Chapter Nineteen
The next morning, after I help Chris get the kids off to school, I head downstairs with coffee but without eating breakfast. My stomach isn’t thrilled with the idea of solid food.
My secretary is already at her desk. “Any word from Leo or Kev this morning?” I ask.
“No, ma’am. Do you want me to get them on the phone for you?”
Do I?
I could call or text Kevdirectly except, under the circumstances, if I do that and it’s not about work, I know he’ll kill me.
The optics.
Motherfucking optics.
“No,” I tell her. “But let me know if they check in, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I don’t even pause in the Oval Office. I walk straight through to my study. I’m due my PDB any moment now, but my routine is thrown off without Kevin walking into the West Wing withme.
I force myself to sit down behind my desk in the study, take a deep breath, and hold it for a moment before letting it out.
I have a job to do.
The world can’t stop just because I’m…off-kilter.
I have to get back to work, the reelection campaign—everything.
It’s not fair, but it’s life.
Mylife.
Once the PDB ends, I find Chris standing in my study door with a plate in hand and anothercup of coffee. “You didn’t eat this morning.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You didn’t eat dinner last night. And when I thought about it, I don’t think you ate the day before, either.”
He’s right, but I wasn’t saying anything.
He walks in and shuts the door with his foot. Then he sets everything on my desk and stands there, arms crossed over his chest. Today he’s wearing jeans and a light blue chambrayshirt, button-up, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. No tie.
Casual, for him, for a work day.
But he’s channeling Sir.
Or, he’s trying to.
It is ironic that the sadist isn’t Sir the way Sir is. I’ve seen Kev reduced to tearful begging for release by this man, and yet, to me, Kev is still in certain ways a scarier Sir than this Sir is.
Chris is the Rottweiler, and Kev is the BorderCollie.
You ever fuck with a Border Collie when they’re trying to get you to do something? They’re persistent, they don’t give up, and they are used to single-handedly corralling large numbers of very stupid beings and getting them to do exactly what they want them to do.
Border Collie.
Sure, a Rottweiler can fuck up your day, but most of them are sweet, adorable snot-demons who are great tohave backing you up, but you know damn well most of them, they’re not “dangerous.”
