Page 121 of Enemy of My Enemy
Leslie frowned down at her lap, and the fingers of her good hand picked over her blanket. Her blackened, disfigured hand and arm had been bandaged and put in a sling, even though it was clear nothing would save them and the damage had long been done. Maybe they could amputate and clone a replacement, sometime later, but that was just another thing for Jack to excoriate himself over.
“I used to fantasize, you know,” she said softly. “That one day, I’d escape. One day I’d fly home to you. Find you practicing law in Austin. You’d have your own firm.” She smiled up at him. “I figured, of course, that you would have moved on. Married again. Had kids.” She sucked her top lip into her mouth, her chipped teeth chewing on her skin. “I never,everthought you’d end up sleeping with aman.”
Her eyes were filled with questions, and beneath those, all of the accusations, all of the wonderings, even some of the derision that had been flung his way in the aftermath of his falling in love with Ethan. Gus’s voice blared in his mind, his words pounding into his skull over and over again.
He looked away. Stared at the baseboards on the far side of the room. Blinked fast and tried, desperately, not to feel like less than half a man, made small by the world who derided him and Ethan, and their love—
No. That wasn’t who he was. He’d fought for his and Ethan’s love, had bled for it. He’d stood up to the world, refusing to compromise either his love or his presidency.Look at everything I’ve done, a part of him screamed.I became the president! I forged peace where there was none. Don’t discard me—my achievements, my identity, my masculinity—so quickly! Don’t discard my love! I amworthsomething!
But the world was in shambles, just like his life, and the more he examined his own actions, his own choices, the more he wanted to shrivel up and disappear. Sergey was missing, possibly dead. The peace he’d built had been destroyed, his identity and the narrative of his life, upended.
Ethan… gone. Their love…
Hard knocking at the door made him jump, and he whirled as the door shot open. Welby strode in, his face a mask of stone.
“Mr. President. We require this door to be kept open atalltimes.” Welby lifted his chin and stared Jack down. Gone was the slight—very slight—curl to his lip. The way his eyes had smiled when Jack had asked him to buy his first box of condoms and lube for him and Ethan. The way his voice had warmed when Jack asked if he would help them slip off to Walter Reed and pay respects to the wounded.
These men weren’t Jack’s men, though. They were Ethan’s. They were his friends—his family—before they were anything to Jack, and now he and Ethan were—
Jack gave Welby a tight smile. “I was just leaving,” he said quickly, heading to the door. Welby stepped aside, watching him like a hawk.
“Jack.” Leslie leaned forward on her bed, her lips moving, searching for something to say. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she finally said, her voice rising, almost like a question.
Nodding, he fled, striding down the hall as the hot stares of the Secret Service agents burned through his suit, into his skin. His eyes closed and then snapped open again, and his breaths quickened, fast, shallow pants that left him dizzy. Fingers clenched and unclenched, his tongue thickened, his mouth suddenly dry. Diving sideways, he pushed open the door to his bedroom, raced inside, and slammed the door shut.
He pressed back against the dark wood and his heart thundered in his chest, so hard it ached. His head tipped back as he tried to breathe, tried to hold on to the air in his lungs.
Ethan’s Secret Service sweatshirt, lying on the foot of their bed, caught his eye.
Ethan’s suit jacket, draped over the back of his desk chair.
Ethan’s running shoes, toed off and kicked under the bed.
Ethan’s Christmas gift to him, the Secret Service teddy bear he’d made, sitting on Jack’s dresser.
Their gigantic pump bottle of lube, a monstrosity, one he’d laughed at—and then loved—sitting on Ethan’s bedside table, next to a pack of wet wipes. A basket of clean towels, rolled up, on the bedside table’s lower shelf.
The detritus of their love, and their life together.
A sob choked his throat, and his mouth gaped wide as he tried to breathe. Instead he screamed, a raw, guttural bellow, and slid down the door, collapsing to his ass, boneless and breathless.
Pitching forward, Jack let loose the sobs that wracked his body and soul.
His bones were made of shame, his veins filled with sorrows and regret. His heart had turned to a void, an empty ache, a sucking black hole of misery and anguish. What kind of a person, what kind of a man, was he? Everything he’d done in his whole life had come undone. His peace with Russia, destroyed, and his friend Sergey gone. His presidency in tatters amid a country ripping apart. A madman loose in the world, toppling governments.
His dead wife, alive. The man he loved to thedepthsof hissoul, gone.
Everything he touched turned to disaster, to ruin. Everything and everyone.
Shame burned hot within him, a hatred of himself so searingly intense that he buckled over against the sting, curling down and pressing his forehead to the carpet.
He was worthless as a man. Utterly, absolutely, worthless.
* * *
Chapter 42
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
