Page 120 of Enemy of My Enemy
“Gus,” Pete growled through gritted teeth. “Get the fuck out of the White House. Don’t come back.”
Gus threw his hands up in the air and stormed out of the Oval Office. He slammed the door behind him, rattling George Washington’s portrait over the fireplace.
Jack’s mind was just a blank hum, a buzz of static. Gus’s words popped in and out.Dump Reichenbach. Stick with your wife. Prove it.
Prove it.
He closed his eyes.
And there was Ethan, lying beside him in bed and reaching for him, tucking a stray lock of hair off his forehead.
His eyes snapped open.
Pete stared.
“Pete, I won’t make this political. I can’t play politics with this. God, not this.”
“I know you won’t, sir.” Pete rolled his jaw as his hands went into his pockets. “You’re too good a man to do that. But… what do I say to the press? It’s a deluge out there.” Pete leaned in. “I don’t want to misspeak. I don’t want to be wrong. Not with this. What do I do? How do I help you?”
“I havenoidea,” he whispered. Ethan was gone, but actually saying the words, confirming to the world that they were over… He couldn’t do that. Not yet. “I have no idea what to do.”
* * *
He bailedfrom the West Wing and headed back to the Residence.
Never had the stairs up to the Residence seemed so ominous. Or taken so long to climb. Each step added a sorrow’s worth of weight to his soul.
Secret Service agents were inside the Residence, standing post along the main hallway and outside Leslie’s room. He recognized their faces. Remembered laughing with them on Air Force One and around the White House. Remembered getting to know them over Christmas, and taking pictures with them in front of the tree. Remembered feeling like he had, if not friends, friendly faces around him.
No one met his gaze. Their steely eyes stared ahead, jaws locked, muscles clenched.
Soft voices floated down the hall. He headed toward Leslie’s room, even though his stomach lurched, rancid shame burning a hole through his guts.
Flickering light from the TV on the wall flashed over Leslie’s stunned face. Her cracked lips were parted in surprise, and her wide eyes stared at the screen. Sixteen years of history to catch up on, and she’d turned on the news.
Images of him and Ethan together, his happiest moments, flashed across the screen—them arm in arm at Sergey’s state dinner, dancing at the Correspondents’ Ball in early spring, and at the Christmas ball before that, and then the world-shaking kiss they’d shared in the back of an ambulance on the North Lawn after they’d emerged, bloody, from retaking the White House—overlaying a news anchor spouting unnamed sources within the White House who claimed Ethan wasgone. That Jack had kicked him out. Or that Ethan had fled.
That Leslie had taken his place.
Vomit rose in his throat. He swallowed hard, trying to push it away. Agent Caldwell glanced sideways at him but said nothing.
“Hey,” he called out to Leslie, leaning against her doorframe. Shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets. He could barely stand straight with the weight of shame bending his spine.
She whipped around, stared at him, and grabbed the remote, turning the TV off one-handed after fumbling with the controls.
Silence. He looked down at the gray carpet.
Leslie took a deep breath. “Ethan?” she finally breathed. Her eyebrows arched sky-high, nearly climbing off her forehead.
Jack reached for the open door and pushed it gently closed, blocking out the agents on duty. He faced the white wood for a moment, his back to Leslie.
“Are you…” Leslie hesitated. “Gay?”
He heard the questions she didn’t ask wrapped up within the one she did.Were you lying this whole time? Were you faking? Was our marriage real? Did you even want me? Did you ever really love me? What kind of man are you?
As if everything that had come before loving Ethan was suddenly cast in doubt, suddenly fraudulent. How could he truly have loved them both? One must be a lie.
“I’m bi,” he said, turning to her. He shuffled closer, but not too close. “I didn’t know, though, until—” He swallowed down Ethan’s name. He hadn’t known the love he was capable of before Ethan, the way his heart could expand, could fill so perfectly, so fully with another.
