by Raine, Meli
“Apparently, my own biological father is none of my business, either! If you had it your way, at least.”
The man has a heart. He does. I wish he didn’t. This would be so much easier if I could dismiss him as evil. Turning Harry into a villain would make my life simpler.
But he’s not evil. He is not a god.
He is human.
And human beings have a remarkable capacity for complexity. For hypocrisy. For believing two truths that contradict each other, but clinging to those truths desperately.
And of course, for love. Our capacity for deep, abiding love is what makes us so complicated.
So stupid.
So careless.
And so, so worth giving a second chance.
“It wasn’t just me, Jane. Anya kept the secret as well,” he replies. Even he doesn’t seem convinced by his own words, running a hand through his hair as his eyes move rapidly, ever calculating. After checking the watch on his left wrist, he just sighs and looks at me again, as if I’m supposed to have some kind of answer to make this all fit neatly into a box so he can move on.
“Too bad she isn’t alive to give me her perspective. How am I supposed to believe anything that comes out of your mouth? You’ve spent my entire life lying to me. My entire life. Now I’m supposed to trust you? Now I’m supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt? You have a lot of nerve, Senator.”
“I do.” He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a flask. He takes two plastic cups from the water cooler by the door, and pours an inch of amber liquid in the cups.
Then he holds one out to me. He ignores Silas, who takes it all in stride.
“Drink,” he says, following his own command, slugging down the shot.
“No, thank you.” I want to stay clear. Keep my wits about me. Not be fettered by alcohol.
“This is one of those conversations better conducted under the influence of a shot or two. Trust me.” He gives me a wry look I can’t decipher.
I take the drink.
And choke it down.
Harry pours himself another shot, consumes it, then takes a deep breath. All of my interactions with him until this moment have been in groups. Lindsay and me and him. The three of us and Monica. My mom and some advisors. Bodyguards.
Crazy meetings where I am moved around like a box of old yearbooks no one wants, but can’t bear to get rid of.
He has no true power over me. Letting the press know I’m his biological daughter is a hand grenade clasped in each of our hands, the pin pulled, our palms sweaty.
That pretty much describes my day-to-day existence most of the last year.
“I want to be clear, sir,” Silas interrupts, although no one’s talking. It feels like a breach of protocol. He’s coloring outside the lines, wildly violating every code of conduct I know his job requires.
Then again, he’s off duty.
“Get out of the room, Gentian.”
“No, sir. Not just yet.”
Now it’s Silas my father stares at.
“Are you disobeying an order?”
“I am off duty, sir, so there are no orders between us. Only Jane.”
Only Jane.
I’m between them, literally and figuratively, my body the midpoint in a line that stretches from my secret-filled past to my hope-filled future. Silas is putting his career on the line to defend me in this ridiculous meeting with a man who won’t accept how much he has damaged me.
Defending me is Silas’s purpose.
But what is his goal?
“You’re not doing yourself any favors, Gentian,” my father declares, working the alpha-dog angle, trying to make Silas conform. Testosterone infuses the air like nerve gas. It’s toxic. I can taste it on my tongue, feel it drift along my skin, searching for a way in.
Seeking compliance. Conformity.
Submission.
Silas, though, doesn’t play my father’s game.
Silas has his own rules.
One set of rules for work.
And a wholly new set I’m about to witness.
“I’m not here to ask for favors. I’m here to make sure that Jane gets what she needs.” The set of Silas’s jaw, the way he holds his body so loose, yet primed, makes me unable to look away. This is a man comfortable with the physical state of awareness and vigilance. This is a man whose DNA has built into it the capacity for violence. This is a man who has trained and honed his muscles and mind to kill for a higher purpose.
In this room, right now, I am his higher purpose.
That knowledge makes the chaos inside me go still.
“You weren’t hired to meet all her needs. Especially the ones you’ve chosen to start with.” Harry’s eyes flicker with a curmudgeonly glare, one filled with reproach as he stares Silas down.
“If you’re alluding to sex, sir, just say so. No need for weasel words.”
Harry looks murderous.
“Don’t you tell me how to communicate, Gentian. Don’t you tell me how to do anything.”
“Then I’ll ask for the same, sir. Don’t gaslight Jane. Don’t deny her what she needs from you.”
Harry turns to me, raw and livid. “And what is that, Jane? What do you need from me?” If anger had a color, it wouldn’t be red like in the movies.
It would be black.
The color of an endless abyss.
Like his eyes.
“I need the truth,” I plead, voice shaking.
“Which truth?”
“The truth.”
“You’re so young. Naïve. You still think there is a truth?” He shakes his head. “Cute. Really cute. No such thing exists. If you haven’t learned yet that multiple truths exist and come into constant conflict with each other, you have some severe life lessons coming your way.” His voice is so smooth, years of public speaking and private schmoozing turning it into a work of art. If I closed my eyes, I could listen to him yelling at me and find it to be a riveting performance.
Sound washes over me, Harry’s voice a weapon of beauty, his words the bullets he loads into his throat, his mouth and eyes aimed at me and Silas, the trigger cocked.
If he were going to shoot, we wouldn’t even be here. A part of me knows this.
And suddenly, I have the upper hand.
“More severe than being denied my own father for twenty-four years? Or having my car bombed? Being sent tweets describing how men want to gang rape me on live-streaming television like Lindsay was–but worse? Or being sent pictures of snuff films with my face superimposed over the poor victim? How about losing my mother in the most public and humiliating way possible? Or losing our house, my apartment, everything I own, and being reduced to wearing Lindsay’s hand-me-downs? You think I haven’t suffered? You think I live with some rose-colored glasses on? You’re not as smart as you think you are, Senator–Daddy–if you think I’m naïve.”
My voice carries, growing louder and louder, Silas behind me. I can feel his attention, his praise, his support as an almighty roar of protest grows inside me.
“How dare you!” I shout. “You turned my entire life into a lie and you’re standing here judging me?”
“I am assessing the situation,” Harry says sharply, that cold countenance so pervasive. In an instant, my world distills down to one, singular goal: to knock him out of his privileged state of being so shut off from emotion.
Make no mistake: it’s a privilege to have power without experiencing emotional consequences.
“You’re a stone-cold sociopath who would rather see your own daughters suffer for your goals,” I accuse, the feel of steel on flesh palpable as each word enters his consciousness.
All the color in Harry’s face drains out of him, his eyes going wide, authentic, unfiltered emotion unveiled as I watch his reaction, my gaze holding him accountable.
“No,” he rasps. “That isn’t true.”
“It’s closer to the truth than you’ll let yourself admit,” I respond. “But it’s especially true of your
wife. What she has done to Lindsay is unconscionable.”
To my surprise, Silas and Harry exchange a look. It’s fleeting, but inescapable.
I’ve touched on some piece of information I’m not supposed to know.
All my anger migrates, redistributing between both men.
“Look, Jane, you’re clearly distraught right now–” Harry’s manipulation sets off my alarms.
“No. I’m clearly right.”
He looks at his watch. “I have a meeting in one minute. We’ll need to table this discussion for another time.”
“You can’t treat me according to Robert’s Rules of Order. I’m not on a subcommittee for foreign affairs. I’m not a bill you’re considering. I’m your daughter. You don’t table your daughter.” My last word catches in my throat, the emotional impact of saying it to his face too much to hide behind a wall of anger. Silas’s eyes grow compassionate but his jaw is clenched tight, body primed to step in and protect me.
Me.
Not the future president of the United States.
I walk to the door and realize Harry was right.
That shot of whisky did make a difference.
“I’m tabling you, Senator. Effective immediately. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want your money. I don’t want your pity. If you won’t give me information–and that is all I need from you–then you don’t get me. You don’t get to control me. You don’t get to tell me where to live or what to do. You spent twenty-four years pretending I wasn’t your daughter, propping up a back-room lie without filling me in. And for that, you get what you deserve–this.”
I exit the room and slam the door.
Then I run.
Before I can reach the door, I’m blocked by Duff and some guy in a suit I don’t know. He’s the size of a small mountain and has the deadest eyes I’ve ever seen. The thump of footsteps behind me gets louder as Silas appears, face a controlled mask, minor muscle movement the only hint of turmoil underneath.
“I’ve got her,” he tells them. They move away from the door and I burst through it, running down the sidewalk, not caring what this looks like.
Keeping up appearances is someone else’s job.
Chapter 12
I run straight into a wall. A cloth-covered, finely tailored wall.
Drew’s body surprises me as I crash into him and Lindsay. She’s right next to him, and while I should have seen them as I fled the coffee shop, some part of my flight response doesn’t track them in my sight.
I fall backwards as if Drew were made of stone, and as I fall my knee cracks against the broken, crooked sidewalk, pain radiating through my bones. Skin tears and blood rushes to the surface to repair the injury, my language centers cut off for a moment as my mind becomes a screaming red cloud.
Drew’s hand goes to the holster on his belt, hovering, as Silas appears, his worried face over mine.
“Get me out of here,” I demand as he helps me stand. Duff walks swiftly to a black SUV and Silas helps me to the door, gently lifting me up as I wince in pain. I look at my knee and see a constellation of older bruises around the raw, broken flesh. This is who I am.
A map of mottled wounds.
I’m running away from my father, who is arguably one of the most powerful men in the country.
But there’s someone even more powerful in my life, and he’s climbing into the SUV next to me, slamming the door shut as Duff peels out and leaves Harry’s retinue staring at us. No sign of Harry.
No expectation he would follow me.
“What an ass,” I say, working hard to control my breath. “Why would he come all the way to the coffee shop like that, Silas?”
“I don’t know. How bad is it?”
It takes me a second to realize he’s asking about my knee.
“It hurts. A lot. But I’ve endured worse.”
“I know. I’ve watched you. I’ve seen the bruises and the cuts.” His face hardens. He reaches into a flat pouch behind Duff’s seat and extracts a small first-aid kit. I wince in anticipatory pain from future alcohol swabs. He sees me wince and his eyebrows do this adorable thing where it’s clear he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
Silas is giving me anticipatory compassion.
“It’s going to hurt,” he says apologetically as he pulls the antiseptic torture device out from the foil packet.
“Duh. It won’t hurt more than anything else I’ve experienced in the last week.”
“Has it really been only a week? Feels like a lifetime.”
“Thanks. Glad to know the seconds tick like days when you’re around me.”
“Time stops when we’re together, Jane,” he says in a lighthearted voice.
Before I can answer, he quickly presses the alcohol swab on my open wound. I hiss sharply and arch my back in pain, then slowly let out my breath.
“Damn, that hurts.”
“Sorry.” He’s being clinical and calm, the word robotic.
“It’s my own fault. I ran into Drew and fell.”
“I saw.”
“I couldn’t stay in that room with my–with Harry–one second longer.”
“He didn’t deserve your attention.”
That statement makes me well up. None of the scrapes or bruises do, but his empathy... oh, how it pierces me.
“Hey,” he says softly. “It’s okay.” He uses the edge of his index finger to wipe away a stray tear, his touch making my cheek stretch up with a smile.
“Where to?” Duff asks from the front seat.
Silas looks at me with an expression that hands me the world.
“Home,” he answers Duff. “Take us home.”
I lean against him, twitching here and there as he cleans and bandages the wound on my knee, which is now swelling like it’s imitating a baseball. I close my eyes and let myself sink into his body, relishing how my head feels against his shoulder, my ear against his jacket, the scent of his warmth and how it all mingles inextricably.
I let myself drift off, comfort and peace in the casual freedom to cross invisible lines between us, and soon there is no pain, no discomfort, no fear.
No light.
I’m running in the darkness, in a cavernous cocoon covered in velvet and slime. It runs along my bare ankles, coating my feet. The sound makes me want to rake my eyeballs, pull out my hair, cut off my ears. Squinch squinch, it echoes.
Squinch.
“Silas!” I scream, my voice boomeranging back to me, wet and thick like mucus.
He doesn’t reply.
I fall, my knees thick in the black fluid, my lungs pressed flat like pancakes. I can’t breathe, but I crawl, my fingernails breaking off as I dig into the slime and pull myself forward, frantic. The slime turns to thick, black dirt, the kind with fertilizer in it, the smell like a flower shop,
My feet turn into roots, splitting with a terrific pain that feels like a thousand razor blades are slitting my bones, turning me into slivers with roots that spiral out like tentacles, tendrils seeking to violate and invade.
As I open my mouth to scream, I see a man in a fine suit, his back to me, hands in his pockets, body loose and casual yet confident in his power.
My heart slams in my chest, then slows, smacking against the wall of ribs it finds, until the noise inside me turns to a slippery, sloppy sound.
Squinch.
Squinch.
Squinch.
“Jane,” the man says in a cultured voice, one that feels like ice invades every hole I have, making me scream with lungs so flat, they aren’t real. My body tries to breathe but it’s forgotten how.
The room goes grey. Mist swirls around me as I click my tongue, my neck laboring to stop the involuntary spasms of my lungs. Pain rips through my throat. The muscles strain and shred in order to bring me oxygen. The edges around my vision start to ripple, like lightning twisted by a blacksmith to track my periphery —
“Jane?” Silas’s soft, rumbling voice comes through like we’r
e underwater. He plants a kiss on my temple. “Jane. We’re here. Home.”
I jolt, realizing I’ve drifted off, inhaling sharply through my nose as my jaw tightens, suppressing a yawn. Tingling pain shoots through my right leg. It’s fallen asleep, the pins-and-needles sensation making me shake it over and over, a little too panicked in my attempts.
What was I dreaming about?
Fear grips me, the sense hard to shake. My muscles don’t know whether to be loose or tight, whether to stretch or constrict. I’m coming out of slumber. In the awkward in-between, I have no ability to regulate or calibrate.
Silas does it for me.
Leading me into our building–it’s so strange to think that way, but it is ours–we take the elevator up, Silas insisting I lean on him for support. As I make my halting way to my apartment door, he continues to his, taking three steps back to touch my elbow.
“My place,” he says, his eyes filling with a series of emotions that feel infinitely more complicated than what they are: desire.
“I’m fine in my apartment.”
“You have a blow-up mattress as a bed.”
“It’s on a cot. It’s comfortable.”
“I’m not inviting you over to have sex, Jane. I’m inviting you to my place because you need to recuperate on a proper bed.”
“Why not sex?” I blurt out, unable to hide the disappointment in my voice.
His eyes darken, his smile wide like a predator’s.
“I told you. I don’t want to be a revenge screw.” His smile turns to something more contemplative.
“You’re not.”
“I don’t want you to sleep with me in anger.”
“Then we’re never sleeping together, Silas, because all I am is angry these days.”
“Jane.”
“If you don’t want me, I understand. You heard what my father said. You’ll be hounded by the media and–”
His kiss is relentless, hard and demanding, a kiss that takes your breath away at the same time it stokes a flame. My fingertips dig into his business shirt so hard my knuckles ache. The warmth of his chest through his clothes makes me want more. I want to strip him naked and spend the next few days exploring him. I want his bed to become my playground. I want a world where we’re the only people in it.
