Page 39 of The Illusion of Power (Passion and Politics #1)

CAL

S elene rises from her seat abruptly.

“I should get some work done,” she announces, grabbing her bag from spot where she left it and heading towards the hallway to her right, which leads to a home office. Just before she cuts the corner, she stops. “Monique had groceries delivered. Please help yourself to whatever you like.”

And then she’s gone, rushing off with her shoulders raised and wracked with tension.

“Is she okay?” Beck asks, glancing at me like I have a fucking clue what just happened.

“I don’t know.”

“Should we go after her?”

That he even considers that an option makes me smile.

I have to hide it, though, since he’s still reluctant to talk to me about whatever it is that’s developing between them.

I know he’ll bring me into the loop eventually, and I’m trying to be patient, but it’s been hell waiting to find out where his head and his heart are at.

I push to my feet. “No. We should call Hicks and let him know the situation has changed and do another perimeter check.”

Beck stands, too. “Divide and conquer?”

“Let me guess, you’ll do the perimeter sweep while I call and update Hicks?”

“Precisely.” He claps me on the shoulder twice before stepping around me and heading out the front door.

I dig my phone out of my pocket and dial our supervisor, already knowing he won’t be happy with this development.

As much as I like the thought of time with Selene where outsiders are not constantly monitoring us, I’m not psyched at her choice of accommodations either.

The house is lovely, don’t get me wrong, but the property is far too big for Beck and I to effectively monitor on our own.

We’ll have to sleep in shifts and pray the lack of rest doesn’t impede our ability to keep Selene safe.

“This is Hicks.”

Ready to get the inevitable reaming over and one with, I explain what’s going on in short, succinct sentences that leave no room for misinterpretation or confusion. When I’m done, he groans.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I wish I were.”

“So now I have to go and tell Mr. Taylor that his wife of twenty some odd years has run roughshod over not one, but two, Secret Service agents and convinced them to take her to an unsecured location despite their training, and common fucking sense, telling them that was a bad idea?”

“All due respect, sir, what you tell Mr. Taylor is none of my concern. Beck and I have been entrusted with Mrs. Taylor’s safety, which means we go where she goes. She’s here, so we’re here. That’s the situation.”

“Well it’s a shitty situation, Drake, and I can guarantee you there will be hell to pay if anything goes wrong.”

“Less chance of that happening if you send us two more bodies. Travel protocol mandates at least four agents?—”

“I know what the fucking protocol is, Cal,” he barks, slicing my sentence in half.

“Just like I know you heard me when I said Ortega and Bennett are down. Any good agent knows that when resources are spread thin, you prioritize the primary. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that would be the man currently running for the office of President of the United States, wouldn’t it? ”

There it is again. That insinuation that Selene’s life is less important than Aubrey’s, even though she’s the one under constant threat.

That’s a casual justification for playing fast and loose with a Black woman’s life.

Beck probably thought I would do a better job of keeping my cool when faced with Hicks’ bullshit, but my patience for this man and this conversation is a rapidly unraveling thread.

My nostrils flare as I push out a frustrated breath.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Dan, but if anything goes left while we’re out here, that would not only reflect badly on Beck and me but you and the rest of the unit as well, wouldn’t it?

Tell me, how likely do you think Mr. Taylor is to select you to run his Presidential detail if his wife is injured or killed because you sat around playing with your dick instead of getting me some fucking back up ? ”

The last part of my sentence is a growl that I deliver through clenched teeth.

Hicks’ side of the line is silent for a second, and I’m certain if I could see him right now his face, neck and even the lobes of his ears would be red.

That’s how he always looks when Beck takes him to task, and I smile at the thought of getting the same reaction from him.

After a full minute, he sighs. “I’ll put a call into the local PD and see if they can send some uniforms over to assist.”

“Six for day shift, six for night shift.”

“Four for day shift, two for night shift.”

It’s not enough, but it’s better than nothing.

At the very least, we’ll be able to focus on the interior of the house while putting the officers in charge of exterior security.

In the morning, we’ll have one team from the day shift secure the venue where Selene is recording her speech, while the other team tails us when we leave.

“Fine. We need them here as soon as possible, Hicks.”

He grumbles something about me thinking I’m his boss under his breath and then hangs up the phone, leaving me with no choice but to hope he’ll keep his word.

Beck comes back into the house via the back door while I’m rummaging through the fridge to figure out something for dinner.

“All good?”

He crosses over to the sink and washes his hands. “Yep. All exterior doors are locked. The windows on the ground floor are closed and secure. The back gate is latched. I did see a snake near the back patio, though.”

“A rattlesnake?” I ask, turning around with all the ingredients for a simple pasta dish clutched to my chest. Beck, who knows about my fear of snakes and, more specifically, rattlesnakes, nods and gives me an impish grin as I set them on the counter.

My eyes narrow as I study his expression. “You’re lying,” I declare finally.

He throws the towel he was using to dry his hands down. “Damn! I hate how good you are at that.”

“Maybe you should hate how bad you are at lying,” I muse, crouching down to pull the cutting board I saw earlier out of one of the cabinets underneath the expansive marble countertop of the island. When I rise, I’m greeted by his middle finger.

“Fucker,” he says.

I pull a knife from the block next to the gas range and slice open the package of crimini mushrooms, shrugging off his insult. He rests his elbows on the counter. “You’re not even going to try to deny it?”

“What’s the point? You know I’m a fucker. I know I’m a fucker.” My eyes meet his, and my voice drops down low. “You like how I fuck you.”

His lips part, and his brows shoot up in surprise. I chuckle, admiring the effect my words have on him and appreciating that he doesn’t immediately tense up or turn around to check and see if anyone heard me, even though he knows Selene is in the house.

Almost like he doesn’t care if she learns the truth about us.

Almost like he’s accepted that our feelings for her and each other could very well make that a question of when and not if.

Beck clears his throat. “How did the call with Hicks go?”

For some reason, the change in subject doesn’t bother me as much as it usually does.

I recount the details of the call for him as I rinse the mushrooms, and he vents about Hicks while I pat them dry with a paper towel.

Listening to Beck talk is probably one of my favorite things to do while I’m cooking.

His passion and candor make the process feel like it’s going faster, and when he jumps in and helps, it does.

“It’s like they don’t care if she lives or dies,” he’s saying now, watching the faucet tied into the tile above the stove gush water into the stainless steel pot on the back eye. “She deserves so much better.”

The shift in his attitude regarding Selene since the last time we cooked a meal together is so drastic, so poignant, I can’t stop myself from diving headlong into a topic we’ve been tiptoeing around for days.

“She has better. She has us.”

He cuts the water off and turns the dial up to its highest setting.

He’s always so impatient when it comes to waiting for water to boil.

I want to tease him about that, but now isn’t the time.

Aside from the soft sizzle of the mushrooms browning in the pan in front of me, there’s not a single sound in the kitchen.

Beck’s avoidance is loud in the face of that silence, and so is his resigned sigh when he turns to face me head-on.

I study him more closely than I did earlier when he was lying about the snake. I can always read him easily, but he tries to block me, to erect walls in the onyx pools of his eyes. I reach for him, linking our fingers together.

“Can we please talk about it?”

“What’s the point?”

The swell of love that blooms in my chest when he doesn’t act like he has no idea what I’m talking about is the point.

Confirmation that I’m not losing my mind is the point.

Assurance that whether I act on them or not, my feelings for Selene won’t cause a permanent rift between me and the man I love is the point.

I don’t say any of that because it all feels too serious, and if things get any more serious, then Beck will get scared and shut down. Instead, I offer him a lifeline in the form of levity and a bad French accent.

“ Folie à deux.”

A shared delusion. A mutual agreement to indulge in the madness of possibility. An aching, forbidden echo whose weight is balanced between his hand and mine.

Beck snorts. “That’s a great way to put it because we both have to be experiencing a break from reality if we think we have real feelings for her, if we think, for even a second, she would want one, let alone both of us.”

The word both sparks a hunger inside of me that won’t be touched by the food we’re preparing. “You would want to share?”

His pupils dilate slightly, and he’s nodding his head before he can stop himself. He drops my hand, taking a step back as if a few feet between us will make the desire swirling around us less potent.

Long fingers glide over his scalp and down his neck, gripping his nape tightly. “ What I want is for you to stop acting like there is a single scenario where this thing between us and her happens.”

“So, you do have feelings for her.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Cal,” he hisses. “Do you need to hear me say it?”

My answer is immediate. “Yes.”

Beck closes the distance between us with angry strides and places both of his hands on my shoulders.

“You were right about her, okay? She’s not at all what she seems. There’s a softness and a strength to her that makes it impossible for you to want to experience anything that’s not her.

And she’s so fucking smart,” he pauses just to smile like he’s disgusted with himself.

“I could listen to her talk about coding and social justice and the implications of living in an increasingly technological world every day, all day, and never get bored.”

“Me too,” I admit, knowing that feeling all too well.

I knew I was in love with him when I started reading the DSM-5, so that I could have a better understanding of the mental disorders he was always going on about.

My first clue that I was fucked on the Selene front was the in depth research I did on autism, consuming everything I could about stimming, masking and low support needs versus high support needs in the span of a night.

“But that’s not a good thing, Cal! Holding her hand in public is not a good thing.

Cradling her half-naked form in your arms when your training tells you to always have one hand free and ready to access your weapon, and there’s an active threat, isn’t a good thing.

Staying in a house alone with her isn’t a good thing. ”

His logic is sound. I should be agreeing with him, or at the very least, telling him I appreciate the points he’s just made, but I can’t because my brain is stuck on something he’s said.

“That’s what happened in the dressing room? You held her?”

I wait for jealousy or bitterness to sweep in at the thought of the two of them wrapped in an embrace, but it doesn’t come. All I feel is grateful that Beck was there for Selene in a moment when she was clearly in need.

“She was scared.” He grimaces as the memory assails him.

“She kept talking about how loud the gunshots were and calling her son’s name, saying he must have been scared when he heard them the day he died.

I couldn’t bear to see her in that kind of pain.

” He searches my features for understanding. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Of course, you didn’t. She needed you. You set everything aside to be there for her.”

“And I would do it again, without question.”

“I know, so would I.”

The snap of his fingers is loud, but the vast, accusatory stretch of his eyes is more audible.

“That’s the problem, Drake. Selene doesn’t need us to set everything aside for her, to be everything to her.

She needs us to do our jobs and do them well, and if we can’t do that, then we both need to walk away. ”

My heart twists in on itself at the mere thought of moving in any direction that differs from the path she’s traveling. “If we walk away, she’ll have no one.”

“If we continue to guard her with our hearts and not our heads, then she’ll end up dead. Trust me when I say there’s no amount of love, no depth of emotion that will make you okay with that kind of failure.”

There’s a grave certainty to his tone that brooks no argument, and I know exactly where it comes from. That knowledge makes it so that the only thing I can do is nod solemnly.

“You’re right.”

A sad smile tugs at his lips. “I know.”

And just like that, the promise is made, and everything we’ve ever felt for Selene shrinks in on itself, another torrid secret trapped between Beck’s heart and mine.

A flower stomped out before it ever had the chance to bloom.