Jack’s attention swung away from Irv to the politician with his mouth opening and closing like a guppy. Another reporter—one who hadn’t taken his eye off the ball because of a girl—used that opening. “And have you seen the story that the Washington Post just published about your interference with city contracts?”
After that, cacophony took over, and he pulled out his phone to see that the story had dropped early, about half an hour ago.
SENATOR CHAPIN INDICTED ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE CHARGES
By Jack Nolan
Senator Alexander Chapin was charged with nine felony counts today in the federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois. Among the charges were bank fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations. The charging document states that Senator Chapin allegedly paid for his daughter Madison’s lavish engagement party at the Drake Hotel with campaign funds. The party is scheduled for this evening. Ms. Chapin and her fiancé met through his father, also implicated in the money-laundering scheme.
Senator Chapin has yet to resign from the Senate, but he has been removed from all of his committee assignments . . .
Before he had time to tell Hannah the truth about why he’d asked her out. Before he had a chance to tell her that he wasn’t going to write the “How to Lose a Girl” story because he was hopelessly in love with her and didn’t want to lose her.
Irv was gone, and he was standing alone at the bar. The lights had come up, and the partygoers seemed mostly shell-shocked.
That’s when he spotted Hannah, standing next to the stage, ushering the betrotheds offstage. He started to move toward her but froze when he saw the flash of Giselle’s red dress closing in on her.
Goddammit.
* * *
—
FUCK.
The last thing Hannah needed was Giselle mayonnaise on top of her shit sandwich of a night. Although she’d averted the minor crisis of a public breakup, it looked like the party was over for Senator Chapin.
She doubted that Annalise’s gratitude over her saving the engagement party would make up for her extreme disappointment that she wouldn’t be able to cash in on this couple making it to the altar. The closest thing to a royal wedding in the States would have meant a fat check and probably a trip to the Amalfi coast for her boss. Not to mention the bragging rights. And, despite the fact that none of this was her fault, she knew that for a good, long while, Annalise would see a missed Italian vacation every time she looked at her. Hopefully, she’d be more worried about her friend the senator going to jail. But Annalise could be pissed about more than one thing at a time, and she’d probably want to spread her anger around.
Hannah let a disappointed sigh loose once she’d pushed Madison et al. toward the back door. It seemed that Giselle, who was now standing in front of her, looking extremely satisfied with herself, had dodged a bullet by not booking this job.
“I met your boyfriend.”
Just freaking great. She’d probably already told him that Hannah had just been using him to earn brownie points with Annalise. So, in addition to losing out on a promotion, she was going to lose the only guy she’d let herself care about in years. That hurt even more than the prospect of losing oral sex with Jack, which was saying a lot about her feelings for the guy.
Giselle stood there, waiting for her to ask the question, which she did. “Did you tell him?”
That bitch had the audacity to look innocent. Hannah had never slapped a woman, but she had a nearly insatiable desire to go Dynasty on Giselle’s ass right now. “Tell him what?”
“About the reason I started dating him?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Just to be a bitch. Like, you got here tonight, and you hadn’t been bitchy enough during the course of your day until this opportunity presented itself.” Hannah quite enjoyed the way Giselle started every time she called her a bitch.
“I think you have a distorted view of how I spend my time.” She laid her left hand across her chest, showing off the iceberg on her finger. “To think, I came over here to tell you something important. To protect you.”
Hannah didn’t bother trying not to roll her eyes. “What are you trying to protect me from?”
“From the fact that your boyfriend”—she said that word with an amount of sarcasm that Hannah did not appreciate—“the man you’ve been dating—has been using you for a news story.”
“What?” None of this was computing. Had he been investigating Senator Chapin? That would have been inefficient. And kind of outside of his lane.
Giselle was ready to drive the point home, though. “Yes, Jack’s been writing a story about how to lose a girl. That’s the only reason he ever dated you at all.”
If Hannah hadn’t felt like she’d been punched in the gut, she for sure would have slapped Giselle then. Just because she was so gleeful while being so bitchy.
“When I saw you together at the Halloween party, I was wondering what my sister’s ex-boyfriend was doing dating you.” She said it as though Hannah was an actual dog. As though Jack had been dating human women and then just decided that he preferred something . . . less.
All this time, she’d thought that Jack had actually liked her. And she’d started to believe that she’d made a mistake giving up on love. She’d started to believe that she was the kind of girl someone lovely like Jack would want to marry someday.
But she’d been wrong. She was the girl he’d used for a fucking news story.
Jack had been ready to humiliate her for his job. She had very little moral ground to stand on, because she’d done virtually the same thing to him. But she had a few pebbles to cling to, because she hadn’t been ready to humiliate him in public.
Suddenly, it all made sense—the way he’d morphed from Mr. Perfect into a regular asshole, doing asshole things. How uncomfortable he’d seemed while doing those asshole things. Introducing her to his mother on their second date, and the rest of his family on their fourth. The mansplaining and the dick pic.
He probably wasn’t even saving it for marriage—that complete and utter asshole! He probably thought it was all okay because he didn’t get his dick wet.
Oh God, was his family in on the joke? Because that’s what he’d done. He’d made a joke out of her. She felt nauseous, the hors d’oeuvres and gin cocktail roiling in her stomach. She’d toasted having a future with him less than thirty minutes ago. And he’d looked her in the eye.
Her office nemesis faded out of her vision. Even though the party had devolved into chaos once the press had peppered the senator with questions, everyone in the room seemed to disappear except for Jack, who was standing next to the ice sculpture with a short, paunchy guy Hannah didn’t recognize.
Luckily, people were still crowded on the dance floor, looking at the stage because Senator Chapin had disappeared in that direction. No one was paying attention to what Jack was doing. Good. Maybe she could murder him in plain sight and get away with it. Doubtful, but a girl could dream.
For his part, Jack likely knew what he was in for the moment he saw her. No doubt the fury flowing off of her was tangible. He moved around the man he’d been talking to and approached her.
She grabbed another gin cocktail off of a server’s tray and took a long drink before coming face-to-face with him.
“Hannah, I—”
“Did you try the signature cocktail?”
He shook his head slowly, obviously confused at the turn in the conversation. She moved quickly, dousing his face in the drink. He wiped his face and licked the gin off his lips. She would have enjoyed it because it was a sexy movement. But then she remembered that everything between them had been a lie. “Delicious.”
She gave him the finger. “Sit on it and rotate, Jack.”
“Can you let me explain?” Of course he’d want to explain. Because no guy dum
ping her had ever wanted to be seen as the bad guy. And Jack was very invested in everyone around him thinking he was a good guy. Hell, he’d even fooled her into thinking that he was good—if inept.
“No, you don’t get to explain why you used me for a story.”
She flagged down a server with a full tray of signature drinks and pointed to the table next to them. She picked up one of the whisky drinks and hit Jack with it just as he opened his mouth.
“Can you just be reasonable?”
“I think I’m being very reasonable.” He took a step toward her and she took a step back, grabbing two more drinks to wield as weapons. “You’re still alive, so that means that I’m being reasonable.”
“Can’t we just discuss this like adults?”
No hesitation, just another gin drink to his face. “No. I don’t want to discuss how you used me to get ahead in your career.” Adding another whisky drink to his ensemble—this time staining his white shirt—she said, “I don’t want to discuss how you made me come a bunch of times, even though you were using me for a fucking listicle. So generous of you.”
He held up his hands as she grabbed another gin drink from the tray. “It wasn’t a listicle, I swear.”
“So you were going to go into detail about how you used me to prove a point?” Her throat was getting hoarse from the yelling, and Annalise was floating over, so she knew her tantrum wouldn’t go unnoticed.
She paused for a moment too long, because Jack almost got into the bubble she’d created for herself brandishing signature drinks. Hannah wheeled around, but her back was to the ice sculpture. He got closer, and she was about to start crying. Desperate to hold on to her rage, she grabbed the ice pick the sculptor had left.
“Hannah—”
“Come any closer, and I’ll pop your balls like fucking balloons.”
He looked from her face to the ice pick, as though he was considering the risk. As though she might be worth deflated testicles. There was a long beat of silence between them, when tears threatened again. But she kept his gaze. He might have destroyed any chance she would even think about trying to be in a relationship again, but he hadn’t destroyed her. She refused to give him that.
“Hannah, what are you doing?” Annalise’s voice was hushed but tight.
Still, she didn’t break eye contact with Jack. “We’re breaking up, Annalise. You were right. I’m not the relationship type.”
“That’s not true, Hannah.” Jack sounded earnest, but he’d sounded earnest a whole lot during the course of their farce of an affair. “Why would you ever think that?”
The urge to strike back at him was too great. When she’d come over here, she’d wanted to make a scene and make him leave. But now she wanted to hurt him. Just for pretending to be the good guy right now. Not to mention, she wanted to save just a bit of pride—hard as that might be after throwing multiple drinks and threatening serious bodily injury.
“I only dated you on a bet.”
Jack shook his head as though he didn’t believe it.
“It wasn’t a bet—” Annalise felt the need to interject.
“It wasn’t?” Hannah finally looked at her boss. “You didn’t want to give me this wedding, so you bet me that I couldn’t get anyone to date me for more than two weeks.”
“So, you used me, too?” She didn’t even look at Jack when he spoke. This wasn’t about him anymore. Not really.
“You didn’t think I could do it, and that I would just happily go back and be your good-time girl, didn’t you?”
Annalise backed away from her, and Hannah realized that she was still holding the ice pick. She glanced back at Jack and put it down on the table. “Yeah, I used you, too. It was all fake.”
She turned to leave and ignored Jack’s “Hannah, wait—”
In the background, Annalise said, “Maybe take the rest of the night off, and we’ll talk about this on Monday.” She’d be getting her ass fired on Monday, but she was actually more upset about everything that had happened with Jack right now.
She threw up two middle fingers at Jack and walked out, passing a bunch of guys in FBI windbreakers as they walked in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
YOU FUCKED UP.” THAT was a rude awakening, especially coming from her best friend.
Hannah sat straight up in bed at her best friend’s cursing. Sasha hated the f-word. When they’d first become friends, in college, Sasha had refused to say the swear words when doing rap songs in karaoke, which Hannah had found impossibly charming—especially since that gave her permission to curse very loudly. Getting woken up from a dead sleep with her roommate cursing at her was less so.
“How did I screw up?”
Sasha sat down on the foot of her bed and offered a steaming cup of coffee, the only reason Hannah didn’t ask her to leave. She wasn’t exactly up for being around people or being told about all the things she’d done wrong.
All the ways she’d been stupid about Jack.
She merely wanted to lick her significant wounds in private and build the armor back up around her heart. This time, she’d turn into titanium. But she couldn’t do that with Sasha making her see how she’d been in the wrong as well. “He’s the one who used me to get a news story.”
“Just like you used him to get a promotion?”
The hot coffee scalded her tongue and throat, but that wasn’t why she choked. Sasha was right. She had lied to Jack. Even though she’d already liked him more than she would ever admit before she’d decided to use him to show Annalise that she wasn’t a total shrew. She’d gone ahead with it anyway.
Part of her wondered whether things could have been different, whether she could have been honest with Jack from the start. But she knew she never would have done that. Telling Jack that she needed him, after one kiss and a bunch of texts, would have required her to be vulnerable to him, and it would have required her to trust him. Before Jack had wheedled his way into her life—and her heart—she hadn’t been able to do either of those things.
And, since he’d taken her trust and smashed it into a million pieces in a very public way, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to trust anyone enough to give them her heart ever again.
“I didn’t mess up, Sasha.” She blew on the surface of her coffee and took another sip. “Jack just proved me right. My only mistake was that I ever trusted him at all.”
Sasha sighed heavily and looked up at the ceiling as though she needed guidance and strength from above. “You didn’t see it at all, did you?”
“See what?” Hannah grew incensed. Her best friend was frustrated with the wrong person here. She should be frustrated with the patriarchy, not her. “I saw last night that a man I really liked—” There was no need to say that she’d fallen in love with him, even if it was totally true. “I’m so humiliated—all that stuff he did. For his job. And then I threatened him with an ice pick.”
“Listen, I’m not certain Jack hadn’t already planned to tell you—” Sasha paused for a breath but continued before Hannah could get ramped up enough to argue with her. She needed much more than a few swallows of coffee to have this conversation. “It was all very weird and mortifying in a way that we need to process.”
Oh Jesus. Sasha’s degree in psychology rearing its ugly head again.
“I don’t know that he was ever going to tell me. And the humiliation isn’t even over. Jack is writing a story about how I fell for his game and then he strung me along and abused my trust for two weeks.”
Sasha shook her head and her brow furrowed in a way that it always did when she was very determined. “I saw the way he looked at you, Han.”
“We hadn’t had sex yet. He was only looking at me that way because he didn’t get what he wanted.”
“Shut up.” Hannah was stunned speechless. Her flawless, naïve, Irish Catholic rose of a best friend was cursing and
telling her to shut up? Unprecedented. “Stop making this about sex. The way he was looking at you wasn’t about sex. Not at all.”
“Of course it was about the sex. It’s always about the sex.” And it was all her fault because she’d gone boots up for Jack at the very first opportunity despite the best advice of the woman sitting across from her right now. “That’s all men ever want. I thought he was actually interested in a relationship. How dumb is that?”
“Not dumb at all.”
“You were the one telling me I was doing everything wrong.”
Sasha sighed. “I was the one who was wrong.”
“What?” Hannah wasn’t sure she was hearing her friend correctly. Sasha, who had never once admitted she was wrong about anything—especially dating stuff—despite her march of heartbreak through the past few years of app-based dating.
“I was wrong about Jack.”
“No, I think last night proves that I was right about him all along.”
“Stop lying.” She had no idea where this blunt, bold woman had come from and what she’d done with her best friend. And she liked it. Although she would like it better if her blunt boldness was directed elsewhere. “You liked him from the start, and I saw the look in your eye after I got home the first night at the speakeasy, from the first time he texted you a picture of a cute dog. Just admit it. You liked like him.”
Maybe she could admit that to herself, but she wasn’t about to swallow her pride and admit that to her friend. Not when it was too late to do anything about it. “Does it even matter now?”
“It matters.” Hannah’s eyes filled, and she looked down into her cup, hoping it would hold answers. Sasha grabbed her forearm as though she was afraid that she’d lose her attention. “It matters because it’s about how you feel, not the lies you told each other. It matters whether you liked him, because you matter.”
“He made me feel like I did.” She did not want to talk about this right now, when it felt like her chest was an open wound. “When he looked at me, I felt like he really saw me. Like he didn’t see any room for improvement.”
Not the Girl You Marry Page 22
