The Phoenix Campaign (Grace Colton Book 2) (23 page)

“Because you thought he would hate you for it?”

“Yes. Call me selfish, but I needed to see and know the man he’d become. Even when I met another woman, and married her and had three more children, I always regretted that I hadn’t been the father I should have been to Jared. So I tried. In small ways. And I know that’s not enough.”

A shadow in my hospital room moves and my eyes flick up to see Jared in the doorway, a blue teddy bear dangling from his hand. My heart soars, believing for one second that he’s come back for me.

But when I see the fire and ice in his expression, the anger and the pain, I feel the earthquake in this room that tears us apart.

Shep spins, following my gaze, and Jared’s expression is scalding, incandescent with hatred.

“You. It was … you?” Jared chokes out the words, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his fists clench.

Shep stands and walks to him, but Jared pulls back toward the door. “I never meant for it to come out this way. I just wanted to be a part of your life in the only way I thought I could. And I needed—”

“You used me,” Jared spits. “You left me when I didn’t suit your political plans, and you kept me around when it did.”

The horror of the moment is amplified by the beeps and buzzes of the medical monitors, the tang of bleach and whoosh of air through a vent.

My gut clenches with the fear of what’s next. I’m desperate to go to him, hold him, anchor Jared in this moment when he is untethered from everything he believed to be true.

“I’ve done everything I could to repair what I ruined,” Shep says, his deep voice hoarse with emotion. He reaches for Jared’s shoulder. “I’ve tried to help—”

“Bullshit!” Jared flings Shep’s hand away. “You’ve done
everything you can?
You’ve never given me the truth. After everything you stole from my life and my mother, you
owed
me the truth.”

Jared whirls and strides out of my hospital room. Shep staggers backward, slumping against a wall. Sasha is frozen to her spot, but, damn it, someone needs to act.

I yank the IV needle from the back of my hand and push my body out of bed, my stomach rolling like I’ve got a wicked hangover.

Sasha and Shep move to stop me but they’re too slow. I burst out of my hospital room, shocking Mac and Eric to attention, my head swiveling wildly until I catch Jared’s back disappearing down the hospital hallway.

“Stop! Stop this!” I run to chase him, past the blue teddy bear dropped in the corridor. Heads turn at the nurses’ station and I hear Mac and Eric pounding behind me.
 

Jared breaks his stride and I barely recognize him through the pain on his face, the mask of a man who is beaten in every way possible. Every shred of goodness has been ripped from his life.

He has nothing but anger left. And it’s directed at me. “Don’t even try.”

“No. I have to try. Don’t you get it? I love you and Shep loves you, no matter what.”

“You don’t lie to people you love.” On his tongue,
lie
is the foulest curse. His eyes sag with hurt and he turns away, again, swift strides down the hall. I follow as Mac and Eric jog behind me, barking alerts to the security team.

I raise my voice to reach him. “Sometimes you have to lie, to protect them.”
 

Jared spins to me once more.“No. Everything a lie touches is tainted. It’s poison.”

“It’s protection,” I insist. Maybe they weren’t all lies, just little omissions, misdirections, each one a brick in a wall intended to protect our fragile connection.

“Then that’s a lie you tell yourself.” Jared’s voice is hoarse with emotion. “I loved you no matter if we were fighting or fucking or politicking. And I was gonna keep loving you, win or lose, but you wouldn’t fucking
let
me. You shut me out. You and Shep were the most important people in the world to me. But neither of you trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”

“But I—”

“Don’t.” His command cuts me down. “Don’t even try to justify it. Trust goes both ways. How can I trust you after this? How can I
love
you?”

Jared’s turns his back on me and disappears through a stairwell doorway. My knees buckle and my stomach drops to the floor. Cold grips me and the room tilts.

I’m slipping, falling, and the floor races up to devour me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Strong arms carry me.

Shouts, beeps, buzzes.

The sting of a needle.

The suffocation of a mask.

The bliss of floating. The quiet. The dark.

***

The pain.

Throbbing pain wakes me, pulling me back to earth from a floating haze. I’m disoriented in darkness, small pricks of light coming into focus as I blink and look around this room.

I’m still in the hospital.

Still alive, or at least surviving.

My stomach cramps and pain shoots through me again. I moan.

A movement from the far corner of my room catches my eye and I lift my head to see a head bent, light from a tablet illuminating a face.

“You’re OK.” The words don’t match Sasha’s sandpaper voice. “How are you feeling?”

She crosses the room and turns on a small light at my bedside. I blink as my eyes adjust and then motion toward the bathroom.

“You can’t get up,” Sasha says firmly.

My mouth feels like it’s filled with cement and my hand immediately goes to my stomach. Before I can ask about my baby, Sasha disappears behind the bathroom door and returns with a tiny Dixie cup. I guzzle it down and she refills it without complaint. Twice.

I struggle to push my hips up to relieve my achy ass that’s been cemented in one position in bed for who knows how long. That’s when I realize that my legs are tethered to the bed.

“What is that?” I drag the covers off my feet, revealing wide velcro straps securing my ankles. “What happened to my baby?”

“Let me help you.” Sasha presses buttons on the side of my bed and raises me to sitting. Dark circles line her eyes but she doesn’t answer my questions.

I try another. “How long have you been here?”

“I never left.”

“What time is it?”

Sasha checks her tablet. “Four-thirty in the morning.”

I take stock as my last memories race back to my brain. Shep’s secret. Jared’s anger. Running after him. Falling into an agent’s arms. And pain. So much pain radiating from my center.

I touch my face, then inspect the tender seam in my scalp where I hit my head when I fell off the podium at Shep’s press conference. An IV needle is secured to the back of my hand again.

Two light raps at my door give my heart hope for a moment, but it’s not the man I need to see. It’s the doctor, and his drawn, pitying face tells me everything I don’t want to know.

My shoulders shake and I convulse, tears welling, my throat constricting with breathless sobs. “My baby?”

“I’m so sorry, Congresswoman Colton. There was nothing we could do. You miscarried.”

I look to Sasha for confirmation of this horror and her eyes are downcast. She knows. She knows everything—how much I would have traded to keep my child, how far I’ve come to get so close to the White House, and that I would have given it all up.

But now the choice is made for me.

The doctor says more words I don’t hear and my eyes volley between Sasha and him as she nods, taking in information I can’t process. Before he leaves, he pats my shoulder.

“I know this is difficult news, but it’s not your fault,” he says.
Of course it’s my fault. I ignored the bed rest order and ran after Jared.
“Give yourself a break, physically and emotionally, to let yourself heal.”

A break.
Broken is all I can feel right now. My heart cleaved in two when this new life formed in me, one half loving this perfect new being, one half loving the man who created it with me.

And now both parts are shattered.

Night claims me, heart and soul, as I collapse back onto the pillow and wail, welcoming each new wave of pain.

***

I get another dose of painkillers and brush my teeth in bed, spitting in a Dixie cup. Mac and Eric bring the suitcases Sasha and I packed from DC and lattes from the hospital coffee cart. I sip it, bitter that I can now drink as much caffeine as I want.

The sun rises.

The campaign is a disaster.

Sasha catches me up on the last day: Jared is AWOL, Shep’s at a scheduled appearance in Detroit aided by another member of his team, and my appearances are canceled.

Off the record, Sasha whispered to the press I have a fever, nothing serious.

On the record, my condition is good and I’ll be back on the campaign trail in a few days. There’s no mention of me withdrawing.

“What are we going to do next?” I ask her, touching my belly. “Are you going to replace me?”

“It’s up to you, whether you think you can physically handle the rest of the run to November,” Sasha says.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” she counters.

“I thought you just said it was my decision.”

“I did, but I’m also here to tell you when you’re wrong.” A slight smile tugs at the corner of Sasha’s mouth. “You might think this is the lowest low of your life. You might be right, but you’re never going to get back to good if you give up now.”

I shake my head, beaten, broken … done. “I don’t have anything left.”

“Bullshit,” Sasha says, and there’s that smile again. “You have everything—everything you’ve done so far, everything you’ve worked for, and every opportunity to finish this run.”

I look away from Sasha’s piercing gaze as she inspects me, as if to test my mettle. She’s looking for something I don’t think I have in me.

“It’s six weeks to Election Day. That’s all you’ve got to endure. You can handle it.”

“I can’t handle anything right now.”

“Wimp.” Sasha snorts. “Loser.”

My eyes widen.

“You’re going to puss out on this? Cash in your chips and be
content
walking away? I told you I’m in your corner and I am. I call bullshit on you giving up. Don’t be stupid.”

“Don’t call me stupid!” My outburst shocks me.

Sasha grins. “You see? You’ve got a little fight left in you.”

“Don’t call me stupid,” I repeat quietly. “That’s what my mother called me.”

“Then don’t act stupid. Stupid isn’t failing. It isn’t getting beaten. Stupid is giving up before you’ve fought the whole fight. It’s giving up when you still have a chance to win.”

“There’s no way we can win this.” My voice drops so low Sasha has to lean in to hear me. “The campaign can’t recover from this—first with Shep and then with me.”

“A campaign can recover from anything except a quitter,” Sasha says fiercely. “You’re not done. The Secret Service calls you Phoenix for a reason. You’ve got to come back from this.”

Sasha’s voice is raw with emotion and her eyes glisten with tears. I’m stunned—this shark, this sharp-edged, ball-busting woman who just spent God knows how long at my hospital bedside, is begging me to keep going.
 

“Tell me you’ll go one more round. Tell me you can make it until November.”

One more round.
Her words prompt the mental image of a fighter, bloodied and beaten, who swings back against his opponent.

Weeks ago, Jared told me there are six stages in a campaign. Number five is when the candidate hits The Ropes.

“That’s when the candidate is most fragile. It’s your darkest time, when you think your campaign has disintegrated,” he said. “But getting thrown on The Ropes is essential. Voters need to see a candidate fall to prove his humanity. They want to cheer for the underdog and see him rise again. You have to be broken so they’ll feel personally responsible to help you back up, to get out and vote.”

I hiccup a sob. Jared predicted this, and he predicted we’d come back from it.

My heart is empty from loss, my body drained, my brain filled with exhausted mush, but in my gut, I know. I have to do this. Not because Sasha’s begging me, or because Trey would too if he were here, but because
I
have to do this.

I have to make it right.

I have to make it count.

“I can make it.” I return Sasha’s tiny smile.

Relief washes over Sasha’s face and she lets out a long breath with the word
yesssss
. Then she straightens in the chair beside me and rolls into business mode without missing a beat. “You don’t have to tell anyone, you know. We can get you out of the hospital, cover you with an unspecified medical issue, and reschedule appearances in a couple days.”

Her words come fast as she makes plans and proposals, testing possible lies about why I’m really here and debating their potential fallout. Finally, I hold out a hand.

“Stop.”

She blinks.

“No more lies.”

“This is a personal matter. We don’t have to lie, exactly, but we don’t have to tell the whole truth. Millions of women have miscarriages and never breathe a word. No one can fault you for that. We can keep it our secret. You’re not pregnant anymore, so you’re not failing to disclose something that would affect your ability to serve.”

“I said, no more lies. And no more secrets. If I keep going toward the general election, you’ve got to be a hundred percent with me on this.” My words become more forceful and the clarity startles me. “Every secret I’ve kept has poisoned our campaign somehow. I can’t do it anymore.”

Sasha bows her head to the tablet and I take stock of the secrets that threatened to ruin us at every turn.

My mother, ready to blab my childhood secrets on a talk show.

Lauren using Jared’s identity as a bargaining chip.

Trey hiding in the closet.

The secret of my pregnancy.

The secret of Shep’s child.

We justified these secrets, hid behind walls of lies, and blocked out the people we’re supposed to love most.

How can Mama Bea fully love Trey if she doesn’t know who he really is? How can Jared love me if I won’t let him in—all the way in?

I wonder what secrets he’s keeping from me. His words, spoken in anger, echo in my head:
“I’ve given you more than you even know, sacrificed my future for you.”