“No!” I take a step back, putting some distance between us. “Matt, I want you to win this presidency.”
Determination flashes across his features. He fists his fingers into his palms, then growls, “And I want to win this presidency, Charlotte.”
I nod then, in this moment, both of us coming to an understanding. We both worked each other out of our systems for the last time. It’s over with. Done with.
So I step into his embrace and we just hug. Knowing this is goodbye. Not a goodbye as in me leaving the campaign again. But goodbye to . . . what could have been.
Politics aren’t simple, they are messy; there is always deceit and something lurking underneath. This time it is the fact that I love him, and I think he might have, in another time or place, come to love me, but you cannot do two things at once . . .
My mother says, sadly, that she doesn’t think there has ever been a truly happy First Lady in the White House or a president capable of making one happy. He holds the most powerful office in the land but it’s so consuming, love has no place in the White House.
Almost in a brotherly way, in the same way he kissed me when I was eleven, Matt kisses my cheek. He wraps his arms around me and I inhale him, closing my eyes, curling my hands around him, forcing my tears back because though a part of me wants to keep him, I want him to win, too.
There’s no time for this. We’ve got an election to win.
Everywhere we go, everyone seems to be watching Matt and whether he looks at me, smiles at me, or so much as stands close to me. Carlisle has been sending me looks, warning stares to avoid giving Gordon and Jacobs fodder. Still, Hewitt, as press manager, is playing the card of childhood friends, and Matt is so stubborn and secretly mad for giving the public such access to his private affairs. He has been blatantly using the press manager’s expert handling of the situation to keep me close and keep looking at me as much as he pleases.
Which in turn both pleases and distresses me.
We travel to Des Moines, Iowa; Manchester, New Hampshire; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Charleston, South Carolina; and one afternoon, we even go visit a tree called the President.
We stand before it, close to the wood sign that identifies it, in the middle of the giant forest of Sequoia National Park in California.
The tree is over three thousand years old, and the most amusing thing is the smaller sequoia trees surrounding it are called the Congress Group: two dense stands of medium-sized sequoias that represent the House and Senate.
“If you win and your ego starts getting too big, one trip here and it’ll be squashed back down. I’ve never felt so tiny next to a tree.” I look up its tall, gnarly trunk to the top, where its leaves rustle in the breeze.
Standing here, I marvel at how many people I’ve met and all the landscapes I’ve seen. I’ve been taken out of my D.C. bubble to see the colorful quilt that makes up our country.
It’s incredible, touring all the states, each unique in its own right, each having its own growth spurts and challenges. You don’t know America until you step back and really look at it.
It makes me want to see more of the world—to travel, do everything, see everything, be touched by everything and touch it back in return.
It helps me remind myself the reason I’m staying away from Matt . . . even when Matt still effortlessly carves time to spend moments alone with me.
37
BACK IN D.C.
Charlotte
We arrive in D.C. early the next day. My machine is flooded with phone calls.
My mother would love for me to spend the night home.
Kayla, Alan, and Sam want to see me.
I look around my apartment, then scroll through my phone contacts.
After denying it all. After everything. One night.
Tomorrow we vote, and that’s that.
But I cannot leave it at that.
I would like to tell him that I love him, but this is not something you do to someone when you know he may have such a hard, demanding path ahead. This is something you might do if he didn’t, if the public chose someone else, and maybe then he’s free . . . to choose me.
But I don’t want to imagine anyone not choosing him, denying what he has to give. I also am human and no matter how much I want to make a difference, I want things for me too. Those things have narrowed down until all I am aware of wanting, every second of the day, is him, in any way I can have him, even if it’s just a tiny piece.
Tonight I could have him whole, all of him. And I want him—I want to hold nothing back, except the words. But I can tell him with every kiss that I cannot help the way I tremble, the way being touched by him makes me feel like the only thing in the world for me is him in those moments.
I sit down and think of him, and before I can think better of it, I text him and ask if I can see him.
I don’t know what it is I want, but I know I cannot go to his house, nor could Matt come here. He’s too closely watched, and I’ll be too tempted, and it won’t be fair. It needs to stop at that last night we shared, but I’m no longer going to be his campaign scheduler. After tomorrow, I’m not sure where to go from here, and if I’ll ever see him again.
We meet at the Abraham Lincoln Memorial. We sit by the steps, gazing out at D.C. as the wind whips through my hair and stings my cheeks.
“You could really win tomorrow,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“I want you to.”
“Do you?” He studies my features.
Silence. I shiver. “What’s done is done, what isn’t done isn’t done, I guess.” I shrug. “We did all we could, didn’t we?”
“That’s right.”
Before I know it, he shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it over my shoulders. “Charlotte,” he says softly, “we wouldn’t be here without you.”
“Yes, we would,” I assure him.
We wait for a young couple to walk past us, then he inches his hand close to mine, on the steps, under the fall of his jacket, and drags his thumb over the back of mine. “If I lose, I want you to go out on an official date with me.”
I drop my head and suddenly feel more emotional than I’ve ever been, a whole year of campaigning both for him and against my feelings for him hitting me hard. I don’t want him to lose, but I hate yearning for it, just for this second. “That’s really unfair.” My voice cracks.
My face is suddenly wet. I don’t know why I’m crying; I just am.
“The chances of you losing are this big,” I say with my fingers.
I’m sniffling now, and I stand and tuck his jacket closer around my shoulders so I can hide my face inside the collar.
He stands too, stepping closer, his voice tender. “Show me my chances again,” he says.
I clutch the jacket closed with one hand and lift the other, making the space between my fingers slim.
He takes my fingers in his hands and widens the space between them just a little. “I’d say more like this.” He smiles down at me, trying to cheer me up, and I love him all the more for it, because the smile doesn’t reach his eyes at all.
“I love you. I love you and your silly glasses,” I say, widening my fingers as much as I can, and then I add, laughing and crying, “I can’t even use my arms to show you.”
One second his smile is there, the next it’s replaced with a look of fierce emotion. His eyes roil with it—with something I’d never seen in Matt’s eyes before. Impotence.
I start to leave, ducking my head into the jacket to hide myself from another group of passersby. I hear him start after me before they stop him.
“Holy shit, Matt Hamilton!” the guy says. “I mean, sir . . . it’s a pleasure, a real pleasure.”
I hear Matt greet them, but I can feel his eyes on me as I slip my arms into the sleeves of his jacket and use it as a shield against the cold and leave.
I take the train to my apartment. The first thing I do when I arrive is splash cold water onto my face. I’m drying it when I hear a k
nock.
Dropping the towel, I open the door, and Matt stands on the other side. His hands are at his side, his eyes a little wild.
I gasp. “Matt!” I glance around the hall, relieved to find it empty. “What are you doing here? My neighbor could see you—”
One second Matt is on the other side of the door, the next he’s shutting it behind him and the back of my head is in his hands, and his lips come crashing down on mine.
38
ELECTION DAY
Charlotte
The next morning I wake up alone in bed. Across the floor, only a few feet from the bed and next to my clothes, is Matt’s jacket.
His jacket—Election Day!
I leap to my feet and turn on the TV as I hurry to change. Thirty minutes later, I’m in line at my polling place. I watch the line of voters and wonder who each is voting for. Had voting ever been this exciting? There’s a charged anticipation in the air, or maybe it’s just me, my fingers itching when I finally slide behind the privacy curtain and stare at the voting sheet.
For one second, my chest hurts. I know what I’m losing. I know what I’m choosing. But the urge to see him win overcomes my own selfishness, and I mark an X next to his name.
I stare at the ballot for a moment.
I missed voting for the last president when I was stuck home with the flu. It’s the first time in my life I actually vote, and the eleven-year-old who promised to help him if he ever ran for president can hardly believe that today, I’m standing here and voting for him.
I feel an odd sense of loss as I exit and yet distract myself as I try to make sure no one is following me when I take the train, then walk a few blocks to The Jefferson Hotel.
Detouring to the lobby restroom for a moment, I pull out my makeup kit. I carry only lipstick, blush, and mascara, but I dab a little of each on my face.
I didn’t need to add blush. A red tint stains my cheeks, and my eyes look a little rounder, very dark, and very shiny. Oh god. It’s almost as if I’m afraid to go upstairs, walk into the room, and have everyone see right through me.
Exhaling for courage, I step out, take the elevators, and head to Matt’s suite.
The last time we were in D.C., we hosted a fundraiser at the ballroom of this hotel. A lifetime ago and at the same time, only yesterday.
I knock on the door and when Alison opens it, my eyes fix on a tall, large figure standing by the window across the room with his hands in his pockets. He’s the one farthest from the door, and there are dozens of people between us. But it doesn’t matter; space doesn’t matter.
He sees me; I see him.
His gaze looks very male as our eyes lock. It’s as dark as it was last night, and it makes my stomach constrict painfully. Warmth spreads all over me as I step inside. Will he be able to tell that he flusters me?
Of course he will.
I greet everybody as I walk into the suite, leaving him until last.
“Matt.” I smile at him, excited the day has finally come.
“Charlotte.”
He returns my smile, but the way he says my name sounds gruff.
He doesn’t look frazzled like the rest of us. He looks like he just left the spa and wellness center on one of the lower floors.
God, I envy his ability to keep his cool.
But one year is enough time to get to know somebody and I know that hungry shadow in his dark eyes too well, and I know that his mind is working full speed.
Maybe speculating on the exit polls as we hear the newscasters in the background, as the seconds tick by, and the minutes turn to hours into what feels like the longest day of the year.
As I sit on one of the couches next to Alison and Mark and alternate between watching Carlisle smoke and glancing at the TV, I am acutely aware of Matt and where he sits and breathes, and every inch that he physically occupies in this room.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him lift his eyes and smile a satisfied smile, and it makes me squirm and remember more than that.
He’s back to reading something, Jack’s head on his lap, Matt’s hand on top of Jack’s furry black head. I remember that hand last night . . .
We locked the world out when he closed the door.
I remember him backing me into my bedroom, his hands easing off his jacket, slipping under my shirt. Possessive and firm, that’s how his touch felt. His kiss. I needed him so much that when he stripped me, I wanted to rush, clawing at him as I stripped him too. But Matt wasn’t in a hurry.
He kissed me and tenderly shh’d me as he lay me down on the bed, and he took me in in the moonlight that came in through my window as he caressed me.
I melted into a pure white-hot need as he kissed my mouth, my cheeks, nibbled a line down my throat. His mouth moved around and over the peaks of my breasts, all over my stomach, to the insides of my thighs, and then it spent a long time between them.
His tongue drove inside me with slow, deep flicks that seemed to be what he needed to quench his thirst.
His hands held my thighs open as I convulsively tried to close them shut, the feelings too intense.
Hot and firm, he used his lips and suctioned with just the right amount of pressure to unravel me.
I unraveled.
I felt like I was cut from one string into a thousand. I came against his mouth with his hair between my fingers, but even then, he seemed hungry. His eyes, as he came up, glowed dark brown as he stroked his fingers down my face and captured my mouth in a crushing kiss that curled my toes.
I remember that hunger. How it built and built and didn’t diminish. Not after an hour, naked under the sheets with him, nor even after another hour.
And I remember the sound I made after he made me orgasm with his fingers and then, finally, slipped his hands into the nook at the small of my back and clenched my bottom as he drove inside me. I groaned his name. And I remember the way he smiled against my mouth, a smile of relief, and then moved, groaning my name, telling me I’m classic, so classic.
I remember how we did that, all night.
Him, whispering things so gruffly I didn’t understand what he said, only heard the hunger and tenderness in his voice and the rake of his teeth on my skin as we got rougher, more desperate, our breaths faster.
I remember it all, today, of all days, and I feel my cheeks start to burn bright red as I try to push it all out of my mind.
Amazing how I can forget sometimes what I dreamt, my apartment keys, my cell phone, but not a single detail about him.
Things from the past come to the surface. Holding his jacket for him, accidentally sipping from his coffee cup, spilling my folders at his feet and him kneeling down to help me.
I lift my gaze to find him reading the daily copy of the Washington Post. He’s wearing his glasses.
When he lifts his gaze and looks at me above the gold rims, his eyes darken and my breasts suddenly feel sensitive under my bra. I lick my lips and they feel extra sensitive after being kissed by him all night.
Matt’s gaze falls briefly to my lips, and I can’t help but drop my gaze to his mouth, which looks full and firm. Suddenly all I want is to feel it again, firm and hungry, his tongue ravenous against mine.
I don’t know how I’m going to do it.
How it will be possible to fall out of love with him.
But that’s what I need to do. Because this was only temporary, because that date he proposed won’t be happening.
I need to forget him and I need to put as much of an effort into the task as I did into his campaign.
Still, he’s staring at me across the table with those dark eyes that look both warm and tender.
With a jolt, I remember his jacket strewn across the floor of my apartment along with my lingerie.
The thought of someone seeing that I have it in my possession makes me worry, and my eyes widen and I leap to my feet.
Matt frowns and pulls off his glasses, standing instinctively as if to help me.
“I forgot I have somethi
ng for you,” I say.
I can see he doesn’t like the idea of me leaving this suite, but I don’t give him time to stop me as I hurry to the door.
“Stay away from the paps and if they question you, you know the drill,” Carlisle says behind me.
“‘No comment,’” I assure him as I swing open the door.
My eyes meet Matt’s, and I feel that familiar skip of my heartbeat. I close the door behind me, the nerves about today’s results multiplying by the second.
I keep my head down to avoid any paparazzi, which I thankfully manage to do as I head to my apartment to get Matt’s jacket.
Once I reach my building, I hurry inside and spot it in the same place I left it.
My heart does that flip again.
I walk toward it slowly, almost as if I expect it to bite me like a cobra. But that’s not really why suddenly time seems to slow down—it’s because I suddenly don’t want to take it back.
I want to slip his jacket around me one more time. I want to wear it and hug myself and pretend that my arms are his arms. I want to tuck my face back into its collar and breathe in his scent.
The urge to do this is so enormous. I stifle the impulse with a lot of effort, calling back my professional side, the side that knows last night was not just unplanned, but a mistake.
So I take the jacket in my hands and fold it neatly into a department store shopping bag, then I head back to The Jefferson Hotel, determined to be professional and to put last night behind me as our farewell.
39
YOUR NAME IS CHARLOTTE
Matthew
There’s a calm I didn’t expect as we wait for the popular vote results to come in.
Charlotte brought me my jacket a while ago. Hell, I didn’t want it. I wanted a piece of me with her. I can’t shake her off and when it comes to her, I’m selfish enough that I don’t want her to shake me off either. Her concern for others keeps mystifying me. She’s been more concerned about a scandal than I have all this time. More concerned with making sure that the man the country sees is the one she makes me want to be.