9. Anthony

Chapter 9

Anthony

Goddamn it, Hunter, what the fuck were you thinking?

Sitting beside Jesse on the early flight to San Francisco, close enough to catch the vague scent of chlorine from his daily swim, I stared straight ahead. The occasional glance at him confirmed he focused in the same direction. Neither of us had said a word to each other since we arrived at the airport at crap thirty this morning, and this silence was in no danger of breaking.

Fortunately Ranya—who was appallingly perky for someone conscious at this hour—had bought our excuses about working late last night, not being morning people, and not having nearly enough coffee in our systems. She already knew Jesse didn’t function this side of nine o’clock, and it hadn’t taken much to convince her I was equally anti-early.

And by the time we’d made it to the gate, she was in no mood to give a shit anyway. Perky and chipper had made a very quick switch to pissed off and silent thanks to security treating her like a potential terrorist.

Well. Wasn’t this trip off to a spectacular start?

Now here we were, sitting in a silent row in business class. Ranya had buried her nose in a book and blocked out the world with a pair of white earbuds, and she nodded subtly in time with whatever she was listening to while Jesse and I very carefully didn’t look at or speak to each other.

God, what was I thinking last night?

Jesse had told me he was gay, and my campaign manager brain had shut the fuck off when we’d both needed it the most. Damage control should have been my first instinct. After all, there were so many reasons why this could be disastrous to his campaign. The charade of a happy marriage had to stay solid. The media and the public had to keep believing Jesse was heterosexual and married. No one could know about this, and I needed to do everything in my power to make sure no one did.

But had I thought about that last night? No. Fuck no. Because suddenly all those looks I thought I’d imagined were potentially real, and all those thoughts he’d unknowingly put into my head had the potential to come to fruition. I couldn’t resist, I didn’t resist, and now I had to figure out how the fuck we could continue to work together without awkward silences and uncomfortable throat clearing. We’d had enough of that before we’d crossed this goddamned line.

Now what? We couldn’t talk, not here where we could be overheard. And for God’s sake, Jesse and I couldn’t get caught giving each other any kind of suggestive or flirtatious looks, but then I supposed that wasn’t an issue as long as we couldn’t look at each other in the first place.

It was just a kiss. Okay, several. It wasn’t like we’d slept together. And he’d said himself that his marriage was over. Once we’d broken the ice and touched, there was no pretending that intense mutual attraction didn’t exist. The only thing that had stopped me from fucking him then and there had been our early flight.

To further his campaign.

His campaign that was every reason not to sleep with him. Or kiss him. Or touch him. Or fucking want him.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes, hoping Jesse and Ranya took it as a sign of stress and fatigue if they even noticed it at all. Christ. This was going to be one long campaign.

Not long after it took off from LAX, the plane touched down in San Francisco. Flanked by two of Jesse’s security escorts, the three of us walked in silence through the airport to baggage claim. Once we’d collected everything—this was, after all, the first of about two dozen stops before we were anywhere near home—Ranya called to confirm our car was on its way.

“The driver left about fifteen minutes ago.” She dropped her phone into her purse. “Assuming traffic is still light, he should be here in the next ten.”

I nodded. “Good. That gives us plenty of time to get to that breakfast.”

“Thank God,” she said. “Airline pretzels will only keep me sane for so long.” She glanced around, then looked at us. “Can you guys watch my stuff for a minute? I’m going to go use the restroom.”

“Sure.” Jesse’s tone was flat. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“You’d better not.”

They exchanged tired smiles, though Jesse’s seemed to take a lot more effort than hers. She narrowed her eyes slightly like she wanted to grill him about it, and when her gaze darted toward me, my blood turned cold.

But she didn’t say anything. Instead she took off for the restroom, leaving Jesse and me alone in the middle of the crowd. We were a good arm’s length and luggage cart’s width apart, with the two security guards on either side like a pair of armed bookends, but we may as well have been on opposite ends of the airport. As hurried travelers rushed past us like water around a stone, I shifted my weight and kept my eyes down, pretending I didn’t feel this conspicuous. Intellectually I knew no one noticed, but I swore we radiated the guilt of two men who shouldn’t have gone there and the tension of two men who had.

I looked at Jesse in the same instant he turned toward me, and we made unexpectedly direct eye contact. He quickly dropped his gaze. Cue awkward silence. Cue uncomfortable throat clearing. Fuck.

Damage control, Anthony. Do some fucking damage control.

I drummed my fingers on the upraised handle of Ranya’s suitcase. “Listen, I’m sorry about…um, about what happened.”

Jesse played with the shoulder strap on his carry-on bag and looked anywhere but right at me. “It happened,” he said coldly. “Not much we can do about it.” He nodded toward the doors. “I’ll go see if the car’s here. ”

And with that, he and the security guards merged into the rush of people, leaving me staring at his back while I waited for Ranya.

She emerged from the crowd a moment later. “Where’s Jesse?”

“He went out to see if the car’s here yet,” I said. “Ready?”

Ranya’s eyes darted toward the exit, then back to me, and they narrowed again, this time with the faintest hint of suspicion. But then she shrugged and took the handle of her suitcase. “Let’s go.”

If there was one thing I could say about the campaign trail, it was that the damned thing was almost nonstop busy, busy, busy. There was plenty of downtime on planes and in cars, but even that could be occupied with speeches and campaign strategies, especially when a candidate and his campaign manager had shared a kiss that they really needed to not talk about.

But it was inevitable that something would get canceled or rescheduled at the last second, leaving us with some unexpected time to kill. I knew it would happen sooner or later. I dreaded it.

And about a week after that night in Jesse’s foyer, in the backseat of a rented sedan in Redding, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out and opened a new text from Lydia:

2 pm event canceled. Chairman wants to reschedule in 2 wks; working on details.

I swore under my breath, resisting the urge to throw my phone out the damned window. Last-minute cancellations were a pet peeve of mine even when they didn’t leave me facing down an awkward, unavoidable conversation.

Jesse glanced at me in the rearview. “What’s wrong?”

“This afternoon’s canceled.” I shoved my phone into my pocket. “Looks like we’re coming back up here in two weeks.”

Ranya twisted around in the passenger seat and stared at me. “Are you serious ?”

I nodded. “Good thing we have a few other events while we’re up here, or I might have to bash some skulls together.”

“Wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you did it anyway.” She groaned and rested her forehead against the seat. “God. That means another flight, doesn’t it? Can’t fucking wait.”

I gave her a sympathetic grimace. “Sorry. Par for the course for the next few months. I’ll see what I can do about making sure we’re close enough we don’t have to fly, but…”

“I’ll live.” She scowled but made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t worry about it.”

“So what do we do with the rest of the day?” Jesse asked. “Before we have to go to that dinner, anyway? ”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Ranya said, “this afternoon calls for hanging out at that shithole you guys call a hotel, eating pizza, and not campaigning for five minutes.”

“I like that idea.” Jesse looked at me and bit his lip. “You?”

Any other day during any other campaign, hanging out in a hotel room with pizza would have been heavenly. Any other day during any other campaign, I wouldn’t have made out with the candidate who’d be hanging out in the same room.

Way to complicate things, Hunter.

Jesse muffled a cough. “Anthony?” In the rearview, his eyebrows rose again, a distinct look of panic creeping into his expression. Ranya glanced at me, at Jesse, at me again, and I wondered how much she knew.

I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Sure. Pizza. That actually sounds like a good idea.”

An hour later, there we were, sitting around in the shithole we called a hotel, eating pizza, and not campaigning for five minutes. I sat cross-legged between the extra-hard pillows and one of the pizza boxes. Jesse and I both had half-empty beers on the nightstand between the phone and the clock radio, and he mirrored me on the other bed. Beside him, Ranya sprawled on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows as she ate.

“I thought you were a vegetarian.” She nodded at the slice in my hand.

“I am.” I tilted it so she could see the toppings. “If you’ll notice, there isn’t a single scrap of animal corpse to be found.”

“So you’ll eat cheese, then?”

Normally this kind of discussion irritated me, but Ranya was good-natured about it, and it meant we weren’t discussing the fact that I knew how Jesse kissed, so I didn’t mind at all. “I’m a vegetarian, not a vegan.”

“Why are you a vegetarian?” Jesse glanced at me just enough to be polite. “Ethical reasons, or…?”

I shrugged. “Just can’t stand the idea of eating meat. It’s disgusting.”

“You are aware you’re a predator, right?” She gestured at her eyes. “Forward-facing eyes? Teeth meant for cutting?”

“You’re talking to a man who buys cigarettes on his way to a health food store,” I said. “I assure you, what nature intended and what Anthony does are not always in sync.”

She picked a piece of sausage off her pizza and tossed it into her mouth. “Suit yourself. Just means more for me.”

“Have at it,” I said, chuckling.

“Has anyone ever pointed out the hilarious irony of your last name, though?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Oh no . No one’s ever caught on to that .”

She snickered, and even Jesse let himself laugh as he picked up his beer .

Adopting a ridiculously horrible Australian accent, Ranya said, “Look, it’s Anthony, the fearsome Hunter. Watch him as he prowls the produce aisle and stalks the unsuspecting bean sprouts.”

Jesse choked on his beer, and Ranya and I both burst out laughing.

Still giggling, Ranya continued, “The tofu packages are helpless to fend him off, and now he’s moving in for the kill. Look out, he’s—” She snorted and dissolved into giggles.

Rolling my eyes again and chuckling, I picked up my beer can. To Jesse I said, “How do you put up with her?”

Jesse shrugged and gave a nervous totally-pretending-to-be-comfortable grin. “She has her uses.” As he reached for the pizza box, he added, “If nothing else, she makes pretty good furniture.” He set the pizza box on Ranya’s back.

“Hey!” She glared at him. “I am not furniture, Jesse Cameron.”

He shrugged again. “Well, at your height, you would make a great ottoman.”

“And at my height, I have the perfect vantage point for kicking the crap out of your shins when you stand up.” She narrowed her eyes and gestured at the box with her thumb. “Move it, buster.”

He eyed her coolly. “You know, you’re awfully mouthy for a sidekick.”

“Sidekick?” She pointed at the box again, bracelets jingling emphatically. “How about you take this thing off my back before I show you a roundhouse kick?”

He laughed as he picked up the box and set it beside her but didn’t quite pull his hand back before she smacked him.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” she said.

“That’ll be the day.”

“Yeah, isn’t that the truth?” She reached down to pick up her beer off the floor. After she took a drink, she set it down, and as she drew her arm back, she paused to look at her watch. “Oh man.” She pushed herself up. “It’s almost five.”

“Is it?” I looked at the clock and blinked. When the hell had we gotten this far past noon? “Goddamn, it is.”

Ranya sat up with a dramatic groan. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to go make myself quasi-presentable for this evening.”

“Good idea.” Jesse swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood. Muttering, he added, “Another late night, another early fucking morning.”

A retort of get used to it, Governor stopped at the tip of my tongue. I glanced at the clock radio while the two of them tossed plates and beer cans away.

It was a little after five. We all had to get ready for this dinner, and we’d likely be back late tonight. There wasn’t much time now, but there’d be even less when we got back, and God knew when even the smallest opportunity might present itself again .

“Jesse,” I said. “We need to go over a few things before the rally tomorrow.” I gestured at my laptop case, where I kept notebooks and crap for briefing him prior to events.

He hesitated, his eyes darting toward Ranya. “Does it…need to be tonight?”

Yes. It needs to be now , damn it. “It’s now, late tonight, or the crack of dawn tomorrow. Your call. Just depends on if you want to deal with me pre-coffee or not.” I raised an eyebrow. Please, Jesse. We need to do this now.

“Sure. All right.” To Ranya, Jesse said, “We’ll see you in the lobby at six thirty?”

She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Assuming you two are dressed and ready by then.” A look of horror flickered across her expression, and she locked eyes with Jesse for a second. Then she quickly cleared her throat. “Well, I mean…” Her gaze darted back and forth between us. Finally she just shook her head. “Just get yourselves put together. Both of you. Okay?”

“Will do,” I said with a two-fingered mock salute.

“On it.” Jesse avoided her eyes and mine.

She glanced back and forth between us, chewing her lower lip, but once again let it go and reached for the door. “Anyway, I’ll see you guys in a little while.”

“See ya,” we both said quietly.

Ranya left, and Jesse closed the door behind her. Once we were alone, he faced me and leaned against the door. For a long, long moment, we just stared at each other, and fuck if I knew what to say or how to say it.

Jesse took a breath. “This isn’t about the rally, is it?”

I moistened my lips. “No.” I stood and took a few tentative steps toward him. He pressed himself against the door like a cornered animal. Like he needed to stay as far away from me as he could while staying in the same room. I stopped, hooking my thumbs in the pockets of my jeans in an attempt to look relaxed. Non-confrontational, if nothing else.

“Jesse, we need to talk.”

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the door. I chewed my lip, trying to ignore the nicotine craving that rose exponentially with each passing second. This had to be handled indoors, away from prying eyes and ears, so the smoke would just have to wait.

“Look, about that night in your foyer. It was…”

It was what? My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my breath stayed in my lungs. It was what, Anthony? Panic quickened my heartbeat. I’d needed—and dreaded—this opportunity since the morning we flew to San Francisco, but hadn’t thought this far ahead. What did I say? How did I address this? What the fuck kind of damage control did a situation like this warrant?

“Was it a mistake?” Jesse’s voice startled me .

“What?” I barely forced the word past my dry lips.

He opened his eyes and looked at me across the canyon of hotel carpet. “Was that night, what happened, a mistake?”

I ran a hand through my hair. “I’m your damned campaign manager. It’s—”

“I’m not talking about the campaign.”

“Then…?”

Jesse shifted his weight, his shirt rustling against the door, and with what looked like a lot of effort, he held my gaze. “Not campaign manager to candidate. Just man to man.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Jesse, we… I mean, we can’t pretend we’re not campaign manager and candidate.”

“Can we at least drop that long enough to have this conversation?” His tone was even and collected but held a tense undercurrent I couldn’t quite identify.

I swallowed, my chest tightening as I struggled to figure out what to say. Finally I managed a quiet, “Does it make a difference? If we drop it or not, I mean?”

Just as quietly, he said, “It does to me.”

I watched him, unsure how to respond to that.

Jesse shifted his weight again. “Look, this may sound stupid, but you’re the only man who’s ever kissed me .”

I blinked. “What?” Jesse had been closeted all this time, but it hadn’t even dawned on me that he’d never so much as touched another man. “You’ve never… You’re…”

“I’ve been with men.” He laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “Plenty of them. The thing is, every man on the planet who’s ever touched me like that thought I was someone who happened to look like Jesse Cameron.” He swept the tip of his tongue across his lips and stared at the floor between us. “You’re the first and only one who’s ever known who I was. And I…” He looked at me through his lashes. “Call it ridiculous, childish, whatever, but I need to know if that was a mistake.”

“I…” …wasn’t sure how to answer that. Was it?

Jesse exhaled sharply and pushed himself off the door. “That’s what I thought.” He started for the door handle.

“Wait.”

He stopped, his hand hovering above the handle.

“Listen, I…I don’t know.” I avoided his eyes. “All I’ve been thinking about is how this will impact the campaign. I haven’t even stopped to think about how I felt about it. Feel about it. I’ve just been trying to do damage control, I guess. ”

“Damage control. God.” He laughed bitterly and shook his head. “You know, that was the one time in my life something like that happened and I didn’t feel like it was fake. And even that needs fucking damage control.”

Before I could speak, he pulled open the door, and by the time any words made it to my tongue, I was alone, staring at a closed door as my heartbeat pounded out the phantom cadence of his footsteps fading down the hall.

I sank onto the bed where he and Ranya had lounged earlier. Rubbing my temples, I closed my eyes and swore under my breath. As his campaign manager, I knew that night was a mistake. A huge one. But man to man? I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t allowed myself to. With all the other factors in place that couldn’t be changed, it didn’t matter.

Did it?

I drummed my fingers on my knee. I needed a cigarette. No thinking was going to happen in here until I had some nicotine in my system, so I grabbed my room key and hurried outside. Maybe some air—toxic and otherwise—would help me clear my head and figure this the fuck out.

In the parking lot, squinting against the unforgiving blades of sunlight bouncing off steel and glass, I lit a cigarette. As soon as it was between my lips, I pulled in as much smoke as I could in one breath. I closed my eyes, letting the smoke out slowly. The twitchy, shaky craving slowly receded, and my nerves settled as much as I could ask the nicotine to settle them.

The panic burning its way through my veins wasn’t the “oh shit, I’m losing control” panic that always came with seeing a campaign potentially unraveling at the seams. That simmered below the surface, of course; I was constitutionally incapable of turning off the campaign-manager brain most of the time, and the risk of all this fucking up Jesse’s campaign was not lost on me.

But this was something much deeper. More unsettling. Something that burrowed into the center of my chest and left my heart pounding with the certainty I’d just fucked something up. And I wasn’t sure how badly or how to fix it, and even if I did, maybe there was no fixing it. Maybe there was no going back.

With a shaking hand, I brought my cigarette to my lips. No going back or not, this ache in my chest promised not to let up until I did something. What, I didn’t know. But something other than sucking down nicotine alone in the lingering heat of a desert afternoon in a hotel parking lot. Whatever conclusion I came to about what the fuck was going on, it didn’t do me a damned bit of good out here.

I dropped my cigarette and crushed it under my heel as I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. Typing out my text message took a few tries; my fingers were too infuriatingly unsteady to hit the tiny keys, but after some cursing and backspacing, the only four words I could think of were on the screen :

It wasn’t a mistake.

My thumb hovered over the Send button for a moment. Holding my breath, I pressed the button. Before the ‘message sent’ confirmation even flashed on the screen, I had another cigarette out of the pack and between my lips.

Christ, Jesse. You’re going to drive me to chain-smoking.

My heart beat faster, though I didn’t know how much of that was the double hit of nicotine and how much was from half-panicked nerves.

Not sixty seconds after I sent the message, my phone chirped. Cigarette balanced between two fingers, I pulled up the new text.

Sure about that?

I exhaled. No. No, I wasn’t sure about that. It may have been a huge fucking mistake, but…no, it wasn’t. And this wasn’t getting any closer to ironed out via text messages.

Pocketing my phone, I crushed my half-smoked cigarette under my heel beside the first one. Then I went back into the hotel. I took the stairs to kick away some of this nervous energy. That, and waiting for the slow-as-death elevator to get me to the third floor would just give me too much idle time for second thoughts and backing out.

On the third floor, I walked past my room. Ranya’s. Those occupied by other staffers who’d come up for tomorrow’s rally. All the people who didn’t need to know about this. On to the room of the one person who might have a better grasp on what the fuck was going on than I did.

At his door, I hesitated. Then I took a deep breath and tapped just loud enough for him and no one else to hear. But of course, the sound fucking echoed all down the hall, and for a few seconds, I was sure every damned door was about to fly open.

None of them did, though.

Including this one.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled. Come on, Jesse.

Maybe he didn’t hear me. That was it. Maybe…if I just…

I knocked a little harder. A moment later I wished I hadn’t, because quiet footsteps on the other side told me he had heard me this time.

The chain on the other side rattled and slid— which way?— and the deadbolt clicked. I gulped.

Then the door opened.

Preoccupied or not, I couldn’t not notice how he looked. Fuck. He already had on his tuxedo shirt and slacks, and his bow tie hung untied around his neck. A few more minutes and a black jacket, and he’d have eliminated any chance I had of forming a coherent thought.

His expression was almost blank. Almost neutral. Only the slightest lift of his eyebrows and the suggestions of crevices between them hinted at something other than complete apathy. The man could put on an act, but the cracks were showing, and the more they showed—his Adam’s apple bobbing, his lips tightening—the more my own cool exterior threatened to crumble.

I cleared my throat. “Can I come in?”

He stepped aside. I walked past him, and he closed the door with a quiet click . Still trying to find the right words, I took a deep breath, but Jesse spoke first.

“Look, obviously we shouldn’t have done it,” he said coldly. “Can we just let it go and move on?”

I faced him. “You didn’t believe my message?”

One eyebrow rose in unmistakable “fuck no, I didn’t believe you” fashion.

I exhaled, wringing my hands to keep from going for my cigarettes. “I mean it, Jesse. This is…this…it’s complicated. That doesn’t mean it was a mistake.”

“How could it not be?” he snapped.

“Look, I’m your campaign manager. It’s up to me to keep this all together between now and the election. I owe it to you to put that responsibility first and foremost.”

Jesse looked away, his lips thinning into a bleached line.

“But that doesn’t mean the other night was a mistake,” I whispered.

His gaze darted back toward me. “Then what was it?”

“I…” I swallowed hard and shook my head slowly as I took a step toward him. He tensed, so I stopped. “I don’t know what it was, Jesse. All I know is…”

Is…

What, Anthony?

The silence went on, and with every second, the panic knotted tighter in my chest with the certainty he was a moment away from throwing me out. I supposed I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did.

Jesse inclined his head. “All you know is, what?” His tone was laced with suspicion and skepticism.

“Nothing.” I took another step toward him, reaching for his waist. “I know absolutely nothing.” And with that, I kissed him.

He stiffened, and panic ripped through me. Certain he was about to shove me away, I almost beat him to the punch and drew back, but when he put his hands on my chest, he grabbed fistfuls of my shirt so I couldn’t pull away.

I broke the kiss and met his eyes. “As your campaign manager, I owe you better than this. I know this is a bad idea, Jesse, and so do you, but I can’t help it.” With a trembling hand, I touched his face. “I want you.”

Jesse swallowed. He parted his lips like he was about to speak, but after a few seconds of silence, he pulled me into another kiss. He wrapped his arms around me and pushed me back a step. I took another step, pulling him with me. When he pushed me a second time, my calf bumped the bed, so I grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him down onto the mattress.

“God, Anthony,” he moaned between kisses. “I want you so fucking bad.” Before I could speak, he pressed his hips against mine. Through his slacks and my jeans, our erections brushed, and as he kissed me again, his loose bow tie whispered across my neck like a soft, cool breath.

Bow tie.

Tuxedo shirt.

Slacks.

His tuxedo. Mine, which still hung in my room.

I broke the kiss and sighed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“We don’t have time,” I whispered and lifted my head to kiss him again. “We have”—I picked up the end of his bow tie—“we have that dinner.”

He exhaled. “I know. Damn it.”

I combed my fingers through his hair. “We’ll finish this.”

“When?” He bent and kissed me again, pausing to murmur, “God, I’m going to go crazy waiting even a few minutes…”

I shivered. “You’re not the only one. And I don’t know when. Soon, I hope.” As he raised his head and met my eyes, I added, “As soon as we fucking can.”