Negotiated between us and not by her?
“Because EPU will chew my ass out, thinking I’m the one who snuck you out of the office.”
“I’ll tell them you weren’t.” He gently holds my chin and tips my head back so he can look me in the eyes. “Or is there a reason you don’t want to spend the night with me? I thought that was part of the problem, that you weren’t getting enough time with me?”
“Part of the problem is feeling like I’m a dirty secret. First to her, then to you. Childhood trigger, but necessary evil right now, because I’mnotletting you drop out of the race.”
Those blue eyes stare into mine for a long, quiet moment. “I’m not the fricking president,” he says. “Paparazzi aren’t sitting outside the front gate.”
“Anymore.” I lean in for a kiss, to nuzzle noses with him. “It was crazy when you first got back.”
“No one’s going to know if you ride to work or home with me every day.”
“People notice more than you think they do. Everyone has cell phones. All it takes is for one disgruntled trooper to drop an anonymous tip to a reporter, and they start watching your neighborhood’s front gate and the office. Or, if a General Assembly aide gets a whiff of impropriety and feeds it to their boss to leverage against you. You’ll never get anything done if you’re too busy fighting a scandal.”
“Then we tell them the truth.”
His nonchalance floors me. “George.Seriously? Have youmetTennessee? We aren’t New York or Colorado. We’re California and Washington state’s worst frickingnightmare. And it would mean I have to quit or get fired.”
He rolls me on top of him, my hands braced on either side of his head, me staring down at him. “There’s another option,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I resign. I walk away, effective immediately.”
I know he’s not kidding, and that’s what fucking terrifies me. “You can’t resign. There’s too much to do.”
“And she’s dead.”
“Butyou’renot. You’re not dead, and there’s a lot of fucking good we can still do. If you quit now, maybe in the short-term you’ll feel relieved, but a month or a year from now, you’ll kick yourself in the ass that you did that, and that’ll transfer into resentment. Resentment that’ll taint whatever we have. I can’t handle that guilt and I’m not willing to be another emotional experiment for a sadist trying to throw shit at the wall to see what fucking sticks.”
He scowls. “You think Case manipulated us into this?”
Absolutely, I do, but I’m not going to admit that. “I think she facilitated. But I love her. And I love you. And I’m sick of trying to figure out the angles. Does it really matterwhywe’re in this thing if it’s what we both want? Let’s do this.Allof it. We kick ass for the election, we kick ass for the next four years, and then…”
“US Senate?” he asks.
“Ifyouwant to.Wecome before that, though. And that might mean we don’t get you elected to the Senate, if we can’t overcome prejudice.”
It takes me another twenty minutes of trying to coax him out of bed to realize he enjoys this game way too much. Helikesplaying sleepy octopus with me.
He likes holding on to me.
I freeze as the thought hits me, that he doesn’t want to let me go.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I sigh. “Too much to list. But not anything you did.” I lean over and kiss him. “Come on, Sir. We need to get you out of here.”
But we’re also both starving. I scramble us some eggs—because George would probably accidentally give us food poisoning or something if he tried to cook—and then I drive us back to the office.
Inmycar. Because it’s still raining, and I really don’t want to drive Casey’s car in the rain. I prefer my SUV and it’s all-wheel drive. My plan is once George is on his way home, then I’ll drive Casey back to my apartment so she can get her car. And we’ll be able to talk.
Hopefully.
The only problem with that plan is that while we do manage to get inside the building with minimal issues, with George telling the confused EPU officer on duty not to worry why no one saw him leave, much less why he didn’t have a security detail with him, Casey isn’t there.
I try calling her work cell, then her personal cell, but she doesn’t answer either.
