THIRTY-FOUR
ELLE
It physically burns.
Everything. Everything hurts.
Pain funnels into my chest, singeing my lungs and my head throbs as I reach for my phone to dial Blake. She picks up on the second ring, her voice cheery, her tone teasing, but the words die when I let out a harsh sound that’s part sob, part scream.
“Elle … what’s happened now? What’s your dad done?”
A bubble forms in my throat when she says that. If it weren’t for my father, this would never have happened. Graham wouldn’t have sought me out. I would have kept my job at 202. Naked photos of me wouldn’t be sitting in my inbox, waiting for the Buzz to have a field day with Senator Courtney’s terrible daughter.
I wouldn’t have fallen for a man who cares about nobody but himself.
I’ve felt stupid before. Growing up with my parents, it was hard not to, but nothing compares to this. The churning in my stomach and the unforgiving fist seizing my ribcage. Graham had warned me. He had told me that first night that his needs and wants were his only motivation. I was just too naïve to understand what he meant.
He was right. I am a dove. A foolish and stupid and soiled dove.
“He took pictures. He took pictures to hurt me and now they’re—” I pause, gasping for air. I squeeze my palm to my chest as a spasm racks my muscles. “God, it hurts, Blake.”
“Who? Who took pictures?” I hear her moving around and the jangle of keys, followed by a door slamming shut. “I’m on my way, but you’ve got to tell me what the hell is going on?”
It takes me a long time to answer, to string together a coherent sentence that’s not drowned out by the sounds clawing up from my windpipe. When I finally say his name, my stomach and heart feel like they’re slowly meshing, freezing together.
“Graham Delaney.”
Blake is unusually quiet on the way from the Buzz headquarters to our apartment, and I’m grateful for that. My tears have stopped but the aftermath is worse—it’s cold and numbing, sharp pinpricks that cover the whole of my body and leave me unsteady as I creep behind her into our living room. I sink down on the edge of the couch and bury my face in my hands.
Immediately, I jerk back and stare at my hands like they’re on fire.
Because they smell like him. The scent of cedar and sandalwood drift from my palms, a cruel reminder that he was mine just an hour ago. Acid scalds my throat as I drop my fingers to the couch cushion beneath me. I grasp and dig until the fabric feels like it’s tearing apart.
“Talk to me, Elle,” Blake gently says.
I draw in a shuddering breath as I raise my gaze to meet her questioning look. She’s pacing in front of the TV, worrying her hands together and biting her lip. “He took pictures of us—of me—in New York.” When she freezes in place, mouth open wide, I thread my fingers through my hair and clamp my eyes shut. “He was going to use them to hurt my dad.”
She draws in her cheeks and narrows her eyes. “He was or he did?”
“He—” My pulse jumps when my phone vibrates on the coffee table. If it’s him, I will throw the goddamn thing out the window. And if it’s Janelle again, I will go to 202 and strangle her. She doesn’t know I work at The Capitol Buzz and had texted during the ride home. To check in with me to see if everything is going well with my internship.
I had stared at her words for a long time, my breath suspended and my fingers dangerously close to telling her to go fuck herself. At that moment, being a Courtney—doing damage control by pretending the situation didn’t exist—was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. But I had managed. I would figure out what to do about Janelle tomorrow after I speak to my boss.
My phone stops pulsing but it immediately starts again. I breathe a sigh of relief when I see my mother’s name on the screen. My finger’s tremble as I bring the phone to my ear, and then my heart stops the moment she opens her mouth.
“You’re on the news, Eleanor,” she says in a flat voice.
“What?”
“I-I can’t talk loudly because I’m in your grandfather’s study, but you. Are. On. The. News.”
As I sat at my desk waiting for Blake to pick me up, there was a part of me that held out hope. That was convinced that Janelle’s email started—and ended—at The Capitol Buzz. I could have handled that because Mitchell Kyler is fiercely protective of his employees and the story would have gotten buried as soon as I cornered him tomorrow morning. But I’m not that fortunate, and my luck ran out the second I locked eyes with Graham Delaney. As I listen to my mother’s hushed voice and turn to the TV station she mentions, my insides tangle and twist.
“Sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill,” Blake reads the caption on screen aloud, her eyes bulging at the blurred images on the screen. “Are you fucking with me?”
I tune her out. Take a deep breath. Count to ten. And then, I say, “I’m sorry. Mom, I’m so sorry.”
“Were you forced? Was this—”
“I didn’t know he took them, but no.” I swallow, and the rawness in my throat nearly chokes me. “My relationship with Senator Delaney was consensual.”
“That sleazy motherfucker,” Blake says at the exact same time as my mom breathes, “I need a drink.”
I drop my chin to my chest, letting my hair cover my face as I close my eyes and wish. That I could erase or rewind. That I had never met him. I’m not aware that I’m whispering an apology until I feel the couch cushion sink and Blake’s small hand covers mine.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” my roommate says through her teeth, loud enough for my mother to hear.
She’s right, but that doesn’t stop the bitter hum in my veins and the throbbing in my temples. It doesn’t undo the weight on my chest.
Mom is deathly silent for a long pause but then she inhales. “Blake is … right. Are you okay, Elle?”
It’s the first time in years Mom has called me that, and it undoes me. I break—shatter into hundreds of pieces. I don’t give a fuck that my class photo is flashing on the screen now or that the reporter is referring to me by my full name. I don’t even care that she’s saying that my father has a statement about the scandal.
“Yes,” I say to Mom, but my voice is so small. Fragile and dove-like. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be okay.”
We fall down. Not Graham—not like he should because he was far too smart for that—but the Courtneys. My father and I.
It’s almost as if Senator Delaney planned it this way, even though I know now his only goal was to use me to get to my father. He just hadn’t anticipated the rest. That he’d bare himself to me, giving me the fuel I needed to tell my mother everything I knew about Charlotte. Or that Mom would use that information to destroy Dad without even blinking an eye. Graham hadn’t counted on growing a soul or changing his mind about ruining me no more than he predicted that Janelle would steal his phone and go through with it on his behalf.
In the end, it didn’t matter that he hadn’t wanted to hurt me or that he saw those photos as a mistake. It was done. They were sent. And I fell.
That’s what I didn’t anticipate.
That, even though it’s now my photo keeping me up at night, there’s something else on my mind. Dark eyes and a cocky grin that digs beneath my skin. Hands that drive me out of my mind. A voice that brings goosebumps to my skin the second I hear it.
The face and touch and words of a liar I can’t help being in love with.