Rogue Hearts

by Tamsen Parker

  It wasn’t boring per se, but no one who’d read anything about the race in the paper was going to learn anything new about them or change their minds about for whom they would vote.

  Then, at the end of answer about a recent Montana Supreme Court decision about the limits of police investigations, Hoagland went off on a tangent.

  “My opponent—” He was doing his level best not to use her name. “—spends her days in court defending criminals. She believes the police have too much power, and she’s argued against them time and again. But I know that law-abiding Montanans have nothing to fear from local police.” Federal ones he probably wasn’t too sure about.

  He gave her a sidelong glare. “As long as we’re both here, I’d like to get a straight answer from her. Why doesn’t she want the police to be able to investigate? What does she have against law enforcement?”

  The moderator, an anchor from one of the Great Falls news stations, bunched his mouth up. While he had a typed list of questions and a sufficient amount of gravitas to read them, he didn’t seem prepared to manage this. “You, uh, have a minute to respond,” he told Maddie.

  She could ignore Hoagland’s question and stick with the underlying issue, but that would be a coward’s way out. Hoagland was giving her an opening by bringing up the one issue that seemed to be holding some moderates back from supporting her. Of course she was going to take it.

  “I’m going to use my time to respond to Senator Hoagland’s question, if you don’t mind. I’ll write up something for Facebook about the Supreme Court case.” She looked out into the crowd. Her parents were there and probably the very district attorneys Mike Hoagland thought she menaced. Adam was there too—and he’d want her to give the best rebuttal of her life.

  “What do I have against law enforcement?” she repeated. “Nothing. But I also believe in the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects. We’re protected against unreasonable searches and seizures, and without probable cause and a warrant, it’s unlawful for the police to enter someone’s home or seize evidence.”

  Across the stage, Hoagland shuffled in his Carhartt boots. “What’s that?”

  “That’s from the Fourth Amendment. I think it’s some of the most beautiful writing in the whole Constitution. It’s certainly my favorite bit, anyhow. When I read it in law school, I knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be. To my mind, Senator Hoagland, what keeps you safe from tyranny isn’t that you or your supporters choose to follow the law. What keeps you safe is that we have laws. We all have a right to good defense in court. It’s the only thing that makes court, that makes America, fair. Legality changes. Laws themselves can be unjust. People can be unfairly accused. It’s the system that matters. The system is bigger than you or me.”

  “Well, I—”

  She wasn’t going to let him derail her. “I know you’ve spent a lot of time mocking my work and telling lawyer jokes, but I don’t think it’s particularly funny. I’ve spent years ensuring our system works right. You’ve just cashed checks and done nothing.”

  “Next question,” the moderator sang out, saving Hoagland.

  The rest of debate was standard, and when it was over, she walked across the stage and shook Hoagland’s cold, clammy hand.

  “Goodbye, Senator.”

  He croaked something, but she knew they were done. He was done.

  Backstage, her friends and family mobbed her. The Montana Tomorrow folks lingered at the edge of the circle, whispering back and forth. Adam’s gaze was warm and appreciative—and she wished the election was over so she could fling herself at him.

  “That was perfect,” her mom said as she hugged Maddie fiercely.

  “Which is what you’d say even if I screwed up.” But she appreciated it still.

  Once her grandparents had congratulated her and Ruth had finished gushing and her brother had snapped some pictures, Maddie made her way over to Chad and Adam. She half stumbled into Adam, and he caught and held her pinkie for a moment.

  “Garrett went outside trying to upload that clip.” Chad was grinning so wide his jaw was strained. “You’re going to get so many last-minute contributions.”

  “That was totally why I did it. I’m all about the money,” she deadpanned.

  “Well hell, it doesn’t hurt.”

  She turned to Adam. He wasn’t smiling. No, his expression was too heated, too appreciative for anything like that.

  She could feel herself growing breathless. “No critique? No notes? No criticism?”

  “You were brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. Damn, Maddie, I didn’t know you were that brilliant.”

  Not touching him was almost impossible—but it was going to make touching him on election night all the better. “A review like that would’ve meant everything to me when we were sixteen.”

  “I thought the same thing back then.” When she rolled her eyes, he went on. “Seriously, hear what I’m saying: you’re going to be an exemplary state senator.”

  Even as close as she was to winning, actually being in the legislature was abstract to imagine. Too big. Too fanciful. But when Adam said it, she believed.

  She wanted to fall into him, into those gorgeous brown eyes and those strong arms. But she couldn’t yet.

  Chad was still too giddy to pick up on the subtext. He thumped Adam on the shoulder. “She is, right? Don’t tell anyone else, but you’re our favorite. And when Adam’s back in LA, he’ll know he left the state in good hands.”

  If Chad had hit her in the head with the Ninth Circuit Criminal Handbook, the blow wouldn’t have been any harder. “Back in LA?”

  Adam froze. The color and heat drained from his features as if someone was twisting the dimmer on a light switch. When he’d gotten all the way to ashen, he swallowed.

  So. It was true. He was leaving.

  Which he might have mentioned during their many, many conversations.

  They hadn’t been falling for each other. This wasn’t the start of a relationship. He, like so many other people she’d known, was leaving.

  She had to blink against the moisture building in her eyes.

  “You didn’t think they’d let him go forever, did you?” Chad asked her. When she didn’t answer, he turned to Adam. “Do you have tickets yet? Or are you driving back?”

  “Driving.” That was a whisper.

  Maddie bit her lip and focused on the wall. It was lined with posters for the plays and musicals the high school had done, all covered with yellowing signatures. She read the names to herself until she didn’t feel like bursting into tears. Godspell. You Can’t Take it With You. Oklahoma! Noises Off. Bye Bye Birdie. Romeo and Juliet. Cinderella. Our Town.

  She wasn’t going to get everything she wanted then. Which she could handle. Like, who did? She was good with disappointment. With losing. She was less good with surprise.

  She pulled her phone out of her purse and stared at it. She wasn’t actually reading anything, but she needed the reprieve. She’d begun with the assumption that he was leaving. He’d never actually lied to her. He’d never told her he was staying. He’d just said he’d like to sleep with her on election night.

  The only thing that was different now was that she was going to pass on that offer.

  “Well,” she said as sweetly as she could, not pulling her eyes from her phone’s screen. “We’ll miss him, won’t we? But we’ll have to soldier on.”

  “Montana Tomorrow isn’t going anywhere,” Chad assured her. “We have lots of plans for next cycle—”

  “And you know I’ll help.” She put her phone away. “But I need to go shake some hands now.”

  “Of course. Enjoy your moment. I’m going to see where Garrett is. I love tonight!” He punched the air as he walked away.

  She was less enamored of it, at least of the last two minutes.

  “Maddie.” Adam seemed to have found his voice. “I—”

  She raised a hand. “Thanks for everything. You don’t n
eed to explain. You’ve been…”

  He’d been everything. She would not have been able to get through the campaign without him. Someday, when this shattered feeling in her chest had faded, she’d tell him that.

  But for now, she said, “Great.” Her tone implied something else entirely.

  He closed his eyes. “I tried to—”

  In fairness, she knew he had, but she hadn’t wanted to hear it. The delusion had been entirely on her part. “I really do need to go.”

  “We’ll talk soon?”

  She didn’t answer him.

  She worked through the rest of people she knew—and a few genuinely undecided voters—with a forced smile and then she went home.

  It didn’t help because Adam was everywhere: in her kitchen where she’d talked to him on the phone, and in her living room which had a pile of campaign posters and paraphernalia, and in her office and bedroom where she’d texted him. Her space was all full of apparitions and wishes.

  She needed an exorcism.

  In lieu of that, she took a shower. But before she could crawl into bed, a text alert sounded on her phone.

  I drove up with Chad and Garrett, or else I would be sitting outside your house.

  She threw her phone on her nightstand and picked up a book. She need to decompress before she’d be able to sleep.

  But another arrived. And then another and another. She didn’t respond, but she read them all.

  I’m sorry.

  Obviously the story of why I left LA is colorful. You’ll love it because I come off like an ass.

  The truth is I don’t know what I want.

  You’re ignoring me, and that’s fair.

  I’ll let you sleep, but I want to say the worst part is I miss you.

  No, the worst part was that she did too.

  7

  For three weeks, Adam didn’t call or text Maddie, and it was awful. For months he’d told himself they weren’t having a relationship because he hadn’t touched her since the night they’d kissed, but after she froze him out, he knew: they had been together, and it had been the most intense and meaningful connection of his life.

  He’d dated, but exactly as he had kept his distance from his job back in LA, those relationships had been causal and he’d been vacant. They’d been nice women, smart women, lovely women—and he’d only been half there with them.

  Since running home, his life wasn’t half anything.

  Putting a clock on his time in Montana had done it. Everything counted, and he didn’t have a moment to waste. Or maybe what had exploded out of him at the partner hadn’t been merely rebellion. Maddie had said certainty grew over time, but he still didn’t know. He was a vacillating prick, and he felt like shit about it.

  Unfortunately, even if he was an asshole, he still needed to face Maddie. He left Choteau a week before the election and headed toward Fallow. Once he was in front of her house, he sent her a text. I’m out front, and I’d like to talk. If you don’t want to, though, I understand.

  She appeared in the doorway a minute later. Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and she was in workout clothes without glasses. She had to be the most beautiful woman on earth.

  “How are things going?” he asked once she let him in.

  “Fine. All the GOTV is on track. But I haven’t had any time off in years, and I feel…” She gestured around her living room at the evidence of all the work she was doing to get the job at which she’d be amazing.

  “Lazy,” she finished.

  “I hear you’ve been anything but.” Except he didn’t need Chad and the rest of the staff to tell him she was perfect; he already knew.

  “Well, I promised that first day I was going to win.” She wouldn’t look at him and her voice had scrubbed shiny quality. This was how she talked to other people, not how she talked to him. Not how he wanted her to talk to him.

  “I can tell you’re still pissed, but I just need to tell you some things, okay?”

  Still falsely chipper, she said, “Sure.”

  “Last October, I blew up in a meeting. I refused an assignment—a political thing. Two years ago, three, I would’ve done it, no questions asked. But now, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to use my knowledge like that. It would’ve been wrong.”

  At last, Maddie gave him her attention. Her jaw was fixed and her eyes cold. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but he needed to know she was hearing him.

  “This is going to piss you off. But it’s true: it rattled me, what I did. Because I’m not exactly a true believer. So I didn’t trust it. I wasn’t sure it was real. When I came home to help Chad, it was a thing to do. A thing that might make my huge screwup okay. If I left for a year and ran some campaigns, I could go back to corporate life with a story, you know?”

  It wasn’t unheard of for someone to go on hiatus for a bit. Or at least that’s what he had told himself when he’d been leaving California.

  He’d never known a time when he hadn’t wanted to leave Montana. He couldn’t remember when he hadn’t mocked it and been frustrated by it and despised it.

  Then he’d spent a year driving over every inch of it. Eating its food. Talking to its voters. Shouting about it and raising money for it and cursing it—and when he thought about Montana now and whether he could live here forever, the question was so tied up with her. With the beautiful, brilliant woman standing in front of him with scorn in her eyes.

  He wanted to tell her he was staying. But more than that, he wanted to know that he should.

  And simply, he didn’t.

  “But you were planning to go back?” Maddie asked pointedly.

  “Yes.” She would hate that and probably hate him, but he wasn’t going to lie to her anymore. “At least at first, yes I was. But now, I don’t know.”

  “That night at Floyd’s you said—”

  “I know what I said, and I’m sorry for it. But even by then, I was having doubts about going back. Just a few months of doing this, and I was already hooked.”

  “And now?”

  She’d been an amazing lawyer, and she’d still be an amazing lawyer when the legislature wasn’t in session. He had no idea how witnesses ever lied to her.

  “I would tell you if I knew. I haven’t given my firm a date when I’ll be back. I told my landlord in Helena I wasn’t sure if I wanted to renew my lease. I’m just…I can’t see past the election.” That was absolutely true. Everything for a year had been about the next Tuesday. It was like the edge of the cliff, and he couldn’t see over it yet.

  “Ah.” She walked away and with her back still to him she said, “I was needy, I think. How I approached you in Helena. It’s my fault.”

  “No, it’s mine. I meant every word I said. I had fallen for you, and—”

  She flicked an annoyed glare at him. “You meant every word after that first night, maybe.”

  “Yes. I can’t defend what I did. And if you never accept my apology, I’ll deserve it. But, Maddie?”

  He waited until she turned, until he could see her face.

  “I’m in love with you.”

  She blinked. Several times. But she didn’t respond.

  He’d expected that, and it still felt like shit.

  “This next week…I know that it’s what you’ve been working for. And I’m sorry, again, and I’m sorry to do this now. But if I never get another chance to tell you, I’ll regret it. I think you’re incredible, and I love you.”

  He would’ve given anything in that moment to have been able to touch her, but as much as it hurt to have her stay silent, he didn’t want to push. If things were broken, he had broken them, and he would have to live with the damage.

  “That’s what I needed to say. I’m going to go now, but if I can help in any way, please call me. You know I’ll do anything for you, even if we never talk about this again.”

  With that, he left. Because the only thing he could still give her was space.

  Election day was smeared and dreamy, partly b
ecause of the snow storm that had started raging over night and partly because Maddie got to vote for herself.

  How fucking weird was that? Even when that had been the object of eight months of work during which she’d distributed countless yard signs and bumper stickers and T-shirts, seeing her name on the ballot gave her a jolt.

  Also electric: knowing she wanted to see it there again and again.

  She’d been dragged into this kicking and screaming, but she wanted the chance to make a difference. Whatever happened, this wasn’t going to be her final election.

  After she voted, Maddie went to several popular diners and a strip mall. She must have shaken hands with half the people in town. Then she and her mom served a potluck lunch for volunteers. They were frosty and cheerful, at least once they’d loaded them with carbs and hot cocoa.

  As she carried dishes into her kitchen, Maddie’s mom said, faux nonchalantly, “I’m surprised Adam isn’t here.”

  Subtle, Mom. Super subtle. “They have other candidates who need them.” She was tempted to text Adam for updates on Ted’s race, but they hadn’t spoken since the day he’d shown up at her house to say he loved her.

  She’d done her level best to try to forget that day entirely. The man didn’t know where he wanted to live or what he wanted to be. He was in no position to say what he had.

  If he settled down, if he stayed here, if he made a commitment to something, perhaps she’d be ready to hear his pitch. But not now. She couldn’t risk her heart on a maybe.

  Her mom started to fill the sink with soapy water. “But when you’re in Helena for months and months during the session—”

  “First, I haven’t won yet and everyone needs to stop jinxing me. And second, he’s moving back to California.” Probably tomorrow. Probably she’d never see him again. Probably all of this was moot.

  “I just think he’s a very nice young man.”

  “He’s no such thing.” He’d told her himself he wasn’t nice, and she wouldn’t have fallen for him if he had been. A nice guy wouldn’t have pushed her to get into the race. A nice guy wouldn’t have kissed her. A nice guy wouldn’t have made her need him.