Except…George doesn’t know everything about my past.
He doesn’t know about the long game.
Or I can turn away from that path, always hate myself for not getting retribution, and I can have my career and the man I love. “If I ask you to withdraw, you mean marry youafteryou’re out of office next January?”
“No. I meannow, if you tell me to send that letter. I know what’s important in life. My kids, obviously. I’ve survived hell, and you’ve shown me another heaven I never knew could form from the ashes.”
I suck in a sharp breath at the imagery his words conjure.
I can’t…think. I wasn’t expecting this. I mean, we successfully hurdled the kids accepting whatever this is between us and agreeing to cover for us.
My brain can’t process…this.
“H-how are you evenhere?” I ask.
“Casey covered for me and gave me her keys.”
That’s going to piss off a few officers in the EPU. “What’d she tell you happened? Between her and me?”
He smirks. “That you two had some words. That she’s not sure what happened to trigger it originally, but she unintentionally made it infinitely worse. She said she was worried about you when you wouldn’t respond to her texts, so she sent a trooper after you because, as she put it, she overreacted and thought worst-case scenario, that maybe you were kidnapped or something.”
His smirk fades. “That she thinks maybe we overwhelmed you last night with the kids and by not telling you first or giving you a choice about it, when that wasn’t my intention. She theorized that maybe instead of planning that with her, I should’ve planned it with you. And she accepts responsibility for not stopping me and bringing you into the process.
“I was trying to show youwecan be a family. I wanted to tell the kids about you because I love you and I’m tired of not being able to tell anyone about you or my love for you. And I’m sorry if you’ve felt ignored today. That wasn’t my intention, either. I was busy and I didn’t reply to your good-morning text, and I’m sorry. I need to do a better job of showing you how much I love you outside of what it is that we do together. Because Idolove you.”
I stare into his eyes. It feels like I can’t breathe. “But what about our agenda? About all the things Ellen wanted to accomplish?”
His eyes go too bright and he blinks a couple of times. “I can’t bring her back,” he quietly says. “Nothing I do will bring her back. She’d tell me to not be a dumbass and drive away the one person who finally made me want to live again instead of killing myself a day at a time.”
“It’s my choice?”
He nods. “You tell me to send that letter, we can be married Monday morning as soon as the clerk’s office opens. You’d have to resign from staff, but you could go back to work at the law firm, we could live openly as a couple, and you’d be the First Gentleman of Tennessee until next January.” He wryly smiles. “Or you can let me make you a kept man and you can do whatever it is the First Spouse is supposed to do. Unless the General Assembly recalls me, and Dick Cailey gets to be governor again.”
“Fuck that guy,” I mutter. I take a breath. “What did Casey say when you ran all this by her?”
He shrugs. “I haven’t told her. This is between you and me, not her. She came to me immediately after you two talked, and she told me what happened. I told her to clear my schedule and give me her keys so I could come here and talk to you.”
He sighs. “Either way you decide, you can still see her, be involved with her. I know how much she loves you, and how much you love her. I can share you withher, but no one else. I’ll also tell her if she decides to get involved with someone besides you, that it puts an end to her being able to be with you. Or, if she decides she wants to be with both of us, and you’re okay with that, then maybe we can have a triad. It’s her choice whether or not to be with us.”
I can’t take my eyes off his laptop now.
The letter can be copied and pasted into an e-mail and sent in under ten seconds.
In ten seconds, I could have the relationship, the house, the career, the life I always thought I wanted.
The public recognition—good or bad—but at least I’d no longer be a dirty secret.
In ten seconds, everything we’ve worked so hard to accomplish can be transformed into dreams I never knew I wanted before.
And Ellen’s legacy will be set aside forever.
I think about that day in Casey’s office, when she received the call about the plane crash.
The grieving woman who, for the first time, I saw completely unguarded and vulnerable.
The woman who softly sobbed in my arms and begged me to tell her it was a nightmare.
Who begged me to tell her she’d wake up to find me holding her in bed and that Ellen and George were safe and on their way home to us.
