“Good. I’ll pull the car around and meet you up front.”

It’s a cool spring evening, and I pull on a hoodie before I go down to meet him.

The second I climb into his car, I can tell his mood has shifted. He’s more serious now. Somber, almost.

He waits for me to buckle, then starts driving.

“Where are we going?”

“I want you to understand something.”

I don’t ask any more questions, just ride in silence. After five minutes on the interstate, he reaches across the console, takes my hand, and presses my knuckles to his lips.

Something tightens in my chest. He looks so vulnerable.

We exit on the west side of the city, and a few turns later, he’s parking in the street of a subdivision of cute craftsman-style homes.

He points to the house across the street. “A couple lives there with their little girl. Lilly. They adopted her a couple of years ago.”

The house is dark except for the porch light and the gleam of the TV visible through the big picture window in the front. “Who are they?”

“Lilly’s my daughter.”

I startle. “Sorry, what?”

“Before Christmas, you asked me about Asia. I told you I didn’t talk about it, but that’s where I’d go back. If I could have a redo, I’d go back to the first night we slept together and I’d tell you all about Asia. I should have told you the truth then, but instead, you saw me with her and you pushed me away.”

“Who is she?”

“Asia is a stripper.” He cuts his eyes to me. “We hooked up one night, and she ended up pregnant.”

“Sam, I didn’t know.”

“You said you saw her at my house that night, after our first weekend together. She’d been planning to have an abortion. That night I came home and she was there, and she told me that she’d have the baby. That’s what you saw: me grateful that she planned to give me that gift.”

“So, she had the baby? You have a child?” How could I not know this? How could he have kept it a secret? Not just from me, but from everyone?

“Not long after that night, she told me that she went ahead and had an abortion after all. She asked me not to contact her. I was so angry I didn’t want to anyway. All this time, I thought she’d ended the pregnancy.”

We watch the couple stand, and the house goes dark as they shut out the remaining lights. I can tell this is hard for him, so I wait for him to finish his story.

“Christmas morning, she showed up at my house again,” Sam says. “This time drunk and rambling about how she’d sold her soul to a blond-haired devil. I think she meant Connor. She said she’d made an agreement to give the child up for adoption and tell me that she’d had an abortion. She changed her story again after she sobered up, but I hired a PI to find out the truth about her pregnancy.”

“Connor wouldn’t do that.” I shake my head, but my chest aches with the possibility. I was the one who told Connor about Asia. I have to believe he didn’t have anything to do with Sam’s child being taken away from him. “He’s your friend, and a good guy. How can you believe he’d do something so terrible?”

“He works for my father.”

“You think your father put him up to it?”

His brow wrinkles, and I can see all the frustration and hurt he’s holding there. He rubs the back of his neck. “That’s what I suspect. You don’t know what it’s like to have politics lead your life, Liz. For years, I’ve felt my relationship with my dad was one part son, two parts political pawn. My father had an online affair with the woman I love and paid off another woman to keep my child from me—that is the kind of world I live in. That’s the kind of world Sabrina lives in. Neither of us asked for it.”

“Of course not, but you don’t have to be their pawn, Sam.” I shake my head, as if that could slow my spinning mind. Sam has a baby, and his father may have had something to do with him losing her. I may have had something to do with him losing her. “Don’t let them manipulate you.”

He stares out his window silently for a beat. “My reasons for carrying on with this charade are complicated. I want to help Sabrina because I know what it’s like to be fucked over by a parent’s political aspirations. And I know it’s not fair to you. God knows we’ve been through enough without piling this on. But it’s temporary, and I think it will be worth it.”

“I understand,” I say softly.

“Do you?” he asks, turning to me. “Because it’s not selfless, Liz. I want the attention off the tape for myself too. I don’t want the world to know the truth. I’ll become a national joke. A spectacle. The scandal of my relationship with Christine would make this exponentially worse than it is now.” When I think he’s not going to say any more, he says, “Some day, when the right people can pull the right strings and I can meet my daughter, I want to be more than a sex tape. More than an embarrassment.”

“You need to talk to your father.” And I need to talk to Connor. “You deserve to know what happened and what role your family played in it.”

He flashes a twisted smile. “I’m not exactly on speaking terms with Mr. Candidate.”

“Consider it, Sam. You deserve to know the truth—the whole truth.” The words aren’t just for him. I’m telling myself too.

Chapter 17