She’d never in her life been more relieved to have a gaggle of children interrupt her as Lucy and several of her cousins came barrelling down the hallway to hide from Alex, who was counting down to seek them.
The moment had been broken, Sutton had been able to flee and take a minute—or ten—to herself to regain her bearings on this earth, but when she’d regained her composure and returned to the party, Charlotte wasn’t there.
Not in the main entertaining area; not in the entire Spencer home.
Maybe not even in the state, for all Sutton knew.
After Charlotte uttered those words, Sutton could only imagine that Charlotte would run right back to D.C. That she would bury herself in work, reminding herself of her life’s purpose and determinedly putting her momentary insanity behind her.
Hell, for Sutton’s best guess, Charlotte may never even talk to her again. Sutton could imagine a world where Charlotte was so terrified and galled and disgusted by what she’d said that she would have to erase every trace of it from her life, which meant erasing Sutton, too.
She’d done it once before, so Sutton absolutely could imagine her doing it again.
What shecouldn’timagine was that Charlotte had actually said she wouldn’t run for president!
“She can’t have meant it,” Sutton insisted aloud for at least the tenth time in the last couple of hours, as she paced in her childhood bedroom.
“Maybe she did?” Regan insisted, though without confidence, from where she was now sitting on Sutton’s bed.
On almost any other night, Sutton would have been able to take some amusement from their current arrangement. Growing up, Regan had spent the night at Sutton’s houseeveryNew Year’s Eve. After the countdown, as guests started dwindling, Regan and Sutton would come up to her bedroom and stay up for almost the entire night.
They hadn’t had a “sleepover” in this sort of fashion since they’d been teenagers. They hadn’t had to; they’d shared their apartment, where they both had proper bedrooms, for years, and whenever Regan had spent the night at her place in D.C., which had happened a handful of times over the last few years, Regan slept in the guest room. And, the biggest thing, they never stayed up past two o’clock in the morning anymore.
But Sutton was so wired she didn’t think she could sleep even if she wanted to. She wasn’t sure she could sleep even if she took an entire bottle of melatonin.
Regan had scared the hell out of her a few hours ago.
As Sutton had predicted, Lucy hadn’t been able to quite make it until midnight, having fallen asleep near eleven. True to her promise, Sutton had gone into Lucy’s room to wake her up to ring in the new year.
Truthfully, Sutton hadn’t even truly left Lucy’s room after putting her in her bed. Sutton’s own bedroom was now technically a guest room, but very little had changed in it, other than the fact that she’d cleaned out all of her teenage memorabilia. Lucy’s room was the bedroom right next to her own, one of the two rooms her parents kept as guest rooms specifically designed for their grandkids. Lucy, however, was the only one of her parents’ grandchildren who didn’t live locally, and therefore she had crowned this room as “hers.”
Oftentimes, when Sutton was seeking a peaceful sense of calm—somewhere that made every other one of her life problems seem small, a place that gave her clarity—she would sit at the foot of Lucy’s bed while she slept.
Listening to the quiet, even breaths of her daughter, watching the way she snuggled into her stuffed animal, settled Sutton. These quiet moments typically gave her strength and focus when any other part of her world felt like it had been thrown into uncertainty.
Tonight, for the first time since Lucy had been born, even this didn’t quite do the trick.
She’d left Lucy’s room after waking her up at midnight, getting a sleepy hug and exclamation in response, before her daughter had—as Sutton had known she would—fallen right back asleep a minute later.
As she’d quietly shut the door behind her, she’d almostscreamedwhen she saw Regan waiting for her in the hallway, arms crossed over her chest.
Sutton had slammed her hand over her racing heart. “What are youdoingthere, creep?!”
“Waiting for you! I’ve seen you for, like, five minutes the entire evening. Charlotte completely absconded into the night,” Regan finished listing off the inarguable details before throwing her arms into the air as she whisper-yelled, “and I need to know what the fuck is going on!”
“I don’t evenknowwhat the fuck is going on!” Sutton whisper-yelled back before dropping her head into her hands. Whatever calm she’d found in the last hour was completely shot yet again.
Then I won’t. What had Charlotte meant by that?!
“I told Charlotte that I couldn’t really be with her,” Sutton had said, voice slightly muffled from where her head rested in her hands.
“Sutton! What?!” Regan demanded, stepping closer as she dropped her hands to Sutton’s wrists, gently tugging them away from her face.
Sutton stared helplessly at her best friend’s baffled, demanding expression as she stated, “And she told me that if I can’t be with her because of her political office, then… then she won’t run for president.”
Yeah. Saying the words aloud had done absolutely nothing to make them seem more real. It still felt like Sutton was living in an alternate reality.
“She saidWHAT?!” Regan yelled this time, with not a hint of a whisper.
