I’ve been praying for you every night like I said I would. I hope wherever you are that you can feel that. Somehow.
Sincerely yours,
Greer
Dear Ash,
You’re famous now. Imagine my surprise yesterday at waking up to your face all over the news. My horror when I found out what you lived through, my relief that you were unharmed. It’s unthinkable to me that you were able to fight your way out of a building surrounded by separatists, all while carrying that wounded soldier. I can’t fathom what kind of courage it took for you to stay with your friend when the rest of your squad escaped. What kind of skill it took for you to fight off your attackers and eventually save yourself and him. But after reading and watching all the profile pieces on you, I shouldn’t have been surprised. You have a history of being a hero, don’t you? And I’m not trying to tease you or make you uncomfortable. I’ve been around every sitting president, vice president and first lady since I was a baby, and I have seen how tiring it can be to have people fixate on your accomplishments. But I can’t write this letter without telling you that I’m in awe of how many times you’ve risked your life for your fellow soldiers. ‘No greater love than this’ is what Jesus says about men like you, and I’m honored to say that I’ve met you in person, and that you’re even kinder and more humble than all the profile pieces and journalists say.
That being said, to me you are still Ash. Our acquaintance lasted only an hour, but the things that I remember about you—the cut on your jaw, the way your hands felt as they worked the glass splinter out of my finger—are more than your battles. You are a hero to me, but you are a man too. Maybe even more man than hero.
Yours,
Greer
Dear Ash,
It’s been six months since we met, and part of me is embarrassed to look at this chain of emails—a chain with only me in it. I tell myself it’s because you’re at war, because you’ve been saving lives—last week, that high school building where so many civilians were taking shelter!—but I guess I’m also not foolish enough to believe that a twenty-six-year-old war hero wants unsolicited emails from a boarding school student. So I should stop bothering you, I know I should, but it feels as if I have taken you up as a sort of hobby. Reading about you, thinking about what I should write to you. The girls at school are obsessed with the fact that Abilene and I were at the same party as you this summer, and even though it’s one of the only times anyone has been interested in actually talking to me, I hold what happened between us as my own private secret. I don’t want anyone else to know what it felt like to be in your arms. I don’t want anyone else to know about the little groan you made when we kissed for the first time. I’m greedy for you, or at least for those memories of you. I’m not stupid—I know that you must have a girlfriend or that you’ve had them—I know I’m not the only person who’s heard that little groan or felt the heat of your hands on their back. But I like to pretend. I like to feel possessive of these small parts of you, the parts that don’t belong to the public imagination, and maybe that’s the real reason I can’t stop writing.
Yours,
Greer
Dear Ash,
It’s my seventeenth birthday today. It’s been exactly one year since we met, and while you’ve fought in several crucial battles and saved countless lives, I’ve completed a year of high school. The two don’t really compare, do they? I told myself after my last email that I wouldn’t bother you again, both for your sake and for my pride, but tonight I feel strange. Restless, I guess. It’s hot for England, even for May, and muggy. I have the windows thrown open and a fan blowing, but I can’t seem to cool down. Every part of me feels flushed. And Abilene is gone from our dorm room and I found a bottle of Prosecco stashed in her mini fridge, and so I’m tipsy and alone, on top of being restless and hot.
It feels like the kind of night to make a bad decision. I think normally girls my age find boys my age to make their bad decisions with—at least that’s what Abilene is out doing right now—but I don’t want that. There’s something really pedestrian about the kind of fun Abilene seeks out, and this is not me trying to force morality onto her, because I don’t think there’s anything immoral about having sex, but it’s more of an…aesthetic…thing, I guess. I don’t want boring, common ways of being bad. I want ways that rattle me to my bones, that send me to my knees in repentance, I want to be the kind of bad that leaves me wrung out with bite marks blooming purple on my body. I want to go to the brink of not knowing myself, I want someone to take me there and hold me by the neck and make me stare at an entire reckless realm of possibility. What’s the point of sex if you don’t feel like every dark crevice of your soul has been exposed to the light? If someone doesn’t take your lust and your shameful thoughts, and twist them into a spell that leaves you panting like a dog for more? I think I want that for myself. I want a normal life too—I want an education and career and my own house and to make all of my own decisions—but whenever I think about sex, about what sex would be like when I’m older, I don’t ever imagine the Titanic hand-hitting-the-car-window thing. I want to feel like my veins are being sliced open by the sheer desire of someone powerful, I want to be handled and cherished and used and worshipped. I want a man or woman to claim me as their equal partner in every way—until we’re alone. Then I want to crawl to them. I can have that someday, right?
Right now, as I type, I’ve got one leg slung over the arm of my computer chair because it’s so hot, but also because it makes it easy to tease myself in between writing sentences to you. I do this a lot when I’m thinking about you. (I am guessing you probably don’t know that, and tonight, for some reason, it just feels like I should tell you.) I started by running a fingertip under the lace of my panties, imagining it was you. Imagining that we are back in the library and we were never interrupted by Merlin. I imagine you pulling up my skirt after I tell you that you were my first kiss, because you want to know if I’m a virgin. You want to feel if I’m still intact, if I’m wet for you, you want to know what I’d feel like wrapped around your dick.
God, I’m so wet right now. I wish it were your fingers inside me, your thumb on my clit. You’d be so good at that. I can’t stop thinking about your hands, how big and strong they are. I bet your eyes would burn green as you rubbed me, I bet you would lick your lips at the thought of tasting me, of being the first man to ever taste me. I think about what it would have been like if you’d fucked me that night, right there against the wall maybe, or on the large desk in the corner. Abilene says boys should always wear condoms, but I wouldn’t have wanted you to. I would have wanted to feel your skin, if it was hot and if it was smooth and silky. I would have wanted you to feel me. I would have wanted you to whisper in my ear how good I felt, what a gift I was giving you, how you could stay inside me forever and ever if only I’d let you.
What noises do you make when you come? Do you gasp? Groan? Whisper names? I think I’d like you to whisper my name. Sometimes I imagine you in your cot on base, your hand beneath the blankets trying to be quiet, and then when you come, you have to bite your lip so you don’t say my name aloud. I imagine you fucking your fist in the shower, wishing it was me instead of your hand. I imagine you imagining me in every different way a man can be with a woman, sweet and rough and slow and angry and loving. And right now, I’m going to stop typing and finger myself until I come, and when I come, it will be your name I say.
I don’t know if this will ever be read. If it will go straight to spam or into some folder marked ‘Crazy Girls with Vice Presidents for Grandfathers’. I almost hope you never see this, but it couldn’t go unwritten. Not tonight. But this will definitely be the last time I write to you. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up hung over and ashamed, although hopefully with that dark excitement that comes with making the best kinds of bad choices. You won’t hear from me again, and I’m sorry if any part of this made you uncomfortable or irritated. But you should know that even if I’m not writing you emails any longer,
I’ll still be thinking of you every time I dig my fingers into my pussy.
Be safe.
Yours,
Greer
Chapter Seven
The Present
Ten years separate me and that moment in the library. Ten years encompassing wars and illness and the entirety of my adult experience, and yet somehow it all shrinks to a pinprick point and disappears as I walk into St. Thomas Becket Church. It’s erased and there’s nothing between me and the man kneeling near the front of the sanctuary, his head bowed. There’s no air, no time, no different versions of ourselves…I could be sixteen right now, walking up this aisle, and he could be twenty-six.
Maybe it’s because of this that I hesitate as I get closer to him, my feet slowing as my pulse speeds up. When Embry suggested my church as a meeting place, I leapt at the idea. The church is where I feel safe, the church is where I feel watched over by God, and most importantly, the church is neutral territory. I can’t bear the thought of waiting in line to see him in the West Wing, a hastily penciled-in visitor, and I even less could bear the thought of being smuggled into the Residence. I understand discretion, but I also don’t want to feel like contraband. Like the living embodiment of a lie.
Stop freaking out. You still don’t know for sure why he wants to meet you. Embry had hinted—intimately—at the reason, but I’ve been burned by hope before. And besides, how could there be any room for hope at all? After Jenny, after that long sweaty night in Chicago, after ten years, for fuck’s sake. I should keep this box buried. I should save myself while I still can.
But I don’t stop walking. I send a quick prayer—a blank prayer, a silent plea, because I don’t even know what to pray for at this point—towards the tabernacle as I genuflect and slide into the pew behind the President. I carefully set down the kneeler and get to my knees, lacing my hands together and bowing my head, as if to pray, but I never get around to actually forming the words.
I study the President instead.
He’s praying as well, kneeling like me, his dark head hanging down over his hands. He’s shucked his jacket, leaving him in a white button-down shirt. His sleeves are rolled up, exposing tan, muscular forearms, and I can tell from the loose way the shirt collar lies against his neck that he’s unbuttoned his top button and loosened his tie. The shirt stretches and pulls over the wide shoulders and broad muscles of his back as he keeps his head bowed.
And because I can’t help it, I let my eyes trail down to the narrow lines of his hips. His pants are excruciatingly tailored, excruciatingly, the fabric hugging a firm ass and hard, thick thighs. Heat floods me everywhere, sending sparks and electric flashes dancing across my skin. How could I have forgotten how powerful he is in person? That there is still a soldier’s body under those dark suits and requisite flag pins?
And then when he speaks, the sparks dancing across my skin ignite into true fire as I remember the words he murmured against my lips that night a decade ago—tell me you’re eighteen and do you like my lips on your skin and God, where did you come from?
“I’ve prayed for the free world, the less-than-free world, my enemies, my allies, my staff and my mom’s favorite dog,” the President says without looking back at me, his voice rich and burred around the edges. “Am I missing anything?”
“The babies trapped in limbo, maybe.”
“How could I forget about them?” He leans his head farther down for a brief second. “And please watch over the babies trapped in limbo. In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.”
He crosses himself, and I get a glimpse of those large, square hands that once cradled mine. “Thank you for meeting me,” Ash says. “I know it was presumptive to send Embry—especially as you haven’t ever met him—to do something so personal, but I couldn’t wait another minute after seeing you here on Sunday. And I also couldn’t get away to do it myself. I mentioned it to him and he volunteered to help right away.” He smiles. “He’s an amazing friend.”
Especially as you haven’t ever met him…
Ash doesn’t know that Embry and I know each other? A quiet worry starts tugging at my heart, but I push it aside. “Vice President Moore is a very persuasive messenger.”
“I know. That’s why I sent him. Trust me—the things he’s persuaded me to do can’t be spoken aloud in a church.” The President stands and comes around to the side of my pew, extending a hand. I take it and look up, and all worries about Embry fade into nothing. There is only Ash.
Since the night we kissed, I’ve seen thousands of pictures of Maxen Ashley Colchester, I’ve watched all his televised rallies and debates and press conferences, but it in no way prepared me for seeing him right now. Even though he’s perfection personified in any medium, no picture or video can do him justice. Nothing can compare to seeing him in person, face to face.
Still the same chiseled planes and full mouth, the bottle green eyes—still the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, aside from Embry Moore. But what the President has is more than good looks. There’s a certain nobility to his face, an honesty and openness, and even more than that, a sense of purpose. Like he knows exactly who he is and within seconds, he can tell you exactly who you are. It’s electrifying.
I allow him to help me to my feet. I’m shaking, and he notices.
“Do I scare you?” he asks, his brow furrowing. Like Embry, there are lines around his eyes and mouth that weren’t there a decade ago, and I see a few silver strands peeking through his jet-black hair. If anything, it makes him even sexier now than when we first met.
“Will you be angry if I say yes?” I manage.
His hand slides from mine up to my elbow, and I realize how close we’re standing. “Angry is not even close to the kinds of feelings you stir up, Greer.”
Oh God.
I can’t handle how intense this is, how fiercely my body is reacting to his mere proximity when all we shared was an hour a decade ago and another hour five years after that. I fumble for a way to defuse the sudden weight of the conversation. “Mr. President—”
He sighs. “Please don’t call me that. Not here. Not now.”
I try to force myself to say his name aloud—the name that I wrote a thousand times in looping cursive during my high school classes, the name that I sighed to myself in my shower with my hand between my legs—but my decorum was forged in the crucible of The Party and it’s so hard not to use the title I know I should use.
He leans in, and I smell the fire and leather smell of him. It makes me dizzy.
“You can call me ‘sir,’ if you like,” he murmurs. “But only when we’re alone.”
I have to close my eyes.
He guides me into the aisle, and then we’re walking past the altar to a door at the side of the church. We walk by stone-faced Secret Service agents and go out into the church garden, his hand moving from my arm to the small of my back, steering me where he wants us to go. The gesture is possessive, peremptory, as if he assumes he has prerogative over my body.
I want him to. I want him to have every prerogative over my body.
I don’t see any agents in the garden, even though I know they must be there, but for the moment, it feels as if we’re alone among the rustling red and gold trees and wilted fall flowers, and he stops us in the middle of a flagstone-paved clearing, next to a bleached-white statue of the Virgin.
“I won’t waste your time. God knows I have little enough of my own. But I couldn’t—” he pauses, the famously eloquent soldier at a loss for words. “I couldn’t wait any longer,” he finally says in a low voice.
He is so close, and all I can smell is leather and leaves and I force myself to take a step back. I have to think, I have to use my brain, because my body and my heart are screaming so loudly that I can’t hear anything else, and what they’re screaming is yes please yes please yes please even though a question hasn’t been asked yet.
The President—Ash, I mentally correct myself—lets me step back, but his eyes are on me li
ke hands, still possessing me, still steering me.
“I don’t think I understand,” I say. “I don’t understand why you wanted to meet with me.”
He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture I recognize from that night. “That’s fair, I suppose,” he says, his eyes on the leaf-covered ground as he frames his next statement. “And I don’t want to scare you away by being too…direct.”
“I mean, I’m still shocked that you remember me. We met only the once.”
“Twice,” he corrects me. “Chicago, five years ago. Remember?”
Flames lick my cheeks and I take a deep breath. “I remember.” It was the night I lost my virginity, after all. Girls usually remember that sort of thing. “Twice then. We’ve talked twice.”
And then I bite my lip, remembering something I’ve managed to forget for several years, because it’s not exactly true that we’ve only talked twice. I have talked to Ash more than that, though he never talked back.
The emails.
My face flushes even hotter, this time with humiliation.
God, the emails. Why was I so young and stupid? So ready to attach meaning to the things adults do without thinking twice about it?
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