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I was already shaking my head.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “I’m not doing this again. I’m done. I left on purpose. I don’t want this life. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I’m sorry if that bothers you, but that’s the way it is. It’s not going to happen.”
Plus, I’d never, ever force Carolina into that.
“What about if I win?” he asked. “You’re not going to come to the inauguration?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Dad looked pissed then.
“This isn’t a death sentence, Saint,” he said. “Why the hell are you treating it like one?”
I didn’t know what he was talking about.
My hand tightened on Carolina’s inadvertently, and she squeezed back.
“It is a death sentence, though,” I said. “How many death threat letters did I get when I was a kid? How many fucking times did I have to go to school under full protection? How many times did I attend some function and then have to leave before I’d even gotten too far into it because of some stupid bomb threat to the building? I couldn’t go to movies. I couldn’t go to dances at the school. I was bullied so badly when my security detail wasn’t there over some fuckin’ policy that you wanted passed that I literally dreaded the days that they weren’t there. So no, I’m not doing it.”
Carolina let go of my hand then and took hold of my entire arm, sensing that I was on the verge of losing my shit.
“Come on.” Dad waved away my worries with a feeble sweep of his hand. “Your childhood was great. What kid can say he got to live at the White House?” He looked at Carolina then. “You don’t want this?”
“A few can say that, actually,” Carolina said, naming off at least twelve names that she knew were children during their parent’s presidency. “And no, I don’t want this. I probably wouldn’t really want it if I wasn’t with Saint. But now that I am, and I’ve heard his stories about his childhood, seen his struggles, I wouldn’t want that. Not for us, and not bringing a child up into it, either.”
“There are no children yet.” Dad again wrote off our words. “Y’all are being ridiculous. You’re not children anymore. So it doesn’t matter. You’re adults. You can deal with stuff better than you used to.”
So. Fucking. Stubborn.
“Not yet,” Carolina said. “As in, not this month. But in eight of them, there will be.”
That bomb dropped so delicately into the room around us that it was hard to breathe.
I looked down at Carolina to see a ‘whoopsie’ written all over her face, as if she hadn’t meant to reveal that, that I would’ve laughed had this not been so freakin’ serious.
Dad sighed. “Just what we need. A scandal baby. An unmarried scandal baby. For the love of God, go get freakin’ married.”
My eye twitched.
With that last comment, I was done.
“All right, Dad,” I said. “Well, it’s been fun. I’ll see you next year.”
“Son…” Dad said, realizing he went too far.
But like I said, I really was done.
Not just this time, but for all future times, too.
Hell, I might not even go see him around the holidays anymore.
This was just getting too old.
Dad didn’t care. Never cared.
This was always the end result with him. His way or no way.
Carolina latched on to my arm just a little bit tighter and walked out with me.
I closed Dad’s door on his growled ‘come back here’ and kept walking to the end of the hallway where I could see the three men who’d given us privacy.
That’s when I turned back to see that there were two new men at the door.
“You heard?” I guessed. “That he’s planning to still run?”
They all nodded, but Brad was the one to speak.
“We’re all done,” he said. “We’re getting too old for this shit, and it’s obvious that he’s going to do this. I thought he wasn’t. He said he wasn’t. Then he started to think about how ‘good it would look’ and how many ‘people will feel pity for him.’ I should’ve never let your mother or your father’s advisor do that, which means that it’s time I’m done. If he’s doing this, he needs new people that can keep him safe.”
I agreed.
I also had a feeling that this wasn’t going to happen like my father thought it was going to happen.
Holding out my hand to the three men, they each shook it before I said, “Don’t be strangers, okay?”
Daniel patted my shoulder. “It’s time that I find a hot, sexy woman. I hear that your town has a lot of them.”
Carolina giggled then.
“I’ve heard that, too,” she teased.
Daniel pumped the air with his fist. “You’ll be seeing me at least.”
Brad was shaking his head. “I’ve actually found a job consulting with someone near you, anyway. Met a few people while I was down there. You’ll be seeing more of me.”
