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enough to want me for the long haul.
    If he loves the idea of being a father.
    “The man in this picture is a good man. Let’s move on, Gloria, so we don’t bore your viewers.” I give her my best smile and, miraculously, she does.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    “How’d it go?” Trey looks up from his computer. He’s the last member of my staff left in the office. Sasha’s done with me for the night, but she packed every minute of my schedule from seven to seven tomorrow.
    “It went.” I sink into the chair by Trey’s desk with an audible sigh and toe off my shoes.
    “Your hair looks good up.” He nods to the hair-sprayed confection of curls pulled into a loose twist, with a few soft spirals by my ears. Per Jared’s direction, it’s become my signature for public appearances. “Jared knows his shit.”
    “Except for the part where he acts like a shit.”
    “Trouble in paradise?”
    I roll my eyes, unsure of how much I should say. “I think this one was my fault. He pushed me, I pushed back hard, and then … he just quit.”
    “He quit you? Or the campaign? That’s why Sasha Heller’s in the mix now, isn’t it?”
    I nod. “He said he didn’t want me to be his candidate anymore. So he assigned someone else.”
    Trey scoots his chair to the side of his desk and grabs my hands in his. He waits until he has my full attention. “Don’t sweat this, baby girl. Maybe the best thing for you two is to have a bit of space. It’s a new relationship and going from zero to sixty is pretty jarring.”
    I cock a brow in question. “You know this from experience?”
    Trey’s gaze slides away from me. “Nah. Things are moving pretty slow with Joel. He’s out, I’m not, and that’s a problem for him. I don’t like keeping secrets, especially from people I love, but I can’t help this one.”
    Trey’s words echo the words in my brain. I don’t like keeping secrets, especially from people I love, but I can’t help this one.
    Aliza knows about my pregnancy, yet I can’t bring myself to tell Jared, or Trey and Mama Bea. The people I love.
    There’s also another man to whom I owe the truth, the one who’s taking untold amounts of flak for picking the “slutty widow” as his running mate after the backlash of my pictures. Shep Conover deserves to know his running mate’s going to be a blimp by spring. I need to repay his faith in me with honesty.
    I chill, imagining what he’ll say. He knows Jared and I are recently together, and I wonder if he’ll shame me for being so colossally stupid for getting knocked up right now, or if he’ll blame me for potentially ruining his shot at the White House.
    Jared’s words from early in the campaign echo back to me. “Voters won’t vote for you if you give them a reason not to. They’re listening for all the reasons why not . You’ve got to be louder and stronger with the reasons why .”

    ***

    I send Mac and Eric into a tizzy when I announce that I want to drop by Jared’s apartment after I leave the office.
    “Could we pick him up and bring him to your condo, Congresswoman Colton?”
    “No. I have to go to him.”
    “We need to call ahead to ask a few security questions.”
    “No. It needs to be a surprise.”
    Mac and Eric exchange disapproving looks but Eric nods and mumbles some more military letterspeak into his microphone. All I catch is, “Phoenix away from Charlie Hotel to…”
    Jared’s apartment window light is on, a good sign. I use the keycard he gave me to get into the lobby and march my butt up the stairs to apologize like a grown woman.
    Mac and Eric trail me, both wearing sidearms, but they’re no real backup for this confrontation.
    I should have brought Jared something. Wine? No. I can’t drink it, anyway. Some kind of food? Or dessert? Something to show him I’m sorry.
    Something to take the edge off so I can finally talk to him long enough to get a sense of his stance on family and kids and that tiny human, smaller than a blueberry, who