He leaned back against the lounger and just stared at me, and I found myself doing the same. I was at a loss as to what to do next. I was in completely new territory. Sure, I’d been in relationships before, but I wasn’t sure that was even what Vincent and I had. Hehadn’t brought up the issue again of me leaving, but it felt like it was right there on the tip of his tongue. If I said or did even a single thing wrong, this could all be over.
And I didn’t know why that mattered so much.
It wasn’t like we had anything we could build a future on. I still knew next to nothing about the man, but what I did know was that he hated politics and pretty much everything I stood for. Our chemistry was off the charts, but I knew that wouldn’t be enough to sustain this thing between us.
But that was just it.
There was something more between us than just sex.
Wasn’t there?
I certainly hadn’t been scared shitless this morning when I’d discovered he’d left to go after my assailant on his own because I would have missed the sex if something had happened to him. And I couldn’t fathom that he’d let me stay just so he could keep fucking me.
Fuck, why was this shit so complicated? With Virginia, I’d never had to wonder about this kind of stuff. Of course, with Virginia, all I’d felt was trapped.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Vincent asked as he took another sip of his beer.
“Nothing,” I said with a shake of my head. “Just tired.”
He eyed me for a long time, but didn’t say anything.
“What happens now?” I asked. “With finding the guy,” I clarified, since I sure as shit wasn’t ready to hear Vincent tell me this thing between us needed to come to an end.
“My plan this morning was to draw him out, but someone blew that out of the water with his little stunt.”
I was surprised to see a small smile grace Vincent’s hard mouth, proof that he was no longer pissed at me for what I’d done this morning to get him back here.
“We can still do that,” I said. “Draw him out.”
Vincent opened his mouth to say something, so I quickly continued before he could protest. “I’m scheduled to speak at a rallyon Saturday. Maybe if this guy sees that I’m getting back to my normal routine, he’ll come after me again.”
“No, it’s too dangerous,” Vincent said before the last syllable had even left my mouth.
“There will be security there. And you can blend in with the crowd. I can tell the security team that you’re my bodyguard…it’s not unheard of for political candidates to have them.”
The fact that he didn’t cut me off again was a good sign. “You said we could make it look like I was staying in a hotel in Charleston…”
He took another long draw of his beer. The fact that he hadn’t shot me down was proof that whatever he’d been doing on his own hadn’t been working.
“Vincent, he needs to see me…he needs to see that he hasn’t stopped me.” I was about to continue my argument when Vincent suddenly stood. His jaw was hard as he studied the backyard for a moment and then, without a word, he turned and strode into the house. I grabbed my own beer and followed, waiting long enough for Mickey and Minnie to follow me into the house before shutting the patio door.
I found him in the kitchen pouring himself a drink. There was a glass for me, but he didn’t fill it up. He merely slid the bottle and glass towards me and then snatched his glass off the island and went to stand by the kitchen table so he could stare out the window. I poured a small amount of the whiskey into the glass and downed it in one swallow, then capped the bottle. As much as I would have liked another drink, I needed to keep my wits about me for whatever was to come.
“What do you want, Vincent?” I finally asked when he remained silent. “This morning you seemed eager to finish this thing – I’m assuming because you wanted to get me out of your life sooner rather than later. But now that I’m giving you a surefire way to do that, you won’t take me up on it.”
“It’s what I don’t want that’s the issue, Nathan,” he said without turning around.
“Okay, whatdon’tyou want?” I asked.
“For you to get too comfortable. For you to start thinking there’s something here…between us.”
His words stung, even though I’d suspected as much. But even though I’d wanted to force him to talk to me, now I just wanted him to shut the hell up. I felt weak and foolish for thinking there might even be a chance he was feeling a fraction of what I was feeling.
“I get it,” I mumbled as the alcohol in my belly began to sour. “I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have pushed this on you. I’ll go pack. If you’ll lend me a car, I can drive myself to the nearest police station, or you can drop me off there yourself. I’ll report the attack…”
I didn’t wait for him to respond. I hurried to my room and searched out my bag. I wanted to laugh at the fact that I still hadn’t managed to do laundry, so I had nothing clean to change into. But I supposed it didn’t matter if I showed up at the police station in sweats and a T-shirt. My political career likely wouldn’t survive any of this anyway, so potentially having a picture snapped by reporters in the casual attire seemed pretty irrelevant at this point. As soon as the story got out that I’d been attacked in my own home, my opponents would make sure the public was wondering what skeletons in my closet had triggered the incident. The good news was that if I dropped out of the race now, my party could still nominate someone to put on the ballot in my place. It wasn’t ideal, but they’d still have a chance of running a successful campaign against the Republican candidate.
I waited for the disappointment to hit me as I considered what giving up my career in politics would mean, but surprisingly, all I felt was a lingering curiosity about the whole thing. Like what my life would have been like as a U.S. Senator. But along with that feeling came an odd and completely unexpected sense of freedom.
