Page 113 of Where There's Smoke

His eyes widened. “No. Of course not.”

“Promise?”

“Swear it in blood.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek and glanced around, making sure there were no prying ears nearby. Not another patron, not the bartender who’d disappeared into the background. Once I was certain we were as alone as we could be in a room that wasn’t quite empty, I turned back to my brother.

Barely whispering, I said, “Chris, I’m gay.”

His lips parted. “You…what?”

“I’m gay.” My eyes darted around the room once again, making damn sure no one had suddenly sidled up next to us to listen in. “I’m sorry I never told—”

“But what about Simone?” An undercurrent of anger threatened to bring up the volume of his voice. “Does she—”

“She knows. She…she knows.”

“But you guys are still married.”

“Yeah, because we’re trying to keep up appearances,” I said. “And it’s killing her. It’s killing me. We have to put on…put on this show. And we can’t stop until the election’s over.” I made myself look at him in spite of the shame that had me wanting to hide beneath the bar. “So I know what I’m talking about when I say this whole keeping-up-appearances thing is hell. And that’s without what Julie’s doing to you.”

“Wow.” He shook his head. “You’re gay. My wife kicks the shit out of me.” He rested his elbow on the bar and rubbed his forehead. Then he laughed softly and looked at me. “Man, our family is fucked up.”

I managed a halfhearted laugh. “Yeah, it is.”

“And thanks for not, you know, letting this out. Mentioning me by name.”

“I won’t say a word unless you want me to.” I paused. “But I’m serious. You need to get out of there. You can’t keep—”

“Yes, I can,” he snapped. “I appreciate your concern. Honestly I do, but you don’t realize how fucking complicated this shit is.”

“I don’t understand why you have to stay in a marriage where your wife fucking throws shit at you,” I said.

He glared at me. “You, the domestic violence champion of California, can’t fathom why I can’t leave?”

“I get that,” I said. “Believe me, I do. But there’s got to be…something.”

“It’s not as simple as walking away, Jesse. She has control over every dime we have.”

“What about community property?”

He laughed bitterly. “Fat lot of good that does me between now and the end of a divorce that you know she’ll drag out.”

“Then stay with me. Anything you need—a house, a car…” I waved a hand. “Hell, I’m a damned lawyer. Whatever you need, say the word.”

“I can’t ask you for all of that.”

“Then consider it a loan, but my God, you can’t stay with her. You need to get the fuck out of there.”

“Easier said than done.”

“What can I do? There has to be something.”

“If there was something anyone could do, I’d have done it already myself. There is so much—” He stopped abruptly and looked past me.

An inkling of panic crept into my chest as I imagined Julie storming into the bar behind me, but then Chris said, “Looks like you’re needed for something.”

I looked over my shoulder just in time to see Ranya hurrying across the room with her phone in her hand. Normally I’d have asked her to take a message and let me deal with it all later, but her gait was fast and her eyes were wide and I knew immediately something was wrong.

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