“Hi, Wilson.”
“Miss Wells.” He nods briefly as he opens the door. “The president is inside.”
“Thank you.”
I suppose my heart is whacking so loudly because I’m seeing him again, and also because I don’t know what to expect.
I walk into the room, the door shutting with a soft click behind me.
The air is sucked out of me as if by a vacuum.
A Hamilton vacuum.
It feels as if the whole room is just a backdrop for him. He’s so . . . imposing. Electrifying. I have eyes only for the tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered man at its center. His stance confident but easy, one hand inside the pocket of his slacks. The bow tie he wears is perfect. Even his hair is perfect, not a strand out of place, and I ache to run my fingers through it.
But inside his eyes there is a whole universe, dark and endless, an intensity in his gaze that pulls at every fiber of my being as he slowly drinks me in—every inch of me in this dress, from my eyes, to my nose, to my lips, my throat, my shoulders, my chest, my abdomen, down my legs.
It’s hard to speak. The way he’s looking at me is thawing my resolve to be strong, and I need to pull his attention away from stripping me naked with his eyes. “Being president looks good on you,” I can’t help but say, because as he undresses me with his eyes, I sort of get an eyeful of him too. His athletic, muscular frame and how the tux hugs his shoulders.
At my words, Matthew’s eyes leisurely trek back to my face to lock on mine again. He responds simply, his voice as deep as I remember, the tone firm and completely unapologetic. “You’re beautiful.”
I inhale sharply, his words like a punch at the very core of my being. Warmth blooms in my cheeks. It’s as if he’s lit me up, this man. And nothing I do can dampen the fire he ignites in me. “I didn’t go into this for a happily ever after,” I whisper.
“But you deserve a happily ever after.”
Matt is not smiling. His eyes are dark and somber as he continues to stare at me intently. “I’ve stayed away from you,” he says, taking a step, withdrawing his hand from his pocket.
“I’ve noticed.” My voice sounds raw, and I’m so overcome with his presence as he prowls around the room that I drop my eyes, my emotions all over the place. I raise them after a second and meet his unflinching gaze—which he hasn’t removed from me. Not for a second. “Is it getting easier for you?” I ask.
“Fuck no. It’s taking everything in me not to touch you right now.”
He drags a restless hand over his face, a tinge of regret in his voice as he stops a few feet away. “Being with me could hurt you—you know that’s why you wanted me to stay away. You know that if I’m with you, I’m going to hurt you even when that won’t be my intention. Not at all. I know that wasn’t my father’s intention when he hurt my mother for years.”
“Seeing you is hurting me now.”
He clamps his jaw, then reaches out to tilt my head back. “Look at me,” he says, his voice gruff and low, his dark gaze carving into me. “I can’t give you what you deserve. I can’t give you a house and I can’t even take you out on a normal date. But I want you. I fucking need you in my life, Charlotte.”
His touch is making my knees quake. I breathe, “I’ve accepted that I can’t have more and that’s okay with me. It’s not worth it. You’re doing more important things than being with me.”
He frowns thoughtfully as he curls his hand and drags his knuckles down my cheek, grazing my skin. “The bigger risk is you getting hurt because I can’t give you what you need. But I want to. I want to give you everything.”
I battle a tremor, lick my lips nervously, craving more of his touch, more words, more Matt. “That’s not why I came here. I want you to have the best presidency, and I wanted you to know I’m okay that this is over between us.”
“I don’t want this to be over.” His eyes glimmer mercilessly as he drops his hand and just looks down at me. “I’m fucking selfish. I want you all to myself. Jesus! Every day, I wonder what you’re doing, who you’re talking to, who you’re smiling at, and I want it to be me.”
“I don’t want this to be over either. But it has to, Matt.”
He shakes his head, smiling ruefully. “It doesn’t have to. Fuck trying to stay away from you. That’s not what I want. What do you want from me? Do you want this?”
“What’s ‘this’?” I ask uncertainly.
“Everything.”
My stomach feels as if I’m riding a roller coaster, so many dips and tugs I can’t stand still as Matt waits for my answer.
I’ve never been able to lie to him, and I don’t think I ever will be. “I don’t want you to stay away from me.”
“I asked you a question. Do you want everything I can give you?”
God. The pull he has on me, his magnetism tugging at me. The pain in his eyes only reminding me of my own.
He’s the president now, but he’s still Matt. My first crush, my first love. And I know that after Matt, I’ll never want or love another man again.
“I don’t know what ‘everything’ means. I want to start slowly,” I begin.
“How slowly?”
“Slow, Matthew,” I say.
He exhales, his eyes softening.
“It’s too much. You’re too much,” I groan. “But I don’t care about anything else. I don’t want you to stay away from me.”
His gaze is alive with heat as he gazes down at me.
“I just don’t see how this can even work without a media explosion I don’t want,” I add. “It’s too close to the campaign—people will think we had an affair all that time.”
“We did.”
I feel my cheeks heat at both the memory and the gruffness in his voice.
The times I spent with him are too valuable to me to willingly give them up as fodder to the media. “Yes, but those were our moments.” I flush even more at the look in his eyes, as if he remembers too. “I don’t want the world to use them against you. Or me.”
He’s silent for a moment, simply staring at me, everything about him making my mouth water—his achingly familiar espresso eyes, warm and liquid as he looks down at me. And when he lifts his hand to hold me by the chin, my whole body jerks in response. Wanton. Aching. Swaying toward him. “Come to the White House. Be my acting first lady,” he says, his voice husky.
“Matt, I couldn’t possibly.”
“You can very possibly.”
I’m stunned to realize he means it—his eyes steely with determination and certainty.
“You can do whatever you want with the role, it’s self-defined.”
“But your mother would be so much better at it,” I insist.
“And yet I’ve got my eye on you for the part.”
“Why?”
That lovely playful sparkle I remember so well appears in his eyes again. “Because you look good on my arm.”
“Haha.” I’m suddenly smiling, I can’t help it.
His lips are curved too, but his stare is deathly serious. “Because I can’t see any other woman standing next to me. And because no one could do the job that you could.”
My heart flips in my chest.
“We’ll figure this out. You try the role on for size. Let me date you out in the public eye without hiding this time. We’ll take it as slow as you need.”
“The media will begin to speculate.”
“They can speculate all they like. As acting first lady you sleep in the White House, you’re on the president’s arm, and you can do so many things, Charlotte. I want to see you spread your wings and fly high, and I want to give you the platform to do it.”
“I don’t see myself as one of those ladies. I’m not posh enough.”
“You’re a countess; your grace is innate.”
“Stop flirting with me. You’re a cad, Mr. President.”
He laughs, and I scowl, and then he reaches out. “I’ll take this”—he leans over and pecks my lips—“as a yes.” H
e sets his forehead on mine. “A team will stop by to get your belongings, set them all in your room in the White House, and your new detail will pick you up tomorrow and bring you here.”
“I can’t move, Matthew—”
“Listen, I know you don’t want a media circus outside your apartment building every day for four years. I want you to be safe, and you’re safer with me.”
“I . . .” I can’t even think of an argument, and I definitely don’t think my neighbors deserve a media circus and Secret Service around 24/7. “Well, see, that’s something I really don’t need, a detail—”
He interrupts me as he crosses the room to leave. “We can talk more tomorrow. Expect them early.”
I watch him step outside to a trail of Secret Service agents behind him. I stay back for bit until he disappears out the door—and, it seems, until that moment when I can finally breathe. When I start to follow, he suddenly fills the doorway again.
“I forgot something—wait a minute.”
He pulls me back into the room, and then his lips are pressing firmly down on mine. I gasp at the contact, having missed it too much. Him too much. His taste, the way his tongue massages mine. And it’s massaging mine so wickedly as I open up instinctively, a moan leaving me and muffled by him as our tongues rub, tangle, twirl. Taste. Taste. Oh god, his taste. It’s divine ecstasy when he kisses me. Impulsively. Ravenously.
Head slanting, going as deep as he can go in the precious minute the kiss lasts. He groans as he pulls back, my face engulfed by both his warm hands as he drops his forehead on mine, his tone fierce.
“This isn’t over yet.”
“Matt—”
“It’s not over.”
Trying to pretend that a thousand and one things didn’t just awaken in my stomach, I push at his chest, urging him out the door. He doesn’t budge.
He takes a long moment to look down at my kissed lips—at me. In the way only he sees me, as if he knows my every dream and fear and nightmare, and all I have been and will ever be.
As if he knows that I . . . was and am and will always be his.
He smiles, and after one last glance at my wet lips, he steps out and leaves me with knees that just turned to putty.
“Mr. President,” says Wilson as Matt buttons his jacket, which I seemed to cause to come loose.
Matthew just nods and strides confidently down the hall with the men after him.
“Jackie Kennedy, Princess Diana—all young and beautiful and loved.”
“I just cannot believe you’re comparing me to them,” I tell Kayla as she sits on my small couch that night.
“Why?”
“I don’t see myself like one of them. I don’t know the first thing about it. I’m not my mother—it’s easy for her, smooth-talking, cool, and collected. My palms sweat, thinking of all these important people looking for reasons why I don’t fit the part.”
“You are the part. The president has asked you. The people have been fascinated by you and Matt since the whole campaign began. You go out there and show them Matt was right in picking you. He’s an intelligent man; let them see what he sees.”
I exhale.
“You don’t need to do it all at once,” she says.
“Oh, I’m definitely not doing it all at once. Small steps. Jessa would tell me that when I was little. Small steps take you farther, and one at a time.”
She continues gaping across the room, clearly still mind-blown. “Wow. God, I still can’t believe it.”
“Don’t tell Sam, or Alan, anyone, until he makes the official announcement, please.”
“Of course.”
I stare out the window, as mind-blown as she. I wanted a man to love and to make a difference. Does this mean I can have both?
Why is it that when the opportunity finally comes, the fear is so great, you almost want to back down?
“Whenever you doubt whether you belong there, know that you do. Jackie and Di. Both very beloved. They brought something new, something you cannot buy with experience. Tell yourself, Charlotte, ‘I have been asked by the president to be his acting first lady. And I’ve accepted.’”
I swallow, nodding. I’ve missed him too much. I’d do anything to be close to him. Anything. They say to grow as a person you need to challenge yourself, go for something higher, something that you might fail at, even.
There is nothing higher or greater for me than this.
To try to be with the man I love, no matter how big he is, how grand, how larger than life. Try to make a difference, not a small one, but one that reaches across cities, states, continents.
Oh god.
I’m going to be Matthew Hamilton’s acting first lady.
I’m afraid of it, and at the same time, I’m scared of how much I want it. To be his true first lady. His only love. His girl, his wife, just . . . his. His in public, his at night, his every morning, his by right.
Is he thinking he wants something like that in the future? Everything … he said.
But I don’t want to ask what he meant yet. Because . . . baby steps. I cannot handle more right now.
I don’t sleep that night. I lie awake in bed in my small apartment, touching my lips. Squeezing my eyes shut as all the memories come washing down on me. As Matt’s eyes come back to haunt me. Matt telling me he wants me at the White House. Matt once telling me of the woman he’ll settle down with someday:
“One day I’ll do all the things I need to. And she’ll be mine. Mark my words.”
“Does she know this yet?” I ask, quietly.
“I just told her,” he says.
Warmth races through my bloodstream as I remember. I want to prove myself worthy. That I deserve to be there. That I deserve to be the woman by Matt Hamilton’s side.
I know it won’t be easy, winning the public. But I know that despite the fear, the uncertainty, the self-doubt, I am still that girl. The one who wants to make a difference. The one who offered to help him with his campaign. The one who fell irrevocably in love with him.
3
THE OVAL
Matt
If you want to make a difference, you need to start today.
Four years sounds like a lot, eight an eternity, but it’s really not. I learned that from my father. Things that were postponed never got done. Changes never set in motion remained stagnant, dead dreams never to be fulfilled, not with the new management and every president having his own agenda.
I tackle confidential information for the entire night, reading—sometimes filled with respect for my predecessors and the calls they made, sometimes with disgust. A lot of times, all I can really say is fuck.
I meet with my chief of staff, several issues on the board.
I meet with my press secretary, Lola Stevens, and strategize for a press conference tomorrow when I will introduce Charlotte to the world.
“I want the drafts for the Clean Energy bill. The Healthcare bill to fix what’s broken in our healthcare system. I want to look into a bill for equal pay and opportunity for working mothers,” I tell Dale as we head down the halls of the West Wing to the Cabinet Room—I walk inside, and everybody stands. “Good morning,” I tell my cabinet members.
“Mr. President.”
“Good morning, Mr. President,” Vice President Louis Frederickson greets me.
I chose him as my running mate because he’s honest, humble, no-nonsense, and a no-kiss-ass kind of man—exactly what we need to get real changes in our country.
I take my seat, then glance at the press corps standing behind the members of my cabinet.
“This meeting will be closed to all members of the press,” I say.
“A quick picture, Mr. President?” one coaxes.
“We have work to do here. But I’m aware, so do you. Make it fast, guys,” I say as I flip to the first page of the thick file before me, an identical one seated before each cabinet member.
Flashes erupt for the next ten seconds, and then Dale opens the door.
&nbs
p; “That’s enough,” he says, waving them out.
The door shuts and I look at all the members of my cabinet, letting the taste of the silence sink in.
“We’re going to have so much work, there’ll be days when we sleep very little, eat very little, and can think of very little else but the things we’re going to do. I want to be sure everyone understands, I’m taking no prisoners for the next four years. What I aim to do is vast, extensive, and very concrete. Let’s get started, then.” I slip on my glasses, take a sip of my water, and we begin.
4
WHITE HOUSE
Charlotte
There is a majesty about the White House that envelops you even from miles away. Today, though, I cannot help but be overwhelmed by its size, its splendor, its very whiteness as I’m led by my new chief of staff, Clarissa Sotomayor, into the White House and along the second floor of the residence—more specifically, to my bedroom. If being transferred from my apartment to the White House in a black car by men with guns wasn’t enough to blow my mind, walking down the White House’s endless wings certainly is.
I’m going to be the youngest first lady in history—as Matt is the youngest POTUS in history. Speaking to Kayla about Jackie and Lady Di last night, I sort of blow my own mind that I’m even comparing myself to these women—is this really my life?
I’m in love with the president, for god’s sake!
And Matthew asked me to be here, asked to see me, asked me to take on this role.
It’s actually happening—and I can hardly believe that it is.
It’s barely after lunch, and here I am.
“And this will be your bedroom,” Clarissa declares as she swings the door open.
My jaw just . . .
Drops.
I didn’t have to lift a finger—every one of my belongings that I wanted to take was transferred from my “shitty, unsafe” apartment (as my mother called it) to the secure, huge, and glamorous White House.
To this room.
My room.