“Kellan, at the risk of sounding like Tate, it’s almost statistically impossible to become president. Your mother wouldn’t hold you to a deathbed vow, especially if chasing the goal was making you miserable.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t know my mother. She would be disappointed in me today. But at the time, I was determined to keep my promise. So I proposed to Lila, and we went to work for my dad’s firm. After a year, we started planning my first campaign. State senator. We began fund-raising, and for a while we were really a team. I thought we were happy. I wanted to have kids, but she put me off at first. She agreed it would be great publicity for me to campaign with a pregnant wife, but she wasn’t ready.”
Belle’s little gasp said it all.
“I wanted kids. Having them wasn’t just about the campaign for me. Please understand that. I wasn’t some party guy. I worked eighty hours a week and I was married. I wanted a family to come home to. For months after the wedding, Lila resisted even discussing trying to conceive. She didn’t want to lose her figure in her twenties. She wanted to establish her career. She wanted time with me. That last one was a lie because she was always working. But she had every excuse to avoid becoming a mother. Then suddenly she was ready to throw away her birth control pills. I should have known something was going on, but I chalked it up to her simply coming around to my way of thinking.” He snorted. “And I was a bit behind in the poll numbers.”
Her brows came together in a puzzled frown. “What do you mean ‘going on’? You two were practicing together at the same firm. Didn’t you practically trip over one another all the time?”
He could see where she would have a few misconceptions about their careers. “You’ve only worked in a very small office. You don’t know how easy it is to get lost in a big, corporate firm. We didn’t work in the same division. We were both heading large portions of the busy practice and we were starting to campaign locally, each with different responsibilities. It’s a lot of work. There are a ton of distractions, and one day I looked up and realized we didn’t spend time together anymore. And I hadn’t missed her as much as I should have. One Sunday, I sat her down and told her that she felt too much like a stranger to me and that we needed to make time to be together. She started crying and said she really wanted to have a baby.”
“Some people think having a baby will save a marriage. It rarely does, but…” Belle sounded as if she was making excuses for Lila’s behavior because she knew something bad was coming. “Maybe she didn’t know?”
“I wish she would have told me how she felt about us before I started the campaign, but I think she was hedging her bets. Turns out, she’d been having an affair for the past year. She’d gotten pregnant.”
Belle’s mouth gaped open. Shocked didn’t begin to describe her expression. “And she wanted to pass the baby off as yours?”
Kellan gave a resigned shrug. Spilling all this to Belle actually felt odd because his gut wasn’t churning the way it normally did when he thought of Lila. The guilt and self-loathing still felt toxic in his veins, but the mad rage was muted by Belle’s soothing presence, by her hand in his.
“It would have likely been easy to do. I was just happy to have everything falling into place. I would have smiled and never questioned it. I like to think I would have been a good dad, but mine was pretty awful, so I have no idea.”
“When did you discover the truth?”
“Three weeks before the election. That was when a staffer came to me and showed me the proof that my pregnant wife was having an affair.” He rubbed at the back of his neck again. “With my father.”
That day was still vivid in his memory. He could see the photos of his wife and father making love in the swimming pool where he’d played as a kid, where his mother had taught him how to swim. They’d had barbecues and family gatherings in that backyard, filling the expansive space with their big personalities. All of those memories had been burned away by a handful of photographs featuring his dear old dad happily plowing his beautiful bride.
“Oh my god, Kellan. That’s terrible.” Belle clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at him with an expression somewhere between horror and pity.
Once, he would have pushed her away, but now he realized this was as close as he could allow himself to be with her emotionally. Sex… Now that was different. He could have sex with her all fucking day and night, but taking her comfort pushed at his very firm barriers. Allowing her soft empathy meant she could sneak behind his walls, and he couldn’t allow anyone to do that again. He couldn’t give her what she deserved, and letting her indulge in the fantasy that he was a whole man would just hurt them both.
Still, he gave himself one moment—just this one—to sink against her and feel her gentle caring.
“My pride was shredded, but worse than that, my campaign was over and not for the reason you’d think.”
“Did someone leak the pictures?”
He huffed out a bitter laugh. “No, my father bought them. Then he sat me down and told me I was a disappointment, but he’d long known I would be. I hadn’t been man enough for my dad and I’d proved it by not being able to take care of my wife.”
Hell, son, I even had to get her pregnant for you. Maybe this kid will have some guts.
“Oh, Kellan, he was wrong.” Belle put an arm around him and looked into his eyes as if willing him to believe her. “You have to know that.”