Page 127 of Enemy of My Enemy

About how he’d left her, and how he’d moved on.

She was back now, and he had to do something, anything, for her. To try—even though it was oh-so-futile—to attempt to make up for those long years she’d wasted away while he’d been living his life.

While he had found love and joy again.

No. He couldn’t think of Ethan. Hecouldn’t. Delirious panic hung on the edge of his mind, threading through his memories of Ethan. Clung to the thought of his smile, the sound of his voice. There wasn’t a single part of his heart that didn’t ache, that didn’t yearn, for Ethan, and for their life. He could never repair that hole, the rend in his soul shaped like Ethan’s smile.

Now, Ethan was gone and Jack was a broken, worthless, wreck of a man, and the only thing he could do, for the rest of his life, was try to put the pieces of Leslie’s life back together. Give her something to counterbalance the darkness.

He’d tried, damn it, to do the right thing. He’d tried to put his life back together after losing her. Tried to focus his efforts on honoring her memory. One cause led to another, and then he was running for office, and suddenly he was running for president. His life had been made out of honoring a wife who wasn’t even dead, who was silently suffering, and everything he’d done, everything he was, seemed to crumble and fall in the face of that truth. In the face of Leslie’s battered, emaciated body.

Except for Ethan. His love for Ethan—

Panic fluttered under his skin, and the ache slammed into him, straight into his heart.

Hehadtostop.

He gripped the kitchen counter as the world tilted and his stomach rolled over. He tried to breathe, in and out.

Ethan’s smile hung in the darkness behind his eyelids.

Jack forced it away.

He went back to his work, blinking away the bright spots in his vision and the dark edges around his gaze. Methodically, he picked up the kitchen knife again, slicing the steak before him into long strips, and then dropping them into the glass dish to marinate. He tried to force his mind to blankness as he set up the stove, pulling out a frying pan—

Ethan would make the salad while I prepared the steak.

He sliced strawberries and tossed them with spinach and a blueberry vinaigrette. Rice simmered next to the pan, just hot enough as he dropped a bead of water to the metal. He laid out two plates—

Damn it, Ethan always made the rice better. His was never mushy.

The marinated steak slices sizzled as they hit the pan, a few quick seconds flash frying, and then he pulled everything off the burner. Rice on the plates, steak on the rice, salad piled around—

I remember the first time we had this. Ethan made me wait at the table, no peeking, and he brought over the plates with a flourish and such a shy smile.

Jack closed his eyes and grasped the counter again.

He had to get a grip. Hehadto.

He ignored the frigid stares of the Secret Service agents as he made the long walk from the kitchen to the Queen’s bedroom on the opposite end of the Residence. Silence hung, impenetrable, and his footfalls on the plush carpet broke the air like cracking glass. He couldn’t meet their gazes, and he shouldered past the agents standing guard outside Leslie’s door with his eyes downcast, shame curling his spine.

Leslie looked up as he crept in, a warm smile breaking over her gaunt face. She had a newspaper spread out over her lap, and to her side, a TV tray left over from lunch.

Jack plastered a smile on his face and walked to her bed, sitting on the end. He set the plates on the tray and put it between them.

“What’s this?” Leslie smiled down at the food, then at Jack.

“I made you dinner.” He coughed, trying to get his voice to stop sounding so strangled. “The doctor says you need to build your strength up. Get your health back.Voilà.”

Leslie laughed, soft and musical. She speared a piece of steak and sniffed it, arching her eyebrow, before she took her first bite. A moment later, her eyes closed, and a blissful expression took over her face.

“Good?”

“Do you remember the first meal you made me?” She shoveled rice and steak onto her fork, taking bite after bite, eating fast like she might not have time to finish.

Jack froze.

“The chicken?” Leslie laughed again, wiping her mouth. “I came home from training, and you had burned it so badly, but you wanted to surprise me.”