My eyes flew open again as he spoke. What the hell? My ears had to be deceiving me. My jaw practically unhinged itself as I watched my father continue. He was committing political suicide. Surely he knew that.
“I realize many of my would-be voters might be outraged by this, but to them I’d like to say two more things: firstly, what my son and stepdaughter do is no one’s business other than their own, and it has absolutely no bearing on my work and what kind of positive changes I’d like to make as State Governor. And secondly, perhaps you could try to save your outrage for the abysmal policies my opponent will be bringing in if he is elected over me. That’s what you should really be concerned about. Anyway, that’s all, folks. Thank you for your time.”
With that, he stepped off the dais and walked away amidst a flurry of shouted questions and flashing lights from photographer’s cameras.
Jesus. He’d really done it.
“Mr. Stryker, how can you support this?” one journalist yelled.
“Will you be withdrawing from the gubernatorial race?” another asked.
Dad’s chief advisor approached the dais and waved his hand at the buzzing crowd of reporters. “Peter has already made his stance clear. He will not be withdrawing from the race at this time. Please address any further questions towards me,” he said.
Nina stood up and switched the TV off, and we all sat in the room in silence, still processing what had just happened.
“Well…that wasn’t what I expected,” I finally said.
Nina smiled. “No…I knew he’d do the right thing.”
“So this was you. You convinced him to say that?” Lina asked, her eyes wide.
Nina shook her head. “No. We spoke about it, and I told him to do the right thing. I didn’t specify what, though. In the end, it’s his campaign, and it’s up to him.”
“So…you really think it’s okay for us to be together?” Lina said softly. “I know we spoke about it yesterday, but I thought…maybe you’d changed your mind…or…”
Her voice trailed off, and Nina arched an eyebrow. “I admit, I was worried at first, but you two clearly love each other, and you aren’t actually related. You aren’t even living in the same house, since Chase has moved out,” she replied, squeezing Lina’s hand. “Just don’t go breaking up! That’ll make things quite awkward, to say the least.”
I chuckled. She didn’t have to worry about that. Unless Lina planned on ditching me, we were in this for the long haul.
I still couldn’t believe what my father had just done. It seemed surreal, like it was all some sort of dream which I was about to wake from. He’d sacrificed his campaign just to ensure that Lina and I felt secure in our relationship and within the family, and my stomach roiled at the thought of what he’d given up for us. If we’d just been able to wait a few more weeks to tell him about us, till after the election, then things would’ve been so much better. He wouldn’t have felt trapped into nuking his bid for Governor, but I’d basically forced his hand by revealing the truth about Lina and me at the wedding.
I’d tried to speak quietly when I’d answered him at the reception, but it hadn’t made a difference. Several people around us had already heard Lily’s outing of us, and they’d been paying close attention from that second onwards. Judging by the timestamps on some of the Facebook and Twitter posts about us, they’d been posted at literally the exact moment my father had asked us what the hell was going on.
I couldn’t blame Lily, though. She was only a kid. She had no idea what she was doing, and besides, it was our fault, anyway. Lina and I were the ones who’d kept things from our family and sneaked around for this long, and it was our fault that Dad’s campaign had been wrecked. Even if my father hadn’t made the speech he just had, it would’ve been over anyway.
Nina picked up her handbag and smiled at me and Lina. “I need to go run some errands,” she said. “You two stay here. Don’t leave the house for any reason, and don’t answer the door to any journalists.”
“Okay,” Lina replied, trying to return her Mom’s smile and failing miserably.
I knew she was feeling just as glum as I was. Nina and my father were being so good and supportive about this whole thing, which was unexpected and totally undeserved. We should’ve just been honest about our feelings for each other in the first place, instead of putting everyone in this awkward position.
“Do you feel as crappy as I do?” Lina asked quietly a moment later, once we were alone in the room again.
I nodded. “Yep.”
She sighed, and just as she opened her mouth to say something, the doorbell rang.
“Great,” she muttered. “Million bucks says it’s the press.”
We both walked towards the front door to make sure it was locked, and we heard a faint voice on the other side.
“Lina? Are you there?”
Lina’s eyes widened. “It’s Michaela!”
I peeked through the peephole and nodded. “Yep, it’s just Michaela and Landon. No press.”
We hurriedly let them inside, and Landon grinned at me as Lina and Michaela hugged. “We so knew about you guys. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us, though!” he said.
I shrugged, and Lina gave the two of them a half-smile. “Sorry. I wasn’t sure how.”
“It’s okay. We get it. Pretty rough situation, huh? We just heard the press conference thing on the radio,” Landon replied.
I nodded. “Yeah. We’re both feeling a bit shitty.”
“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Michaela said, a conspiratorial smile lighting her features. “We’re here to make you feel better!”
Lina shook her head. “Thanks, guys, but I don’t know if anything will make me feel better right now. Peter’s done so much for me, and Chase and I just totally ruined his campaign for Governor.”
Michaela’s smile grew wider, and she exchanged a glance with Landon. “Um…maybe not,” she replied.
“Huh?” Lina asked, her eyebrows drawing together in a puzzled expression. “What’s going on?”
“Well, everyone is talking about you guys right now, as I’m sure you know…but let’s just say Eric Bond is about to have his own family scandal. And it’s a hundred times worse.”
My eyebrows shot up, and Landon grinned. “And there it is. That’s the face I was looking for. Sit down, and we’ll tell you about it.”
“Er…okay.”
We led them into the lounge room, and they sat across from us on the sofa, their faces lighting up with glee. “Okay, we know we’re totally horrible people for knowing about this and not stopping it, but…well, Jessie Bond is a horrible person, so we don’t feel too bad,” Landon said.
“About what?” Lina asked. “Stop keeping us in suspense!”
“Well, remember how we stalked her Facebook a while ago? When you first told us about her?”
Lina nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, you know what I’m like with my Facebook stalking. I take it very seriously,” Landon said with a wink. “Anyway, I noticed that there were heaps of check-ins and posts with some guy on her profile. Figured it was just someone she was seeing, so whatever…no big deal, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But then,” Michaela cut in. “We met this girl in one of our classes who used to be best friends with Jessie, and they had a falling out recently. We’ve kinda become close with her—I think I mentioned her to you, her name’s Amy—and we somehow got to talking about Jessie. She ended up telling us that the guy who’s always all over her Facebook…well, it’s her cousin. Her first cousin.”
“And…? What’s wrong with hanging out with a relative?” Lina asked.
“Uhh…they were doing a lot more than hanging out. Apparently they’ve been ‘friends with benefits’ for like, the last three years.”
Lina’s hand flew to her mouth. “What? How could you or this Amy girl possibly know that?”
“Amy found out a while ago, when they were still friends. Jessie was using her
phone to sext him because her own phone was dead, and she forgot to delete the sexy messages. Amy saw the messages and figured out that it was Jessie’s cousin, so Jessie swore her to secrecy. But now they aren’t friends anymore, because Jessie slept with her boyfriend, and Amy wants to get a little revenge.”
Christ, it all sounded like an episode of Days Of Our Lives. I could barely keep track of who’d said and done what.
“So what’s she doing with this info?” I asked, leaning forward.
“She’s going to the media about it and showing them the texts, which she still has backed up. In fact, she’s already done it. The story should be breaking any minute now. And this is like, actual incest. Not a harmless step-relationship, like what you guys have going on. Soooo gross.”
“Holy shit!” Lina said.
“Yep,” Landon said with a smirk. “I realize being so happy about this makes us petty assholes, but I don’t care. Jessie’s had this coming for a long time, from what I’ve seen and heard about her. Apparently her Dad’s just as bad, so it’s too freakin’ bad if his campaign goes south because of it.”
“Um…it’s gonna do a lot more than make his campaign go south,” Lina said. “Oh my God, I still can’t believe this.”
“Can’t believe what?”
A deep voice interrupted us, and I turned my head to see my father standing in the entrance to the lounge room. I sprang to my feet. “Dad…it might not be over. You might still win the election!”
He shook his head. “I doubt that. May I speak to you in private for a minute?”
“Sure.”
I stepped out of the lounge room with him, leaving Lina with her friends.
“I trust you saw my press briefing half an hour ago,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah. Look, Dad, I’m really…”
He held up a hand to shush me. “Chase, it’s all right. I’d be a hypocrite if I said it wasn’t. Just yesterday I was telling you I wanted you to find love, and well…you have. Most people would think it’s simply puppy love, but the way you spoke about Lina yesterday when you told me the truth…and the way you look at her as well…I should’ve seen it sooner. I must have been blind. But I can tell you really love her.”
“But we totally fucked things up for your campaign.”
He shrugged. “There’ll be other elections.”
“But you worked so hard at this one.”
“And I haven’t worked hard enough at building a decent relationship with you, as we discussed the other week,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “I’d like to change that. Work comes second to family from now on, even if I become the damn President of the universe. As one of you young people might say…screw it.”
I grinned. “Well, like I was saying earlier, it might not even be over.”
He sighed. “Chase, it’s over. Believe me. I’m not withdrawing, because I still have my pride, but nothing short of a miracle could save my campaign now.”
Seemingly right on cue, his phone beeped. It had been set up to send him a text alert every time the gubernatorial campaign was mentioned online, and his eyebrows practically shot to the ceiling as he looked at it.
“What on Earth…is this what you were just talking about?” he said, handing me the phone.
Holy shit. The entire web had already blown up with Jessie’s story. I actually felt a little bad for her. Yes, she was a heinous bitch, but I knew how shitty it felt to be dragged through the mud like this. After all, it had just happened to me and Lina, and it felt goddamned awful.
“Chase, you didn’t do this, did you?” Dad said as I scrolled through the articles.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It was this girl called Amy. Ex-best friend of Jessie Bond. Lina’s friends just told us.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t you,” he replied. “I realize this could be good for my campaign, but still…this is exactly the kind of stuff I chastised everyone about in my press conference. The muck-raking that goes on during election season is ridiculous.”
“I know.”
“Well, at least I know my team wasn’t responsible for this leak.”
“Yeah, you’d look like a bit of a douche if you went on national TV decrying this kinda stuff, and then released the mother-lode of smears two minutes later,” I said with a grin.
He chuckled and slapped me on the back. “Indeed,” he said, before reaching over and pulling me into a manly hug. “Well, I might win this governorship after all. I suppose everything has a way of working out happily in the end, doesn’t it?”
Over his shoulder, I saw Lina pad into the hall a second later. She looked like she was about to say something, but when she saw my Dad hugging me, she smiled and gave me a nod instead. I grinned back at her.
Despite the shitty day we’d had, everything was already working out for the better, just like Dad had said. I should’ve known it would. Everything would always work out just fine, as long as I had Lina and my family by my side.
Especially Lina.
Even though we’d only known each other for a few months, she meant the world to me. We’d gone through a lot of shit in the short time we’d been involved with each other, and each time one storm had passed, another had been looming on the horizon, casting shades of black and grey over our lives.
But we’d made it through each and every storm together, and we always would. It sounded clichéd as fuck, but love really was all we needed.
And love was what we had.
Chapter 28
Chase
Four years later
“I hate to tell you this, but you smell awful. You’re gonna have to get in that shower with me.”
I waggled my eyebrows at Lina and grabbed her, and she squirmed in my arms beside the bathroom counter. “I don’t smell bad!” she protested. “I’m not showering with you. I told you, I have to get to work!”
I chuckled and pulled her top off, and she melted into my arms with a sigh as I unhooked her bra. “God…you’re the worst.”
“Yes, so you’ve been telling me for…what, four and a half years now?” I replied with a wink.
She pouted as I sank to my knees, stripping her of the black jeans and purple panties she’d only just put on. “I really do have to get to work…you make things so hard sometimes,” she said, a half-smile turning the corners of her lips up a second later.
“That’s not the only thing that’s hard,” I joked, rising to my feet and placing her hand on my crotch.
She rolled her eyes at my immature gag and then yelped as I wrapped my arms around her waist, lifted her off the ground and deposited her straight in the shower. I quickly shed my own clothes and then joined her, and as the hot water streamed all over our bodies, my lips found hers.
“Mmm…” she murmured into my mouth, hands roaming all over my back as I pushed her up against the tiled wall.
A lot had changed in the last few years, but our feelings for one another had only grown in intensity. We had our own apartment now, and subsequently as much privacy as we wanted, although we still went home to visit our family as much as possible.
Dad was nearing the end of his governorship, which he’d won after the Bond scandal had broken. The other scandal involving Lina and me had quickly been forgotten by the public amidst the news of what Jessie and her cousin had been up to, and Dad had won by a rather substantial margin. He was currently campaigning for another term in the office, and I had to say, he’d done an amazing job at balancing the pressures of the governorship with his family life. He worked hard at the job, but he always made as much effort as he could to spend time with all of us, and his marriage to Nina was as strong as ever.
Lily was doing well in school, and she was always over the moon whenever she came to visit Lina and me at our apartment. Lina and I suspected that it was mostly because of Goldie, and we always joked with her that we’d probably never even see her if it wasn’t for the cat. In typical Lily fashion, she would always fire back with her own jokes about how sh
e planned on stealing Goldie from us. She’d always been a little spitfire, and I was proud to call her my family.
Speaking of family…Tripp was now in prison. Just after the election four years ago, Lina had finally summoned up the courage to tell my Dad and Nina what he had done to her, and Dad had immediately offered to help bring him to justice, despite his familial ties to us. The State’s Attorney had launched a formal investigation into him after three other girls had come forward as well, stating that Tripp had done the same thing to them, and he was rotting away where he belonged now.
I was so proud of Lina for finally standing up for herself against him. I’d never wanted to force her to do anything she wasn’t ready for, and it was amazing to see how much she’d come out of her shell since I’d first met her. Now Tripp could never hurt her again…and I’d never let anyone else hurt her again, either.
She’d recently completed her degree in biomedical science, and she’d scored a job at a research lab downtown after interning there during her final year of college. As for me, I was nearing the end of my business degree, which despite being a part-time thing, had taken me less time than I’d thought it would. It turned out that a lot of the classes I’d already taken for political science counted towards a business major as well, so I was well on the way to graduating. Four more months and I was out of there.
My fitness center was up and running, too. I’d named it Stryker’s, and since we’d opened up, we’d had new members joining every day. It was busy as hell, but I managed. I’d even gotten involved in some legit MMA fights, as a coach to an up-and-comer in the scene. This time, there was nothing illegal about it, and I’d kept everyone in the loop. No more lying and sneaking around with anything.
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