10. Jesse

Chapter 10

Jesse

A week after that trip to Redding, I had already decided on my first order of business as California governor. Somehow or another, whether or not it was in my power, I was finding a damned way to get the word soon added to the Geneva Convention as a form of cruel and unusual punishment, especially where it pertained to someone trying to campaign alongside the man he desperately needed to sleep with. Especially when that man shared those feelings, the two of them had to be all but inseparable every fucking day, and they couldn’t get five goddamned minutes of privacy for a desperately needed quickie or something .

We stole the odd kiss now and then, including a dangerously long one in a hotel stairwell in Mendocino, but it wasn’t enough. It was a tease, not a release. Every day, every night, just more teasing. More torturing ourselves.

Frustrated and exhausted, I closed my eyes and leaned against the headrest in the back of a limo that inched through San Diego traffic.

Now that we both knew what we wanted, it was a matter of discreetly being in the same place at the right time with condoms at the ready and nothing on the agenda for a few minutes. Soon, we’d get each other alone and into bed. Soon, I’d find out what Anthony looked like naked and how he felt inside me and how he sounded when he came. Soon.

Soon. Soon. Soon. Never fucking soon enough.

And with the gubernatorial primary coming up fast, the campaign had accelerated to breakneck speed. Speeches, appearances, dinners, rallies, baby kissing, ass kissing, and sustaining life with coffee and Red Bull. Downtime? What downtime? Even when we found a few minutes of that mythical downtime, we were either around other people or too exhausted to move.

By this point, I’d written off soon as something around the time of the discovery of cold fusion and the colonization of Mars.

“Doing all right?” Anthony’s voice made me shiver.

I opened my eyes. He sat across from me, his back to the privacy window separating us from the driver, with his cell phone in his hand and a notebook balanced on his knee.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You sure?”

“It’s a campaign.” I forced a laugh. “It’s supposed to be stressful.”

“Yes, that’s true. But there’s being stressed, and there’s being stressed to the point you can’t handle it.”

“I can handle it.” I glanced out the heavily tinted window, and my stomach flipped as the airport control tower came into view. Almost there. Oh fuck. Almost there.

“Jesse— ”

“I’m fine.” I put up my hands. “I’m just—” I met his eyes and couldn’t pretend I was all right. Exhaling sharply, I let my shoulders drop. “I could use some downtime.”

He gave a quiet laugh that might have come across as obnoxious in the beginning, but I now recognized as a show of “I feel your pain” sympathy. “There will be plenty of that in November.”

“I’m sure.” I looked out the window at the rapidly approaching airport. “Just tell me it won’t be November before we…” I glanced at him again but quickly shifted my gaze toward the airport again.

Anthony unbuckled his seat belt and got up. He dropped onto the seat beside me, and holy fuck, I couldn’t make myself look at him. If I did, I’d pounce on him. And we’d have to pry ourselves off each other in a few short minutes. And that wouldn’t be nearly enough time, so I’d be even more frustrated, and the distance between now and soon would feel infinitely longer.

“Hopefully it won’t be November before we can get some time alone,” Anthony whispered. “But if it is”—he put his hand on my face and made me look at him—“I promise it’ll be worth the wait.”

“I have no doubt about that,” I said and couldn’t resist leaning in to kiss him.

He didn’t object. His hand drifted into my hair, and his tongue parted my lips. The taste of the cigarette he’d smoked before we left made me shiver again, driving the point home that this was Anthony .

God, this was so wrong. This was the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong everything. I needed him, I wanted him, but…

To hell with it. I wrapped my arms around him. It wouldn’t solve anything, it wouldn’t make me any less frustrated in the long run, and I’d probably regret it in a few minutes when I had a hard-on and couldn’t do a damned thing about it, but I wanted him. The whole fucking universe could just wait a minute while I indulged in Anthony’s deep, demanding kiss.

He touched his forehead to mine, and we both held on, panting and shaking. My mind told me to pull away and put an end to this before we got caught or had to get out of this car, but my body wanted more. Way more than we could even dream of indulging here.

“I’m hanging by a fucking thread,” I breathed. “I don’t know… I don’t…”

“I know.” He stroked my hair with a shaking hand. “I am too, believe me. But I’ll take what I can get. And right now—” He cut himself off with another kiss.

The limo slowed, and we broke the kiss to look out the window.

“Shit,” Anthony muttered.

I scowled at the airport, which loomed at the end of a strip of pavement that was much, much too short .

We separated, clearing our throats and straightening our clothes and not looking in each other’s directions. I took a few deep breaths and willed myself to calm down at least enough to hide my very visual response to Anthony’s touch. And that worked. Really well. The driver pulled up and stopped under the ARRIVALS sign, and I was still aroused. Still hard. Still losing my fucking mind.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“We’re waiting outside Arrivals,” Anthony said into his phone. “Five minutes? All right, he’ll be there.” He hung up and looked at me, lips parted like he was about to speak. Instead he paused, cocked his head slightly, then reached for his notebook. “I meant to tell you about this earlier. Latest polls are in.”

Really? Seriously? You think I can focus on this shit right now?

Evidently he did. He flipped to a page in his notebook, and after about forty-five seconds of poring over dry, confusing numbers that made absolutely no sense, at least my body temperature and heart rate had come back down to something close to normal. Talk about a mental cold shower.

Anthony closed the notebook and glanced at his watch. “They’ll be finishing in baggage claim right about now.” Our eyes met, and he smiled. “I’m assuming you’ll be all right going out there?”

I laughed. “Yes. Thanks.”

He winked and sat back against the seat. “Glad to help.”

Now that I was calmed down and presentable to appear in public, I stepped out of the limo. My private security had followed in another vehicle—limos were roomy, but goddamn, they could get crowded with a couple of burly security guards—and followed me into the airport.

The instant the double doors opened, I found her. Not that it was difficult with a large crowd trying to get close to her, and her towering bodyguard was pretty tough to miss.

Simone grinned and stepped out of the crowd. She threw her arms around me. We embraced and made damn sure that any camera in the vicinity—and there were always a few—got a shot of us kissing like happily married spouses ought to kiss when they hadn’t seen each other in a couple of weeks. Deep, passionate, punctuated by the pause to look into each other’s eyes and smile before going back for more.

She pulled back, and twin creases formed between her eyebrows as she ran her tongue across the inside of her lip. Her eyes darted toward the limo, and the corners of her mouth pulled up with tired amusement.

“What?” I asked.

Laughing softly, she shook her head and slipped her hand into mine. “Nothing. Should we get out of here?”

“By all means. ”

We picked up Simone’s luggage and went out to the waiting limo. While the driver put everything in the trunk, my security guys got into their car and Simone, Dean, and I slid into the limo.

“Anthony,” she said with a stiff nod as we all settled in. “Good to see you.” Whatever amusement had been in her expression a moment ago was long gone.

Anthony smiled just as stiffly. “You too.”

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Simone asked, notes of both impatience and irritation in her voice.

Anthony folded his hands on his knee as the limo lurched into motion. “Besides a hell of a lot of hurry up and wait? First things first, you’re both appearing at a luncheon for the San Joaquin Democratic group.”

As he continued through the itinerary for the next few days leading up to the primary election, I tried not to look at either of them. Her involvement with the campaign had been reasonably light so far; she’d been tied up with promoting her film and had a break from that for the next few weeks. That meant she was free to be more visible on the campaign tour. Up until now, she’d gone to key events with me so we could put on a happy, united front, but she’d had to forego Anthony’s plan of grassroots campaigning—by herself and with me—until she’d fulfilled her contractual obligations for the film.

The limo took us to the obscenely ostentatious luxury hotel where I’d checked in earlier. How it took so many people to get one couple into their room, I’d never understand, but between security and hotel personnel, I swore we had a hundred people running in and out of the room Simone and I shared.

And just like that, they were gone.

All of them.

Except us.

Simone and I stood in silence—awkward, unending silence—and stared at the bed. The only bed.

“It’s all about appearances,” Anthony had said this morning with an apologetic shrug after he’d told me about our accommodations. “Housekeeping leaks a rumor that you two left two beds rumpled, suddenly you’re sleeping apart and there’s trouble in paradise.”

Great. Just what we needed. Simone and I hadn’t shared a bed in the better part of a year, and I was sure the months leading up to my confession that I was gay hadn’t been this awkward or uncomfortable. They were hellish in their own right, of course. For those endless months, it was the constant fear—one that was sometimes realized—that Simone would want us to be intimate .

Tonight? Oh, tonight was a very different story. I knew she wouldn’t reach for me. She’d probably sleep as close as she could get to the edge of the bed, just like I’d sleep as close as I could to the opposite edge.

But this time, there’d be someone on my mind. The second the lights went off, Anthony would be at the forefront of my mind, and even now, my pulse soared just knowing he’d be a few doors away. Sleeping alone. Maybe lying awake and—

No, best not to think about that now.

I looked around the room. The sofa was probably hard as a rock and would be just short enough to prevent me from sleeping comfortably, but it looked more inviting than any piece of furniture ever had.

“I’ll, um…” My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “I can sleep on the couch.”

“You don’t think that’ll kick up rumors?” She folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself like she couldn’t quite get warm. “If the maids think we slept separately?”

I blew out a breath. “It probably will. Fuck, I don’t even care. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Simone laughed. “Well, I’d be most comfortable with a ticket back to LA, but…”

“Sorry,” I said with a sympathetic grimace.

She waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Part of campaigning, right?”

“Yeah. Part of campaigning.”

She rocked back and forth from her heels to the balls of her feet. “Well, I’m going to call it a night. Your call about the bed or the couch.”

I opted for the couch. It was uncomfortable as fuck, and I suspected my back would have something to say about it before dawn, but at least it put a little distance between my wife and me. Some breathing room, if nothing else. Not that I was any more likely to sleep than I would have been if we shared the bed. This was going to be one long damned night.

Was Anthony this frustrated? Of course he slept alone, so he could relieve the tension if he needed to. By now maybe he already had. Maybe in bed, with his forearm over his eyes and his other hand stroking his cock, or in the shower, water running down his face while he jerked off to the same thoughts that drove me insane.

I shivered, and even that sent a ripple of panic through me. Deep down, irrational as it may have been, I was terrified that the slightest movement, the faintest catch of my breath, would scream to Simone that I was painfully aroused. And how awkward and embarrassing would that be for both of us? She’d know I was turned on, and she’d know it was someone else. Of course she knew I was gay, but she didn’t need a cruel reminder that we were only staying married for the sake of appearances while I thought myself hard about someone else .

I focused as much as I could on sleeping. Fat lot of good that did me. I’d drop off, then suddenly be awake again. I’d crawl from one end of a restless hour to the next before dropping off again, only to wake up without feeling like I’d gotten a single moment’s rest. Sometimes I ached with arousal. Sometimes lack of sleep had me on the verge of being in physical pain, while the couch on which I tossed and turned made sure I was always in some sort of discomfort. The night went by like a kid learning to drive a manual transmission: jerking awake, dropping off to sleep, jerking awake again.

Eventually it leveled out into consistent, unrelenting insomnia. The body was tired but the mind was stubborn and preoccupied, and Anthony wasn’t here, and Simone was, and I couldn’t. Fucking. Sleep.

Moving slowly and carefully, scared to death I’d wake Simone just by existing, I craned my neck and looked at the clock above the television.

Ten minutes past four.

Good enough. It was an unholy hour, but I didn’t stand a chance of sleeping, so to hell with it. I threw the thin blanket back, swung my legs over the side of the couch, and got up as carefully and quietly as I could.

I went into the bathroom and closed the door before I flipped on the light. As my eyes adjusted to the bright fluorescent, I turned on the shower. The white noise of running water wouldn’t bother Simone the way a light would, so I didn’t worry about waking her up.

When the water was as hot as I could get it, filling the bathroom with opaque steam, I stepped into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtain across. Hot water stung my back and shoulders, scalding drops running down my sides and hips like invisible fingernails raking over my skin.

Now that I was alone, I didn’t even try to ignore how aroused I was. I flattened my hand against the wall and fucked my other fist, forcing my cock into my tight grip and wishing to God this came close to soothing this maddening need. I imagined myself with Anthony, on my knees and begging him to touch me, to fuck me, to make me come, to let me come. I couldn’t imagine he was a gentle lover, and in my mind, he shoved me against the side of a bed. His bed? Mine? Didn’t matter. It was a flat surface. And there was lube nearby. Lots of lube. God, he used it too. He was fucking me. Hard. Deep and fast. Growling profanity in my ear. Forcing himself inside me again and again.

I’d never been fucked before, but I’d seen and felt how other men came unraveled when a man was inside them, and I wanted it. I wanted Anthony like that, and I begged my fantasy to be like the real thing, for him to feel as good as I’d imagined as he fucked me hard and fast and deep, until he lost control and I lost my mind.

I dug my teeth into my lip, struggling not to groan as my impending orgasm built, as it reached maddening heights that threatened to drag a cry from my lips and force me to my knees. My breath caught, my knees buckled, and I kept stroking, my semen-slicked hand sliding easily up and down my cock as I held on to this fantasy, and I didn’t stop until I couldn’t take another second.

I braced myself against the shower walls with shaking arms. Closing my eyes, I let my head fall forward, and scalding water raked over the goose bumps on my back and shoulders.

The heat and the orgasm relieved my hard-on, but now I was wide-awake. Way more awake than I should have been after jerking off at four in the damned morning. I wanted that postrelease fatigue to settle in, but it refused, and I was no closer to relaxing enough for sleep than I was before my shower.

Simone was still asleep—oh, I envied her—and I didn’t want to wake her, so I put on my swim trunks, grabbed a towel, and left the room to go get my morning swim out of the way. In theory I should have roused one of my security guards and been escorted downstairs, but…not today. I avoided taking security with me whenever I could, but especially now; I needed to be alone. That included evading the people who were there for my own safety, but also provided a constant, undeniable reminder that I lived under a goddamned microscope. Once in a fucking while, I needed a little time to myself, even if it was more or less in public.

Keeping my head down, I slipped past the sparse early crowd in the lobby and into the pool area. Just as I’d hoped, the pool was open and still deserted at this hour. Still, my skin crawled with that undeniable sense of being exposed and conspicuous. Like no matter how empty the place was, someone was watching. Someone with an agenda and a camera.

I usually opted for something less ostentatious than this high-profile hotel, but Roger insisted on five-star accommodations everywhere we went. Keeping up appearances and all that shit. Personally I’d have preferred a sun-warmed swim behind a no-name hotel off the main drag of some small town, diving into a pool with chipped tiles and the odd floating leaf instead of this perfectly maintained Olympic-length pool. This kind of place just felt too damned much like a fishbowl.

But it was what was available, so I dropped my towel in a rumpled heap on the footrest of one of the poolside chairs, tucked my room key into its folds, and pulled on my swimming goggles. Then I dove in.

The cool water shocked my skin after my hot shower, but I adapted quickly. I started slow to work some stiffness out of my muscles, and on the second and third laps, I picked up speed. Once I’d found my usual comfortable, sustainable speed, I focused on nothing more than swimming. Follow the black stripe on the bottom of the pool until it became a T at the end, turn around, follow the stripe the other way. Back and forth. Up the lane. Turn around. Down the lane. Turn around. Again. And again. And again.

I could only relax so much when I was on a schedule, though. If I’d had the entire day to myself with nowhere to be, I could have spent an hour or more just going back and forth, back and forth, watching that long black stripe while I cut through the cool water. With a schedule to keep, I had to stay aware of the time. The muscles between my shoulders always insisted on tensing up when I was under the gun, and no matter how much I swam, they refused to relax. They refused to let me forget, if only for a few minutes, that a world existed above this one.

But it helped. It was better than nothing, anyway.

I completed my last lap, then hoisted myself out of the pool and took off my goggles. Chlorine stung my eyes, and as I rubbed them, I yawned. Fatigue set in, turning my legs to putty and pushing down on my shoulders. Maybe now I could get some sleep after all.

Keeping my head down, I once again slipped past the handful of people in the lobby and took one of the back stairwells up to my room. I keyed myself back into the room, quietly changed into a pair of boxers, and eased myself back onto the couch. Between the shower, the orgasm, and the swim, sleepiness finally took over, and in no time flat, I drifted off.

Muffled coughing—more like choking and gagging—drew me out of the fog of sleep. I lifted my head, blinking my vision into focus.

I knew that sound all too well. Few other things could wake me up at— where the hell is that clock?— seven fifteen in the morning, and my heart sank even as I looked around to take in all the facts and make sure I hadn’t just heard it in my dreams.

The bedside light was on, and Simone wasn’t in bed. Craning my neck a little more revealed the bathroom door was closed, and slivers of light glowed at the top and bottom. As I scanned the room, Simone coughed again right about the time my eyes tracked to the platters—one covered, the other uncovered and mostly empty—on the table. When the toilet flushed, I closed my eyes and swore.

I didn’t know which was worse: when she ate and puked, or when she just didn’t eat at all. And if I said a word about it, she’d get defensive. Then she’d get angry like only Simone could, and she’d either eat less or puke more just for spite. Maybe the divorce made it worse, maybe pretending to stay married made it worse. Maybe both. The election sure as hell didn’t do her any good.

The bathroom door opened, and Simone startled when she saw me. Her cheeks colored, almost matching the redness in her eyes, which darted toward the platters. She was dressed in a pair of sweats and one of my old T-shirts, which hung much too loosely over her shoulders.

She casually took a seat at the table. “Enjoy your swim?”

“Yeah. Definitely needed it.” I pretended not to notice the subtle movements of her jaw as she chewed a piece of gum like she always did after one of her episodes. “How’d you know I went swimming?”

“You were stressed and out of bed at oh dark thirty.” She paused, then added with a weak smile, “And you smell like chlorine.” Before I could say anything else, she gestured at the pair of platters beside her. “Room service came by while you were asleep. I wasn’t sure how long you’d be, so I already ate.”

I gritted my teeth. “I’ll get to it. Not quite hungry yet.”

“Well, don’t leave it,” she said with a hint of bitter humor. “God forbid the housekeepers see an untouched plate of food in this room.”

I rubbed my eyes, hoping she took the gesture as one of tiredness or a reaction to chlorine, not frustration. Couldn’t say I was all that hungry now. Not after a sleepless night in a room with the woman who’d just spent ten minutes using her digestive system to, if I knew her, rebel against all the stress I was dumping into her life. The guilt and helplessness were bad enough when I wasn’t the catalyst for her downward spirals.

I got up off the couch and sat across from her. My appetite was MIA, but I lifted the lid on the untouched platter. Better to eat than discuss food, because discussing it would lead to arguing about it, which would only make things worse.

At least breakfast was a strawberry-covered Belgian waffle. If anything involving eggs had been sitting there for any length of time, I might have had to risk housekeepers gossiping about an empty plate. This, I could deal with.

I poured myself some coffee, then started on the waffle.

Simone pulled her feet onto the chair and hugged her knees to her chest. “Can I ask you something?”

I shrugged as I cut a square off the corner of the lukewarm waffle with my fork. “What’s on your mind?”

She hugged her legs tighter to her chest, then tilted her head and rested her cheek on her knee. “Are you and Anthony, like…”

I narrowly avoided choking on the bite of waffle. Recovering quickly, I reached for my coffee and took a quick sip. “What?”

Her forehead creased. “Is there something going on between you two?”

“What… Why? What makes you think there is?”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Jess, I know you. Just…is there, or isn’t there?”

I set my fork down. Resting my elbows on the table, I clasped my fingers loosely together above the waffle I probably wasn’t going to finish. “We’re…um…”

She giggled softly and raised her head. “You know, I’ve never seen someone get you this tongue-tied. It’s cute.”

My cheeks burned, and I dropped my gaze. Suddenly interested in my breakfast again, I picked up my fork but didn’t get any farther than just picking at the barely touched waffle.

“I’m serious, Jess. And I…you know I won’t be mad.” A faint smile played at her lips. “I’d only be mad if you told me you’d taken up smoking. ”

“Taken up smoking?” I furrowed my brow. Then I remembered the way she’d looked at me in the airport yesterday after she’d kissed me. After I’d kissed Anthony. After he’d had a cigarette. Fresh heat rushed into my cheeks, and I chuckled. “Okay, okay. Yeah, there is…I mean…” I gestured with my fork and shook my head. “Something going on, I guess.”

“Something? You guess?” Simone raised her head, and the faint smile turned into a tired smirk. “Well, is there or isn’t there?”

“I’m…not sure.” I sat back, tapping my fork against the plate. “Things are complicated.”

Her humor faded. “Because of us?”

“Yes and no. I mean, the election is the big one.” I sighed. “Kind of hard to find a moment’s privacy.”

She looked around the room and shrugged with one thin shoulder. “You could always bring him in here.” Her eyes darted toward me, and she winked. “I’ll leave you two alone for a while.”

I laughed, but it was forced. “I…don’t think I could do that. Kick you out so I…” I shook my head and watched myself pick at the waffle with my fork. “Thanks, but no.”

“Are you sure?”

Oh, it was tempting. I wanted Anthony bad enough I was willing to abandon tact and common sense to have him, but…no. I wouldn’t sleep with him at home while she was there, and I sure as hell wouldn’t kick her out of here. This was uncomfortable enough without adding a “don’t knock if there’s a scarf on the doorknob” clause to our arrangement.

“Well, if you change your mind, just let me know.” She looked at her cell phone. “We still have some time before we have to go. I’m going to run to the gym downstairs and get in a quick workout.”

I opened my mouth to speak but hesitated. Her eyes narrowed just enough to tell me she heard loud and clear what I didn’t say. We’d had this conversation enough times, we both knew the script.

Are you sure you should be working out after—

Jesse, back off.

I’m just worried about you. I don’t want you to get sick or—

I’m fine. Back off.

I’d back off, she’d work out, and I’d spend the whole time hoping to God she didn’t pass out.

Simone changed into her workout clothes and left the room. Alone in the silence, I sat back in my chair and pushed the cold waffle away. I didn’t eat any more. At least that meant my breakfast didn’t end up going the same way hers had.

After that appearance together in San Diego, two in a row on the California side of Lake Tahoe, and a rally in Oakland, Simone and I once again had separate itineraries for a few days before we’d both return to LA for the primary. She flew out early in the morning, and I went straight from the airport to three back-to-back events. Rallies, dinners, speeches, interviews—I couldn’t even keep track anymore.

“You know, everything on this campaign trail is starting to blur together,” I said to Anthony as I drove us down the coast in the dark after yet another event.

“They tend to do that.” Anthony dropped his phone into the console between us and sat back in the passenger seat. “And it’s just going to get crazier after the primary.”

“Great. Assuming I win the primary, right?”

“You’d damn well better win it. I didn’t work my ass off for you to lose this early in the game.”

I glanced at him. A few weeks ago, that look might have made me gulp and fidget, but I just rolled my eyes and looked at the road again. “Well, at least Ranya will be back by the time the primary is over.”

“Don’t know why you let that girl take vacation time,” he said in a playfully stern voice. “How dare she?”

I laughed. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

“Better she goes on vacation now. After the primary, you’re gonna need her.”

“No shit.”

“How are you holding up for now, though?” he asked. “I mean, in general, and with her being gone?”

I shrugged. “I’ll manage. I’ve still got you to keep me in line and tell me where to be.”

“Yeah, but I am not your assistant. Make no mistake.”

“True. My assistant has a sense of humor and brings me fried chicken from time to time.”

“Ugh.” Anthony shuddered. “Sense of humor? Check. Fried chicken? You’re on your own.”

I clicked my tongue. “Man, what good are you?”

“I’m keeping your campaign in some semblance of order.”

“Order? This is order?”

“Just be glad you don’t have a chaotic campaign to compare to this one. I assure you, your campaign is running smoothly and flawlessly as only a Hunter-managed campaign can.”

I laughed. “So other candidates don’t have slave driver campaign managers to keep them on their toes and in line?”

“Well, certainly not good-looking ones, anyway.”

“Cocky son of a bitch. ”

“I don’t deny it.”

We both laughed. The conversation dwindled, and after a while, we both fell silent. He pulled his phone out of the console to check his e-mail or something, and I stayed focused on driving. This was becoming the norm for us; especially when we were alone, we could only keep the bantering and small talk going for so long before frustration set in. Being out in the sticks like this, with no supervision and a few too many cheap motels along some of the more populated stretches, was dangerously tempting.

I forced myself to think of anything but the man sitting next to me and the empty backseat behind us. As the highway wound into the night in front of my high beams, my mind drifted back to that morning with Simone in San Diego. If this campaign was worsening anything faster than the tension between Anthony and me, it was the very, very different tension between Simone and me. Three times since that morning in the hotel, I’d caught her making herself sick, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Not without throwing gas on the fire. And every time I heard her retch behind a closed door, caught the scent of a breath mint, or noticed the shadows beneath her cheekbones and the cavernous depressions beneath her collarbones, the helplessness burrowed deeper.

She fought a constant battle with this, but these severe episodes—when she threw up more than she kept down—usually only lasted a few weeks. The election and our divorce were still months away. Something had to give before then, or she’d do irreparable damage, if not kill herself.

Something had to give, but damn if I knew what. If I dropped out of the election, the guilt would send her into a tailspin. Modifying her schedule, getting her out of the spotlight, or just getting the divorce over with now…if it didn’t stress her out, it would tip off the media. As it was, the media was waiting in the wings, frothing at the mouth for a scandal to tarnish my campaign, and the second the boat rocked, they’d be all over it. I couldn’t have cared less about how that would affect the campaign, but what would it do to her?

“Jesse?”

Anthony’s voice made me jump.

“What? Sorry…”

He gestured up ahead. “Our exit is coming up.”

“It…” I glanced at a sign just before it whipped past us. “Oh. Thanks.”

As I changed lanes, he said, “You kind of, I don’t know, spaced out there for a bit.”

“I was just thinking.” Taking a deep breath, I held the wheel a little tighter. “Simone isn’t handling this well.”

“She knows?”

“What? No, I mean the election.” I tapped my thumbs on the wheel. “But yes, she does know. ”

“She does?”

I put up a hand. “Anthony, the woman can see right through me. I couldn’t lie to her if I wanted to, so when she suspected something was up…” I shrugged.

“And she can be… She can be trusted with this?”

“Absolutely. Divorcing or not, I’d trust the woman with my life.”

“Good,” he murmured. “That said, define ‘isn’t handling this well.’”

“She’s losing weight.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t there anything she can do?” He absently scratched his jaw as he looked at me in the low light. “See a therapist or something?”

“If you can talk her into it, be my guest.”

“How bad does this get? Forgive my ignorance here. This isn’t something I have any experience with.”

“Depends. Sometimes she comes out of it on her own. Sometimes she ends up in the hospital.”

“What kind…” He hesitated. “What kind of hospital?”

I glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“Like, to treat her physically or…”

“Mentally?”

He nodded.

“Either or. She’s been near suicidal a few times, and she’s starved herself nearly to the point of organ failure before.” I sighed. Just this train of thought exhausted me. Simone and I had been down this road so many times, and it scared me every time she went through one of these episodes. I was helpless to stop her, powerless to help her, and I hated myself for being the one who drove her to it this time.

“Answer me honestly,” he said. “ Can she handle this campaign?”

I rested my elbow below the window and rubbed my forehead. “Honestly? I don’t know. Sometimes I think she can, and sometimes I just don’t know.”

Anthony was quiet for a long moment. “I didn’t realize her condition was this serious.”

“It is.” I rubbed the back of my neck and blew out a breath. “The media likes to harp on the whole slant about her doing this to lose weight, buckling under societal pressures to be thin, which makes her sound shallow and weak. They couldn’t be farther from the truth. She’s a strong woman. Honestly she is. It’s just, sometimes she gets into these downward spirals, and it’s really, really hard for her to get out of it. It drives her crazy because she thinks that makes her weak or stupid or whatever, and the damned media just reinforces that every time they sink their teeth into this. ”

“Jesus,” he whispered. “And now we’re kind of between a rock and a hard place.”

“How so?”

“She’s already an active part of your campaign. And thanks to your uncle’s harebrained idea about using your marriage as an election tool, she’s expected to be completely and visibly supportive of you. If she drops off the radar now, it’s just going to draw attention to her, which will ultimately draw attention to her condition.”

“Which will only make things worse.”

“Exactly. I have to say, I admire you for being able to cope with all of that as gracefully as you have. Sounds like you’ve been a tremendous support for her.”

“I’ve tried to be,” I said, barely whispering. “Which is why I feel so guilty about what she’s going through right now. It’s because of our marriage, me being gay, my campaign.” I thumped the wheel with the heel of my hand. “I’ve tried to help her and be there for her, but now I think I’m just making it worse.”

“How does she feel about the divorce?”

“At this point, I think it’ll be a relief. No more faking it, no more pretending to be the happy wife.”

“And she knows. About us.”

I nodded. “Guess that’s a little weird, isn’t it? Talking to you about my wife?”

“Well, you two are pretty much married on paper only now, aren’t you?”

“On paper. And in the press. And on TV.” I rolled my eyes. “But yeah, it’s over.”

“Sorry to hear it. Are you…I mean, I know you two are done, but this…is whatever the hell we’re doing going to make things worse for her?”

I shrugged as much as I could with all this weight on my shoulders. “She’s free to see other people too. It’s just this whole posing as a happy couple that she can’t deal with.”

“I can imagine. But should we be doing this?”

“We haven’t been doing anything.”

“Not for lack of effort or desire. Right?”

“Good point. And we probably shouldn’t, but…” I exhaled hard and shook my head. “Fuck, Anthony, I don’t want to rub anything in her face, and I wouldn’t have told her if I could have avoided it. But as far as continuing with this?” I glanced at him before shifting my gaze back to the dusty highway. “At the risk of sounding incredibly desperate, I need this.”

“You’re not the only one, Jesse.”

I glanced at him again, and the flicker of streetlights flying past us lit up his eyes enough to reveal his palpable hunger. I gripped the wheel tighter and stared at the road ahead .

We passed a sign for a no-name, cheap motel. Then another. Just like the ones I’d used back east for the kind of anonymous sex on which roach motels thrived. Forty bucks and an hour or so could—

No. No, it was too risky.

Risky, but so, so tempting. It was bad enough just having the two of us out here in the car in the dark without Ranya or Roger or Simone to keep us apart. With just Anthony and me out here, nothing but good sense and fraying restraint kept us from paying cash for a room, slipping in an extra fifty for the clerk’s promise to be discreet, and just getting this out of our systems. Or, when the motels faded into the rearview and there was nothing but parking lots and side streets, it was all I could do not to pull off the highway, pull this car over, and pull him into the backseat.

Rapid tapping worked its way into the otherwise silent darkness. I couldn’t see his hands, but I guessed Anthony was drumming his fingers on the armrest. He kept almost perfect time with my pounding heart, tapping out its frustrated cadence. I fidgeted. Then he did. I hadn’t been this wound up since the night I met him, and that was a very different kind of wound up.

At that thought, I laughed softly.

“What?” he asked.

“Just thinking.” I glanced at him. “You really didn’t like me in the beginning, did you?”

Anthony gave a quiet, almost self-conscious laugh. “Oh, it’s not that. You’re a risky candidate to promote, and I thought your uncle had shot you in the foot by having you do that interview up front. So I suppose you could say I didn’t start out with any kind of optimism. About you, the campaign, any of it. Was nothing personal.”

I chuckled. “And here I thought you were put off by my irresistible charm.”

Anthony laughed softly and slid his hand over my knee. I shivered, instinctively glancing around in case anyone might see. The darkness ensured we wouldn’t get caught, but contact, even something this platonically intimate, gave me a thrill.

And before I could tell myself it would lead to no good, I put my hand over his. If I had a brain, I’d have just kept my hand there for a moment or two, then put it back on the wheel, but I didn’t. I didn’t want him lifting his away, and who was I kidding? I liked touching him. God, I loved it, no matter how much every second of warm contact eroded my restraint.

Then Anthony broke the silence. “I’ve been going crazy,” he said, his voice low as if someone else might overhear. “I swear to God, if I don’t get you alone soon…”

I shivered again, gripping the wheel tighter. “You’re not the only one.”

He squeezed my leg. “I’m not kidding, if this—”

He stopped abruptly when I made a sharp right turn down a side street .

“Wait, where are you going?” he asked. “This is the wrong way.”

“No, it isn’t.”

His hand tensed on my thigh, but he didn’t move it.

Heart pounding, I turned down another side road. I loved these back roads in the middle of nowhere. No one was out this late at night, and there wasn’t a soul to catch me turning this dusty rental car off onto a deserted dirt road.

“Jesse…”

I stopped on the side of the road and killed the engine. Then the lights.

Our eyes met in the darkness.

He swallowed hard. “Jesse, what are we doing?”

I said nothing. I just unbuckled my seat belt and leaned across the console.

Anthony obviously figured it out, because he slid his hand around the back of my neck and met me halfway.

And he kissed me.

And restraint ceased to exist.