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“You fuck.” Davis turns toward me. “I’ll kill you for this. I’ll kill you!”
He’s red in the face, his body shaking with rage.
I get up and take a step back so that everyone can see what’s going on. The moderator perks up, tapping her pen on her desk near the front of the stage.
“Candidate Davis, take your seat. Threaten a candidate again and you will be removed from?—”
But Davis can’t stand it.
He can’t stand being told what to do by a woman. Can’t stand that his world is crumbling around his ears.
He roars and dashes toward me, winding up his fist. He punches, and I dodge, then grab him around the throat and put him in a headlock. I hold him there, rip the microphone freefrom my lapel and drop it to the stage, then lean in and whisper in his ear.
“I told you not to fuck with Marci. I warned you. Now you’re going to experience the full weight of your actions, you little good-for-nothing weasel, and I am going to watch youburn.”
Security runs up on stage, huffing and puffing, and takes Nate from me. He howls and kicks as he’s dragged away, and the town hall is thrown into complete disarray.
Forty-Nine
MARCI
I can’t find Jesse.
He’s not at the town hall anymore, and his squad car is gone. He left his cell phone at home, so that’s out of the question too. I’m stunned by what’s gone down.
Jesse’s pulled out of the race. He doesn’t need me anymore, but his words on the stage said different. That he cares about his wife? The lines are so blurred, they’ve ceased to exist, and I’m struggling to catch up.
I love him, and he’s doing everything in his power to give me what I want. Freedom, justice, and love. And now he’s given up on being sheriff, on, essentially, the approval of the town and his family for me.
I get in my car and ride out to the cottage, hoping to find him there.
My heart sinks.
The squad car isn’t outside.
But the front door is open.
I park and get out, twisting the ends of my sleeves into my palms. “Jesse?” I call out. “Jesse, are you home?”
The sea breeze brushes my hair, and sunshine slants down from the heavens, illuminating the quaint cottage. I walk up the stepping-stone path and enter the open-plan living room and kitchen. I make it two paces before I stop.
My pulse races, tears gather and spill over.
Mr. Skitters is on the recliner, wearing a cute green collar. He meows at me impetuously, as if asking me to hurry up and feed him already. He’s adorable, but he’s not the reason I’m crying.
The walls are plastered with pictures.
A slow progression from one side of the room to the bedroom door. Images of Jesse sitting alone on his bed. Head in his hands. Expression pained. Lying back on his bed with his face covered. Hunched over, one heel elevated off the floor. Standing in front of his bed, his fists balled at his sides.
Most of them are of him seated, staring blankly at the camera.
And then us.
The first picture of me sitting next to him, both of us looking serious. The next with his arm around me, and then every day for months, us together, going from somber to smiling. Jesse’s eyes shimmering with excitement as he talks to me, or me laughing, my head thrown back. Me in his lap, naked, clutching his head to my chest, his eyes penetrating through the picture as he stares past my shoulder.
I stumble a little as I track us through the pictures. As I witness the way his face changes, the worry and sadness fall away, replaced by joy. It’s like we’re both shining from the inside out.
There are more photos too, of me alone. Pictures taken of me in the diner, in the mornings, laughing with a customer, serving coffee, or leaning my elbow on the countertop and staring pensively out of the windows of the diner into the street.
