The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2)

by Heidi Joy Tretheway

  Martin’s lips purse, a disbelieving frown. “Bull. Shit. I see what you’ll do. You’re going to make my son and your friend famous because it’s going to make you look good, same way you used your family after the shooting.”

  Martin’s anger chills me, forces me to see what happened before with Seth and Ethan. I didn’t exploit them. I avenged them. And I’d avenge Trey in the same way, except I can’t without outing him to Mama Bea and the world.

  “Now is not the time for any political calculus, Mr. Butler,” I say. “Now is the time to pray. To do whatever it takes to help Trey and Joel heal. And you have my word that I’m not going to speak to the media on any point except policy where hate crimes are concerned. Not without Joel and Trey’s permission.”

  Martin turns his back on me. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  ***

  Doctors call it “lightening.”

  Not all comas are created equally. When a person is in the deepest coma, the loudest sounds and most painful stimuli can’t reach them. But as Trey moves through the stages of his coma to consciousness, sounds and smells and touch creep into his brain.

  He is lightening. When Mama Bea squeezes his hand the next morning, he squeezes back.

  She yelps, then covers her mouth. I bound out of my chair opposite her cot and watch Trey’s face, his swollen-closed eyes, for another sign.

  Nothing.

  “He squeezed my hand. When I was singing to him,” Mama Bea whispers, as if speaking it out loud could undo the magic of this moment.

  “Try it again.”

  Mama Bea obeys, her wavering alto true to pitch from five decades in the church choir. I watch Trey’s hand, laced with scratches and ugly swollen knuckles. Sure enough, his thumb moves.

  He squeezes.

  “Trey, we’re here for you. We love you,” I say. Hope floods my chest. Hope and lightness after a heavy, anxious night. Maybe I’m lightening, too.

  ***

  I leave the hospital after lunch. After twenty-four hours in the same clothes I crave a shower. I’d like to get off the hook from going into the office, but a swift glance at my phone shows my voicemail and email inboxes overflowing.

  I have obligations.

  I call Sasha from the back of the Secret Service car en route to my condo. My greeting is simple. “What do you need me to do?”

  “We’ve got it covered. Shep picked up a couple of interviews you couldn’t do and Jared moved heaven and earth for your schedule.”

  “Reasons?”

  “We’re keeping Trey’s … assault … private for now, as you asked. We’re blaming most of the cancellations on shifting priorities. We don’t want the campaign to look like it’s scrambling, though, so we’ve kept re-scheds to a minimum.”

  “Got it. What about the debate?”

  “All systems go. We’re flying out this afternoon if you think you can handle it.”

  “And if I couldn’t?”

  “I’d be dragging you down there at the last possible minute. The debate isn’t optional. No matter how much you care about Trey, you have to be there for it.” Sasha’s voice is strained and I realize just how much she’s picked up and juggled in the last twenty-four hours.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve been studying my ass off and you can grill me more on the flight. I’m ready.” I have clarity. In everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I pace my hotel room in Charlotte, mumbling from the script clutched in my shaky fingers. A soft click from the door behind me tells me I’m not alone.

  “Louder. Put your heart into it.”

  I stutter and begin again. I know that voice the way I know my own heartbeat. It’s part of me.

  “We can no longer deny the influence of digital information,” I read, “or the responsibility the American government has to its citizens to protect private communications, rather than exploiting it and cataloguing it without consent, when there’s no link to wrongdoing—”

  “It’s hollow.” Jared takes the script from my hands and kisses my cheek in greeting. It’s not a lovers-long-parted kiss. His face reads all business. “You sound like a robot.”

  “It sounds like someone else wrote this,” I say. “Which they did.”

  Jared drops the script on the side table and steps toward me, his hands resting on my hips and his dark eyes inspecting me. “You need to internalize this. Make what you say be what you mean. You need to get voters to feel for you, to be with you.”

  I turn from him, breaking his grip on me. Too many issues and policies and position papers. Too many stats and facts and stories. Too many half-truths, when I want to tell it plainly, but politics dictates I must not. “How can I say what I mean when your speechwriters wrap everything under euphemisms and soundbites? How much change and leadership do we have to babble about?”

  “We don’t babble.”

  I cross my arms and stare Jared down. “This isn’t working.”

  “The debate? Sweetheart, you’ve got eighteen hours until you go live. We fucking better get it working.”

  “How? How do you expect me to memorize a million answers, spout them out, and act natural when these are the furthest thing from what I’d really say?” I jab my finger at the creased script pages.

  Jared rocks back on his heels, his eyes darkened to nearly black. “Let me show you.” He ushers me to a place by the front door of my hotel suite, where a light shines down from the ceiling like the television studio lights will. “Stand here.”

  I comply and he takes my shirt in his hands. “No talking unless you’re saying something for the cameras. There”—he points to one table lamp beside the sitting-room couch—“and there”—he points to the other. He pulls my shirt over my head.

  “I’m not in the—”

  “For the cameras, sweetheart,” he insists. “Now, Congresswoman Colton, let’s talk about your platform on the environment. You’ve advocated greater investments in hydropower and solar, but how are you driving adoption?”

  I shudder as Jared’s fingers dance across my bare shoulders and slide beneath my bra straps, flicking them down. My breasts have grown larger and they strain in the lace cups held up by underwire. “Tax incentives?”

  Jared growls. “What kind of an answer is that?” He reaches behind me and flicks the clasp of my bra open so my top is fully exposed. My nipples harden in the cool air.

  “Tax incentives,” I repeat, my voice gathering strength, “are just one of many options in our toolbox to drive greater adoption. Our investment in research for solar panels and energy storage is changing the game on what’s possible for solar.”

  Jared comes behind me, his hot breath on my neck. His hands slide down my hips beneath my yoga pants, tugging them down. “Give them more.”

  “While my opponents insist that solar and wave energy are little more than side projects, they are beholden to oil interests that have spent billions of dollars on extraction, transportation and refining a limited resource. Solar and wave energy could be an unlimited resource if we’d make a similar investment.”

  My pants hit my ankles and Jared’s sharp teeth nip at the top of my shoulder. “Wrong. You’re telling the taxpayers you want to spend their money.”

  I clear my throat as his hand moves across my stomach, peeling off my panties. “While the government has the opportunity to redirect research dollars to develop this technology, it can also incentivize private industry investments.”

  Jared’s finger traces up my folds, pausing over my clit. “More.”

  I shiver. “Right now we’re at a grave imbalance that favors the status quo. We choose gas-guzzling cars and fossil fuels because it doesn’t make economic sense to go clean and green. But we can change that.”

  “Shorter. Sharper.” Jared’s breath in my ear and the heat of his body behind me, sends my body spiraling as I struggle to remain standing. He teases me with just a finger.

  “We can go clean and green. Just by changing the economics of what
it costs to make energy and bring it to your home and automobile. We don’t need more energy, we need better sources and smarter ways of using what we have. When we align our purpose”—another flick across my clit and I draw a sharp breath—“to our policy, we can achieve a more energy-independent America.”

  Jared’s fingers stop and my heart beats hard in my chest, anticipating what he might demand from me next. “That’s not a speech that will bring the house down. Go after them. Make them fight back.”

  “Our platform unites energy and tax policy to benefit citizens and business. It means a smaller heating bill and paying less at the pump. Our opponents’ policies reflect business as usual, but our country can’t evolve without evolving our approach to how we use our resources.” My voice gathers strength, conviction powering my words. “Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. The Republican ticket promises new opportunities, but it doesn’t offer new solutions to our energy crisis. There can be no different result. The status quo is destined for failure.”

  Jared releases me and I take a step forward to avoid toppling from the energy ricocheting through my body. I reach for him but he steps out of my grasp, taking in my naked body, my flushed cheeks.

  “I don’t care about what you just said, but I care deeply for the way you just said it.” Jared turns away and picks up my script. “You know the words. You know the policies and rebuttals cold. Now you just need to connect with your passion, with your gut that telegraphs that what you’re fighting for is right.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, my breath still shuddering through my chest. “How can I channel that when you’ve filled me so full of stats I’m ready to burst?”

  Jared cups my face, his drawl confident. “Let them go. They’ll come back to you when you need them. Right now, we need the Grace that America fell in love with. The smart, no-bullshit candidate they saw on the Rick Knox show. Not a policy wonk. Not someone smarter than they are. America wants to meet the lady who will be Shep’s right hand.”

  He takes my right hand and presses it to his chest. “Feel that?”

  His heartbeat pulses in his chest. I nod.

  “When you’re up there under the lights, I want you to feel my heartbeat and the heartbeats of the people in the audience. Feel their connection, their humanity. Nobody falls in love with a robot.”

  My shoulders fall and I reach for Jared, needing to feel his very human, physical reassurance. His hands slide up and down my bare back, a caress that speaks to something more than the fiery passion that ignites us.

  There’s genuine care there. Genuine warmth. “I need to know you’re rooting for me.”

  “Always, Grace.”

  “Even if I lose?”

  “You won’t lose. You and Shep can win this.”

  “But what if—” I stop, my truth on the tip of my tongue. “What if it gets ugly? What if this campaign changes us?”

  Jared tucks a finger beneath my chin, lifting my face to meet his gaze. “You think things between us will change? Because of whatever happens at the ballot box?”

  No. It’s everything outside the ballot box. It’s the truth and the lies that are piling up. “It might.”

  Jared drops his chin until our lips are a breath apart. His nose slides against mine and I feel the tickle of his whiskers on my lips, the soft pad of his lips touching mine, the light flick of tongue.

  His wetness. His warmth. He pulls me closer, crushing me against his body, and I feel him harden between us. I grab his ass and pull our hips together, wanting him to feel the chasm of want inside me.

  How much I need this.

  How much I need him.

  Jared lifts me and I wrap my legs around his hips as he walks us back toward the bedroom. He pulls the bedclothes open and lays me down gently, reverently. His fingertips skim down the center of my chest, between my breasts, over my belly, to the softness of my center.

  “Nothing will change between us.”

  I whimper when he touches me, when his fingers spread me open.

  “Nothing that happens in this campaign can change who you are to me. How important you’ve become.”

  “But what if people know about you? About us?” The specter of Lauren Kennedy Darrow passing that information to the media, naming the man in the picture, haunts me.

  “Some secrets aren’t meant to be kept forever,” Jared says. His eyes trace my body and I’m afraid he’ll see through me and uncover mine. But he has no way of knowing, and as he strips off his clothes without breaking eye contact, his intent becomes clear. “I want to know more of yours.”

  “My secrets?” I squeak, squirming beneath him as he leans over me on the bed, a predator coming for his prey.

  “Yes. All of them.” His teeth nip my earlobe, then trace down my neck. His cock is hot and hard against my belly. He raises his hips. “Tell me one.”

  The baby. I must tell him about the baby. “I’m scared of heights.”

  “Not good enough. Tell me something harder.” Jared’s cock nudges my entrance and I spread my legs wider, wrapping myself around him, begging him to fill me.

  “I want you to … do things to me. Things I haven’t done before.”

  Jared hmms. “Tell me more.” He pushes inside me and I gasp and pant.

  “Things … I can’t say them. I just … need them.” The dark corners of my mind, where I’ve packed away a few delicious taboos, feel like they’re pulsing, straining to be heard.

  “You have to tell me what you need. What you want.”

  “I can’t.”

  Jared pushes himself back until he’s sitting on his knees. His fingers trail up and down my chest, rubbing across my nipples that buzz with sensitivity.

  “I know you like this,” Jared says, and he flicks his thumb across my clit as his hips flex, filling me with a sweet ache.

  “Yessss,” I say, letting some of my self-consciousness go.

  “And this?” His hands crawl up my chest to flick my nipples to attention and he pinches them just to the edge of pain.

  I nod, unable to make words.

  “And what else do you want that I haven’t discovered?”

  I think of my vibrator, buried in the bottom of my suitcase, an embarrassing necessity since the pregnancy ignited my hormones. They’ve made me restless nightly for relief when Jared’s not here.

  He wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow and yet he found a way to come for me.

  Jared follows my glance toward my suitcase and his brow quirks with a question. “Something I should know about, sweetheart?”

  My cheeks burn with embarrassment and I shake my head.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He withdraws from me and I feel empty, but he goes to my suitcase, pawing beneath my skirts, blouses, and panties until he finds a small, drawstring bag. He holds it up. “Is this what I think it is?”

  I draw my knees together and break his gaze. “Maybe,” I mumble.

  Jared’s delight is so evident that he sounds like a kid in a toy store. “A new toy? Or an oldie but goodie?”

  I cut my eyes back to him and see him slip the batteries in the back of the silver shaft. It’s slim and has a gently rounded head—it looks nothing like a dildo—but its variable speeds can consistently get me off even when my fingers can’t. “Oldie,” I murmur.

  “I like it.” Jared gives me a wicked grin and screws the battery compartment closed. He twists the dial at the end and it springs to life with a soft buzz. “It has potential.”

  “No, just put it away.”

  “You sure you want me to do that? Because I think it might be more fun.” He’s already crawling back to me across the bed, opening my legs, his cock hard and ready.

  “It’s so, I mean, I didn’t think you’d want…” I trail off, embarrassment warring with my keen awareness that he wants to use this toy.

  On me.

  And I think I will like it.

  “If yo
u can’t tell me what you want, show me if you like this,” Jared says. He skims the vibe across the top of my sex, creating tremors that buzz through my belly. He dips the vibrator lower, teasing my clit, and my hips jerk off the bed.

  “A very positive response.” Jared chuckles, low and eager, and nudges his cock between my thighs. “More?”

  I nod my head fervently, eyes closed tight, desperate for him to take the reins. His hot shaft fills me and then the vibrator presses on my bud and I twitch beneath him, squirming with delight. My cheeks flush hot as he groans, his own pleasure evident as he sees me respond.

  “So many possibilities,” Jared says. “So many secrets to explore.”

  My breath catches at the word secrets and Jared hooks a hand beneath my knee, turning me over to my front and pulling my hips off the bed. He coaxes me to rock back, ass in the air, completely exposed to him, then he trails the vibrator through my wetness, slicking me from front to back, again and again.

  The buzz increases in pitch and I know Jared’s raised its frequency a notch as he presses it into my body. He fills me with it, then withdraws, then presses against my clit, then up between my cheeks.

  Alarm bells clang in my head. He spreads my legs further, his thumb circles my ass, pressing against the tight muscle. I recoil. He strokes me, then he rakes his nails down my back, sending me into a full-body shiver.

  “I want you to feel everything. I want you to let go.” He presses the vibe against my back entrance and I hold my breath, the vibrations running through me like the chirp of power lines on a summer night. An insistent buzz that grows louder, that fills my senses until I am beyond resistance.

  I rock my hips back toward him and that is his signal. Fill me. He guides the vibrator inside me, slowly as I adjust. I breathe in—one, two, three—and out as I force my muscles to relax. To accept. To enjoy.

  My mind spins with the intensity of the moment. I feel untethered from my body, as if gravity has left me. But Jared drags me back to earth, a slow, consuming motion, as his cock fills me, stretching me to delicious fulfillment.