The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2) (19 page)

***

The moderator explains the rules of the debate for the benefit of the television audience and I see small blue notecards clutched in the hands of the hundred and twenty audience members.

Each card could hold a softball or a landmine.

“Go.” The producer cues me as the moderator announces my name. The audience stands to politely applaud and I walk toward center stage. After doing dozens of appearances in front of hundreds and sometimes thousands, I’ve grown accustomed to the wild cheering from party faithful that makes me nearly levitate on stage.

This is barely more than a golf clap, but I’ll take it. Landon Sharp is introduced and enters from the opposite side of the stage. My ears strain to decide which tepid welcome is louder.

Doesn’t matter. Focus, Grace.

Sharp bounds toward me, a narrow-cut suit on his muscular frame. He’d fit in between Bradley Cooper and Brad Pitt in sheer hotness and I’m unsurprised that his most popular Internet meme is him shirtless, finishing a cancer fundraising run.

Sporting a teal ribbon for ovarian cancer next to his American flag lapel pin, Landon Sharp looks like he was meant to appear in a home gym infomercial. I look like the mom in a paper towel commercial. He crushes my hand in his shake, his teeth blindingly white from too many bleach treatments.

Already, we’re off to a less-than-stellar start.

“Congresswoman Colton, I’m looking forward to this.” Sharp releases my hand, pivots and takes his place behind the clear lectern, stage right. I mirror his movements, taking care to avoid teetering in my heels. He’s got at least eight inches on me.

The moderator describes the debate format, which is a lot more like trading short speeches than actually debating substantive issues.

Pure theater,
Jared coached me.
This is not an issues debate. This is a performance competition
.

When the first real issue—immigration reform—is lobbed to Landon, he grabs it like a pit bull, chewing through his party’s platform with such vigor I want to hand him a napkin.

He finishes with this: “That’s not something my opponent, Grace
Garcia
Colton, is willing to risk.”

I’m knocked back a step as I hear my maiden name inserted in such a way to imply that I should be suspected of being overly lax on immigration. I might be one of
them.

Do I rebut this directly? Do I digress and explain that my biological father, who left my mother before I was in kindergarten, has roots in Spain, not Latin America?

No. I stick to my issues and stick to the reason people are tuning in. They want to know if I’m for them. If I’m the person who, with Shep, can make America more prosperous in the next four years.

And that’s what I give them. A cool head and a warm heart. A tenacious public servant whose solutions are worth listening to. Worth doing.

I also give them questions—it becomes the hallmark of my angle in the debate. I plant seeds of doubt about my opponent and his running mate. Are they truly looking out for you? Is what they promise something they could really deliver?

Landon sputters in response to my first direct hit, an evisceration of his take on health-care policy. But he picks up on my strategy quickly, his military background evident in the discipline and economy of his words, the set of his jaw.

While I grow more animated, he becomes more robotic. And that’s what turns the tide for me, what makes the second half of the debate feel like flying.
This is what I was meant to do.

At each turn, in each topic, I find a way to connect. To make policies personal. To give heart and soul to statistics.
 

“In the last four years, we’ve done nothing but make health care more expensive,” Sharp says. “We’re talking layers of bureaucracy for the small businesses that drive our economy. Under the employer mandate, some companies have to cut employee hours and many incur more operational costs. It’s making America less competitive.”

I take his claims and turn them, speaking to the expanded coverage for more than eight million Americans and tax credits for small businesses to help cover employees’ insurance premiums.

“Stats aren’t the whole picture,” I say, looking to Sharp and letting the weight of my meaning sink in. I speak to the Hales’ experiences, Liam’s diabetes and Marcus’s back surgery, as I talk about what affordability really means. “For every government burden, we’re lifting the burden on working families. We’re giving them access to insurance that covers pre-existing conditions. A three-
trillion
-dollar health care industry won’t make more America more competitive if it doesn’t support families like the Hales.”

When the moderator lobs a follow-up question at Sharp, he looks like he swallowed a bug. He came armed with ironclad stats, but my stories pierce his armor. Nobody wants to be a statistic.

I build soundbites, then repeat or sharpen them later, callbacks to get the news producer to sit up and take notice in the editing suite.

I fight like hell through the debate, giving it the energy that is the sum of three months’ worth of blood, sweat and tears.

Every. Last. Drop.

***

Jared climbs in the SUV last, scooting into his seat as the Secret Service slams the door behind him.

He and Sasha are quiet.

“Well? How did I do?”

Jared’s poker face spreads into a grin. “Wonderful. You did Shep proud.”

I want to reach across the seat to touch him, even just to get a hand squeeze, but I hold myself in check with Sasha here. I look to her, expecting a similar reaction, but her eyes are cold.

“You took some big risks.” Her lip twitches as the SUV pulls into traffic. “We’ll see how the polling numbers come back, but you definitely … surprised me.”

I feel like the kid who’s been brought to the principal’s office. “What?”

She shakes her head and turns to Jared. “Are we dropping you at the airport? Because Shep’s going to need full ground support for his Florida leg.”

“Sure,” Jared says. “When do you guys take off?”

“A couple more hours. Washington tonight, then New York the day after. I was trying to get us down to Florida to make this trip more efficient, but we need to do the Sunday talk shows.”

Jared nods. “Even if the polls come back less than what we’d hoped, you did well, OK?”

“She’s fine,” Sasha snaps. “You don’t have to treat her like a child.”

“And you don’t have to talk about me like I’m not even here,” I snap back.

The SUV pulls up to the business aviation terminal and Jared climbs out with his attaché case and a small rolling bag in hand. I barely catch his wave before Sasha pulls the door closed behind him.

She turns to me, fire in her eyes.

“What. The fuck. Was that?”

My eyes widen, genuinely at a loss. “What did I do?”

“Think
hard
, Grace. Think about one piece of critical information that could tear apart our entire campaign. The thing you haven’t told me.”

I open my mouth to hedge a bit, but she silences me.

“Before you decide to layer on some bullshit, I want you to look me in the face and tell me why you’re about to lie to me.”

I blink. Sasha’s stone-cold bitchface is in full effect and it scares me. “I’m … I’m not ready.”

“There. That’s a little truth. Keep going. Why did you have to keep this from me? When I’m supposed to be in your corner, protecting you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Are you serious? Of course I understand. I get what it means to be lonely. I get that you can spend sixteen, even twenty, hours a day side-by-side with a person and then just fall into bed with him for comfort. But you’re doing a craptastic job of hiding your relationship with Jared from me, so it’s only a matter of time before the rest of America knows. And because you haven’t told me, we’re not ready.”

I open and close my mouth, unwilling to deny this truth. “It’s not like that.” It’s not us being together because we’re bored. It’s a real connection. It has to be.

“Like hell it is. I saw the way he looked at you and talked to you. No wonder he brought me in. It’s self-preservation. He’ll go too soft on you, like he just did for this stupid debate. You can’t expect that someone who cares for you isn’t going to pull punches.”

Soft on me?
I think back to last night, when his so-called coaching nearly erased all of the warmth I felt from his text messages while I was at the hospital with Trey. From the beginning he’s been mercurial and that caused my hesitation in telling him the truth.

“How did you know?”

“The picture. The one that’s been all over the news? When you were standing with him in the green room, when he kissed your cheek, it was a mirror image of that photograph. I didn’t need to see more than the back of his head to know it was him.”

I close my eyes, seeing the image of our tryst captured by Lauren’s covert photographer. Sasha’s right.

“What do you want me to do?”

She snorts. “Well, I guess the question of vetting your secret man isn’t an issue anymore. The real question is when you’re going to tell America about him before someone else does it first.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Lauren and Aaron Darrow both appear on cable talk shows after the debate. They’re among the most in-demand talking heads because Aaron Darrow’s lack of endorsement is perceived to make him more impartial.

As-fucking-if.
I’ll tell you who he’s partial to. Himself. His own agenda. And even more, Lauren’s still behind the scenes, trying to engineer a ticket to Washington for her husband and herself.

I’ll be damned if I let the Darrows get anywhere near the Conover cabinet.

When I explain to Sasha on our flight back to DC that Lauren was not only behind taking the photos of me and Jared, but was also previously involved with Jared and claims she has dirt on him, Sasha goes visibly pale.

“We’ve got to go public with it before she does.” She opens a file on her tablet and starts typing, her eyes cutting around the plane to ensure we can’t be overheard. We’re in the back section with the rest of the staff and the only people close enough to hear are plugged in to noise-canceling headphones.

“She’s been hanging this over my head since the pictures came out,” I tell Sasha. “We’ve got time.”

“Not long. She’ll only keep it quiet while she thinks it’s leverage. If Shep slams the door on the prospect of appointing Darrow, that’s it. Leverage gone. First thing Lauren will do is try to trade the information to the Republicans for some other favor and torpedo our campaign.”

“Conniving bitch.”

“Best in the business.” Sasha smirks. “I mean
me
. No way I’m going to let Lauren play this game and win. You think she’s tough? I’m
so
going to enjoy showing her who’s tougher.”

“You?”

“Us.”

***

My first stop, before home or the office, is George Washington University Hospital. Even though I’ve been gone less than thirty-six hours, Mama Bea looks like she’s aged a decade.

“How are you holding up?” I kiss her cheek and squeeze her hand, then drop into the seat next to her and turn my attention to Trey. The swelling in his face is receding, his eyelashes visible now. Two days ago, they’d been completely swallowed by swollen eyelids.

“I’m still here, and so is he,” she says. “I’ve never prayed so hard as I’ve done these last two days, not since I lost Trent.”

“Are you praying that Trey will heal? That he won’t feel too much pain?” I’m not much of a praying person, but I admire Mama Bea’s faithfulness.

“A little of that. But mostly I’m praying thanks that I still have him. To birth and lose two sons … that’s more than any mother can bear.”

I choke on a breath, hearing her words applied to my own life. I gave birth to Ethan, gave him life and food and time and every ounce of love in my heart. And as I poured myself into being his parent, when he died, part of me died with him. The part that can never be made whole.

And now I am on that journey again. The cleaving of my heart in two begins and I must learn to sacrifice so much of who I am and what makes me
me
to give life to this new little person.

With or without Jared. With or without a job as president of the Senate. After November, I might be nothing more than a mother, but I’m going to be a damned good one.

I cup my stomach with my hand and promise my child that.

And then I tell Mama Bea.

The joy in her face, the way her expressions flicker from sadness to surprise to sheer elation—it thrills me. When I called my own mother and told her I was pregnant with Ethan, the child Seth and I had tried to conceive for years, she shrugged it off with a surly, “I hope that makes you happy.”

But now, as I tell Mama Bea and confirm that Jared is the father, I feel once again that I have finally chosen the
right
family to be part of my life.

We’re on the subject of what she’ll knit for the baby with lightning speed and I almost miss the flutter of his hand.

Trey’s hand. It moves.

“Look!”

Mama Bea reaches for it instantly, caressing his fingers, turning his hand over to reveal pink palms crisscrossed by nasty scratches.

“Baby, I’m here.” She squeezes Trey’s hand. “I’m here, sweetheart.”

“I’m here too,” I add. “I love you, Trey.” His eyelashes flutter and I hold my breath. They flutter again and this time they crack open. He blinks slowly, then his eyes focus on us.

Somehow, beneath the tubes and the wreckage of his face, Trey manages to light up the room with a slight curve of his lip.

He smiles.

***

“Do you think Landon Sharp fake-bakes?” Through the phone line, I hear Aliza munching on a salad as we catch up on her lunch break. “Because he definitely waxes.”

I snicker. “I take it you Googled him?”

“Well, duh. I had to check out your competition thoroughly. And I mean
thoroughly.
” Aliza’s naughty innuendo brings out another round of giggles. “There’s a picture of him doing the Tough Mudder run and his chest looks all male-modely. I mean, break me off a piece of
that.
”