Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston Page 0,127

her son engages in on the sacred grounds of the house our forefathers built. Followed by: Senator Oscar Diaz, responding via satellite, that President Claremont’s primary value is upholding the Constitution, and that the White House was built by slaves, not our forefathers.

A picture: the expression on Rafael Luna’s face when he looks up from his paperwork to see Alex standing in the doorway of his office.

“Why do you even have a staff?” Alex says. “Nobody has ever tried to stop me from walking straight in here.”

Luna has his reading glasses on, and he looks like he hasn’t shaved in weeks. He smiles, a little apprehensive.

After Alex decoded the message in the email, his mother called Luna directly and told him, no questions asked, she would grant him full protection from criminal charges if he helped her take Richards down. He knows his dad has been in touch too. Luna knows neither of his parents are holding a grudge. But this is the first time they’ve spoken.

“If you think I don’t tell every hire on their first day that you have a free pass,” he says, “you do not have an accurate sense of yourself.”

Alex grins, and he reaches into his pocket and produces a packet of Skittles, lobbing them underhand onto Luna’s desk.

Luna looks down at them.

The chair is next to his desk these days, and he pushes it out.

Alex hasn’t gotten a chance to thank him yet, and he doesn’t know where to start. He doesn’t even feel like it’s the first order of business. He watches Luna rip open the packet and dump the candy out onto his papers.

There’s a question hanging in the air, and they can both see it. Alex doesn’t want to ask. They just got Luna back. He’s afraid of losing him again to the answer. But he has to know.

“Did you know?” he finally says. “Before it happened, did you know what he was going to do?”

Luna takes his glasses off and sets them down grimly on his blotter.

“Alex, I know I … completely destroyed your faith in me, so I don’t blame you for asking me,” he says. He leans forward on his elbows, his eye contact hard and deliberate. “But I need you to know I would never, ever intentionally let something like that happen to you. Ever. I had no idea until it came out. Same as you.”

Alex releases a long breath.

“Okay,” he says. He watches Luna lean back, looks at the fine lines on his face, slightly heavier than they were before. “So, what happened?”

Luna sighs, a hoarse, tired sound in the back of his throat. It’s a sound that makes Alex think about what his dad told him at the lake, about how much of Luna is still hidden.

“So,” he says, “you know I interned for Richards?”

Alex blinks. “What?”

Luna barks a small, humorless laugh. “Yeah, you wouldn’t have heard. Richards made pretty damn sure to get rid of the evidence. But, yeah, 2000. I was nineteen. It was back when he was AG in Utah. One of my professors called in a favor.”

There were rumors, Luna explains, among the low-level staffers. Usually the female interns, but occasionally an especially pretty boy—a boy like him. Promises, from Richards: mentorship, connections, if “you’d just get a drink with me after work.” A strong implication that “no” was unacceptable.

“I had nothing back then,” Luna says. “No money, no family, no connections, no experience. I thought, ‘This is your only way to get your foot in the door. Maybe he means it.’”

Luna pauses, taking a breath. Alex’s stomach is twisting uncomfortably.

“He sent a car, made me meet him at a hotel, got me drunk. He wanted—he tried to—” Luna grimaces away from finishing the sentence. “Anyway, I got away. I remember I got home that night, and the guy I was renting a room with took one look at me and handed me a cigarette. That’s when I started smoking, by the way.”

He’s been looking down at the Skittles on his desk, sorting the reds from oranges, but here he looks up at Alex with a bitter, cutting smile.

“And I went back to work the next day like nothing happened. I made small talk with him in the break room, because I wanted it to be okay, and that’s what I hated myself the most for. So the next time he sent me an email, I walked into his office and told him that if he didn’t leave me alone, I’d