Page 78 of Kiss Me Now
My time in Rink’s office had stripped away every illusion I’d ever had about powerful men. At least, the ones in politics. He’d lied to the public so convincingly for so long about who he was that I didn’t believe the one warning I’d been given; when an aide I barely knew from a Midwest senator’s office sought me out in the congressional cafeteria once to give me a vague warning about Rink, I’d brushed her off. Her boss was junior to Rink on the appropriations committee, and he’d benefit from a Rink scandal.
But she’d been right, and I’d been so wrong.
So painfully, terrifyingly wrong.
And wrong in a way that was almost impossible to prove.
What Rink had done to me in his office that night...I’d gotten away from him before he could push things as far as he’d wanted to. There was no physical evidence to take to the police beyond a torn skirt, a blouse with a missing button, and some pictures of me with some vague red marks. I was grateful for that, at least. I was grateful that he’d done no lasting physical harm.
But I’d still spent a year working with a therapist to get over the scarring no one could see, the raw places inside my mind where all my illusions, trust, and idealism had been ripped away.
Someday I’d be ready to trust another man, but maybe it would have to be someone like Noah Redmond, someone I started out with as truly just friends, something that would grow slowly over a long time, so I had a chance to study him, watch him in all kinds of settings to see how much integrity he really had.
Look what had happened when I had let my attraction to Ian hijack my personal judgment. My hormones and silly romanticism sent me to DC on the off-chance that I might see him. I’d talked myself into believing that he was the good man Miss Lily claimed he was. I’d wanted to believe that the electricity that sparked between us was something real.
“Ha.” The laugh tore out of me, bitter and not at all funny.
Ian had swum with sharks and become one. Except that wasn’t fair to sharks. He’d gone from thinking I was a gold digger to pretending to be into me so he could take down Rink. He wanted me to put my reputation, my job,everythingon the line so he could score a victory for his firm.
No way.
I’d love to see Rink pay, and I had made him do it quite literally by threatening a lawsuit so big that he offered me a huge settlement to keep me quiet. I would have gone after him through the cops, but my mother had assessed it all with a lawyer’s eye and confirmed that I didn’t have enough for them to open an investigation that would stick. Without hard evidence, witnesses, corroborating statements...I’d had nothing. And even if I had those things, there was still no guarantee that Rink’s connections wouldn’t protect him. I’d be hung out to dry as an opportunist and a gold digger.
Either way, my career in DC was over, and I’d known it. So I took the money and walked, determined to build beauty from ashes. That was a phrase my favorite resident of Landsdowne used to say when she talked about turning failures into successes. I’d never really understood it until Rink forced me to burn my life down when I wouldn’t let him take what he wanted just because he wanted it.
But no matter how often Ian bragged that he was good at his job, there was no way he would be able to find anything that would stick to Rink. And it was wrong to try to guilt me into offering myself up as leverage.
I drove the rest of the way home fifteen miles over the speed limit, and my anger could have pushed me higher if the roads were less winding.
I wasn’t any less furious when I pulled into my driveway, and when I climbed up to my front door, I went out of my way to kick the box with the swing in it.
It took me forever to fall asleep that night, and I didn’t wake up in a much better mood. My anger had cooled but my disappointment ran even deeper.
I spent Sunday ripping out old carpet upstairs, cutting and rolling it into rolls I could haul to the backyard by myself. I’d have to rent a truck to take it all to the dump, but the hard, heavy work helped burn off more of my mood. Ian texted a couple of times, but I ignored them. The first couple of lines I could see in each showed that he was at least trying to apologize instead of pressuring me into coming forward, but I wasn’t in the mood for apologies. Or Ian.
When I rolled into school Monday morning, I felt almost normal. I got permission from the principal to turn a space in the school quad into a community garden. It was a 10 x 8 foot square of dirt surrounded by a low wall for students to sit. Ferns grew inside it but not well. The spot was too sunny for them, and it wasn’t doing anything to beautify the campus. It was a perfect place to start a small garden, and I’d already looked into the supplies I’d need and come up with a game plan.
I stopped by Grace’s store on the way home, smiling with grim satisfaction as the high total appeared in the register screen.
“This might be the kind of thing you could get the PTA to fundraise for,” Grace said, noticing my look.
“It’s okay. I set aside funds for this.”
She eyed me for a minute as she typed up the invoice for delivery of the topsoil I’d ordered. “I know it’s none of my business, but—”
“But that doesn’t ever seem to stop people in Creekville from getting into mine anyway.”
She grinned. “True that. But I have to say, you’re going to go broke if you keep spending out of pocket like this for your classes.”
I leaned forward and met her eye with another smile. “I really, really won’t.” I wasn’t kidding about having made Rink pay. He’d paid me over a million dollars to keep my mouth shut.
Grace shook her head like she wasn’t so sure, but she finished ringing me up without further comment.
I was halfway toward the door when I turned and went back to the register. “Have I thanked you a million billion times for helping me with all your advice and connections yet?”
“Yeah, but it’s nice to have someone who actually takes my advice. A lot of the men who come in here don’t believe me until they do a thing wrong their way, then they’ll do it mine. But you can thank me again,” she grinned. “I don’t get tired of it.”
I studied her for a second, really looking. She was probably about my age, her dark brown hair gathered in a ponytail, no makeup that I could see, but she was pretty in a quiet way. I’d only ever seen her in her work uniform, a shirt with the name of the hardware store and jeans. I didn’t know much about her, but she always seemed to watch the world like she was secretly amused, whether she was helping me wrangle a rented floor sander up my stairs or gently explaining to someone’s grandpa that he needed a different plumbing piece than the one he was asking for.
