Sway (Landry Family #1) (24 page)

“There’s a picture in the paper today.” Graham lays a copy of the Savannah Dispatch on my desk. “That was taken outside the Farm yesterday.”

Grabbing it and looking closely, I see Troy in the Rover. In the passenger seat is Lincoln and in the back, behind Linc, is Alison. Her face is kind of blurry, but it’s her.

Thank God Huxley isn’t visible.

I want to die. I want to crawl into a hole and just sleep until this entire fucking election is over, until everyone stops acting stupid—caring about what I do, what I say, what I support, pegging kids on me that aren’t even mine.

Nolan glares from his spot next to my brother.

“Don’t start,” I grumble, putting my head in my hands. My mind is spinning about whether Alison has seen it or not and what she’ll have to say about it. This is absolutely what she doesn’t want and what I thought I could prevent.

How fucking stupid
.

“Barrett,” Nolan says, licking his lips, “this isn’t going to go over well.”

“She’s not even officially coming to see me. She’s technically with Lincoln.”

“Even if she is with your brother, and we both know that’s not true, the media will spin it to discredit you, especially with her history. You know that.”

“Fuck.”

“I’m going to need to get back to my desk and figure out how to deal with this,” he huffs, sticking his paperwork back in his briefcase. “This is exactly what we didn’t need and absolutely what I asked you not to do.”

“I didn’t do anything, Nolan. Nothing wrong.”

He pauses, his hand midair, and looks at me like I’m a child. “You just cost me a day’s work by not being able to control yourself for a little while longer.”

“There’s nothing remotely scandalous about this!”

The air in the room thickens, all of us waiting on someone else to make the next move. I want to get out of here, to find Alison, to make sure she’s okay.

“I knew this was coming.” Graham adjusts his tie and clears his throat. “I have a plan, one neither of you may like, but it’s all I can come up with considering the extenuating circumstances. Let’s use this to our advantage. I know there’s no way Barrett is not going to keep seeing her.”

“How do you know that?” Nolan asks. “He’s seen her for a while now and that’s indicative of the end.”

“Trust me.” Graham looks at me again. “Furthermore, there’s no way the media won’t find out about her past—innocent or not,” he adds as I quirk a brow. “All we can do is to go with it, play it off. Defense in the form of offense.”

“What are you saying?” I ask, leaning forward, my hands together on my desk.

He takes a deep breath and watches Nolan. “I propose we go all in. Make a statement that Barrett is in a relationship with a single mom, that he’s this benevolent man that is taking care of her and her son. Let’s swing the story our way, use it to our advantage.”

Nolan seems to consider the absurdity of this.

“She doesn’t want in the media,” I say, nixing the idea. “There’s no way she’s going to agree to this.”

“Are you going to keep seeing her?” Graham asks.

I think about it for a half of a second. “Yes.”

“Then think of it like this—as much as you want to live in Lala Land and pretend like you can do what you want on the down low, you can’t. It’s ridiculous to even consider it, Barrett. So by doing it in the open, as much as she tells you she doesn’t want to do that, you can protect her. Otherwise . . . you can’t.”

It makes so much sense coming from Graham. But I know, in the bottom of my gut, this won’t be that simple to Alison.

“If it were just me, I’d be all in,” I say, feeling my resolve wane. “But this decision isn’t just mine.”

“Since when?” Graham jokes. “You always just make decisions about shit and force everyone else to play your game. That’s what this is, in fact. We’ve told you not to see her and yet, here we are, playing along with what you want.”

I don’t answer him, my mind already on the conversation I’m going to have with her.

“I think Graham has a point,” Nolan says finally, standing up. “If you’re hell-bent on seeing this thing through, let’s run with it. Just until the election. It’s not like you’re seriously going to marry this girl or anything.”

Something about the way he says that burns me. I stand too, my chair smacking the wall behind my desk. Graham notices my demeanor and inserts himself before I can blow.

“Exactly,” he says, assuaging Nolan. “So let’s convince Alison this is the right thing and just roll with it until Barrett is finished.” He raises his eyebrows at me, his way of trying to keep me calm.

My chest heaves with frustration as I watch them walk to the door. Nolan turns to face me before he exits.

“You’re going to need to convince her of this pretty quick so we can get our statement out and beat Hobbs to the punch. You know his guys are working on it now.”

Once he’s gone, Graham turns to me. “This is the best I can come up with. I knew this day was coming and I don’t know how else to let you have what you want and keep you from blowing everything in the meantime.”

My shoulders sag forward and I drop my eyes. Guilt trickles through me because he’s right—this election doesn’t just have my dreams attached to its success, but a host of other people’s too.

When I look back up, he’s gone. I buzz Rose to let her know to hold my calls and cancel my appointments for the rest of the day. I text Troy to pick me up out front. Once I’m in the Rover, I call Alison.

On the third ring, she picks up. I grin as soon as I hear her say hello.

“Hey, it’s me,” I say as Troy swerves through traffic towards her house.

“I was just thinking about you.”

I take a large gulp of air. This could blow back in my face so bad, I know it. I feel it in the pit of my stomach. But it does seem like the most logical solution, and truth be told, I want to be with her. Making up my mind once and for all, I go all in. “Are you home?”

“Yeah, I’m just finishing up a bunch of homework. Why?”

“Would it be okay if I swung by for a minute? I want to talk to you.”

“Uh, yeah,” she says. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine. Just want to run a few things by you.”

“I’m here,” she says, trying to sound confident.

I laugh because I’m trying to be sure this will work out too. “I’ll be there in a second.”

The Rover scurries through thankfully light late afternoon traffic and, before I know it, we’re pulling up to a little white house with black shutters. I dart out the door and race up the steps, knocking a handful of rapid beats before Alison pulls it open.

She stands in front of me in a pair of jeans with holes in the knees and a light green shirt. She looks like she should be fixing dinner in the kitchen, helping Hux with his homework, and waiting on me to come home for dinner.

I shake the thoughts away because the conversation that’s getting ready to happen could end that visual forever.

“Hey,” she says, a lilt to her voice that lets me know she’s as anxious as I am.

“Hey,” I say, entering the house. It smells like her, like vanilla and cotton, and is decorated in a warm, homey way that makes me feel welcome immediately. “Is Huxley here?”

She shakes her head.

Knowing we’re alone and this might not end well, I can’t pass up the opportunity to kiss her. I begin to pull her to me, but she melts into my chest. Our lips find each other, like they could in the dark, and I memorize every movement, every tug, every feeling of peace she gives me by being her.

She leads me into the living room and we sit on a worn sofa. I think about saying something nice about her home and how pretty she looks, but I can tell she hasn’t seen the article and I don’t want to put it off any longer than necessary.

“So,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Apparently someone snapped a picture last night of you and Linc entering the Farm.”

Her face blanches and her eyes go wide. “How? Where?”

I shrug. “It’s in the Dispatch. It’s of Linc and Troy mostly, but you can see you. Your face isn’t super clear, but it’s you.”

I give her time to process this before pushing the issue. She looks away, to a picture of her and Hux when he was much smaller, her eyes filling with tears. But they don’t fall.

“I’m sorry,” I say, the words making me want to die. “I know this is what you didn’t want.”

She nods her head and doesn’t look at me. It’s like a knife in my heart.

“It’s not the pictures in the paper exactly,” she says finally, her words barely above a whisper.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s protecting Huxley’s privacy more than anything,” she says distantly. “But it’s . . . more than that.” When she looks at me, the sparkle in her eyes is gone. There are tight lines around her mouth letting me know she’s in pain. “When I think of the media, it terrifies me. I have panic attacks, Barrett. It took a couple of years after I left New Mexico to be able to even leave the house without shaking and being ready to puke.”

“I’ll never let anything happen to you, Alison.”

She doesn’t tell me she knows I’m right. She doesn’t say anything at all.

“I thought somehow I could prevent this,” I say, taking her hand in mine. “Maybe it was wishful thinking.”

“I don’t know how I believed it wouldn’t come to this.”

“But hey,” I say, looking at her until she looks at me. “It’s to this now. And we have to choose whether what we have is worth fighting for or not.”

She smiles and gathers the courage to speak again. “What do we have, Barrett?”

I kiss her lightly. “I’m just figuring it out. I don’t know what it is because I’ve never felt it before. But I can tell you this for sure—it’s not something I want to let go because we’re afraid.”

“Are you afraid of this?”

“My staff tells me I should be. They tell me getting involved with a woman can flip back around and kick me in the ass. They say it can ruin my reputation and lend more credence to Hobbs’ claims that I’m a flighty decision maker.”

Her face falls. “I don’t want to hurt your career.”

“You make me better. Don’t you see that? You make me feel like I can conquer the world, Alison. You make me smile, give me little glimpses of something I’d never considered before.”

She picks up on what I’m getting at and seems shocked at the idea. I want to tell her that yeah, I’m thinking of what a future could hold between us long-term, but I don’t go there. I need to fight one battle at a time.

“You give me and my career way more than you’d ever take from it. But it’s not just about me. It’s about you. And Hux.”

“I feel like I need to protect my boy,” she says. “I know what being in the public eye can do. I don’t know what hearing things said about his mother, about you if he grows close to you like I think he will—what will that do to him?” She frowns. “If I don’t protect him, who will?”

“I’m fighting for you right now, to give me the chance to prove to you I’ll protect you both. That I’m worth bringing into your lives.”

Her face lights up. “Really? That’s how you feel?”

“Definitely. I want to see where this goes, Alison, and I can’t do that if I can’t say you’re mine. Look,” I say, moving closer to her, “I can’t protect you if I won’t acknowledge we’re together. If we’re sneaking around, it’s only going to make the media more curious as to who you are. But if I can come out and tell them I’m seeing you and ask them to respect your privacy, most of them will. Even though they’re complete fucking dickheads to me, there’s a general rule about keeping kids out of it. So you don’t need to worry about Hux.”

I can see her coming around, the idea not sounding so crazy. So I keep talking, praying that I say something that throws her to my side.

“I want you to be my girl in every sense of the word. We can still go slow, but just do it openly. I don’t see the harm in that.”

She sighs, a burden on her chest that she’s clearly wrestling. It would be so much easier if this wasn’t an election season and I wasn’t in this big fight with Monroe and Hobbs. I wish, for a split second, I wasn’t Barrett Landry, Mayor of Savannah.

“If you want to think about it, that’s fine,” I say sadly. “I’ll understand.”

She closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. Her hand trembles as she places it over mine. I can feel her pulse pounding, her skin heated. After a few failed attempts at speaking, her eyes fly open and the words pour out of her mouth.

“This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in the history of my life, especially since I feel this eerie sense of déjà vu, but,” she says, taking a deep, lingering breath, “let’s do it. Let’s get it over with because the fear of not having you is worse than the fear of the press.”

“Really?” I say, afraid I misheard.

She shrugs, a little grin smearing on her face. “If I think about not seeing you tomorrow, it kills me. And if I think about telling Hux he won’t see Uncle Lincoln anymore, I want to die.”

“Uncle Lincoln?” I ask, raising my brow.

“Apparently your brother told him to call him that.”

Laughing, I pull her into my shoulder. I don’t tell her how much I love the insinuations that makes. I don’t let on that I’m going to call Linc when I get home and give him hell and a couple of thank-you’s. I don’t happen to say that it seems completely right to have my brother already intertwined in her life. But I do kiss the top of her head.

“Linc hated hearing that Hux didn’t have a man in his life. We grew up with all these role models—our grandfather, our father, our uncle, and each other. And, you know, Linc’s the youngest boy in the family, so he had to spend more time than any of us with Camilla and Sienna. I think he just seriously felt bad for your son.”

“Huxley hasn’t been this happy in his entire life,” she sighs. “But I still want to go slow.”

“Absolutely. Whatever makes you feel good about this.”

She gazes in my eyes and cups both of my cheeks in her hands. “I’m still scared, Barrett.”

“I’m scared too.”

“Of going public?”

“No, of not winning your vote back.” My smile falls a little. “And of having you break my heart.”

She laughs like I’m kidding, but I’m not. I’ve never let my guard down with someone before.