The President's Wife - Kathy Myme Page 0,60
his campaign began.
“The night before last…” David’s expression softens. “It means something to me. It meant something then, and it means something now.”
“You said it was a mistake.” My voice is accusatory.
“It was a mistake,” he says, nodding.
I narrow my eyes. “Then why are you even here?”
“It was a mistake,” he repeats. “But it was the best mistake of my life, Veronica. Apart from this one time a cute intern bumped into me with a coffee she was carrying…”
I stare at him, my eyes almost blank. What is he trying to say?
“Hear me out,” David continues. “All my life, I’ve felt the need to maintain perfect control. Control over everything.”
“Control how?”
“I need to be the one in charge,” he says. I can see he’s struggling to talk about this. Something about it is clearly painful. “I need to be the one making decisions. The master architect behind every plan.”
“Like in your secret garden?”
“Exactly,” he says. “Just like the garden. It’s my job to maintain order. At all times.”
I wait for him to continue, folding my arms. I have no idea where this explanation is going, but I’m not sure I like the sound of it.
“My father wasn’t a good man, Veronica,” he tells me. “My childhood was… less than idyllic. I don’t talk about it much for the cameras. People assume that your family's mistakes are yours.”
“What happened to you, David?”
“Poverty happened,” he says, looking grim. “My father made mistakes. He enjoyed alcohol and gambling. He enjoyed them a little too much.”
“Was he an alcoholic?”
“Well, yes, but that wasn’t the extent of our problems,” he says. “The problem came when he wasted all our money betting. For years, even after he’d lost his job. My poor mother was beside herself. Some nights she didn’t eat so that I’d get something to eat.”
“That’s awful, David,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he tells me. “Just do better, if you ever have children. Don’t let them worry about whether they’ll have a roof over their heads.”
I’m silent. I can’t ever imagine this David - in his expensive suits with his lavish, lawyer’s lifestyle - to ever have suffered like that. To ever have experienced that kind of hardship.
“That’s why I need control, Veronica,” he pushes. “That’s why I need to maintain my authority at all times.”
“So you wanted to control me,” I reply, frowning. “You got mad because you couldn’t.”
It’s about what I’d expected. It’s obvious he’s a control freak. But I stand by my principles and the reason I left in the first place. I can’t live like that. I can’t play by his imaginary set of rules.
I suck in a deep breath. “David, I-”
“It’s not like that,” he insists. “Not quite. Yes, in part, I wanted… no, I want to control you. I want you to submit to my authority, as all things should do.”
“But?” I’m really hoping there’s a but.
“It’s not you that I got mad at, Veronica.”
“What?” I’m confused. If it’s not me that he’s angry at, then why run away like that after we slept together? Why brush me off like that the next day?
He breaks eye contact. “I’m mad… at myself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If there’s one thing I pride myself on,” he says, “it’s maintaining my own self-control. At all times. I’ve always been good at it, whatever temptations come my way.”
I remember hearing something about that. When the press went to dig up dirt on David during his campaign, they found very little. All that wild stuff you’re supposed to do during your college years… David had done none of it.
He’d lived a clean, respectable life. At the time, some people wondered if that was because he’d always had his sights on the presidency. If he’d been training for it his whole life.
“That was,” David speaks, “until I met you.”
“Me?”
“You’ve made me lose control more times than I can count.” He paces the room in huge strides, like a caged tiger. “For one, kissing you that night in the restaurant…”
“You said that kiss was necessary for the cameras.”
“I lied.” He doesn’t look apologetic, only angry. “I just couldn’t control myself. I needed to kiss you. It was entirely selfish.”
He needed to kiss me… that badly? How am I meant to live with that kind of information? It’s been clear for a while that he finds me attractive. But to lose control like that…
“And?” I ask, pushing. “That time… the time after Trevor attacked me…?” I can’t bring myself to say the words.
“The time we slept