Solace (Devastation Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  There are some errands I need to take care of, so I handle those—a trip to the cleaners to pick up my suits, buying groceries I might or might not get to eat depending on what happens this weekend and next week, and changing the sheets on my bed and washing the dirty ones, not that they’re gross or anything. I sleep alone when I’m there.

  It’s a hot, muggy day, increasingly overcast and with a threat of afternoon thunderstorms looming while emotional thunder deafens my normally steady mind.

  I throw on a T-shirt, running shorts, and sneakers, and grab the small waist pack I wear when running to hold my keys, ID, and phone. Then I set my personal cell to Do Not Disturb mode, activate my run tracking app, leave my work cell behind, and head out.

  Avenged Sevenfold, Cage the Elephant, and Dropkick Murphys today.

  Not even apologizing.

  I don’t know where I’m going, at first, until I realize I’m heading toward Shelby Bottoms. The park and greenway run along the Cumberland River and it’s early enough in the afternoon it’s not crowded. Sweat pours down my back as I push myself, digging deep and settling into a punishing pace that finally begins to drown my loud, angry thoughts and allows me to zone out.

  Am I naive for thinking anything good will eventually come from my relationship with George? Sure, I’m helping him, but if he wins in November, that’s four more years of secrecy.

  Last night, George told the boys everyone was getting what they wanted and needed, but…am I? Really?

  At least before, with Casey, I knew the full score, understood everything, the whys of her methodology for keeping us a secret, but I felt like I was a fully participating partner despite belonging to her.

  George found a sub-basement access into parts of my psyche I didn’t even realize existed before and effortlessly took over my very soul. That’s what it feels like.

  Who am I now, really?

  I’m halfway up the greenway when I’m alerted to an incoming text on my phone, which means it’s from one of two people if it’s bypassing Do Not Disturb mode—Casey or George. It’s not from the Signal app, either, so I doubt it’s personal. Probably something work-related.

  Dammit, I’m entitled to take time off.

  I thumb it away without reading it or even breaking stride, and I keep running.

  About fifteen minutes later, I receive another text. I finally slow to a walk and check.

  Both from Casey.

  You left work early?

  Where are you?

  Obviously it’s not an emergency, or she would have stated what she needed and requested an immediate response. Or called.

  Without replying, I start off again and head north out of the greenway and up Moss Road Drive, through a neighborhood that’s directly across the river from the Grand Ole Opry complex.

  I’ve run over five miles before I even realize it and I take a moment to stretch. I’ve made it almost all the way up into Northern Inglewood, and now the choice is do I want to take a shortcut home, or retrace my steps? It looks like it might start raining soon, which won’t stop me. I’ve run in the rain countless times before.

  I’ve stopped in the shade of a tree at the edge of a busy gas station parking lot. I’m debating whether or not to go in and buy myself a bottle of water when a marked Tennessee Highway Patrol SUV wheels into the parking lot, its blue bubble lights flashing, and pulls right up to me.

  I automatically hold up my hands, removing my right ear bud as I do so I can hear his instructions, and wonder if someone called me in as a suspicious person or something.

  My heart pounds while dozens of scenarios flash through my head, none of them ending well for me. I usually pass for white, especially when I’m wearing a tailored suit and driving my Jag, but right now I’m just a light-brown guy running with a Rolex on my wrist that doesn’t look like it belongs there.

  The trooper steps out of his marked unit, his hand resting on the grip of his sidearm. I don’t recognize this officer so he’s probably not part of EPU. “Declan Howard?”

  Confused, I nod. “Yes?”

  “You can put down your hands, sir.” He speaks a code into the radio mic on his shoulder before he opens the back door and waits, his meaning clear.

  Fuck.

  My fear flashes over to rage.

  I’m going to fucking kill her.

  “I don’t suppose I can go inside and buy myself a bottle of water first, can I?”

  “Sorry, sir. I have orders to transport you immediately.”

  Resigned and embarrassed, I trudge to the SUV, well aware of the way customers at the gas station are gawking over the sight of the light brown guy being loaded into the back of the cop car. This public mortification is only slightly tolerable because it’s doubtful any of those people even know who the fuck I am.

  At least I’m not being hauled away in handcuffs. Although this is the first time in my life I’ve ridden in the prisoner compartment of a law enforcement vehicle.

  “Can you crank up the air for me, at least?” I ask after I buckle my seat belt and he climbs behind the wheel again.

  “Yes, sir.” I feel cool air blowing on me as we head out.

  I angrily punch in a text to Casey’s personal cell and don’t bother sending it through Signal.

  Little fucking overkill, isn’t this? I’m not allowed a few fucking hours to myself?

  I hit send and immediately regret it, but too late now. I’m resentful of my run being interrupted. I’m resentful of this intrusion when I’m trying to work shit out in my head.

  I didn’t fucking ask to be made a public spectacle. I didn’t ask to be made…powerless without any input or my consent being sought first.

  It angers me in a way I’ve never felt before about her, or George.

  A few minutes later, we pull into the deserted parking lot outside Nissan Stadium, where Casey’s waiting in her car. The officer parks next to her, opens the door for me, and doesn’t hang around once I get out.

  Her car’s running, air on. I climb into the passenger seat and she hands me a cold bottle of water.

  “Thanks,” I mumble, taking it and immediately downing half of it. If I wasn’t so fucking thirsty now, I would have refused it on principle.

  She stares out her windshield and I don’t bother interrupting her or explaining myself.

  After a few minutes, she finally speaks. “You going to talk to me about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About what’s going on?”

  I shrug. “Needed to get out of the office. Just having a run, and minding my own fucking business, when a state trooper rolls up to me in a goddamned busy parking lot and orders me inside the back of his marked unit in front of other people. So, that was fun, and completely mortifying, after I got over shitting myself because I thought I was about to be shot. And how the fuck did you even know where I was?”

  She finally looks at me. “I have the login for your running app. GPS tracking. You gave it to me years ago. And you didn’t reply to my texts. I was worried about you.”

  “I told Dana I was taking PTO and leaving for the day, and you and George were both busy when I left. Didn’t realize I needed permission to leave work early. Or is that a new rule my two Masters never told their boy about so they could set me up to fail for shits and giggles?”

  “Talk to me, Declan.”

  “Why? No one’s talking to me! No one bothered to give me so much as a heads-up that George was going tell Ryder and Logan yesterday. No one bothered to fucking ask me if I was okay with that! No one even bothered to so much as reply to my good-morning texts today.”

  I didn’t mean to start yelling, but now that it’s pouring out of me like overflowing sewage, I can’t stop it.

  “You didn’t bother to ask me before all this started if I wanted to walk this path. You didn’t consult with me before setting George up that night to walk in on us, and you didn’t fucking consult me before inviting him to fuck me that first night. Where’s the motherfucking in
formed consent, Case, huh? Looking back on it all, it sure seems like you were setting me up for this for well over a year, the increased strap-on play, training me to get hard over simulated oral on dildos, all of that. I can see it all looking back.

  “Now I’m in love with a fucking guy I can’t even publicly be with right now. I spent the last nearly twelve years hiding in your shadow, Case, watching what everyone thought about your dating habits but unable to say anything or declare my love for you. Having to pretend I didn’t love you so fucking much it was killing me inside when I couldn’t be linked to you romantically. But I was okay with that, because I loved you, and felt like you loved me.

  “Now? I don’t even know who the fuck you are. You don’t seem to want to spend time with me anymore. I’m really fucking confused if you ever actually loved me, or I was just a fucktoy to you. How could you claim to love me and then simply hand me over to George like this? And did you manipulate his children to think this was all some Hallmark romance-movie relationship between us?

  “I get it—George thinks he loves me, and the two of you were playing tug-of-war with me for a while in the beginning. But was I nothing more to you than a pawn for you to use to keep him alive? Or is it you need me now to manipulate George, because Ellen’s not here anymore to do your dirty work for you? How will George feel about me when I become a PR liability to him, huh? I know I always came second in your heart to Ellen. I get it. And after she died, we had to fight to keep George alive and run the goddamned state at the same time.

  “Tell me if you ever really loved me, Case, or were you using me trying to make her jealous all those years? Do the ashes in that necklace you can’t take off now still get priority over the living and breathing man who would have fucking died for you at any time over the past twelve goddamned years? Do you still love a fucking dead woman so much, a woman who was too terrified to publicly declare her love for you, that you’d do anything for her, including throwing me at her goddamned husband?

  “Why didn’t you go to George yourself, huh? Why engineer all this? I know you love him, and you’re in love with him. I can see it in your face. I know he’d give his left nut to be with you. Perfect political marriage, right there, and don’t forget the fucking bounce! Jesus Christ, Case. The goddamned PR bounce he’d get from that would guarantee he gets re-elected, and you fucking know it. Tragic story, widower father, the wife’s single best friend. Two years is a respectable time for grieving. They’d throw you the biggest fucking wedding this state ever saw.

  “I’m going to be thirty next month, and the only thing I can say for certain about my life right now is I’m feeling pretty shitty about myself and the fact that I can’t even keep one simple goddamned promise to my sister. Meanwhile, that piece of shit is still alive and gets to sit across the table from the man I’m now in love with, and I can’t even do a goddamned thing about it or get a motherfucking say in it. What do I get? One fucking lunch with George in Washington DC, where hardly anyone knew who he was, and a late-night grocery run to fucking Walmart.

  “Oh, let’s not forget I get the privilege of sneaking around and pretending I’m nothing more to either of you than the hired help, warming your beds when it’s fucking convenient for you and then exiled to my own empty bed when it’s not. Like mother, like son, huh? I’m nothing more than a wetback breeder for the sexual amusement of some fucking rich white folks. Just like she was. But guess what? I’m not some white-savior DIY project for you to earn your SJW card over.”

  I didn’t mean to go off like this.

  I really didn’t.

  Casey stares at me with stunned shock I’ve never seen her wear before.

  Instead of waiting for her response, I shove the door open and climb out, leaning in to speak to her.

  “Thanks for the water, Ms. Blaine. By the way, that was a fucking dick move, sending a trooper after me. Nice to know I’m literally nothing more than property to you with no will of my own worth taking into consideration. Don’t bother wasting more taxpayer dollars sending a trooper after me right now, because I know my way home. Oh, and don’t you ever fucking humiliate me like that again, or I will submit my resignation and walk.”

  I switch to Spanish, knowing she’ll understand me. “Next time you send a goddamned trooper after me, he better have a fucking arrest warrant in his hand, counselor, or someone better be fucking dying.”

  I slam the door shut and storm off across the parking lot as I blink away tears. Angry fucking tears.

  I’ve never spoken to her like that.

  Ever.

  Half that shit I didn’t even realize I was going to say until it spewed out like toxic lava.

  Okay, not half of it—most of it. Nearly all of it.

  Shit, most of it I didn’t even realize I was thinking, until it was…there.

  I also turn off my run app. Fuck, I’ll have to change the login for that, I guess. I didn’t even think about her having all my logins, just like I have all of hers. That means changing my e-mail password first, because she could simply reset it again by accessing that.

  Fuck. I am her property. But days like this it feels so fucking one-sided, and not in the good ways that I love.

  In the ugly ways that…

  Well, I don’t need to rehash that. You heard me the first time.

  I walk, my rage now spent, and my body exhausted. I don’t head straight home, either. I take a roundabout way and struggle to regain some of the peace I’d felt so tantalizingly close to achieving earlier, before the trooper intercepted me.

  Ten minutes from my apartment, the bottom drops out of the sky, immediately soaking me to my skin. I tuck my phone into the lightweight waist pack. The pack is waterproof, my earbuds are, too, and I don’t bother picking up my pace.

  Why should I?

  Now that it’s all in the center of my mind, I can’t forget the smile on Junior’s face that fucking night at the fundraiser, a memory that flips back and forth with my memory of Emma’s sightless eyes staring at me.

  The sounds of my screams in my ears.

  She loved me. She quit school because she wanted me to go to college, wanted to help Mom pay the bills.

  Believed in me, wanted me to finish my education and do great things.

  I’m the main reason she’s dead, because she approached Junior mostly for money for my college education, and she concealed a secret from me that got her killed.

  She was my big sister and always looked out for me, took care of me while Mom was working. Thought of me first. She would have been a fantastic mom one day, and she never got the chance to even have a boyfriend because she worked so much.

  But what would she think of me now?

  Thankfully, the rain helps hide my tears as I trudge the final distance back to my apartment. It’s been close to forty-five minutes since I left Casey, and because of the clouds and the rain it’s starting to get dark a little early.

  Then I spot Casey’s car parked next to mine.

  Motherfucker.

  I guess we’re doing this, whether I like it or not.

  She has a key to my apartment in case of emergencies, but she hasn’t been here since George’s return, and we never played here because we didn’t want nosy neighbors hearing anything.

  Part of me considers turning around and just wandering in the rain until she finally goes away, except now I’m getting chilly. It’s breezy, the temperature’s dropped, the rain’s cold, and I’m…

  Exhausted.

  Dreading what I’m sure is going to be a massive showdown I no longer think I have the strength to endure, I fit my key into the lock and let myself inside.

  Except it’s not Casey I find sitting on my couch.

  It’s George.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I stand there, processing that George is actually here, in my apartment.

  He sets his laptop aside, picks up a towel he apparently got from my bathroom cabinet, and brings it to me as I peel off my sodden sneakers and socks
on the mat by my front door.

  I take the towel from him. “Thanks,” I mutter. I pull my shirt off and drop it onto the mat, too.

  As I towel my hair and torso dry, he stands there watching me with a sad expression that reminds me of the George of last year and not the man who smiles all the time now.

  Dammit, I love this guy.

  He’s not wearing his blazer, and the sleeves of his button-up are rolled up, his tie loosened, and the top button unfastened.

  He’s a handsome man, a man people look up to—a father, a statesman.

  A governor.

  A survivor.

  I strip off my shorts and wrap the towel around my waist after I finish drying myself. He motions for me to follow him into the living room, and, of course, I do. He picks up his laptop and holds it so I can read the document he’s composing.

  It’s addressed to Hal Shipman, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. Dated today, it’s short and sweet.

  Deal Hal,

  After a great deal of consideration, contemplation, and prayer, I’ve decided that I am not going to run for re-election as governor of Tennessee and am withdrawing from the race. It has been an emotionally turbulent two years for myself and my family, and what I need to do is retire from public life for now and focus on my loved ones. This is not a decision I make lightly. I know that it puts the state party in a bit of a bind with the short notice. I promise whoever you back to run for my office, I will throw the full weight of my existing campaign structure behind them, as well as take all legal steps to transfer as much funding to them as is allowed by election laws, either directly, or by purchasing in-kind advertising or other support.

  Regards,

  George S. Forrester

  Governor.

  I’m…stunned.

  I have to read it several times before I finally look into his eyes.

  “Tell me to send that, and then marry me,” he quietly says. “Or tell me to stay in the race, and, together, we try to figure this out as we go, with you by my side. Then we’ll get married after I’m out of office, whenever my term expires. Either way. Your call.”