Twelve Minutes
Chapter Eight
The door opened without resistance.
Wes stood with his back to the polling table. Laurel’s hand rested against his jaw. Their mouths were together.
There was no stumble, no mistaken turn of the head, no ambiguity assembled by poor lighting. Wes’s left hand held Laurel at the waist. His wedding ring showed against the charcoal fabric of her dress.
Adrienne’s first clear thought was that he had lied badly.
Laurel saw her and stepped back. Wes followed her gaze. His hand dropped.
“Adrienne.”
She remained in the doorway. Behind her, the corridor traffic continued: radios, hurried shoes, a burst of cheering from the ballroom above. Nobody had yet noticed the three people inside.
Laurel straightened her jacket. Her face had lost its practiced calm, though she made no attempt to touch Wes again or turn the moment into an explanation.
“I’ll leave,” she said.
“No,” Adrienne replied. “Stay.”
Wes came around the table. “Let me talk to you.”
“I’m listening.”
He glanced toward Laurel. Adrienne watched him make the calculation: what could be admitted in front of the woman who knew the answer, what could be delayed until his wife stood alone with him.
“This was wrong,” he said.
“That part is visible.”
“It shouldn’t have happened.”
Laurel’s mouth tightened. “Don’t make it sound accidental.”
Wes turned toward her. “I’m not.”
“You usually do.” She met Adrienne’s gaze, not defiantly but without requesting mercy. “I kissed him. He kissed me back.”
“Laurel,” Wes said.
“She asked for the truth.”
“I didn’t ask either of you anything.” Adrienne looked at his hand, the one that had been holding Laurel. “You told me no.”
His face changed. “I know.”
“Two nights ago.”
“I know.”
“You had sex with me after you had already kissed her?”
The question seemed to strike him harder than discovery itself.
“Tonight was the first—” he began.
Laurel turned her head toward him.
Adrienne caught the movement. “The first what?”
Wes looked at the digital countdown mounted over the door.
Twelve minutes and eighteen seconds remained until his scheduled appearance.
He looked at the clock before he looked back at his wife.
Adrienne felt the sequence register with clinical precision. She did not need to interpret it. His body had answered.
“Addie, please,” he said. “We need somewhere private.”
“This room was private enough a minute ago.”
Laurel picked up her phone from the table. “I’ll get Elias to delay the walk-through.”
“No,” Wes said. “Give us the room.”
She held his gaze for a beat, then left without going near Adrienne. The door closed behind her.
Wes reached for Adrienne. She moved beyond the distance of his hand.
“How many?” she asked.
“Adrienne—”
“How many times have you kissed her?”
Wes dragged his thumb across his lower lip, wiping away what remained of Laurel’s lipstick. The movement was practical. Adrienne hated that she noticed.
“Answer me.”
“Twice.”
Laurel’s glance before leaving had already suggested another history. Hearing the number gave it weight.
“When was the first?”
“After the first general-election debate in Pueblo.”
“Six weeks ago.”
“Yes.”
“You came home the next morning and told me the flight had been delayed.”
“It had.”
“You gave me an accurate travel update after kissing another woman. Was that how you decided you were still honest?”
“No.” He pulled a chair away from the table but did not sit. “I knew it was wrong. I ended it.”
Adrienne looked at the door Laurel had just used. “Your definition of ended needs work.”
“I told her it couldn’t happen again.”
“Then continued the calls, the trips, and the messages.”
“We were running a statewide campaign.”
“You keep naming the workplace as if it put your hand on her.”
He flinched. “I put my hand on her.”
“Yes.”
“I am not blaming the campaign.”
“You have blamed it every time I asked where you were.”
He looked again at the clock. Eleven minutes, forty-two seconds.
“We cannot do this in eleven minutes.”
“You had months. I called those late-night conversations intimacy in July, and you told me I was confusing access with an affair.”
“I will tell you everything. I swear to you. But if I don’t go upstairs, every network in the state will make your absence the story before I’ve had a chance to protect you.”
“Protect me from what you did?”
“From having it happen in public.”
“It already happened. Publicity is only the part you understand.”
He pressed both hands to the table. “Then understand that I have a duty beyond this room.”
“You want me to help you perform it.”
“I want twelve minutes.”
The number was so specific that Adrienne almost admired it. He had reduced catastrophe to a slot between the call and the speech, a delay short enough to sound reasonable and long enough to get what he wanted from her.
“And during those minutes?” she asked. “Do I stand beside you?”
“We walk out together. We get through the speech. Then I leave with you.”
“While Laurel runs the room behind us.”
“I will remove her from the campaign.”
“The campaign ends tonight.”
“From the transition.”
“You haven’t decided that. You decided to say it because I’m holding a microphone I can take off.”
His gaze dropped to the wire at her neckline. “I should have decided it after the first kiss.”
“You should have told me after the first kiss.”
“Yes.”
“Instead you came home.”
He did not ask what she meant. Their night together stood between them, recent enough that Adrienne could remember the pressure of his mouth on her palm.
“I wanted you,” he said.
“You also wanted her.”
“That doesn’t make what happened between us false.”
“You withheld the one fact that might have changed my yes.”
Wes went pale.
Adrienne did not need to raise her voice. “You don’t get to tell me which part was real.”
“Eleven now.”
“I am asking you not to make a permanent decision while you’re in shock.”
Adrienne looked at him. “I’m not the person who made a decision tonight.”
There was a knock. Tessa’s voice came through the door. “Governor call in ten. We need both of you at stage right.”
Wes closed his eyes briefly. “One minute.”
Adrienne reached behind her neck. The microphone cable had been taped beneath her dress, the pack clipped at her lower back. She loosened it and pulled the wire free. The tape tugged her skin.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She set the microphone pack on the polling table.
“Adrienne, don’t walk into that hallway like this. Let me get security to take you somewhere private.”
“I decide where I go.”
“Yes. Fine. But reporters are everywhere.”
“They are here for you.”
“They will follow you the second they see your face.”
She opened her clutch and took out her phone. “I can call a car.”
“Your protection detail will drive you.”
“They report to the campaign.”
“They report to me.”
“Exactly.”
He came closer, stopping before she had to retreat. “Don’t leave without talking to me.”
“You have been talking to Laurel for five months.”
He did not ask how she knew the length. They both understood that the start could be dated by the disappearance of his attention.
“I did not sleep with her,” he said.
The sentence was offered like a handhold.
“You slept with me,” Adrienne replied. “Then answered her from our bed.”
His mouth opened.
“Did she know?”
“Know what?”
“That you were with me when she wrote that she wanted the night to be hers.”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t tell her.”
“No.”
Adrienne nodded. “How considerate.”
The countdown showed nine minutes, thirteen seconds.
Someone knocked again, harder. “Wes, we have a call from the lieutenant governor. Now.”
His body turned a fraction toward the door. Training, obligation, appetite—whatever name it deserved, the response was immediate.
“Go,” Adrienne said.
“I’m not choosing a speech over you.”
“You already chose what you wanted from me. You want the rest of the state to see a wife who survived it before she even knows what happened.”
“I want you beside me because you are my wife.”
“That title didn’t interrupt you.”
He winced. “No. It didn’t.”
The admission was the first honest thing he had given her. It arrived too late to be useful.
Adrienne removed her credential and placed it beside the microphone. Then she reached for the ring on her left hand.
Wes watched her fingers. “Please don’t.”
She stopped with the band at her knuckle. Taking it off in front of him felt like giving him a role in the decision. She pushed it back into place.
“That isn’t for you either,” she said.
She opened the door. Tessa stood outside with Elias and two security officers. Their expressions moved from irritation to alarm when they saw Adrienne without her microphone.
“We have eight minutes,” Tessa said.
“You have Wes.”
“Adrienne,” Elias began, “if there’s a wardrobe issue—”
“There isn’t.”
Wes came into the corridor behind her. “Clear this hallway.”
Elias started moving people with efficient gestures. A volunteer pushing a rack of flags reversed direction. Tessa spoke into her headset, telling stage management to hold the family entrance.
Adrienne walked toward the service elevator.
Wes followed. “Wait.”
“You’re needed upstairs.”
“I can delay.”
“You can do anything. That has never been the problem.”
He caught up in two strides but did not touch her. “Tell me where you’re going.”
“No.”
“At least take an officer.”
“No.”
“This building is surrounded.”
“By people waiting for you. Keep them that way.”
From the intersection behind them, Laurel called, “Wes.”
She stood beside Elias with a headset pressed to one ear. Her composure had returned, now directed toward the electoral map on a tablet.
“The Associated Press is preparing the call,” she said. “If you’re not in place, they go to the lieutenant governor.”
Wes turned his head.
Adrienne reached the elevator and pressed the button. He looked between her and the corridor where the campaign waited.
“Twelve minutes,” he said. “Give me twelve minutes, and I will come wherever you are.”
“You don’t know where I’ll be.”
“Then tell me.”
The elevator doors opened onto an empty car.
“No,” she said again.
She stepped inside. Wes put one hand against the door before it could close.
For a second she thought he might enter. His face held the naked panic he had hidden in the polling room. Then Elias shouted that the race had been called.
The ballroom erupted above them. The sound came through concrete and steel, thousands of people celebrating the life Wes had chosen.
His hand fell.
Adrienne watched him take one step back. The doors slid between them.
The elevator carried Adrienne to the lobby.
The motorcade route had been cleared, leaving a corridor of velvet ropes and flower arrangements chosen to look native to Colorado.
She ducked beneath one rope rather than wait for an aide to unclip it.
A security officer started toward her, recognized her, and stopped.
Through the glass entrance, she could see the SUV assigned to take her to the ballroom’s private garage.
She passed it and asked the valet for a taxi.
The first notes of the entrance music reached the lobby and made the glass doors tremble.
Wes would know exactly where to stand, which county to thank first, when to let emotion roughen his voice.
Twelve minutes had been enough for him to decide which emergency deserved his presence.
Adrienne gave the valet the hospital’s address and removed the campaign credential from her dress.