Page 3 of At His Wife’s Behest

His father stared silently a moment. “After all I’ve done for you? You’re going to prance away because of a few hurt feelings? I taught you better than that.”

Prance. Of course, he said prance. Suppose it could’ve been flounce. Biting his tongue, he leveled a gaze at his father. “I’m going to walk away because you don’t know how to talk to people with respect. Case in point.”

“You get what you give, Son.”

“Exactly,” Kellan snapped.

Norman Rhodes leaned in close, narrowing his eyes. “Fine. You don’t want to work for me, I’ll find someone better qualified to do it. What I do need from you is this—no slipping into old habits. I don’t need another of your rendezvous showing up in the tabloids ahead of voting day.”

He’d never live the video down. No matter if a decade had passed or not. “I’m a married man, Dad. I’m a dutiful husband.”

“Sure,” his father murmured, a hitch to the side of his lips.

Kellan shook his head and walked away before a scene was made.

He spent the rest of the repast avoiding another confrontation with his parents.

If they slipped closer, he excused himself, and he managed to keep his distance for the rest of the event.

When the chaos was finally over, he led Emma to her bedroom and shut the door behind them.

Emma collapsed onto her bed, belly down, and shoved her face into a pillow before screaming.

She pounded on the bed, letting out a muffled trail of expletives.

Kellan leaned back on the door, letting her get it out of her system.

When she rolled over and sat up, a chunk of hair had escaped her updo and curled along her cheek. “It’s over, Kel.”

“Well, the caterers are still here. You might want to hold any more screaming until they’re gone.”

“No, I mean… this.”

Kellan frowned.

“Mama’s gone. Now Daddy. With his stock added to mine, I now have the majority stake in the company and can take his seat as Chairman. I can fire the dead weight and clean house.” She grinned. “All our hard work is finally gonna pay off.”

“I see the mourning period is over,” he replied.

“Come on,” Emma said, sighing. “He was a bastard, and we both know it.”

“Those tears looked awful realistic today.”

Emma scoffed. “I replayed his greatest hits in my head. All the times he was evil incarnate. All the times I was forced to shut up and let him treat me like shit.” She shook her head.

“Those weren’t tears of sadness. It was rage that I’d lost my chance to tell the old man off.

” She smiled. “But it’s over now. I’m no longer under his thumb. ”

Kellan smiled wryly, wishing he could say the same. While he did his best to keep his parents at arm’s length, he was still under his father’s thumb. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to pull away far enough.

“I think it’s time,” Emma said.

“Time for?”

“Time for this facade to end.”

Kellan tensed. “You might be free, but I’m not.”

“I’ll give you whatever it is you need in the divorce settlement. We’ll still be a family, and you’ll still be my best friend… we’ll just be best friends who’re free to be with who they want.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“ I’ll take care of you.”

Kellan scoffed. “I can take care of myself.” He’d been forced to work as an intern every summer, from eleventh grade on.

Pressured by his father, he’d ended up working on staff after graduating business school at twenty-one.

Soon after, he’d been pressed into helping run his father’s re-election team.

Until the last election, that is, when he’d quit days before voting began.

Kellan had searched for another position, but his work history and his father’s toxic stances on many controversial topics made him persona non grata for the roles he’d really wanted.

Only those seeking to use his connection to the Senator seemed willing to make an offer.

He refused to be beholden to the man, but ultimately, he’d crumbled under the pressure.

One of his father’s cronies, Harlan Cross, had offered him a COO position—at the Cross Foundation, the charitable arm of Harlan’s vast empire.

He'd taken the job, assuming it was the lesser evil.

He’d soon learned working for his father’s friend was worse than working for his father. After three years at the Cross Foundation, he was once again at a junction, not sure which way to turn. Sadly, there was little road left ahead.

“I know you can take care of yourself, but when we come out, Harlan’s gonna fire you. You know that. Now that I’ve got control of Daddy’s company, we can do what we said we would do when we got married.”

They’d agreed to five years. Then they were going to divorce and move on with their lives. Only a night of hard drinking, depression, and desperation had resulted in Abigail and changed those plans. At least they had in his mind. He’d never asked Emma, as it had seemed she was of the same opinion.

Until that very moment.

“Abby needs both parents.”

Emma waved off his comment. “You can remain here, and Abby and I will move to the big house. Or vice-versa.” They lived on her parents’ estate, in a custom home built so he and Emma would remain close.

Close enough for her parents to control them.

The Shelby’s extravagant mansion lay empty, walking distance away.

“Whatever works best. Nothing has to change, not really. We’ve always led somewhat independent lives.

Now we can be the people we’ve always wanted to be. ”

Yet close wasn’t the same as having both parents under one roof. “Nothing will change? Things would change for Abigail. She needs stability. Routine.”

Emma rose and crossed her bedroom, stopping a few inches from him. Dark circles ringed her eyes from the lack of sleep. Still, she was beautiful. As beautiful as the day he married her. “Are you going to tell me that you’re okay living the rest of your life denying who you are?”

He looked away, unwilling to consider what she was asking.

Emma sought his gaze. When she captured it, she dug deep. “Don’t you think we owe it to our daughter to be our authentic selves? To end the cycle of shame and lies?”

Down deep he knew she had a point, but Kellan wasn’t ready for the chaos his coming out would cause. It was one thing for the average person to do it but the son of a conservative Texas Senator and the ex-socialite daughter of a conservative mogul? It would be a media frenzy.

Not to mention his father would go on the warpath.

Abigail would be in the middle of that firestorm. While he’d do everything in his power to protect her, he couldn’t be everywhere at every minute. Eventually, she would hear the stories spoken about her parents. He didn’t want that.

“Emma, I’m thirty-six years old. I don’t even know who my authentic self is.”

“Isn’t it time you met him?”

Tears stung the backs of his eyes. He’d hidden so long that the idea of coming out robbed him of air. His stomach knotted, ready to empty its contents at any second.

“I know it’s scary. I know it’s going to be hard. I know there’s going to be chaos.” Emma smiled. “Once the smoke clears, we’re free. One big hurdle and we’re done.”

“We can wait. A few more years. Once Abby is old enough to better understand what’s going on.”

“I can’t live like this another minute!” Emma roared, tears streaming down her face. Her chest rose and fell a few times. “I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not. I’m going to lose my mind.” She eyed him. “Aren’t you exhausted? I’m exhausted.”

Pretending? He’d covered for so long that the lie had become his reality. Being an out, gay man seemed foreign. And terrifying.

“Darling,” Emma whispered, wrapping her arms around his waist and sidling closer. “Don’t you have needs? I’m fairly confident you haven’t been with a man in years… perhaps as long as we’ve been married.”

It had been so long that he wasn’t sure he remembered. He thought back to a decade before, on his knees at a men’s room gloryhole where he’d nearly gotten caught by police. He hadn’t been so lucky missing the reporter’s camera.

He hadn’t attempted fulfilling that need since, unless counting his own hand or the drawer full of toys he kept close. “I don’t know what my father might do if I came out. You know the kind of power he wields.”

“We have enough money to keep him and the rest of the world at bay now. As far as your father, he no longer has Daddy in his back pocket. We can be free, Kel.”

“We can be free. In a few years. When Abby is older.”

Emma sighed. “I promised you five years. I gave you ten. The rest are mine. Mine, Kel. We’re not getting any younger.”

“You wait until both parents are in the ground and you can waltz free … then stand here expecting me to face what you were too chickenshit to face yourself.”

The pain that rose in Emma’s face made his stomach hurt worse.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “That was cruel.”

“But not altogether wrong,” she murmured. A tear slipped down her cheek. “They’re gone, and I don’t have to face them or their ire. But we both know why I stuck around and played the dutiful daughter.”

If they’d disowned her, her inheritance would’ve gone to her cousin—who was just as bad, if not worse than, her father.

He would’ve continued the legacy of hatred and bigotry—which Emma wanted to end.

She spoke of dismantling her father’s PAC and changing the entire company atmosphere once she had the reins. He wanted to see that happen.

“I know,” Kellan said. He believed in her, too.

She would do amazing things with that money.

She’d already started in a hundred tiny ways during her father’s battle with cancer over the last months.

The closure of several overseas sweatshops.

A company-wide raise in pay. Better benefits packages.

A scholarship fund for employees and their children.

With her father gone, she could go even farther.

“I have the money and the power to free us both, babe.”