Page 25 of The Illusion of Power (Passion and Politics #1)

CAL

B eck and I work best as a unit.

There’s a rhythm to us, a synchronicity that can’t be taught or replicated with anyone else.

It’s why we always work the same shifts and take assignments together, completing tasks as a team.

It’s why we’re alone doing a sweep of the green room located in the back of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center’s amphitheater—Selene’s chosen venue for the launch of her facial recognition software—why I’m aware of the sudden shift in Beck’s energy when I mention her name.

It’s not exactly hard to miss when it’s accompanied by a roll of his eyes and a heavy sigh that comes from deep in his chest as he slams the door to the green room’s en-suite bathroom.

“You’ve got to stop, Cal.”

“Stop what?”

“You know what.” Onyx eyes flick to the doorway, making sure it’s empty before Beck continues, his voice pitched low. “This thing with Selene. It’s reckless, unprofessional, not to mention dangerous.”

“There is no thing with Selene,” I insist, pulling open the drawers on the vanity situated on the wall across from the bathroom.

“Really?” he asks, crouching to check underneath the couch for any items that shouldn’t be there. “Then why can’t you stop talking about her?”

I push the last drawer on the vanity closed and straighten to my full height, considering his question.

The answer is simple, and it sits on my tongue, ready to emerge and turn my previous statement into a lie.

It wasn’t my intention to be dishonest, especially with Beck.

I never lie to him about anything, but it’s hard to tell him the truth when it’s something I don’t even want to acknowledge myself.

Beck stands, dusting off his pants and suit jacket as best as he can.

I move over to him, getting the spots he missed.

“Answer the question, Drake,” he says, turning to face me when we’ve successfully rid him of the small specks of dust and dirt.

Everything about his expression suggests that he already knows the answer, and I’m not the least bit surprised that he does.

He’s good at reading people. Years spent in the foster care system taught him to read a person’s intentions in a split second.

His graduate degree in behavioral psychology and years spent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit in the Bureau did the rest.

Which means there’s no real point in deflecting or holding back.

“I can’t stop talking about her because I can’t stop thinking about her,” I admit, shaking my head as one belated confession rolls into another.

“Sometimes she’s a complete mystery to me, and other times I can see her as clear as day.

Her loneliness and her strength. Her beauty and the sadness that lingers in her eyes even now, when it seems like things with her and Aubrey have evened out. ”

When I would interrogate suspects, I’d always tell them they’d feel lighter once they told me the truth.

I’d stolen the tactic from my mom who always used it to get me to confess to doing dumb shit like punching a hole in a wall when my dad broke yet another promise to come and pick me up for the weekend.

Back then, small admissions did lead to relief, but today the unburdening makes me feel ten times heavier because with it comes the acceptance that Beck is right about me being reckless and unprofessional.

He stares at me, waiting for me to continue. I lift a hand, rubbing at the back of my neck, self-conscious under the weight of his gaze. “I know you don’t like her,” I say finally.

“This isn’t about how I feel.”

But it is.

There’s no way it couldn’t be when we are what we are to each other.

Not just partners and friends, but that third, secret thing that usually has no place in our work dynamic but is present here, in this conversation.

Beck doesn’t want to acknowledge it yet, though, so I push on, moving around the emotional grenade to get back on track, reaching for words that might lead to a shared understanding.

“She’s like us. Alone. Apart. Other. Surrounded by people who are committed to misunderstanding her, who don’t want to take the time to know her.”

“She has a best friend whom she’s known for decades and an entire building full of people who are just like her that she sees on a daily basis.”

I dip my chin, acknowledging his point. “You’re right. She does. But that’s when she’s in her world. When she’s in his world, she has no one.”

Beck strokes his chin as a rare flare of possession laces itself around his reply. “She can’t have you.”

The moment Selene and I shared in the car after the failed dinner flashes through my mind.

Her soft voice lined with steel as she asked what I thought of her.

The curve of her lips when she said my name.

Those gorgeous brown eyes going wide when I said loving her husband was her only flaw, and the way she lingered outside of her bedroom door when I escorted her to her room later that night, like she was as reluctant to leave my presence as I was to let her go.

All those tiny little things come together to prove one thing: Selene already has me.

She has my attention.

She has my interest, my care, and concern.

She has infiltrated the same part of my brain that Beck did when he first came into my life, and now she’s on the path he carved out that leads to my heart.

I don’t know how to stop it. I’m not sure that I would, if I did.

All I know is I’m here, once again wanting something with someone I can never really have.

There’s pity in Beck’s eyes as he studies my face, reading my thoughts so easily.

“You’re going to get hurt,” he warns me, using the same words he spoke after we shared our first kiss.

He wanted me to know then, just like he wants me to know now, that what I want will never truly be mine.

I don’t need the warning. I know the bleak reality I’ve resigned myself to existing inside of. I live it every day with him.

Sometimes it’s easy. It’s just the two of us operating inside the messy parameters of our undefined relationship. And other times, like when I have to watch him get dressed for a date, it’s harder.

It’s not even the dating that’s the problem, because I date too, mostly to distract myself from images of him being out with someone else.

The problem is that the someone else is always a woman.

I know it sounds ridiculous, especially since an intoxicating amount of pride swirls through me every time I think about being the first and only man he’s been with, but his exclusive interest in women hurts me in a way that my exclusive interest in men has never wounded him.

It forces me to face the shame that lives at the core of our connection, to remember Beck questioning if being with me meant he never truly loved his wife or wanted his son.

Reaching up, I dust a speck of dust off his shoulder and smile. “I’ll be fine. I won’t ever cross the line with Selene, and I’m well-versed in the art of hiding my feelings. After all, no one we know is aware that I’m in love with you.”

Our conversation in the green room casts a somber cloud around Beck and me that hangs over us for the rest of the day, refusing to be dispelled by our attempts to pull each other into conversation and exacerbated by Selene’s request to have us drive her to the venue that comes in just an hour before she’s due on stage.

It’s clear to me Beck is agitated by the request, that he’s added it to the list of reasons he has to be worried about me and Selene, and even still, I can’t bring myself to be anything but glad that out of all the men on our team, she feels most comfortable with us.

The thought has the corners of my mouth lifting into a small smile that I hide from Beck by turning my head toward the window while he navigates through evening traffic.

“What’s funny?” he asks, cutting his eye at me as he slows to a stop at a yellow light.

His voice is low, barely loud enough to be made out over the sound of Selene rehearsing her speech in the backseat, but I hear him because even when we’re out of sorts, I’m always tuned in to his personal frequency.

The same is true for him, which is how he caught the stupid smile in the first place.

“Just thinking about a joke Riley told me when I talked to her this morning,” I return quietly.

I regret the lie, but I don’t regret the effect it has on Beck.

As soon as my niece’s name leaves my mouth, his eyes light up, and his shoulders relax.

All of the confusing, off-putting energy between us dissipates, making me wish I had thought to invoke her name sooner.

Beck is as obsessed with the headstrong ten-year-old as I am.

When we went to New Haven this summer to visit my younger brother, Hunter, and meet the daughter he’d only found out about a few months prior, we both dove headfirst into an adoration that’s only rivaled by the love her parents have for her.

“How’s my girl?”

“She’s great, already asking when we’re coming to visit her again. Hunter says she’s started going to the gym with him for classes.”

Beck snorts, letting his foot off the brake when the light turns green. “Is she going as an instructor or a student?”

“Probably a little of both.”

We share a laugh that melts away all the tension in my chest, only for it to come back in full force when Selene speaks. “How old is your niece?”

I meet her eyes through the rear view mirror, seeing that she’s put her note cards down and is rubbing her thumb against the side of her index finger.

It’s the same thing I watched her do after her last date with Aubrey, and I now know, from research I did that night, that the small action is one of her stims.