I didn’t bother lying. Not when she read me better than anyone ever had.

“I am.”

She didn’t give me sympathy. Didn’t let it lie there. She continued, pushing me, forcing me to give her more than I was prepared to give.

“Why?”

After all the mistakes I’d made, the wreckage of my life I’d faced, fucking rehab, I’d thought I’d been humbled. I’d been so wrong. It took a twenty-three-year-old girl in a pink tutu to bring me to my knees. And she did it with one word, with an arch of her eyebrow, and a flash in her eyes.

It was like Red Riding Hood had suddenly pounced on the Big Bad Wolf.

“Why?” she repeated when I didn’t answer, tenacious when she wanted to be.

I grimaced. “You tempt me. So fucking much. I want to think I can be better for you. That I can change. But what if I can’t? It’s one thing to hurt myself, what if I hurt you, too? What if I let you down? I break things. I don’t want to break you.”

She walked toward me, stopping when she was less than a foot away. Our gazes held. Her voice was colder than winter.

“You didn’t call on me every week because you thought I was weak. You didn’t challenge me because you thought you could break me. You can’t. You’re so convinced that you’re the bad guy, that you’re somehow going to ruin me. But if you were that guy, you’d take what I’m offering you. You’d take me. Any way you could have me.”

She skewered me like a pig on a spit.

“You’re scared. Scared to try, scared to be more than you are, scared to take a fucking chance. You’re hiding under all that arrogance and anger because it’s easy to hide in the dark. Easy to settle. Easy to play it safe.” She leaned up on her tiptoes, her soft lips pressing against my cheek in a kiss that was more taunt than affection. She pulled back, pinning me with her gaze.

I knew she was right. About me, her, us, all of it.

And I was too fucking empty to do anything but stand there like an idiot while she walked away.

Chapter Thirteen

Two days until the election, and Senator and Mrs. Reynolds are out campaigning. Noticeably absent? Miss Blair Reynolds and her sister Kate. Dare we say it? Is there mutiny in the Reynolds household?

—Capital Confessions blog

Blair

“I think I’m in trouble.”

My younger sister Kate took a sip from her mimosa. “Is this about mom and dad? Because if it is, I’ve already told you—stop taking their calls. I’m sure as hell not doing any campaign shit with them, and you shouldn’t have to either.”

“It’s not mom and dad.”

Although, Kate had a point. I’d received messages from everyone from my father’s campaign manager, to my mother, to a freaking intern, trying to get me to show up for his events.

I’d declined them all.

Part of it was just being busy with law school, the other part that I might have bitten off more than I could chew with the pro bono project. I was the first to admit that I occasionally went overboard with special events, and this had been no exception.

But more than anything, I just couldn’t see myself standing next to my father and endorsing his candidacy. Not after what he’d done. Maybe my mother could forgive his affair, look the other way at the fact that he’d fathered a daughter and refused to take any responsibility for his actions.

I couldn’t.

I understood that people made mistakes, could forgive him for slipping up. It didn’t make it right, but he was human, it happened. But he showed no remorse. It was as if he thought it was okay to treat the rest of the world as little more than inconveniences to be quashed or minions beneath his control. I was sick of falling in line.

“What’s up?” Jackie asked from her place on the couch next to Kate.

Sunday brunch had become a tradition among us. I usually hosted since my place was the biggest. I called it “sister brunch” which Kate snorted at and Jackie seemed pleased by. Mimosas were a staple, and since law school sapped me of my desire to be domestic, I usually ran down to the bakery around the corner and picked up muffins and croissants that we gorged on until we all went our separate ways in a carb-induced coma.

“There’s this guy.”

Jackie’s eyes lit up. “Okay, now you have to tell us everything.”

I winced. “It’s a little complicated.”

She made a face. “Seriously?”

I grinned. “Touché.”

Jackie and her fiancé, Will, had hooked up while she was working on his campaign. It wasn’t forbidden per se, but it had been an issue with her internship at the prestigious consulting firm that hadn’t wanted one of their consultants to be front page news, and had definitely put Will in an awkward position with his campaign. When their relationship—and sex life—had been exposed, the media had been all over it, but eventually the attention had petered out.

Jackie laughed. “If you need a resident expert on complicated, you’re pretty much set. Spill.”

It was tough when you lived your life in the public eye. There were very few people I really trusted with my secrets, and the two people I trusted most were in this room. I hesitated, needing someone to talk to. My gaze darted to Kate.

She pasted on a smile that twenty-one years of sisterhood told me wasn’t completely genuine. It was the smile she’d given me when we’d ridden our bikes and a stick had gotten stuck in her spokes and she’d fallen, skinning her knees until her jeans were soaked with blood. I knew her well enough to know she was bleeding now, even if it wasn’t visible on the outside.

She shook her head. “It’s fine.”

It was hard to not feel horrible talking about guys in front of Kate.

There was that forced smile again. “Spill.”

God, I loved her. She’d been a tough kid, and at twenty-one, she was still the bravest person I knew.

I sucked in a deep breath, ours the kind of relationship where I didn’t even need to say that this was all a secret. Sister bond and all that. They knew.

“I kissed one of my law school professors.”

Kate had the biggest reaction, which wasn’t surprising considering she’d known a version of me who definitely didn’t do things like that. Unfortunately, my announcement caught her mid–mimosa sip and the orange liquid spurted onto my dark leather couch. She grabbed a napkin from the tray on the ottoman, cleaning up the mess with a pointed smile.

I was notorious for being a neat freak.

The spill taken care of, Kate turned her attention back to me. “Sorry, but when my professors come to mind, kissing is the last thing I’d want to do with them.” She was in the final year of her political science undergrad at Georgetown. “Please tell me he’s not seventy and bald.”

I snorted. “He’s definitely not seventy and bald. He’s hot. Seriously hot.”

“So how was it?” Jackie interjected. “I need more details.”

Kate frowned. “Did he come on to you?”

I shook my head. “Actually, I kind of jumped him.”

Kate gaped at me. “You jumped him?” I nodded. “You jumped him?” she repeated.

I laughed. “You can say it as many times as you’d like, but that won’t make it any less true.”

Her eyes narrowed. “It took you six dates before you even kissed Thom.”

“I was fifteen,” I protested. “And I’d never been kissed before. And if you’re going to bring up Thom, you can also add in the fact that clearly he wasn’t dying to kiss me.”

Kate winced. “True.”

“But you like this guy, right?” Jackie asked.

“Yes. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

Kate shook her head like Martians had invaded my body. “Since when do you do complicated? By choice?”

“I don’t.”

Jackie’s gaze darted back and forth between me and Kate as if she were trying to decipher our relationship. These were the moments when I remembered that as much as Jackie had slid into the role of sister with relative ease, there was a lifetime of memories and experiences that she’d missed out on.