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ChapterThirteen
Reese
Then
It’s the absolute stupidest thing I’ve done, bar none. Texting the president?
His number burned a hole in my suit pants all day Friday. I told myself a dozen times to throw it away, and a dozen more times, I convinced myself to keep it. In fact, I tucked that little slip of paper into my wallet to keep it safe.
Saturday morning, I drove out to Anacostia and bought a disposable phone from a gas station mini-mart and loaded up on prepaid minutes and texts. I still hadn’t decided whether I was going to text him or not, but if I was, it was going to be on a burner. Something I could fling into the ocean if any hint of a scandal started creeping near Brennan Walker.
The rest of the weekend was full of enough crap to keep my mind off the problem of texting or not texting the president.
And then I was in my dorm room at Rowley, burner phone in one hand, his handwritten number in the other.
I’d had the dream again Saturday night.
Blue eyes, warm hands, firm body. Skin against skin. This time, my dream man’s lips were on the back of my neck. His arms wrapped around me from behind, and our fingers tangled together as he held me to him. His nose ran through my hair, his breath ghosting over the curve of my jaw.
It woke me before dawn, yanking me from unconscious to fully awake in less than a second. I was on my back with one hand down my boxers. My heart raced, my lungs burned, and my cock was hot and hard and heavy in my grasp. My toes curled, and I tipped my head back against my pillow, like I was leaning into the memory of my dream. I moaned as I came.
Don’t you dare text him. Don’t you dare, Reese.
Of course, I did.
* * *
Refresher training is simultaneously exhilaratingand mind-numbing. Weapons recertification is great. There’s nothing I love more than the meditative state I drop into while slinging five hundred rounds of lead downrange. I can drop bullets on top of each other, lay ten shots in a perfect circle like I’ve only fired a single round. Some of my targets are up on the walls at RTC.
Driving, too. We do it all. Shooting from the limos and the SUVs, suppressive and covering fire, takedown shots and surgical strikes. We practice driving at ninety miles an hour, evading an assassin, an angry mob, an insurrection. Then we do it all over again, in reverse.
After an adrenaline-fueled morning, we’re shuffled into classes and fed PowerPoints, and the agents who fall asleep have to pump out push-ups for the rest of the lecture. Henry and I keep each other awake by flicking rubber bands on each other’s arms.
Henry’s got a group of agents together after class ready to hit the happening nightlife of Laurel, Maryland, but I head east, straight for my Cajun comfort food. All day, I’d thought about boudin balls and seafood boils, crab legs and crawfish, creole seasoning and cush cush.
All day, I’d thought about him, too. And our texts.
Something is happening here, within me, to me, but I’m not the most introspective guy on the planet, and it’s easier to keep pushing the deep and soulful reflection I need to have out past my more immediate concerns. Traffic. Boudin balls.
Texting a picture of my massive basket of fried seafood to Walker.
Brennan:I’m out of my mind with jealousy.
I eat one-handed so I can text.
Me: What did you make?
Brennan: Still cooking.
He sends a picture of a single chicken breast in a skillet, covered in lemon slices and pads of butter and scattered capers.
Brennan: Late finish downstairs. I only just got back.
It’s almost nine p.m. Not that the Situation Room and the West Wing aren’t all hours, but most presidents try to keep a regular schedule. Walker has been better about it than others have, and now that I’m seeing a few more sides of the man, I’m starting to understand why.
Me: No yoga?
Brennan:Not yet, no. Might just do corpse pose tonight.
