able to afford a small condo for myself in North Tampa.
I want to explain to you why I did what I did, but not in this letter. I want to see your face. I want to hear your voice. I left my address and phone number at the bottom. Please come see me. If you can’t, call me. I know I messed up a lot, but I still love you more than life itself. You will always be my little boy.
I love you Ethan.
Mom
The stamp on the letter indicated that it had been written four years ago which meant that the chances of her living at the same place were slim to none, especially if she’d purchased that condo that she’d mentioned. But, I needed to get out of town for the weekend anyhow and couldn’t think of a better reason than confronting my mother.
I didn’t know if it was the physician in me, but I needed answers. There was nothing more frustrating than having a little patient come in, obviously in distress, with a set of symptoms that pointed to nothing I could find in medical journals or through contacts with colleagues. As hard as I worked to help alleviate my patients’ distress, I wanted the same for myself. I simply wanted to know why she’d chosen to kill John Ezra instead of leaving with me in the middle of the night like she’d originally proposed.
I tucked the letter back into the envelope and began to collect my things. Then, behind the letter, I inserted the little slip of paper that Gia had left.
-----
Alexandra
“Rick, no.” I pushed at his chest until he moved over to his side next to me on the bed, an obvious erection tented in his shorts. “I can’t do this.”
“She says again for the fourth night in a row.” He readjusted himself until the front of his pants went flat. “I don’t know what you want Alexandra. You’ve been rejecting me left and right, yet you were able to put out for Dr. Stewart all over the damn city.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
I stood, but didn’t offer a response.
“How do you think all of this makes me feel?” he asked, hopping from the bed. “We put two years into this thing, Alexandra, and you didn’t even have the common decency to say anything to me about Dr. Stewart. I had to find out on my own.”
I hated that he was simultaneously correct and an asshole at the same time. Even with the bland feelings that I’d had for him, if he’d done the same to me, I would have been spewing the exact message. I wasn’t sure if I would have been devastated, but there would still be an underlying feeling of breach of contract.
I’d always seen my relationship with Roderick as a business transaction of sorts. He was virtually a nobody in the senate hopefuls until it was revealed that he was seriously dating General James Miller’s daughter. Naturally, after that, I’d assumed that I was his ticket to winning and that I would have to carry on with the muted marriage, children, and life so that he could be successful. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but I’d understood it.
In between all of that, I’d assumed that he’d never developed any feelings for me over those two years, and that my time with Ethan was all about my liberation, not my personal responsibility to Roderick. I still couldn’t believe how much I’d ruined everything by failing to realize that I would have never overcome my fears by keeping my emancipation in the dark. There was no point in change if I was still pretending to be the same person in the eyes of others.
“I’m really sorry Rick,” I said with as much sincerity as I could. “You didn’t deserve that. I was, without a doubt, extremely selfish. But, I can only make things right by being honest with you now, and I honestly can’t make you happy.”
“This was never about happiness.” He walked around the bottom edge of the bed until we were only a few feet apart. “This was about business. You reneged on your part of our contract.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Alexandra, this is politics,” he explained. “I’ve wanted to go into politics for as long as I could remember, but even with all of my family’s wealth, I would still lose out to the guys whose last names were all people needed to hear in order to vote for them. You’d assume that with