“Does it really matter in the end?” I tried, my voice cracking as I fought to keep my composure.
Dallas said nothing but shook his head once before gathering his plate and drink before heading for the door that connected Lennon’s suite with the one we shared.
“It might not to you, Z,” Brooks said quietly as he put his empty plate into the sink. “But we weren’t the ones being hugged by her grandfather.”
With that he turned to follow his brother, leaving me standing all alone in the kitchen to my own thoughts and the ghosts of my past which had come back to haunt me once again.
Chapter Twelve
Camp David, Maryland
2 months & 2 weeks until the election…
“You don’t need to fuss over me so much, Grandma,” I said as the person in question fluttered around me like an over-caffeinated butterfly.
It had been almost a week since the accident and almost a week since Carter had been checked into rehab yet again.
Once he’d come down from the drugs he’d been upset and confused, but our grandfather made sure that he understood what had happened and what he needed to do.
I wasn’t allowed to see him yet, and truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to either.
It wasn’t easy to see Carter that way and witnessing him like that first hand had shaken me to my core.
“Need I remind you that you were in a car accidentagain,young lady?” my grandmother, Bunny, said sternly as she pushed a steaming mug of tea into my hands despite the fact that it was still over a hundred degrees outside. “I swear we may have to start bubble wrapping you soon. Now,drink.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, you know,” I grumbled before dutifully taking a sip of the chamomile tea.
After a week of investigation Maverick told me that there was no reason to believe that the drunk driver in the F-150 had any motive for plowing into our car. It was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Not that it hadn’t kept the press from speculating of course.
Somehow more information about my first kidnapping attempt had leaked the day after the accident and people were coming up with all kinds of theories about what was happening to me.
From government conspiracy all the way to domestic terrorism, everyone had an opinion about whyIwas the one being targeted and each theory was less fun than the last one.
The only silver lining in all of this mess was that, because everyone’s attention was securely focused on me, almost no one was wondering where Carter was and why he had so suddenly disappeared off the face of the planet.
Small mercies, I guess, though if another one of my friends from university sent me another insane TikTok I would be losing my mind.
“So, tell me about those handsome agents of yours,” my grandmother said as she slid into the chair across from me with a wicked grin.
She was one of my favorite people in the entire world and probably one of the people who I was closest with. But with that came her unfortunate need to pry with a skill that was almost psychic.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I replied, not meeting her blue-eyed gaze that always saw far too much. “They’re a pain in the ass and I don’t get to do half of what I used to be able to do.”
That, at least, wasn’t a lie. Post-accident Maverick was more prickly than ever about my protection. The only reason one of them wasn’t currently breathing down my neck right now was because we were literally at one of the safest places on the planet outside of the White House—especially with my mother also being here for the weekend.
My grandmother’s silvery brows rose, telling me that she knew I was full of shit.
“Whatever you say, my darling, but even I have eyes. I may be as old as dirt, but I know handsome men when I see them and those are some of the most handsome men I have ever seen,” my grandmother said, fanning herself dramatically. “And I can also see when men think someone is beautiful too.”
I laughed at that. “You arenotas old as dirt, Grandma.”
My grandmother was seventy-two and despite that she looked good for her age. She had long silver hair that always seemed to be perfectly coiffed no matter how long she spent in her garden or doing her Pilates.
She had taken care of herself over the years—a given because she was my grandfather’s pride and joy. They’d met when my grandfather, a young senator and the only son of the governor of Massachusetts, was visiting an omega center and there she had been. Beatrice “Bunny” Clyde. She had no family of her own,but my grandfather had taken one look at her and decided that she was his omega and he would be that family despite his own father’s objections.
They’d gotten married and here they were, fifty-two years later, just as happy as they had been the day of their wedding.
