CHAPTER 32
SEBASTIAN
An oversized calendarwas tacked to the wall with "Election Day" circled in bright red ink. Every time I glanced at it, I felt a tightening behind my sternum and popped another Tums.
We could do everything right and still lose.
We’d know one way or the other in five days.
In the meantime, there was work to be done. Like walking a regional coordinator through our final get-out-the-vote push. I switched my phone from my right ear to my left, reaching for a folder at the corner of my desk containing the specific tactics for her district, when David barreled around the corner and into my office.
I held up a finger in the universal gesture for “gimme a minute,” but he shook his head, his eyes wide and his face leeched of color.
In the months we’d worked together, I’d never seen him like this.
“I have to call you back,” I told the woman, hanging up before she could respond.
“Conference room,” David gasped. “Now.”
“What—”
“Now, Sebastian.” He turned and walked briskly back from the way he’d come, clearly expecting me to follow.
I launched out of my chair and chased after him.
What the hell was going on? Had Merrick conceded? Or worse—pulled some new stunt that would cost us the ground we’d gained?
Through the conference room's glass wall, I could see Michael and Maya standing in front of the TV, their eyes glued to Senator Wyatt Hastings, who stood behind a podium under the giant U.S. flag at Rowes Wharf in Boston.
Behind him, just off to the side, was Celine. Since I last saw her, Celine’s dark hair had been lightened to a shimmery blonde, and despite it being early December in New England, she was tan and glowing.
David held the door open, his eyes fixed on me rather than the television.
“What’s going on?”
“My friend at the State House just texted. The rumor is Hastings is about to?—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence before Wyatt cleared his throat and thanked those assembled before him for being there on such short notice. He continued offering platitudes and smiles, sounding witty, charming, and in complete control of himself and the situation—in other words, the exact opposite of the mean, manipulative drunk who’d shown up on my doorstep last week.
It was the persona I’d helped shape. Had coached, really, in the early days when Wyatt had a tendency to talk too fast when he was nervous and swallow his consonants.
“This was a decision I’ve thought about for a long time," he said, his voice smooth and commanding. "I want to be honest with the American people about who I am, because I believe that’s what this moment requires.”
On screen, a murmur rippled through the crowd.
I knew Wyatt’s rhetorical patterns and tells better than anyone. Not just the words he spoke, but what they really meant—what secret meanings and hidden truths he frequently hid just underneath. And those two phrases, stacked together like that, meant he was about to drop a major bomb.
Holy shit.
He was going to do it.
He was actually going to do it.
My eyes flicked briefly to Celine. She wore an expression that said if she was going to be made a fool of, she was going to be the most photogenic fool anyone had ever seen.
I gripped the back of an empty chair in front of me.
“For several years,” Wyatt continued in that rich baritone of his that always sounded so good in sound bites, “I was in a relationship with a man. A relationship I kept private—not because I was ashamed of him, but because I understood what that disclosure would cost me. It’s a decision many queer people have wrestled with. One that weighs on too many of us because we live in a society where who we love can be the difference between life and death, work and unemployment, a supportive, loving family and being disowned. But I refuse to hide my truth any longer.”
