Running For It by Allyson Lindt

Fifteen

This would be fine. Between Hunter and I, we could plan anything, and Ramsey was a master of executing those ideas—even when we were too drunk to think right apparently. This didn’t even require a complex plan. “We can get it annulled? Do we even have to do that much? We can just ask the chapel not to file the paperwork? No one but us knows about this.”

“About that…” Hunter was still staring at his phone. “These photos? They’re on the Miller for Senate social media pages.

“How—” Ramsey was on his feet in a flash, bolting back into the bedroom. “Shit.” His shout echoed through the entire suite.

I pulled myself up to sit on the edge of the tub. Given the situation, this seemed like a good place to talk about it.

Ramsey returned and handed me my phone. “So, you know that interview I did last night?” He was uncharacteristically sheepish.

“Yes…” I was torn between checking my phone now and flushing it before I saw if I was caught in the fallout. I wouldn’t be able to think until I knew, though.

“I saved some photos from the interview to a shared cloud folder. And I saved the wedding photos to the same place, so Debbie shared them.”

As Ramsey spoke, I saw the text from Luna. It just said congratulations. There was no !!! No :) In Luna speak, it said fuck you. “No,” the word tumbled past my lips. She thought I’d hidden this from her.

“I don’t care where you accidentally put them. Debbie had no right.” Hunter’s anger grabbed my attention again. He jabbed his screen hard enough I wondered if he was cracking the glass, the brought the phone to his ear. There was a short pause. “Save it.” He clipped off the word. “No part of my personal life crosses into Ramsey’s campaign… I don’t give a fuck what you found there… Bullshit. You knew better… No. Don’t do anything until you hear from one of us.” He disconnected and swung his arm as if he wanted to throw the phone. Then pressed it to his hip, as if looking for a pocket.

Right. We were all still naked. I pushed to my feet, legs shaking from uncertainty rather than hangover. “I’m going to get dressed.” I walked past both of them. The numbness in my mind was going to vanish any minute now. The panic would set in. I’d rather be wearing clothes when it did.

I yanked on panties. A bra and T-shirt. Jeans.

Numbness was still there. I sank onto the edge of the bed.

Ramsey and Hunter were shirtless, but at least they’d tucked away the dangly bits. How distracted was I that I didn’t care if their dicks were hanging out?

“We have to undo this.” I was stating the obvious, but I couldn’t find anything smarter.

“It’s not going to be that easy,” Ramsey said.

I started at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. He must be, because the words coming out of his mouth didn’t make any sense. “It’s very much that easy if Hunter and I both agree. I had a friend go through a no-fault divorce. We sign some paperwork—a lot of paperwork—and we’re done.”

“Or, we could stick to the plan we made last night.” Ramsey was still speaking in gibberish. “The one where this makes things easier.”

I blinked several times, until he was a blur, then squeezed my eyes shut and watched the sparkles behind my eyelids. I finally looked at him again. “This is what I’m hearing—we got drunk and did something stupid. Let’s all lie to everyone and tell them we meant it. Do you remember why you and I broke up?”

“Vividly.”

“And you’re asking me to lie to the entire world—not just a few cameras—and tell them this entire thing was on purpose. You want me to stay with Hunter because… Why? Not that I dislike you, Hunter, but marriage?”

Hunter puffed out his cheeks and sucked them in when he sighed. “I get it. No explanation necessary.”

“That makes one of us, because I need to know why you’re not taking my side.”

“There are rumors about Hunter and I,” Ramsey said. “People are noticing what we are. The rumors are quiet now, but they’re getting louder.”

I was clearly missing something. “So own it. “Maybe it’s time—”

“This marriage isn’t a big deal.” Ramsey sounded like he believed that. “I’m only asking that you play along until we—”

“Figure out how to spin a divorce?” I didn’t appreciate being talked over. “If it wasn’t a big deal, you wouldn’t be asking me to play along.”

Ramsey frowned. “Please, Violet.”

I couldn’t… What was going on? “If you ask me to do this, to pretend I’m married to someone I wouldn’t otherwise choose, for your political career, and I do it? That’s the end of us.” I hated the words, but I meant them. I wouldn’t out Ramsey and Hunter, but what they were asking me to do was a personal line I wouldn’t cross just so he could be elected.

“He’s not doing it for his campaign.” Hunter’s voice was quiet. “He’s doing it for me.”

Was it possible to drink oneself into an alternate dimension?

“Are you sure?” Ramsey asked.

Hunter nodded.

“Fill me in. Now.” Before this drove me over the edge.

Hunter pressed his back to the closest wall and turned his gaze to the ceiling. “It took me a long time to figure out my preferences, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t put a lot of thought into it when I was younger. My parents are religious, and so was the community I was raised in. If you think hetero is the default assumption, multiply that by one-hundred and press that weight on a kid whose entire world expected great things from him.”

I’d seen that before. I’d heard it from more than one of the kids in my shelter. There was what most people experienced just from existing, and then there was being paired with the opposite sex from the time a kid was old enough to walk, for appearances. For isn’t that cute? Isn’t he such a lady killer? Moments.

“Anyway.” Hunter sighed again. “Fast forward through a couple of decades of denial that I’ve told my therapist about so you don’t need to hear it, and a series of events that forced the pieces to fit, and I realized I’d been in love with my best friend for as long as I could remember. Telling Ramsey was the most frightening thing I’d ever done.”

I couldn’t be jealous of that. Not of the pain or sincerity in Hunter’s story.

“Fortunately that went well,” Ramsey said and squeezed Hunter’s hand.

Hunter’s mouth twitched in an unformed smile. “He went with me to tell Mom, and that was the second scariest, because she’d always been my biggest supporter.” His frown was back. “She dropped a bombshell on me, too. Assured me first she still loved me. All the stuff a parent is supposed to say, but Dad had been diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer less than a week earlier. This will ruin your father, she said. You know how he is.”

“I’m sorry.” My sympathy felt ineffective, but I didn’t have anything else to offer.

Hunter tugged his hand free from Ramsey and crossed his arms. “He only had six months to live. Mom begged me not to send my father to his grave knowing his only boy was queer.”

Goddess, my heart was breaking for Hunter.

“Dad’s still with us, thank God.” Hunter’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “But he hasn’t recovered, he’s simply holding on because he’s a tough bastard. And every chance my mother gets, she reminds me, begs me, to keep the secret just a little longer.”

I couldn’t believe I was considering going along with this, but the reasons had changed, and I’d heard variations of Hunter’s story—seen the negative fallout—too many times to fault him for his decision. “How long are we talking?”

“After the elections, Hunter will be out of the public eye. No scrutiny. No one is going to notice or care if he quietly divorces, and his parents will think he gave marriage a try.” After the elections. Ramsey wasn’t talking about the primaries.

“November?” I couldn’t hide my disbelief. “It’s January.”

“November is the worst case scenario, right Ramsey?” Hunter’s voice was pointed. He didn’t want to be married to me any more than I did him. “We’re not going to stop looking for solutions. All I’m asking is that you work with me on a plan that doesn’t involve having papers drawn up right now.”

Money and connections get things done, but frequently not the important things.Hunter’s words from the plane bounced into my thoughts. Something neither he nor Ramsey ever did, remind me of the favors they’d done for me in the past. I was going to do this. Please don’t let me regret it. “Okay. But the ring?” I held up my hand. “I can’t wear this.” It was Ramsey’s ring for fuck’s sake, and now that it was on my finger, I could admit to myself I’d hoped it would end up there. But not like this.

“Of course not,” Hunter said quickly. “We’ll get you something more appropriate to us.”

“You can’t tell anyone this isn’t real.” Leave it to Ramsey to drive home how important the facade was.

More pieces of reality sank in. “But our friends…” Shared friends, thanks to Lyn’s relationship with Owen and Kingston. “When Hunter and I break up…”

“We’ll tell them this is why there’s been friction between you and me, because of you and Hunter.” Ramsey had figured too much of this out too quickly. “But on this trip we talked, and we’re all friends again. And then you’ll have an amicable break-up.”

Which would make it harder to be with Ramsey after. This was such a fucking mess. “I have to tell Luna. I won’t lie to her.”

“I’m fine with it as long as she will be,” Hunter said.

I still didn’t know if I was.