Page 23 of The Illusion of Power (Passion and Politics #1)
SELENE
A week after signing the contracts that gave me my new lease on life, I’m at the office working late, preparing for the biggest day of my career.
The launch of Smart Sight—the facial recognition software we’ve been developing since the inception of Culture Code—is just three days away, and I couldn’t be more excited about bringing this software into the world even though I’ll have to schlep around the country with Aubrey immediately after.
He’s already on the road, beginning the first leg of a series of rallies, town halls, and interviews that Jordan has put together with the hope of drumming up voter interest and early ballots being cast in his favor.
We’ll be together for weeks, making stops in Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Michigan before returning to Virginia for a fundraising gala for the campaign. It’s not exactly how I want to spend my time after the launch, but I’ll make the best of it because of my contractual obligations.
Sighing at the thought, I push back from my desk and roll my head from one side of my neck to the other in an attempt to relieve the tension building in my muscles from another long day.
Between preparing for the launch and my extended absence, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends to make sure everything and everyone has gotten their fair share of my attention.
Unfortunately, that’s left me and my needs neglected.
My muscles are aching and begging for a massage.
My eyes are dry and strained from squinting at the screen.
And my attention is constantly split between a million different tasks, leaving me in a persistent state of overstimulation, something that’s not at all helped by the sound of the news broadcast blaring through the speakers of the television mounted across from my desk.
I meant to turn it off hours ago, but I’d gotten caught up with troubleshooting a server issue for Smart Sight, unable to break free from tunnel vision long enough to turn the volume down or shut the TV off altogether.
Now that the task is complete, my brain allows me to reach for the remote that’s been on the edge of my desk the entire time, mere inches away from my hands but miles outside of the realm of possibility as far as my executive dysfunction is concerned.
Just as my fingers wrap around the sleek controller, the screen shifts to accommodate an update on a story that apparently ran earlier.
I don’t know how I missed it. I must have been too distracted with my work to pay attention, but now my eyes are on the screen, and my heart is in the pit of my stomach.
The camera pans across a crowd of adults standing just outside the police tape holding a flimsy perimeter outside of a school where a group of sobbing children—some of them covered in blood that probably belongs to their classmates or teachers—are being escorted to their anxious parents by police officers in tactical gear.
On the screen, below the images of tearful reunions coupled with the crestfallen expressions on the faces of all the people realizing they won’t have one, is a line of scrolling text summarizing what we’re seeing:
Hours-long standoff with active shooter at Bright Hall Middle comes to a tragic end.
A dull, but incessant, ringing starts in my ears as I will myself to look away from the familiar pain on strangers’ faces, even though I know I won’t.
I won’t turn the channel yet, and even when I do, I won’t put the parents, children, or teachers out of my mind.
I’ll obsess over their grief, let it transport me back to the harsh, bitter waters of my own.
I’ll be destroyed by it, and somehow, some way, find it in me to remake myself again.
“The shooter killed himself.” A deep voice laced with somberness says from somewhere to my right. I turn to find the agent I can now identify by the notes of his gravel and velvet tone, and jump when I realize he’s closer than I expected him to be.
Cal.
I haven’t had the nerve to call him by his name since the night he gave me permission to, but I still think it in my head every time I see him. I like the familiarity of it. The way it makes me feel like we’re friends, or, at the very least, not just strangers bound by proximity and duty.
His features, which were just hard and serious, shift into something softer as his eyes rove over my face.
I hold my breath as he appraises me, unsure if I want the vulnerability of being witnessed or the dissatisfaction that comes with not being seen.
In those same silent seconds, I search his face, trying to get a sense of what’s happening in his head, but he gives nothing away.
“I’m sorry for startling you,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. “I knocked several times, but you didn’t answer.”
I click the power button on the remote, and the television screen goes black, dropping us into a silence I have to fill with words that I hope will smooth out the disapproving notch sitting between his brows.
“I didn’t hear you. When I’m working, I tend to tune everything else out.”
He could easily point out that I was knee deep in the trenches of emotion and not working when I ignored his knocks, but he doesn’t. I appreciate him for that, especially since I’m one hundred percent certain Agent Beckham wouldn’t have hesitated to call me on it.
“Everything, including your stomach?”
“My stomach?”
“Yes, your stomach. You haven’t eaten since I came on shift hours ago, and there are no notes in the log indicating that you received food deliveries. As far as I can tell, the only thing you’ve consumed today is the cup of coffee sitting on your desk.”
It shouldn’t mean anything to me that my eating habits, or lack thereof, have garnered his attention, but for some stupid reason, it does.
For some stupid reason, his words and the frown pulling at the corners of his mouth as he delivers them send a warmth reminiscent of what I felt that night when we were alone in the car spreading through my chest. My hand rises on its own volition, landing with an open palm over my heart, and I rub at the spot until the heat and emotion are dispelled.
“I didn’t even finish the coffee,” I tell him, forcing levity into my tone to make light of what’s rapidly becoming another one of those weird moments I keep ending up in with him. “Pretty sure they burned the milk, so the latte tasted off.”
Cal tilts his head, concern etched into the lines of his forehead as he reaches for the cup, testing its weight and the validity of my statement.
When he finds it full, his frown turns into something close to a scowl.
It doesn’t fully erase the concern, so the two expressions sit together on his handsome face, a perfect marriage of wrath and care that makes me wonder, for the briefest of seconds, what it would look like if it were real and not just a byproduct of the correlation between my well being and his job.
“You need to eat.”
“I will when I get home.”
He glances at my desk, eyes lingering on the stack of abandoned papers I set aside to deal with the server issue. “That won’t be for another few hours,” he says matter-of-factly. “You need to eat something. I won’t have you passing out on my watch.”
I pull the stack in front of me and begin sorting out what’s urgent and what can wait until tomorrow. “You won’t be responsible. I will, and I’ll be happy to sign a waiver or anything else you need to assure the higher-ups that you warned me against continuing my day without proper sustenance.”
My voice is hard with a touch of finality to it that should send him retreating back to his post, but it doesn’t.
He stays exactly where he is and blows out a breath of frustration.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch him reach into the pocket of his perfectly tailored pants and pull out a cell phone.
Within seconds, he’s got Agent Beckham on the phone, their voices a brilliant blend of dark velvet and sumptuous smoke that makes me wonder if everything about these two men is better when experienced together.
“I need you to make another stop. I’ll get Ortega to stay on until you’re back.
” A brief pause where I can hear the other agent complaining about owing his teammate a favor.
“It won’t be your favor to owe. It’ll be mine,” Cal assures him while I pretend to be too busy working on the edits to my speech for the launch to care about what either of them is saying.
I do care though, so despite my best efforts, I’m tuned in to their frequency, and I hear everything from the coaxing lilt in Cal’s voice as he convinces his friend that coming back from his break a few minutes late won’t be an issue to the husky notes of authority in his tone when Agent Beckham finally agrees to make the stop and he tells him where to go.
My pen, which had been crossing out a statement I felt was repetitive pauses when Cal says the name of a Jamaican restaurant I’ve been frequenting a lot lately and recites my current hyper fixation meal perfectly, right down to the bottled ginger beer I always pair with my curry shrimp, rice and peas, and coco bread.
When I look up from my work, I find that his eyes are already on me.
He lifts a brow, mouthing, “Anything else?”