Stay With Me (She's With Me #2) - Jessica Cunsolo Page 0,101
but omitting any mention of me or Julian. As far as I know, the detectives don’t see any discrepancies in their story.
Harvey, the man who ran Aiden and me off the road and tried to shoot me, wasn’t found, but Aiden didn’t deliver a kill shot, so they believe he’s injured. They ran the prints on the knife that he held to Aiden’s throat, and they were matched to a Harvey Vedenin, who, to no surprise, has been arrested before. It’s also no surprise that Harvey Vedenin is a known associate and bodyguard of Andrew Kessler, which gives validity to Aiden’s story. Of course, there’s no undeniable evidence to actually prove that Andrew Kessler was behind Harvey’s actions, but we know the truth.
Aiden did end up speaking to Vivienne Henfrey, the reporter who made it clear she is not a fan of Kessler’s, and she practically begged Aiden to go on air. He and Mason stayed at the beach house a few extra days to sort everything out, and the rest of us went back home, and Jason and Jackson stayed at Mason’s house.
I watched Aiden on the news from home, my heart exploding with pride seeing his handsome and determined face, sharing a part of his life that I know he’d rather bury so far inside of him that his subconscious doesn’t even know it’s there. I know how hard it was for him to share his past, but he was confident as he told the world about how he is the son of Andrew Kessler, even though Andrew originally claimed to have no children. He explained how Andrew left when his mother was sick and pregnant, and how he hasn’t tried to contact his family since his wife died. But Aiden was on the news, looking bold, brave, and confident, his words elegant and captivating, making the listener hold their breath just to make sure they didn’t miss a single word of his story.
He was the same Aiden as usual—cold, stoic, and deadly beautiful, looking even more intimidating with the bruised jaw and ten stitches on the side of his forehead. But the world couldn’t help falling in love with him, right there and then.
That’s the thing about Aiden. He has that presence and charm, even on camera, and even when he’s not trying, that just makes people gravitate toward him, that makes people like him, makes them want him to like them, even when everything about him screams, Don’t mess with me.
Vivienne took Aiden’s story and old family photos and ran with it, destroying Kessler’s platform and family friendly agenda with it. She basically proved that Kessler is the biggest hypocrite on the planet, and doesn’t actually care or live by any of the issues he was campaigning for. Obviously, Kessler denied everything. His team worked quickly and efficiently at his response and recovery from this new revelation of information, and as far as I know, has no plans of dropping out of the race for governor.
We were all together when we heard Kessler say he has no intention of dropping out, and Charlotte asked, “He’ll never recover from this, right? People will think he’s an awful person or a phony or a hypocrite and won’t elect him if he chooses not to drop out? Right?”
Annalisa snorted when she replied. “Well, you never know—worse people have done worse things in this country and have still been elected to high places of power, so …”
We all deflated a bit after that, knowing it was true, but at least he’s under more public scrutiny, and won’t make any attempts to take my or Aiden’s life anytime soon.
Hopefully.
Now it’s Monday morning, and we have to go back to school and face the gossip mongers who have nothing better to do than gawk and stare at us. It doesn’t help that there are all sorts of rumors already swirling around before we even head to school.
A few days before school, Makayla Thomas, Kaitlyn’s best friend, saw me at the grocery store, and told everyone that my face is fucked up from botched plastic surgery. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when Charlotte told me about that rumor. Of all the things Makayla could’ve come up with, she went with the most basic and uncreative thing. But still, this means everyone’s going to try to get a look at me, but that’s nothing in comparison to what Aiden’s going to face when he steps in the building.