19
Paige
SEEING SAM AND RICK, together, knotted my insides with one-hundred-pound string. Was Rick here because he knew me and several voters would be? Did my news about Rose only satisfy him for one night?
Panic flamed my cheeks hotter. He wanted more. I knew it.
From the rage mounting all over Sam’s face, Rick likely wasn’t telling one of his very few lighthearted war stories. Rick wouldn’t confirm everything I told him about Rose. Would he?
I flew toward them then reined in my speed. Both of them were too skilled at reading me like an open book, so I blanked my expression and calmed my erratic breaths. Then I flipped on the smile I reserved for interviews and sidled between them, pushing Sam out of Rick’s personal space. The last thing Belle needed was a brawl in the middle of the literacy center fundraiser.
“Hey, guys,” I said with a chuckle. “The testosterone levels over here have skyrocketed. Let’s take it down a notch to save room for cake, okay?”
“We’re just catching up.” Rick’s arm bumped my shoulder as he clapped Sam on the back. Hard. “Talking about you and everything you’ve been...doing.”
Sam’s chest tightened against my fingertips, the only thing holding him back, and Rick’s obvious innuendo curled my hand into a fist. I caught Sam’s intense blue gaze and shook my head, a plea not to take a swing at a senator in a public place, even if he was a worthless piece of shit.
“How’s Rose doing, Sam? No one’s seen her in a while.”
Rick’s words crawled up the back of my neck on a cockroach’s legs. I shivered against the feeling, at the infinitesimal jolt through Sam’s jaw at the mention of his sister. A kind of pain that had nothing to do with the yellowed bruise over his eye flickered across his face. A private pain, one I had no right to prod with the sharpest of sticks when I’d spilled the news about Rose to Rick.
“She’s not in some kind of trouble...” Rick continued.
Blood raged through my veins with sickening speed, and I whirled around to face him. What the hell was he doing?
His mouth quirked up in a smile aimed directly at me. “Is she?”
Without a word, I swiftly took Rick’s jacket sleeve and tugged him away. My head hammered with a blur of staring faces as we passed them out into the hallway, but I couldn’t let Rick continue to fish for answers about Rose when he had no right to. He already knew. So why rub it in Sam’s face?
I spun Rick into one of the small, side offices and shut the door behind us a little too hard. “Why are you making a spectacle?” My voice sounded low and deadly, a complete stranger’s. I had been back in D.C. for just over three weeks, and already, the city was trying to rot me from the inside out.
Rick crossed his arms and leaned casually against the messy desk behind him. His dress shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his customary tie was missing as if to better fit in with everyday folks. “You’re the one who dragged me out of there, Paige.”
“You already know where Rose is,” I hissed. “What more do you want? Why are youhere?”
“I was invited.” His gray gaze slid down to my chest and lingered several beats past uncomfortable. “Same as you.”
He was trying to intimidate me, to control the situation, but I wouldn’t let him. I’d given him enough control when I handed him my body and he’d given me back a lifetime of guilt. I tipped up my chin and refused to curl in on myself to hide my curves from his probing stare.
“You already have what you want,” I said and lowered my voice when footsteps echoed in the hallway.
“What you gave me is good, don’t get me wrong.” He lifted his hand from the desk and stared at the film of dust coating his fingertips in disgust. “I need more, though. More evidence.”
I glanced at the closed blinds on the window by the door, swallowing my disappointment. Of course he wanted more. It had been naïve to think a single piece of information would make him vanish out of my life forever. More information meant more snooping and lies. If I was going to do that and have a real chance at a Library of Congress job, then I was going to have to explain this whole Rick scenario away to Sam somehow. Based on the murderific way he looked at Rick, he likely wouldn’t forget all about him by the time I got back.
Meaning, I would have to lie to him, the same way I had been lying to everyone, including myself, for the last seven years.
You can’t tell anyone about us, Paige. They won’t understand as well as we do.
I promise.
But lies and half-truths couldn’t build a solid enough foundation to live the rest of my life on. It would crack and become brittle like the floor on which I stood. Plus, I was so,sotired of dishonesty.
“You know what will happen if I don’t get the evidence I need,” Rick said, as if sensing the direction of my thoughts.
I snapped my gaze to him. “Yes, you made that very clear.”
His mouth pinched in a sucks-to-be-you sort of way. The long scar along his chin folded in on itself as he nodded smugly, and it was such a weird, grotesque sight, my barely functioning stomach turned. It was hard to believe I ever found him remotely attractive.
