He pulls back and his eyebrows pull together. “You work for me.”

“I’m underneath you right now, Matthew.”

He smiles, shakes his head chidingly, then eases back to eye me as he smooths a hand to brush my hair back.

“I like how real you are, Charlotte. The way you stand up for yourself, and the way you stand up for others. I like how honest and hardworking you are. How sweet you are.” He captures my lips between his, brushing his hand along my forehead again, looking into my eyes.

“Can you blame me for wanting to protect you? I never thought I’d meet a woman like you. That pushed all of my buttons like you do. I want you against any hard surface available and I want to shield you from everything at the same time. I never expected you. And I didn’t expect you now.”

It takes a few seconds to find my voice. “Did you really believe you’d never meet anyone who would be herself with you?”

“Most worry too much about putting up a front they believe matches mine.”

“I don’t.”

“I know. Which makes you rarer than anything to me. So precious.” His voice thickens as he expresses his appreciation.

I grab his jaw and kiss him, and Matt grabs my hands and pins them over my head, kissing me, softly but with an underlying urgency and force. And then I’m getting disrobed and taken, in a bed I’ve always slept on alone, by the only man I’ve ever really wanted and the only one I can’t really ever have. Not if he wins this.

But I take what I can get, moaning softly beneath his kiss as his roaming hands move over me.

25

THE LAST PRIMARY

Charlotte

The next weekend, Matt visits his grandfather in Virginia.

I’m sort of glad for the distance. We’re sinking too deep. Though a part of me wants to get in deeper, deep enough to drown, I know that’s not the best for him, for me, for anyone.

Matt is a stallion in bed. We spent all night touching, coming, and talking at my place. Neither of us slept, and neither of us seemed to want to sleep. I didn’t want him to go.

I am addicted to the times we spend together.

I keep wanting more.

But at this stage in the campaign, we’re not playing with fire. Our secret, scandalous affair is a nuclear bomb, and any slipup in keeping it hidden will be the match that sets it off.

My parents have me over for dinner one evening and grill me on the campaign. I know, ever since growing up in their household, that in politics, discretion is a must. The last of the primaries are tomorrow, and Dad says he heard Matt had been courted by both parties but had declined.

“You’re doing a good job combating decades and decades of power shifts between the two parties, but is it going to be enough, Charlotte? What’s Matt plan if they attack, find some scandal in his past?”

“Dad, I’m not his shadow and I’m not a mind reader, either—I’m busy helping organize his schedule and that’s that.”

“Will we be invited to the fundraiser for literacy he’ll be holding near campaign close?” Mom asks.

“You’re on the list. Everyone’s on the list, even the whole of Hollywood and Nashville; Matt loves music and he loves, loves scientists and tech geeks. The campaign has had endorsements so far from nearly six dozen public figures. Even Mayweather posted on his social media with an image of piles and piles of money and a note that read ‘Floyd Money Mayweather doesn’t do two-hundred-dollar checks, I do cash, and it adds up to a couple more zeroes.’”

I realize how fantastical it all sounds once I hear myself talk about it. How does Matt sleep at all?

How does anyone carry the expectations of a whole country on his shoulders, and carry it well?

“We’re not sure we can attend the gala, though,” Dad warns me quietly. “You do realize my appearance at such an event would be an endorsement too?”

I meet his gaze and nod quietly, wanting to ask him to please, please endorse Matt, but I respect him too much to ask what he’s waiting for. I simply know he’s afraid that no matter the people, the parties will make sure the one who ends on top won’t be Matt Hamilton.

Later that same night, I check in with my friends at the same bar where I celebrated my birthday months ago. “Hamilton for the win,” Kayla says over dinner. “He has my vote. And I know he has yours!”

I laugh, saying, “Of course.”

She frowns. “Wait. What? Does he have more than your vote?”

I laugh it off, but, oh god, it’s not at all funny.

How could I let this happen? I’d been afraid it would, and I admit to myself that was primarily the reason I was hesitant to join his campaign.

But . . . you can’t control who you crush on.

Except a part of me believes that you can, that it was wrong of me to fall the way I’ve been falling, that I know it can go nowhere. But still I want him. And I think of him. And despite wondering if I’ve let things go too far, if maybe I should quit before they get worse, I’ve stayed.

Craving to make a difference. Craving . . . to be with him.

I look at Kayla, and she has a good guy; she’s the one being taken home tonight, who has a job she loves and parents who didn’t care if she was a teacher or a guitar player (she’s actually both).

I have a job that’s temporary, a man I can never truly have, and if my mother realizes that I’m dangerously attracted to Matt, she’ll worry. They wanted me in the arms of a promising politician, true, but not the candidate for the presidency, who every woman in the country believes belongs to her.

I swore I’d never be a politician’s girl—they either cheat on you with another woman or with their jobs, or the truly sleazy ones cheat the voters who put them on their thrones.

But no matter how distasteful I find it all, I live in D.C. I live and breathe politics. Politics has fed me my whole life, put me through a career. Politics is now my job.

Politics is in every pore and cell of the man consuming my dreams.

The fact that he’s driven and the most uncorrupted person in the political world as of now only adds to his appeal, to my admiration, to my respect. My desire to remain at his side until the end is too great, no matter how much it hurts the girl inside me who just wanted a guy to love and for him to love her back.