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“What else should I ask?”
She threw the strap over her shoulder. “I dunno, how about, does he love me?”
I looked at my feet because I didn’t want to know the answer to that. Mostly because either way, I was certain I wouldn’t handle it well.
“But,” Paige sighed. “To answer your first question, I’m heading to the office now to check the damage report. But honestly,” she said, glancing at her phone again, “if anything, I think this will help him. An honest admission of events that the average New Yorker can relate to? Roman just aired his dirty laundry, and I think it will end up securing the blue-collar vote.”
I smiled sadly, but I was truly happy that this could be a good thing for him.
“Paige?”
With her hand on the doorknob, she turned to face me. “Yeah?”
“That second question, the one I should ask…”
She smiled. “Does he love you?”
I nodded, bracing myself for another dose of pain. Because if Paige told me this was likely another scam, a special spin they’d done to gain votes, I thought I just might melt into the floor.
“I would say yes,” she said. “But that seems a little inaccurate.” Pain bloomed in my chest, but she finished with, “I’d say hell yes, he loves you.”
My entire chest relaxed as I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“I need to find him,” I said.
“I’d suggest some clothes first, unless you really want to make an entrance.” She winked. “He should be at home right now. If you hurry, you can catch him before he leaves to meet his campaign team.”
I rushed to my room and quickly dressed.
I had a governor to go see.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The cab dropped me off in front of the governor’s mansion. I was almost to the steps when Roman bolted through the front doors to meet me.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
He looked tired. He hadn’t shaved in at least a day, and his dark eyes were red around the rims. His button-down was wrinkled, and there was no sign of his tie. Or, for that matter, the always crisp and composed Governor Reese.
It was just him. Roman. Exhausted and sad-looking.
“Amy,” he said, and stepped toward me slowly, as if scared I’d dart away if he moved too quickly.
“I heard what you said,” I started. Taking a deep breath, I tried to call on the last of my strength and say what I’d come here to say. “I never meant to put you in a position where you had to choose.”
“You didn’t. And the choice was easy.” He stepped toward me. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”
My eyes shot wide with something like anger, shock, and just…what had he just said?! The man had the nerve to ask me that?
“What I’ve done to you?”
“Yes.” He took another step. “I was fine before you. My world was controlled and predicable. Everything was my choice. My decision. I thought you’d be the same way. Just another pawn to serve my purpose.”
Was he seriously saying this? After the story he’d launched about me and his mother, I’d thought things would be different. But the tug in my chest was informing me that my heart was threatening to break again. I was ready to scream, to throw something, to fall to my knees and beg God to make it stop.
Then he said, “But you are the one I serve, Amy.”
And my whole body zinged with a flare of anticipation. His dark eyes bore down on me, fear and hope etched along their edges.
