“That’s really fucking unfair and you know it. I didn’t want you there today for any of those reasons—I wanted you there today because I like having you there with me, because I love you, because this was an event that was important to me and I wanted to share it with you. I thought you wanted to be there! I’m sorry I put you on the spot, but the timing and setting seemed perfect.” He remembered something, one of the reasons he’d thought it was okay to bring it up today in the first place. “Plus, you talked about it at that city council meeting a few years ago, I don’t know why it’s so different.”

Olivia clenched her jaw so hard he could see it from across the hallway.

“It was my choice to talk at that city council meeting, and I had the freedom to talk about it in my own way. And that was before my name was already in the fucking tabloids! No one cared one iota about me two years ago at the Berkeley City Council meeting! But now, today, if I said one single thing in public about my arrest, too many fucking people would care! They would ask me questions, they would write articles about it for weeks, they would call my office over and over again, and I don’t want any of that. I’ve never wanted any of that.”

He couldn’t ignore the implications of that. He really hoped she wasn’t saying what it felt like she was saying.

“I thought … from what we talked about in Hawaii, anyway … that you saw a future for us. Did you think that you and I would stay together and you would stay in the public eye—as much as you don’t want that, that’s what would happen—and you would never talk about it?”

“Yes!” she yelled. She stopped and took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t get that far in thinking about it. But what I do know is that if I ever did address it, I wouldn’t do it your way, where you just leap into something without thinking about the implications, say the first thing that comes to your mind, and smile and charm your way out of every hole you dig yourself in.”