“Which allows me to focus on you and your talking points,” Henry said, ignoring her.
“Looks like a miserable day for both of us,” Iris said, moving out of the room. “But at least my teachers aren’t you,” she added. She shot Henry a saccharine smile. “It’s always good to look on the bright side.”
“Huh,” Henry said as she walked out. “She was snarkier than usual.”
“She overheard what you said last night,” Finn told him. “And was upset enough to go to her family. She’d left her ring behind.” Even just the memory of seeing it there had his heart twisting. All over a few careless words from a man who knew how much weight words carried. Henry’s career relied on knowing the right things to say, the rightwayto say them. It was frustrating that he so rarely thought to use that insight to mind his own words. “I know you don’t intend to hurt her, Hen. But that doesn’t stop it from happening when you’re so careless.”
That managed to get through to his campaign manager. Was it because he was having a truly human moment of regret? Not likely. But a broken engagement this far into his campaign would be a nightmare.
“I forgot how emotional mermaids can be.”
Finn sighed. “I don’t thinksheis being emotional. Ithink you’re being an ass. And it needs to stop. I don’t want to lose her.”
Henry’s head tipped to the side, watching him with eyes that Finn knew saw him all too well.
“Are you catching feelings for your fiancée?”
“Isn’t that the goal of a relationship?”
“I guess. But it complicates things.”
“How?”
“Because if you’re falling for your fiancée, your focus will be more on her.”
“This far into the campaign, Henry, I don’t think we have that much to worry about.”
“My polls don’t suggest you should feel so confident about that.”
Henry handed him his tablet, letting him look through the polls as well as the compiled document of social media comments one of the interns had put together.
Henry excused himself for a phone call as Finn scrolled.
The thing was, this time, Finn wasn’t convinced that Henry was right. The more he read, the more he saw things that he’d heard Iris grumble about: him coming off as fake, as surface-level, as a PR shell.
The people didn’t relate to Finn on a personal level, even if they did agree with his politics.
The deeper he dug, the more he saw what Henry had been hiding from him when it came to issues with his image.
In fact, the only gushing comments he could find had been on the pictures that had been posted of him and Iris at the parade.
He actually looks relaxed and happywas the most liked comment beneath the article.
All during his massage and acupuncture, all he could focus on were the comments saying that they’d seen him a hundred times and still couldn’t get a feel for who he was as a person.
The scariest part was that Finn himself was starting to lose those genuine, human sides of himself as well.
He didn’t have time for hobbies, for leisure, for nurturing the side of him that was a person, not just a politician.
He was able to move without excruciating pain by the time the acupuncturist—who used magic-infused needles for an extra oomph—left, but Henry still insisted on the shot before he headed out with Arden and Monty to pick out an outfit for Finn that would make him seem casual and approachable while still trustworthy.
He imagined Iris was spending her few stolen moments reading, so he went into the bathroom, took a shower, then stood in front of the mirror in his towel, practicing answers to the questions Henry thought would be most likely to come up at the studio.
He didn’t realize he wasn’t alone until Iris sighed.
Turning, he saw her leaning in the doorway.
“What?” he asked.
