27. #2
Rodney's voice continued above me before I could figure out how to make it cooperate.
"And apparently Lennox wasn't enough. You needed half the fucking federal government helping you sneak around too."
Alexander.
Sean.
Their faces came to me before Rodney said either name.
"Alexander Ward had one responsibility. Protect the President and his family. Instead, he decided his job included helping my wife conduct an affair behind my back."
Rodney stood up and began pacing within the small section of hallway I could still see.
"Then his brother gets involved. The Secretary of Homeland Security. Two men with decades of government service between them, both stupid enough to compromise themselves because you needed help sneaking off to your boyfriend."
"They didn't..."
I wasn't sure whether he heard me.
"I had to clean up your mess," he continued. "Alexander is gone. Sean is gone. Careers they spent their entire adult lives building, finished. And do you know why? Because everybody around you eventually has to pay for your decisions except you."
He stopped moving.
For several seconds, all I could see were his shoes.
Then he laughed quietly.
"Maybe you fucked them too."
My gaze snapped upward despite the pain it caused.
That was exactly the reaction he wanted.
His smile widened.
"Why not? Lennox. Alexander. Sean. You've certainly been busy enough. Maybe I've underestimated what my wife has been doing with all that free time."
"Fuck you."
The words were out before fear could stop them.
Rodney went completely still.
The silence that followed was worse than anything he'd said.
I watched the last trace of amusement leave his face, and for a moment there was nothing there at all. No rage. No smile. No visible reaction.
Then a low laugh escaped him. "Fuck me."
I tried to get up.
I planted one palm against the floor and pushed, desperate to put even a few inches between us, but my arm shook so badly that I couldn't support myself. The hallway tilted sharply to one side. My hand slipped, and my shoulder struck the floor again.
Rodney watched me struggle until I gave up.
"You still don't understand your position."
His voice had gone calm again.
He stepped closer, speaking slowly enough that even through the ringing in my ears, I couldn't escape a single word.
"You've spent the last few weeks walking around Washington pretending you've built some new life for yourself. You applied to law school, bought yourself some notebooks, started sleeping at your boyfriend's house, and now you've convinced yourself you're independent."
My breathing changed.
But then his expression shifted.
"Seven dollars."
I stared at him.
"That's how much your coffee cost this morning, wasn't it?"
The café flashed through my mind. Standing at the counter. My iced coffee in my hand. Leaving for my class.
"Tell me, Naomi. Whose card did you use to pay for it?"
I couldn't answer him.
"Mine."
The word reverberated through my head.
"And the car you've been driving all over my city to see Lennox? Who paid for that?"
My fingers curled against the hardwood.
"The clothes you're wearing. The security detail you use when it's convenient and dismiss when it interferes with whatever you're doing. This house. The people who return your calls because they see Housner attached to your name.
Every room you've walked into where somebody suddenly decided Naomi was finally important enough to listen to."
He pointed at himself.
"Me."
My breathing became shallow.
Rodney stepped nearer, and this time I didn't have enough control over my body to move away.
"Even your sick, worthless mother gets to sleep comfortably because of me."
The words cut through everything else.
The ringing.
The nausea.
The confusion.
"Don't talk about her."
"Why?" He looked genuinely offended by the objection. "Because you don't like being reminded of the truth?"
"Don't."
"Who bought her new bed? Who paid her rent for the rest of the year? Who makes sure that while she's lying there dying, she gets to do it somewhere comfortable?"
Anger pushed briefly through the fog, but my body couldn't do anything with it. The hallway rolled beneath me, forcing me to stay down as another wave of nausea rose into my throat.
Rodney looked at me on the floor and continued as though the sight proved everything he'd been saying.
"You have nothing, Naomi. That's the part you can't seem to understand. You own nothing. You've built nothing. You keep confusing the things I allow you access to with things that belong to you."
His voice was beginning to sound farther away again.
I concentrated on his face because I was afraid that if I stopped, my eyes wouldn't open a second time.
"You are nothing without me."
The words should've hurt more than they did.
Maybe they would later.
"You think people care that you're the First Lady?" His expression twisted with contempt. "The First Lady isn't a job. It isn't an elected office position. You have no constitutional authority. No constituency. No salary. Nobody in this country went into a voting booth and chose you."
He crouched again, bringing himself into the shrinking circle of my vision.
"You're volunteer help."
My throat tightened.
"At best."
His voice remained steady, almost conversational, and that somehow made every word uglier.
"Your purpose in this administration is to stand beside me and make me palatable. You smile when I tell you to. You shake hands when I tell you to. You wear the dresses I choose. You let women look at you standing next to me and convince themselves that if a woman like you loves me,
then maybe I'm someone they can trust. That's what you contribute. You make me look good."
Something inside me resisted him even while my body couldn't.
Georgetown had accepted me because of work I'd done myself.
I'd earned my degree before Rodney ever entered the White House.
My mother had loved me long before his name became something people recognized.
There had been an entire person here before Rodney, even if he'd spent years making her increasingly difficult for me to remember, and lying on the floor while he told me otherwise couldn't erase the fact that she had existed.
I wanted desperately to tell him that.
My mouth wouldn't cooperate.
Rodney mistook my silence for agreement.
"You don't make policy. You don't run this country. You don't have power because you sleep in the same building as the man who does. The power is mine, and the only reason anybody outside of your pathetic little circle knows your name is because I gave them a reason to learn it."
He stood up and looked down with the kind of disgust that once would've made me desperate to figure out how to make him love me again. "Without me, Naomi, you are nothing."
I saw his foot leave the floor before I understood why.
It rose slowly within my distorted field of vision, and instinct told me what was coming before my injured brain could fully process it.
I tried to roll onto my side and bring my arms over my ribs, but my body responded with a terrifying delay.
My elbow had barely moved from the floor when Rodney drew his leg back, and there wasn't enough time left to protect myself.
I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the impact.
Instead, something heavy collided above me.
My eyes opened to Rodney stumbling sideways, his body crashing against the wall as Grant followed the punch that had knocked him away from me.
I hadn't heard Grant enter the house or climb the stairs.
I had no idea how long he'd been there, whether I'd managed to scream without remembering it or whether five minutes had simply passed while I lay on the floor.
All I could understand was that Grant had placed himself between us, his back blocking Rodney from my view as he turned toward me.
The expression on his face changed the instant he saw me.
His mouth moved around my name, but the ringing had grown too loud for his voice to reach me.
I watched him rush toward me through a field of black spots that had become so dense they covered pieces of his face, disappearing and returning each time I blinked.
There were suddenly so many things I needed Grant to know that I couldn't decide which one mattered enough to force past the heaviness in my tongue.
Grant dropped beside me, and his face became the last thing I could still make out clearly. I watched his lips form my name again as his hand reached toward me, but before I could answer him, the remaining light in the hallway narrowed around his face until there was nothing left for me to see.
Consciousness returned slowly enough that I didn't recognize it at first.
There was no clear moment when I opened my eyes and understood that I was awake.
Awareness came in pieces, beginning with the uncomfortable heaviness of my body and a dull pressure behind my forehead that seemed to pulse in time with my heartbeat.
Something soft supported the back of my head, and warmth covered me from my chest down, but my left arm felt strangely cold.
I tried moving my fingers and felt a faint tug against the skin near the inside of my elbow.
Voices drifted somewhere nearby.
Grant's was the first one I recognized.
"...still hasn't been awake for more than a few minutes?"
A woman answered him, but I couldn't make out everything she said. Her voice seemed to move closer and farther away without either of them actually changing position.
I opened my eyes farther.
The ceiling was unfamiliar for only a second.
Then I recognized the recessed lighting, the molding around the edges and the large windows across the room with curtains pulled tightly enough to block whatever was happening outside.
Grant's house.
I was on his couch.
Understanding that should have answered something, but instead it created more questions that my head hurt too badly to follow.