Page 27 of The Night Of
“I thought there was something between us, and it was everything I’d ever wanted.” Despondency fell over Jonathan, a despair that sucked the oxygen from the room. “You were the man of every one of my dreams. Every single one.”
“But what I did to you—”
“What you did to me?” Jonathan’s eyes flashed. “Sean, I begged you to hold me down. I wanted you on top of me. I wanted your hand grabbing my hair. I wanted everything you did. And I thought you wanted it, too.”
I couldn’t move.
“You passed out after. I did, too. When I woke up, I kissed you, told you I’d see you later. And… I never did. So I figured that after you sobered up, you decided that wasn’t actually what you wanted. Maybe I forced you into it or you felt pressured to give it to me. Or maybe you were just disgusted at the thought of me, wanting… that.”
“No, Jonathan! I thought I hurt you!” All this time. I’d loved this man with everything I was, and I’d spent three hundred and sixty-seven days convinced I’d never be able to love him again. Not the way that I had, like loving him was a fundamental truth I’d uncovered about myself. I thought, after that night, that my love was poison, and nothing I felt could ever be true or trusted again.
“You didn’t. God, you didn’t.” His face twisted, and he looked away.
The morning after, when I managed to make it back to the hotel, I’d been hungover, the taste of Jonathan on my lips and dried come all over my stomach, my hips, my thighs. I’d crawled into the shower in my room and collapsed, my heart breaking as I clung to the tiles, letting the water burn me until I couldn’t feel anything. I’d screamed into the porcelain, punched the walls, my tears burning hotter than the scalding water on my back. I’d called out from the detail and stayed in my room, trying to figure out how to turn myself in to the police without making things worse. How did I report the crime if I couldn’t name the victim I’d assaulted?
“You left the G8 early, Jonathan. Because of me, because of what I’d done to you.” My voice was shaking, goddamn it. The horror I’d felt that day had never left me: Jonathan had flown out of the country to get away from me. He’d left the G8 unannounced, unscheduled. Had it been a medical evacuation, I’d wondered. How badly had I hurt him? I’d come apart that day, my soul shredding into bits and pieces of self-hatred and despair.
“That’s not why I left,” Jonathan said. His voice was painted in regret. “It had nothing to do with you, with us. The CIA had picked up an actionable lead on one of our top ten targets in Afghanistan, and Steven wanted me to take point back in Washington. He asked me to fly home early.”
Fucking hell. I wouldn’t have fucking known that, because I wasn’t on Jonathan’s detail. I’d been Baker’s detail lead, but after that morning, I’d cut myself off from everything and everyone.
I’d taken an emergency leave of absence that day and had left the detail and flown home commercial from Japan. I sat in my apartment for three weeks as I waited, and waited, and waited, for a heavy knock at my door, for the police, for an arrest warrant. I stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped opening the blinds, or showering, or even getting out of bed.
But the police never came.
The silence from Jonathan had been absolute. Where we’d texted, called, had secret conversations for months, there was nothing. That was my answer, I’d thought. Be silent. Say nothing. He never wanted to be outed. He never, ever wanted that kind of intrusion into his life. How much worse would the media attention be if he was suddenly known as a victim of one of the men sworn to protect him?
I vowed then that I’d keep his secret as long as I lived. And I’d never, ever get close to another man. I’d live in penance, imprison myself. If I wasn’t going to be arrested by the police, I would arrest myself in my heart and in my mind. I swore it, on Jonathan’s name.
“Goddamn it.” I couldn’t stop the tears then. They fell in fat drops, soaking my cheeks. I rubbed them away, glowering as I bullied my emotions back. “I was so fucking scared that night, and I drank too much,” I whispered. “I’d never wanted anyone like I wanted you. I was terrified I was going to fuck it all up somehow. And I did.” A broken laugh fell from me. “I thought I hurt you. It’s all I can clearly remember.”
He nodded. “I was drunk, too. If I hadn’t been, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to say anything.” He looked to my left, then shifted and stared right at me. “I’d never let myself want what I couldn’t have. But then I met you. You were the man I wanted to tell all my secrets to. You were the man I wanted to trust with everything. And that night, it all came out.”
He was saying everything I wanted to hear, a year and two days late. I wanted to scream, rage, rip the paintings from the wall, shred the couches, flip the Resolute desk over. I wanted to hit my knees and beg Jonathan’s forgiveness. I wanted to go back in time and not fucking drink so much. “I didn’t hurt you?”
“No, you didn’t. At least, not that night.”
I stared at the wall, my vision blurring. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” My mind lingered on the past tenses in Jonathan’s words. I had hurt him, but not in the way I feared. And I had lost him through my own fucking stupidity.
He stared at me, only the slow rub of his thumb over the back of the couch betraying his turbulent emotions. “Were you?”
“Was I what?”
I watched his Adam’s apple rise. Hold. His nostrils flared. His hand clenched on the back of the sofa. “Were you disgusted by me? What I told you I wanted?”
Was I… My jaw fell open, and I shook my head. “Jonathan,never. I hate that I can’t remember that night, except for—” Except for my nightmares. “But you’re telling me again now, and—”
And I stillcravedhim, all the way to the center of my soul. There was a hole in the deepest part of me that had been rubbed raw by my longing. The shards of my broken heart still cut me on the inside, and when I bled, I bled my hunger for Jonathan. I wanted him in every way. I wanted his secret smiles and his dry humor and his eyes finding me across a crowded room. I wanted his long fingers laced through mine, and I wanted to feel his skin quivering beneath my feather-light touch, watch him tremble as I traced his collarbone and the inside of his elbow. I wanted to take him apart with my hands and my lips and my cock. I wanted to find his edges, the places where he begged me to take control. And, fuck, did I want to take control. I wanted to bring him to his limits, and then beyond. Oh God, I was so fucking hungry for him, for what lay between us, I couldn’t see straight.
In the past, lovers had told me on their way out the door that I’d been too intense, too much. It wasn’t hard for me to make the leap from that to my drunken, broken memories of our night together. Fuck, I’d been so goddamn afraid I had hurt Jonathan because of that dark streak I struggled to tame. Because of that need I’d tried to bury.
Had Jonathan, somehow, known? Was there something inside me that clawed for him, and was there something inside Jonathan that begged for me?
Would he beg for me?
How far could we go together, if we were given a second chance?
“Nothing about you disgusts me,” I said. “It’s the goddamn opposite. I crave you so fucking much.Everythingabout you.” I took a step forward, starting to close the distance between us. One year and the width of the Oval Office. “I want everything with you. I want everythingfromyou.” My voice dropped, suddenly ragged. “I never stopped falling for you. I know I fucked this up. Badly. But if you’ll give us a second chance, I will be that man for you.”
