Page 48 of Where There's Smoke

I glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“Like, to treat her physically or…”

“Mentally?”

He nodded.

“Either or. She’s been near suicidal a few times, and she’s starved herself nearly to the point of organ failure before.” I sighed. Just this train of thought exhausted me. Simone and I had been down this road so many times, and it scared me every time she went through one of these episodes. I was helpless to stop her, powerless to help her, and I hated myself for being the one who drove her to it this time.

“Answer me honestly,” he said. “Canshe handle this campaign?”

I rested my elbow below the window and rubbed my forehead. “Honestly? I don’t know. Sometimes I think she can, and sometimes I just don’t know.”

Anthony was quiet for a long moment. “I didn’t realize her condition was this serious.”

“It is.” I rubbed the back of my neck and blew out a breath. “The media likes to harp on the whole slant about her doing this to lose weight, buckling under societal pressures to be thin, which makes her sound shallow and weak. They couldn’t be farther from the truth. She’s a strong woman. Honestly she is. It’s just, sometimes she gets into these downward spirals, and it’s really, really hard for her to get out of it. It drives her crazy because she thinks that makes her weak or stupid or whatever, and the damned media just reinforces that every time they sink their teeth into this.”

“Jesus,” he whispered. “And now we’re kind of between a rock and a hard place.”

“How so?”

“She’s already an active part of your campaign. And thanks to your uncle’s harebrained idea about using your marriage as an election tool, she’s expected to be completely and visibly supportive of you. If she drops off the radar now, it’s just going to draw attention to her, which will ultimately draw attention to her condition.”

“Which will only make things worse.”

“Exactly. I have to say, I admire you for being able to cope with all of that as gracefully as you have. Sounds like you’ve been a tremendous support for her.”

“I’ve tried to be,” I said, barely whispering. “Which is why I feel so guilty about what she’s going through right now. It’s because ofourmarriage,mebeing gay,mycampaign.” I thumped the wheel with the heel of my hand. “I’ve tried to help her and be there for her, but now I think I’m just making it worse.”

“How does she feel about the divorce?”

“At this point, I think it’ll be a relief. No more faking it, no more pretending to be the happy wife.”

“And she knows. About us.”

I nodded. “Guess that’s a little weird, isn’t it? Talking to you about my wife?”

“Well, you two are pretty much married on paper only now, aren’t you?”

“On paper. And in the press. And on TV.” I rolled my eyes. “But yeah, it’s over.”

“Sorry to hear it. Are you…I mean, I know you two are done, but this…is whatever the hell we’re doing going to make things worse for her?”

I shrugged as much as I could with all this weight on my shoulders. “She’s free to see other people too. It’s just this whole posing as a happy couple that she can’t deal with.”

“I can imagine. But should we be doing this?”

“We haven’tbeendoing anything.”

“Not for lack of effort or desire. Right?”

“Good point. And we probably shouldn’t, but…” I exhaled hard and shook my head. “Fuck, Anthony, I don’t want to rub anything in her face, and I wouldn’t have told her if I could have avoided it. But as far as continuing with this?” I glanced at him before shifting my gaze back to the dusty highway. “At the risk of sounding incredibly desperate, Ineedthis.”

“You’re not the only one, Jesse.”

I glanced at him again, and the flicker of streetlights flying past us lit up his eyes enough to reveal his palpable hunger. I gripped the wheel tighter and stared at the road ahead.

We passed a sign for a no-name, cheap motel. Then another. Just like the ones I’d used back east for the kind of anonymous sex on which roach motels thrived. Forty bucks and an hour or so could—

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