Page 192 of The Liar's Reckoning

“Yeah, I guess you should. See you around, Senator.”

“I love you, too, Silas.”

His sharp intake of air is the last thing I hear before I leave his apartment, and the door clicks shut.

59

SILAS

It was a mistake, sleeping with Graham like that. It was desperate and sad and perfect, and I wish I could say I regret it, but I can’t bring myself to. The next day—like a sign from the universe—the perfect place to rent in Florida appears in my search. It’s a duplex two miles from Trixie’s retirement home with big rooms, a full kitchen, wood floors, and windows overlooking a lush, green park.

When I click on the application, a tearing sensation in my chest forces me to catch my breath. While there’s no guarantee I’ll get the place, there’s a finality to doing this that pulls me up short.

I know it’s stupid—magical thinking or whatever—but I used to feel like the universe was pointing me directly at Graham. We felt meant to be. Inevitable despite our differences. And here this is—a place I’d be crazy to pass up. It screams clean slate. Start overhere.Build a new life, meet new people, get some fucking sun.

I have my own set of reservations about living in Florida in general, but I can’t get caught up in the politics of it. I’m sick of thinking in terms of red and blue, and I can acknowledge myprivilege in that thought, white man that I am. But I’m also a queer man, and I’ve done some research on the city near the suburb I plan to live in.

There’s a vibrant LGBTQ+ community there, like any big city. I won’t have to be alone if I don’t want to be. It’s not like I’m moving to the desert, and it’s not like there will be some rainbow spotlight on me when I head to the nearest grocery store.

The universe has more to say, too. Minutes after I find the perfect apartment, I get an email from one of the jobs I applied for. This one is from a large hotel in the city for a full-time concierge. With benefits.

I rub my forehead and push away from the desk. I stand and pace my shoebox apartment. Noise from the street at this afternoon’s rush hour fills the space, both familiar and grating. It’s the soundtrack of my entire life. On the one hand, I can’t imagine not living here, and on the other, I know the city isn’t going anywhere. Nothing can’t be undone. I can always come back.

But people hardly ever do, which says something about not living in New York. It stands to reason life is better elsewhere. I’d have my own washer and dryer. When I walk down the street, there won’t be trash piled on the curb. When I go to sleep at night there won’t be horns blaring and sirens wailing. I could get a dog. The duplex has a yard. Ayard.

With this potential job in mind, I sit back down and fill out the apartment application, pay the two-hundred and fifty dollar fee, and respond to the hotel manager with my availability for a phone interview next week. If even one of these things work out, the next thing I’ll be searching for is a small moving truck to drive down the coast. Never mind that I haven’t driven a car in almost a decade. I’m sure it’s like riding a bike.

I wait for the regret to set in, the second-guessing. It doesn’t come right away, but as evening falls, it makes an appearance.

When I said goodbye to Graham, I did it with the full knowledge that it would probably be the last time I ever saw him. I wascounting on my rage to make a comeback. By all rights, it should have—especially when he told me his family was responsible for my name being leaked to the press. I don’t know remember why I thought it was Avery—maybe because it was something I figured Graham would never do. He didn’t. I get that, but of course it wasthem. It was peak stupidity to think otherwise.

My first clue should have been how quickly the press started crawling up my ass. The video had been circulating for less than forty-eight hours before my phone started blowing up with requests for interviews—questions about me and the senator.

There’d been that terrifying feeling of leaving my hotel and being swarmed, then followed. I was fired from Hanover the following day, and the gym was quick to follow suit. The press was everywhere. To this day, I can’t hear the sound of a camera snapping a picture without flinching and ducking my head.

It lasted for the better part of a month. I changed my phone number twice. I moved hotel rooms in the middle of the night four times until I found this place. Once it died down, and they all realized they weren’t going to make Senator Lawther confess toanything, I became yesterday’s news. No apologies were issued.

For months, my clients continued to recognize me even though I was working under a different name. Not all of them, but most. Some tried to pump me for information, and I suspected they were press masquerading as rich men. Paranoia is traumatic. On the spectrum of trauma, mine is minor, but it changed me. It made me cold, cautious, and, at times, cruel.

Especially to the man I held responsible for it.

But now I see him as a victim, too. He may be weak, but that’s something I’ve always understood about Graham from our first night together in that awful Plaza hotel room. He’s innocent in a way men his age generally aren’t. Over time—in getting to know him, I grew to love his innocence. It’s his fear neither of us could live with.

What sucks about that—along with everything—isI get it. Ialso understandRomeo and Julieton a deeper level now. Because Graham would absolutely be dumb and desperate enough to drink the poison.

None of this means I don’t love him—that I’m not still in love with him, or that I don’t resent myself for loving him. His family may see me as collateral damage, but I don’t think he does. Do I accept all those apologies? I don’t know. Sort of.

There’s something to be said for a man who’s lived in chastity for a year then handed over his key to the last man who touched him. It shows a devotion he might not be able to speak out loud. Unfortunately his devotion doesn’t only apply to me.

I’m unable to offer him a viable alternative to the only way of life he’s ever known. I bring chaos and uncertainty. Even if Icouldconvince him to give it all up for me, I sincerely doubt my ability to make him happy in the long run. Being disloyal to his family would probably break him beyond repair. They’re safe for him, and I’m dangerous.

I get it.

It’s complicated, and it took a lot of time and processing to make it to this point, but the vulnerability he’s shown with me—the willingness to be debased and even filmed in his most humiliating moments kinda proves he’s punishing himself worse than I ever could.

What I’ve learned about myself in all this is that I don’t want that for him. I want him to be okay. Once I decided to leave town, I got sentimental, I guess. Closure and all that. And the closure from yesterday? That was a bitch. Talk about experiencing the entire range of human emotion in the space of an hour. I’ve felt hungover since I woke up at noon, and I barely drank last night. I was too exhausted. Too sick to my stomach.

Too busy worrying whether it really would be the last time.

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