Page 64 of The Love You Fight For
“She’d have left either way.”
The statement gives me pause. Not so much the meaning, but the way it’s said. There’s no anger. He’s not harboring a grudge. In fact, I think the news pisses me off more than it does him. I’m livid on his behalf. I’m ready to track his mother down and give her a tongue-lashing for abandoning her ten-year-old son. To scream at her lover for breaking up a family. But for Chris? It’s just something that happened to him once. Lake water under his grandfather’s dock.
“What were you working on?” he asks, and I’m grateful for the subject change. “Don’t lie and tell me it was campaign stuff.”
I narrow my eyes at him and bite back a laugh.
“What makes you think it would be a lie?”
He holds my stare and arches a brow, and my laugh bubbles out of me despite my fighting it.
I don’t know why I tell him the truth. Maybe part of me—a small, hidden part that’s been getting louder the closer I get to the end—wants him to know that I’m notallHarper. I’m not just some old money, nepotism baby leeching off her trust fund. I’m not just an accomplice to evil deeds. I’m not just what everyone thinks I am.
I want to be so much more than that.
I wanthimto know that I’m more than that.
I want to be what he believes I am.
It gets lonely in the dark, and recently, I’ve been worried that if I hide too well, I won’t be able to find my way back out.
“I do freelance writing,” I confess finally, feeling like a brick has been removed from my chest. “Articles for journals and stuff, usually. Political commentary and op-eds. Some creative nonfiction. Sometimes I’ll do contract work. Right now, I’ve got a project where I’m writing blog content for a business marketing firm. I enjoy it.”
His white teeth sparkle in the moonlight as he smiles at me. I’ve shocked him in a good way, and I like this feeling. I want to do it more.
“Wow, Sam. That’s really awesome. Have I read anything you’ve written?”
“Probably.” I flit my eyes away and shrug. “I’m in thePost‘Politics’ section almost weekly.”
His jaw drops, and I watch as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and searches my name.
“You’re not going to find anything searching Samantha Harper.” I laugh. “You think I could get away with criticizing my father’s politics while publishing under my real name?”
His eyes widen with surprise, his smile stretching over his whole face.
“You criticize your father’s politics?”
I shrug it off, but it’s a bigger deal than I let on. If my father knew, if the media knew, it would be chaos. My cover would be blown, and my plans would be ruined.
But I can’t just sit by and stay quiet.
My silence would fester inside of me, and I would hate myself even more than I already do.
“Wouldn’t you?” I ask flatly, and Chris holds my eyes.
He looks at me like he’s searching for something—like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to piece together—and as thrilling as I find it, it also scares me.
I look away.
“You have an alias?”
I nod.
“Sam Harper has an alter ego,” he says playfully. “You’re basically Batman.”
The laugh that escapes me bounces off the lake and surrounding trees, echoing into the distance, and I slap my hand over my mouth and widen my eyes with surprise.
“It’s fine.” He chuckles. “We’ve got neighbors, but they’re not that close.”
