Page 77 of The Night Of
“And Felic—Yekaterina? She’s dead?”
“Dead and gone. It would have been nice to try her for what she did, but—” Wasn’t that what Jonathan had said? He wanted to bring Steven’s killer to justice. I’d been the bloodthirsty one when this began.
“No,” he growled. His eyes were dark. “No, she got what she deserved. She needed to—” He swallowed. Leaned into my touch.
“You’re a hero,” I told him. “You flushed out the world’s most dangerous spy.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t do that. You did.”
“I wouldn’t have even looked if it weren’t for you. You were the one who knew the president didn’t kill himself. You fought for the truth. You pushed me to find it, even when I didn’t believe you.”
“I’m not a hero. I’m a fool. I didn’t see that one of my closest friends was a Russian spy. Twenty years…”
“She fooled everyone. Everyone, Jonathan—including her husband. Not just you. Don’t take that blame.”
“She killed everyone,” he whispered. “Destroyed everything. She took everything away from me.”
Steven, dead. Carl Rose, dead. Andrew, disgraced. And Jonathan, left behind in the ashes, in the carnage wrought by the long years of her betrayal. I stroked my thumb over his jaw. My heart broke for him. I wanted to scrape together the remnants of his soul and tape him back together, breathe life and love into him again. How did you go on when you’d lost everything? I’d tried, and I’d been a shell of a man for three hundred and sixty-seven days, until Jonathan came back into my life and gave me a reprieve I didn’t deserve.
Jonathan shifted his gaze, finally meeting my own tear-soaked eyes. “Not everything.” He tried to smile.
My heart shattered. At the same moment, he pitched forward, crashing into me as he let his tears fall within the circle of my arms. I held him, cradling his face in the curve of my neck, and kissed his hair, his cheek, the top of his head. “I love you. I love you, Jonathan. I love you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
It wasn’t fair. To grasp hold of your deepest desire, seize your dreams in both hands, but only in the shadow of so much loss. Every part of me ached for him. If I could have, I’d turn back time, rewrite history so he’d never feel this pain. I’d rewrite his life, and Steven Baker’s life, and give them a long and joyous and carefree friendship. Maybe in that life, I’d have tumbled into Jonathan and we’d have fallen in love in happier times, in happier ways. Maybe everything could have been so very different.
But it wasn’t. We had the lives we had, and we had to navigate these ruins. I hoped we were going to do that together. I’d be there for Jonathan in any way he wanted me, any way he needed me, for as long as he let me.
And if he wanted me to step back, to fade away now that he was brilliantly illuminated in the world’s spotlight and the mantle of the presidency had settled so firmly across his bowed and weary shoulders, I would.
Whatever he wanted, I would give him.
Part of me expected him to slow us down. To tap the brakes on the inferno that had sparked between us. He’d never wanted to be out. He never wanted attention on his personal life. No one cared that he was single as long as they thought he was heterosexual, but if the world knew he was gay, every gossip rag, pulp magazine, and Pulitzer Prize–winning paper would publish and publish and publish about his life, the men he met, his future trajectory in politics. What it meant that he was gay, what it meant for the world. As if who he loved made him some kind of alien subspecies, as if it made the way he thought so utterly different. That focus, that microscopic attention, was enough to make his blood curdle.
In three days, Jonathan had lost his best friend, become the president, gained a lover, and lost the narrative of his life. He’d learned that everything he’d known about his best friend’s wife was a lie. That was enough shock for a lifetime. For seventy-two hours?
He could reduce the complications in his life by a factor of one. One boyfriend. One coming out. One closet door, shut again.
We stayed in each other’s arms for a long time. Eventually I was going to crack in half if I stayed bent over, so I guided him back on the bed and climbed in beside him. He turned on his side, and we lay facing each other with our hands between us, like we were younger men who had just fallen in love. Like we could lose ourselves in each other’s gaze, fall into each other’s eyes and live in the love we found there.
The beeps of the monitors echoed in the quiet suite. “What happens now?” I asked, breaking the stillness that had settled around us.
“I’m going to resign.”
“What?” I frowned. “Why? You don’t have any reason to resign.”
“I do.” He stared at me.
“Don’t resign because of me—”
“I’m not. I want to resign because I don’t want to hide, and I’m not giving this—us—up.” His fingers curled in the front of my shirt, over my heart. “I love you, Sean. I want this. I was crazy about you from the moment I met you. When I got to know you…” He sighed, and his breath brushed across my face, tickling the hair that fell over my forehead. “I was willing to resign to be with you a year ago. That hasn’t changed.”
“But… you’d be giving so much up.”
“I’d be gaining everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“What about finishing your term? Or running for the presidency on your own?”
He shook his head. “Politics was never my dream. It was Steven’s. Steven wanted to be the president to create a better world. I just wanted to live there with him.” His voice fractured, and he closed his eyes.
