about. I shook my head. There was no way she would be with a douche bag like Daniel. No way she would choose him if she actually had a choice.
“I know, right? I could be president. I could be the fucking president, Brandon. Can you believe this shit?” He shook his head. “All because her father is an idiot and owed my father a favor. Can you believe it?”
I shook my head slowly. No, I definitely could not believe it. “So an arranged marriage? People are still doing that?”
He shrugged and opened one of my cupboards, pulling out a bottle of scotch that I still hadn’t packed. He opened another cupboard, looking for a glass. When he saw that cupboard was already empty, he pulled the cap from the bottle and took a swig. “Who cares? I’m sure she’s just a spineless little bitch who can’t say no to her parents, anyway.”
My skin prickled. I set my jaw and emptied another cupboard into the box. This news only made me want to leave even more. Maybe she was a spineless little bitch. She would have to be to agree to be anywhere near Daniel.
“So you’re high-tailing it out of here because you still feel bad? You won, man. People get hurt in this game. Get over it.”
I felt heat rise in my cheeks and my body tensed. “Sometimes, Daniel, winning isn’t everything.”
“Are you kidding me?” He took another swig from the bottle. “Winning is everything. And we both won this week, so we should be celebrating.” He took another long gulp. “Where the hell are you going, anyway?”
I shrugged. “Away. West coast, maybe. I don’t know.” Somewhere far away from D.C., Daniel, the Edwards family and every politician who thought he could get some advantage over someone else by paying me to do unspeakable damage to them. Away. The farther away, the better.
“You’ll have to come back for the wedding. I’m going to get married at that compound in Maine. No one’s been invited there in years, but I’m going to throw it open for the world to see. Invite the tabloids. It’s going to be epic.”
“Great.” With everything that had just happened in the past year, I hadn’t let myself even think about Jenna Davis. There hadn’t been room in my head for it. I had fucked up everything with Polly. Her lying about being Darlene when we met at that party hadn’t helped, but shit… Nothing had turned out how I had planned. Nothing had come out the way I expected. I mean, I knocked up a fucking sixteen-year-old…
I grabbed the bottle out of Daniel’s hand and took my own long drink before returning to packing. The only way out of this was out. Out of D.C. and out of politics. I didn’t even care about taking anyone else down. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach was enough to tell me that I wasn’t cut out for this work. At least not like this—not up close and personal. And now, Daniel was going to have the senator’s daughter. It was too much to think about. Too much to bear.
“Yeah, I have to wait a couple years, though. Her parents agreed to keep her here until they think she’s old enough for me, but then she’s mine. They want her to finish college, then business school or law school, maybe. She’s a smart little thing, though. Already finished two years of college while she was in high school. And her dad’s pretty sure she’s still a virgin, so there’s that…”
I rubbed my temples. This was about the last thing I ever wanted to talk about, particularly with Daniel. The guy was an asshole on a good day, and he sure as hell didn’t deserve someone with Jenna’s talent…
“Wait, she’s not playing piano? Not going to music school?”
He chuckled. “You really do know everything about the Davis family, don’t you?” He took another swig from the bottle. “No, they made her give i
t up. It couldn’t have mattered too much to her since she agreed to it. I told you she was a spineless little bitch.”
Because they didn’t give her a choice. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know me, but there was something inside me that knew, without a doubt, that she hadn’t made that decision. I’d heard her play too many times to believe otherwise.
“Four years, man. You’ll have to come back for the wedding. Four years and I’ll be a Hennessey by marriage. I should be ready to run for office by then, too. I can take that little bitch out with me on campaign stops—it’ll be like automatic votes. I can’t even believe this is real.”
My insides felt like they had turned to stone, and I knew in that moment that it was over. There was never going to be a Brandon and Jenna and I would never hear her play again.
I couldn’t believe it was real, either.
5
Present Day
Brandon held my hand as we walked toward the door of the restaurant. There was something so final about this—it felt like everything was over. It was like everything in the last six months had led up to this moment and we were walking to our doom.
Despite the gnawing in my stomach, I turned to him, looking up into his blue eyes. “Kiss me.”
He smiled, his blue eyes boring into mine. He released my hand and snaked his arms around my waist. He tilted his head and brushed his lips over mine, only barely touching me.
Feeling his lips on mine still made my heart flutter, like little wings were trapped inside my chest. His touch still sent a thrill across my skin. And when he breathed the words, “I love you,” into me, they still made me feel light-headed. It felt like the first time and the millionth time all wrapped up into one perfect moment.
I stood on my tiptoes to put my arms around his neck. I ran my hand through his soft, black curls and pulled him into an embrace. I whispered into his ear. “I love you, too.”
There was something so intimate about that moment, but so bittersweet. I knew nothing would be the same again. It was one of those strange, wonderful, but almost sad moments—one of those times when you want to desperately hold onto what you have, even though you already feel it falling through your fingers like grains of sand. One of those moments when you know your whole world is about to change, but you have no idea how or why. I just knew that whatever it was—whatever it meant—it was a moment I would want to hold onto for the rest of my life.
He finally pulled away and laced his fingers through mine again. We went into the restaurant and headed for the back room, just like I knew we would. No words needed to be spoken between us. I already knew who the man behind the curtain here was. I already knew we were going to meet my father. There was just something so solemn about it—like we were marching to our deaths. Like we had to go face the firing squad together.
And looking back, that’s exactly what it was. At least for me.
I was standing behind him, my hand still tightly clenched in his—almost painfully held in his grasp. I couldn’t see the person we were meeting, but I sensed him the moment we walked in the back room.
I heard my father’s voice. “Brandon. Sit down.”
Brandon slid into the booth across from my father and I was finally exposed to him. Not just to him—to them.
I think my heart stopped beating for a second or two and I couldn’t find a way to breathe. I stood there with my mouth open, unable to move. I think a hospital would have probably pronounced me dead because it seemed like it lasted for an eternity—no breathing and no heartbeat.
I’m sorry, Senator Davis. Your daughter is dead. If I only could have been so lucky.
Brandon pulled on my arm and it woke me from the daze, at least long enough to breathe. I sucked in a long breath, staring at the man sitting next to my father. At Daniel. And the memories came flooding back into my mind on that breath. Not just the recent ones—all of them. The anger and the hurt. The betrayal. The fear.
I tried to wrench my arm away from Brandon’s grasp, but it only tightened. I just wanted to run. I had to get away from them, and it didn’t matter where. He pulled me toward him again, almost forcing me into the booth next to him. I finally gave up fighting him and sat down across from my father. I looked between the three men. Daniel. My father. Brandon. I saw the three men in my life and I knew then that I didn’t trust any of them. I didn’t have anyone left—no one in the world who I could trust. No one who had my best interests in mind. No one to keep me safe but myself.
I wanted to calm myself down, and tried telling myself that there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation why my father would be sitting in a backroom restaurant booth with him. With Daniel. And that there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation why Brandon would be meeting with them. With my father and Daniel. I just couldn’t get past the fact that my chest hurt so much that I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. I probably should have screamed. I probably should have run. But I couldn’t even breathe.
“Brandon, so nice of you to join us.” My father’s baritone voice rang out across the table. “I see you brought a peace offering.”
Sick. I was going to be sick. If I’d had even a bit of food in my stomach, I would have puked. My head was spinning so fast I thought I might pass out anyway, but the sick feeling in my stomach… Brandon works for them. He works for my father. They expected me to be here. They wanted me to be here.
I told myself I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know the depths of what Brandon was like, what he did, who he did it for. I didn’t want or need to know. I’d had enough of politics for an entire lifetime, and I never wanted to know what he did. I just wanted to be anywhere but here—anywhere but in the presence of Daniel and my father. Back in the hotel room. Back in the hotel room would be good. Making love with Brandon before I knew anything—that would be so much better than this. I should have held onto that moment a little longer. I should have held onto it forever…
“You’re looking well, Jenna. Better than the last time I saw you, anyway.” I’m pretty sure I heard them all snicker at Daniel’s comment, but it might have only been him. My stomach twisted into a knot and I couldn’t even force myself to look up from the spot on the table where my gaze had been fixed. I didn’t really want to know who was laughing at me, anyway.
They were all on the same side. All on the let’s-fuck-with-Jenna’s-head side. And I had to admit it—the state of my sanity was tenuous on a good day. The fact that I had taken a bottle of my mother’s anxiety pills three days after Daniel’s “death” should have been at the top of all their minds before they tried pulling this little stunt on me. But it wasn’t, because they were all sitting here playing some sort of horrible mind game with me. And I was sitting there, my head spinning and just wishing to be anywhere else. Dead would have been a fantastic place to be at that moment. Death seemed like the perfect option. Because if I was dead, I wouldn’t have to face the fact that each of these men had betrayed me. I wouldn’t have to face the fact that I had slept with two of them—hell, I had slept with one of them less than an hour ago. And they were all playing some sick and twisted game with me. Some fucked up game that I didn’t understand.
My father cleared his throat. “Your mother told me you were in Sacramento, Jenna. Did you hear the speech?”
I felt something squeeze my hand and I looked down. Brandon was still holding it. I tried to wrestle it away again, but he only tightened his grip. I still wasn’t able to lift my gaze to make eye contact with my father. I didn’t think I would ever want to look at any of them. “I don’t forgive you. I don’t forgive any of you.” I pulled my hand away again, and this time Brandon let it go.
I heard the chuckling again. Now that my hand was free, I thought for a second about running, but then thought better of it. “Does someone want to tell me what the hell is going on here?”
My father and Daniel both chuckled again. I was pretty sure Brandon hadn’t made a sound that time, and maybe he hadn’t since we sat down. My hea
d was spinning so fast it was hard to tell what was real and what was only in my imagination at that point.
My father folded his hands on the table, looking at Brandon. “Would you like to explain to her ‘what the hell is going on,’ Brandon? Or should I?”
I looked over at Brandon. He was looking down blankly into his lap, his shoulders hunched. I wasn’t sure what my father had on him, but it had to be big. I had never seen Brandon like this, and it looked like he certainly wasn’t here to stand up for me or for himself.
“How long has it been since I hired you, Brandon?”
My stomach clenched and I felt the same wave of nausea as before. Brandon works for him. For my father. I should have known. I probably did know all along—I just hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself. I finally turned my gaze to him, if only to see what the response would be.
“Three years.” He didn’t look up to make eye contact with me or with my father.
“Three years.” My father repeated it flatly. He let out a sigh. “And in those three years, what has been the one and only rule? The only rule I have told you over and over again? The one I warned you about four weeks ago when I came to visit you after your little accident?”
My father had been to visit Brandon?
He set his jaw, still staring at his hands. “Stay away from your daughter.”
“Wrong. Stay the hell away from my daughter.” My father looked me up and down. “By the looks of it, you haven’t been following my one and only rule, Brandon.”
I heard Daniel snicker again until my father shot him a look that shut him up immediately.
Brandon moved his hands up to the table, still folded together, and sucked in a long breath. He stared down at his hands silently, not even acknowledging that my father had spoken.
