Lord knew that was what Wyatt and I had counted on all these years.
David’s lips tipped up in a wry smile. “The story also included pics ofhimleaving a certain closeted Republican’s hotel room at three o’clock in the morning.”
“Your boyfriend was cheating on you?”
“No.” He shook his head, his lips turning down slightly. “He was a well-known escort.”
Holy shit. David didn’t just have the temerity to be gay; he was also dating a man who could single-handedly take down every closeted politician in the city. No wonder they’d run him out of town.
“Ah.”
“Yeah. Ah.” He scrubbed his hand over his face and blew out a breath. “It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I represented everyone who’d ever hired me, everyone who had or would vouch for me, everyone whose name appeared on the letterhead my words were printed on. And the second any of those people decided your personal life is a weakness?” He drew a finger across his throat. “You’re done.”
“So how’d you end up working for Kendra?”
I pushed off the desk and crossed the room to the window, needing to move, needing to do something other than stand there absorbing the weight of a story that felt uncomfortably like a preview of my own. I leaned against the sill, arms folded across my chest.
“I’d moved home--here to Portland--to lick my wounds and figure out what I was going to do next. Not long after, Michael contacted me. Our paths had crossed many times, so he knew my work. We became friends, and he introduced me to Kendra, who, in case you’re wondering, legitimately doesn’t care about my past. Though you should probably know, shedidask me about yours.”
Kendra knew.
The realization made me re-evaluate every interaction I’d ever had with her. Every time she’d looked at me with that deep, penetrating gaze of hers, and I’d assumed she was evaluating my professional competence, had she been wondering about my relationship with Wyatt instead?
Fuck. Just how badly had we failed at all that subterfuge?How many people had looked at us and seen exactly what we were?
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat.
“What do you mean?”
I didn't know why I was still playing dumb, but it had been my default for so long, and some habits were hard to break.
“You already know she met with Hastings when she was vetting you. After, she said, and I quote, ‘That man was giving offverystrong vibes.’”
“Fuck,” I muttered, moving behind my desk to collapse into my chair. I rubbed my sweating palms along my thighs, my pulse loud in my ears.
“I’m gay,” I blurted.
Two words. Five letters total.
I’d said them before—to Taylor, to Wyatt, of course, and to myself in the mirror more times than I could count. But saying them to someone who existed in my professional world, someone who could carry that knowledge out of this room and into the ecosystem where I made my living, was entirely different.
David simply nodded, like it was a confession he didn’t find particularly remarkable. “Yeah. I sort of figured.”
I exhaled a shaky laugh. “I don’t know why that was so hard. You literally watched me climb out of a man’s car this morning wearing yesterday’s clothes.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I did notice the wrinkles.”
“Fuck off,” I said, but my tone lacked any real bite.
He smiled—a real, unguarded one—though it faded gradually into something more serious. “Can I ask you something?”
I nodded slowly. David had had no problem mentioning Wyatt by name, but he hadn’t done the same with Taylor. Was that because he wanted to respect his privacy, or had he not recognized him?
“I know who your family is. Hard not to, especially when they show up on every Republican donor list in the country.” He held my gaze steadily. “Is that part of it?”
I looked down at my hands. Normally, I would have found the question intrusive, but David had earned my honesty by offering his own history first.
“It’s complicated,” I started, then almost laughed at how inadequate that was. “My parents aren’t monsters. At least not entirely. I know how that sounds, given what they fund and who they support, but they gave me a good life. They supported my career even when I stood in direct opposition to everything they believed in. My father could have made my life miserable when I struck out on my own. He could have had me blackballed. He didn’t.”
