Chapter 52
Chapter Fifty-Two
DK
It’s just past midnight when three soft raps hit my back door.
I freeze on the couch, a Lego block pinched between my fingers. At this hour, an unexpected knock rarely means anything good. It usually spells an emergency or a crisis. But in my world, those tend to arrive with frantic calls and texts, and my phone hasn’t buzzed in hours.
There’s only one person this could be.
I drop the plastic brick onto the coffee table, and quickly cross the darkened kitchen.
Luna stands on my back porch, swallowed by oversized sweats.
The hood is pulled low, hiding most of her face, but I’d know the shape of her anywhere.
I throw the lock open and pull the door inward.
Before I can ask the dozen questions colliding in my head—Did something happen?
Are you okay? Why are you here?—she steps across the threshold and into my arms.
I toe the door closed behind her and pull her close, absorbing the warmth I’ve missed.
She isn’t shaking. She isn’t crying. So I wait.
When she eases back, I push down her hood and her curls spring free.
She looks breathless. Beautiful. Beneath the black fleece, I catch a glimpse of raspberry satin—the dress she wore to the wedding.
The fact that she shoved it into a sweat suit tells me this was important enough that she hadn’t stopped to change.
“Luna.” My hands automatically come up to frame her face. “What’s going on?”
“I know I shouldn’t have come over without calling. Without us preparing.”
“It’s okay. Just talk to me.”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
The breath leaves my lungs. “Can’t do what?”
“The secrets. The hiding. The lies of omission.”
That doesn’t surprise me. We’ve talked about it before—the inner conflict. The guilt. Both of us feel it. But I’ve never seen her this distraught.
“I watched Lot and Lexie holding the men they love out in the open, and it made me miss you in a whole different way. I went down to the water to think. I talked to my dad.”
I keep my hands steady against her cheeks, listening.
“He reminded me about the piping plovers. The nests I saved as a kid. How hard I fought for them, even when I wasn’t sure I’d win.” Her eyes settle on mine. “I want to fight for us, DK.”
The conviction in her voice hits my chest dead-on. “What are you saying?” I already know, but I have to be sure.
“I want to stop hiding.”
“As your man, I want that so bad, Luna. To stop sneaking around. To stop pretending I don’t love you with every damn beat in my chest. But politically, this could swallow your campaign whole right at the finish line.”
“Maybe.” That single word said with a slight shrug isn’t indifference or resignation.
It’s an understanding of the risk. “But if I take office and then announce us, people will wonder if you engineered an advantage. They’ll question whether they can trust me to govern transparently when I hid this from them.
It becomes the story. Not what I can accomplish. Just who I was sleeping with.”
I could give her a dozen counterarguments. I could walk her through every strategy, every contingency plan, every talking point I’ve already built. But she’s not looking for political advice. “Is this what you really want?”
“Yes. But it affects you too,” she says, wrapping her fingers around my wrists. “Diablo will be mad as hell. He could fire you.”
“I don’t care about being fired. The consequences to me will be nothing in comparison. You could sacrifice everything you’ve worked for.”
“I’ve thought it through, DK.” She pulls my hands from her face, holding them in hers, and looks into my eyes. “If I lose because of coming out about us, I can live with that. What I can’t live with is winning because it was safer to stay silent.”
Her words strip away all my defenses.
Every calculation, every strategy, every piece of political armor I’ve spent months building is gone. Collapsing into dust.
I look at her standing here—fierce, brave, putting it all on the line.
There’s only one choice. Only one right answer.
The next morning, I steel myself to confess my secret to the man who put his faith in me to run his campaign.
Diablo waves me in, looking up from his phone with a grin. “Puppy pics. Ella’s been sending them as hints for her tenth birthday.”
I can’t smile. I can’t fake that right now. “Gabriel—”
“Jesus, Dakarai, you look like you’re about to tell me we lost our biggest district.”
“I’m just going to say this outright so we can deal with it.”
“Okay.” He braces, setting his phone down.
I don’t sugarcoat it. I don’t spin it. I just lay the truth bare. “Rayne and I have been seeing each other secretly since July.”
The ensuing silence stretches thick enough to needle my skin.
“We’re not hiding anymore. Rayne’s campaign is issuing a statement today. I’m sorry I wasn’t upfront and honest about it with you before now. I’m sorry to drop this on your doorstep four weeks ahead of the election.”
He stares at me, utterly shocked. His eyes blinking in disbelief until his brain registers the full extent of my admission.
“Sorry?” He seethes, the color rising in his face. “You write my strategy. You advise me. You know my vulnerabilities. You know every Goddamn thing, and you’ve been sleeping with the woman trying to take my seat?”
This is the anger I anticipated, but seeing the genuine sense of betrayal in a man I’ve come to respect, who trusted me, cuts deep. “My decision not to tell you was wrong, but I have never breached campaign ethics.”
“You’ve lied to me for three months, and now I’m supposed to what… take you at your word?”
“I know that’s a lot to ask, Gabriel. But it’s the truth. I have never shared data, documents, or anything that wasn’t in the public domain with Rayne. Your campaign is clean.”
“You never shared an advantage?”
“No.”
“You didn’t bury those pictures or convince me to hire a cyber specialist for her?”
“Did I want to protect her? Yes. But the facts are that a crime was committed against a political candidate, and I stand behind those actions.”
“This is a shit show.” He ploughs a hand through his hair. “Give me one good reason not to fire you on the spot.”
That he’s even asking tells me his principles are warring with political reality. He already knows the impacts, but I lay them out anyway.
“Firing me this late in the game is a textbook admission of internal chaos. It signals weakness. It tells voters that your house isn’t in order. The donor PACs I’ve secured may get skittish.”
His eyes shoot bullets at me. “So basically if I fire you I’m fucked.”
“Yes,” I say, taking no pleasure in it.
“Then you’ll stay on until after election night,” he says, his voice cold and entirely pragmatic. “Work with Jacquie on the statement. And Dakarai…” He holds my gaze in a daring challenge. “Rayne deceived voters. I will not go easy on her.”
Then he opens a file folder, effectively dismissing me.
My chest still feels tight as I walk out of his office, but in a different way than before. The weight of our secret is finally off my chest, but the fallout isn’t going to be pretty, especially for Luna.
Jacquie treats the situation like any other crisis as both camps coordinate our press releases. Anika declares us a wreck to her blood pressure. Ash gets to gloat that he clocked it first.
And then…
The initial blast of the news cycle is ruthless. One radio host calls Luna emotionally compromised. Nobody says I am. A columnist writes that her judgment should be questioned, while my name barely earns a mention. She’s called a liar. A fraud. Disloyal to her cause for sleeping with the enemy.
Luna, true to her tenacity, keeps focused on showing voters why she deserves to be mayor.
The attacks infuriate me. As the man who loves her, I want to hit back harder than a motherfucker. As a lawyer—and someone who’s spent most of his adult life in politics—I know better. Every response risks becoming another headline. Every headline risks making things worse for her.
So I choose my words carefully. One statement and nothing else.
“Rayne Webber has spent years serving this community and advocating for issues she believes in. To suggest her vision or values have changed because of who she’s dating is absurd. She remains loyal to her cause, and I remain loyal to the mayor.”
Still, for the next two weeks, her every word, decision, and expression is put under a microscope. Diablo doesn’t go easy on her as promised. I push back where I can without crossing the line, and endure his professional ice.
Luna’s team plays defense against traditionalists and Gabriel loyalists alike.
Femme Magazine decides the timing isn’t right to feature her.
I want to go to her so badly, but we’ve come too far to be reckless now.
So we stay apart during the worst of it, hunkered down in our respective trenches, waiting desperately for the firestorm to burn itself out.
By the end of September, the election review board completes its investigation and finds exactly what we already knew: no leaks, no sabotage, no ethics violations. That quiets some of the speculation.
We let the press catch a few photos of us together in public—contrived, strategic, carefully controlled, intended to defuse curiosity.
Eventually, the noise fades.
It’s a good day when I finally get to walk those ten doors to her campaign office with lunch in hand. And take her on a real date. Luna chooses something simple for our first one.
It’s a crisp Sunday afternoon in October.
An early autumn breeze skips off the water but the sun is bright.
We aren’t making a grand statement. We’re just getting ice cream on the boardwalk.
Luna’s in a soft knit sweater and jeans, the wind stirring her curls.
She’s holding a waffle cone with a scoop of chocolate salted caramel.
I offer my hand, and smiling, she laces our fingers.
We’ve done that dozens of times. But never like this. It’s not in secret. It’s not a play for the cameras. It’s just for us. Out in the open in broad daylight.
Before, every touch came with an expiration date. Every stolen moment carried a timer—the ticking of minutes until an inevitable goodbye.
Now there’s no countdown. No sand spilling through the hourglass.
Just her hand in mine and an ordinary afternoon.
Later, we take our newfound freedom back to my place. Luna stands at the counter assembling a salad to go with the steak I’m grilling. I step up behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and burying my face in the curve of her neck, inhaling flowers.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to just watch you exist in my space.”
“I think I have some idea.” She turns, her fingers curling into my shoulders before she lifts her mouth to mine.
I don’t take anything to help me sleep that night. I know I’m not going to need it this time. I finally have Luna exactly where she belongs. Tangled in my sheets, her lush curves pressed against my skin.
The election is still two weeks away. The fallout is still falling. But holding her in the quiet dark of my bedroom, I’m already holding the win.