Cruel Promise

by K. A. Linde

  “Please do. It’ll save my poor, precious arms.” I held them out in front of me and shook them like spaghetti.

  Sam laughed and reached into the box of clipboards to count the voter registration forms. He whistled. “Forty-seven. What line are you feeding these undergrads?”

  “No line,” I said with a shrug. “I’m pretty.”

  Sam guffawed. “Who knew that was all you needed? I’m sure Toby will be happy tonight when we recap numbers.”

  “I am starving,” I murmured. I glanced down at my phone. “We have twenty-three minutes until we have to make calls. Food?” I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “Please.”

  “Yes, food for sure. Let me drop these off for data entry, and then we can go.”

  “Oh, thank god.”

  I sank into my office chair in the space I still shared with Sam. Even though we’d gotten more space and Toby had said I could have my own office, I’d just gotten used to sharing. Plus, I had to admit that I liked being close to Sam.

  I picked up my purse and responded to a few texts as I waited for Sam to return. I yawned dramatically and barely managed to cover it with my hand. I’d gone out with Sam and Moira for drinks last night, and I was so fucking tired. I’d been tired all day. I’d really needed that drink last night, but damn, I missed that extra hour of sleep.

  “Okay, all set,” Sam said.

  “Great!” I said and followed him out of the office.

  We wandered across the street and into our favorite burger place near the square. The capitol building stood on the hill, overlooking the rest of the city. It was beautiful and a smaller replica of the capitol in DC. I appreciated that I could see it from anywhere on State Street.

  We ordered our burgers and took our meals back to our booth in the corner. We came over nearly every afternoon. Sometimes, he just liked to have his mentoring time there instead of being cooped up in the office with everyone else. It was one-on-one time.

  “Did I tell you about Kristy?” Sam asked once we sat down.

  “Kristy? Like, volunteer-housing Kristy?”

  Like most people on the campaign, Sam had been placed in a volunteers’ home for the season. He’d been living in Kristy’s extra room in the basement for months. But I knew that he’d been looking to get his own place.

  “Yeah. I guess her daughter graduated this semester and is moving back home. So, now, I have to find somewhere else to live.”

  “When do you have to leave?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  My mouth dropped. “Do you have another volunteer’s home lined up? Or did you find a place of your own?”

  “Toby is calling the other volunteers who offered to house a staff member, but right now, it looks like I’m sleeping on Toby’s floor or getting a hotel until we figure it out. I’m going to go through all the listings for houses. I have enough saved for a down payment.”

  “That’s awful. I hate that it happened so fast.”

  “Yeah. The living situation is my least favorite part of all of this.”

  I bit my lip. Did I dare say what was on my mind?

  “Well…you know, I have a pull-out couch in my apartment,” I said, staring down at my food. “You could stay with me for a while. You know…until you find your own place.”

  “Oh, well, I’m trying to avoid paying rent,” he said with a laugh.

  “Actually, my parents pay for it.” I took a huge bite of my burger to keep from saying anything more.

  My parents had flat-out bought the condo on the top floor of one of the buildings in downtown Madison. They were the controlling type, and money was never an issue. So, they’d simply looked for the nicest place they could find and purchased it. The only say I’d even had in the matter was to convince them to get as close to the office as possible. They’d relented.

  Not that I planned to tell Sam any of that. He didn’t know who I was or what my parents did or that I came from money. And I liked it that way. He treated me just like everyone else. Everyone on campaign did.

  “Are you okay with me crashing on your couch? I mean, I don’t know if you like your space to decompress after work,” he said carefully. His brown eyes said something else though. “It would just be temporary.”

  And I really hoped I wasn’t misreading that look. I hoped that Moira was right and Sam really did like me. Because the last few weeks had been torture.

  “I don’t mind. And anyway, there’s no reason for you to sleep on the floor or get a hotel when I have a perfectly fine substitute. At least until you find your own place.”

  He grinned, and it made me squirm. Why did he have to be so attractive? And so different than every other guy I’d ever met?

  “All right. Well, I’ll pile everything into the truck and come over after work.”

  “I can help if you need it.”

  “You’re already a big help.”

  I tried to hide my pleased grin.

  Sam was moving in with me. I probably shouldn’t have offered. It would put us in close quarters, even more than we were at the office. I was tempting fate by having him in my apartment. But I couldn’t help but tempt fate with him.

  IV

  It was after ten when we were finally done packing up Sam’s belongings and putting them in his truck. I took one look at that truck and laughed. Every time I saw the beaten-up old Chevy, I couldn’t keep it together. I was interested in a man who drove an old truck. My parents would probably disown me on principle.

  “You ready?” Sam asked, stowing his last box.

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you laughing at my truck again?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh again. “I’m not used to it.”

  “Maybe you should drive her.” He offered me the keys.

  I quickly backed away. “Oh, dear god, no. I’ll wreck it, and then you’ll be without a home or a car. And I’ll ruin all your things in the accident. We’d better not.”

  “One day, I’ll get you to drive my truck.”

  “No way.” I shook my head. “That’s not happening.”

  He chuckled and then hopped into the driver’s seat. I followed him across town in my Subaru, which had most of his clothes in it. Then, we spent the next half hour unloading all of his stuff into a corner of the apartment. I was hyper-cognizant of the quality of the apartment. Like it was a ticking time bomb, and any second, it would explode, and he’d know all of my carefully kept secrets.

  “This is really nice, Lark,” Sam said.

  “Thanks,” I said softly, biting down on my lip.

  He peeked into the open door of my bedroom. It was a massive master suite with enough space for two beds, a walk-in closet that could have been a second room, and a bathroom that I was glad he couldn’t see at first glance with its giant waterfall shower and a freestanding jetted tub.

  “Damn! This place is crazy. A little surprised it’s only one-bedroom.”

  My parents had wanted a two-bedroom, had insisted on it actually, until they’d found this floor plan.

  I shrugged off his comment. “Two bedrooms would probably be better for you right about now.”

  He laughed. “Maybe. Well, thank you for letting me stay.”

  “Anytime.”

  He grinned, and my heart melted.

  “I should probably take a quick shower. Carrying all those boxes was quite a workout.”

  My heart deflated. Right. A shower. There was only one bathroom. So, I’d have to show him that.

  I swallowed. “Sure. The shower is the first door on the right. Help yourself to anything you need. I am going to have some ice cream. Want any?”

  “What do you have?”

  “Pretty much everything, except strawberry,” I told him. “I’m allergic.”

  “Good to know. I’ll take whatever you’re having. I’ll just be a minute.”

  I nodded and watched him retreat into the bathroom, worrying at my lip with my top teeth. It would be fine. Or at least, I tried to convince myself of that.
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  To distract myself, I pulled out a container of chocolate chip cookie dough and rocky road and then combined them with a chocolate drizzle on top. I never had time to go to the grocery store, but I always had time for ice cream.

  True to his word, Sam appeared back in the living room in less than ten minutes, freshly showered and dressed in basketball shorts and a gray T-shirt. My eyes snagged on his biceps and went down, down, down. And then way back up.

  Color hit my cheeks, and I pushed a bowl into his hands. “Here you go.”

  “Your shower is pretty epic,” he said, sinking into the couch next to me.

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks. I was not expecting that,” I lied. “Really nice, huh?”

  “Yeah. Looks like the showers I installed in the rich houses I built with my dad back home.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I had known that Sam worked construction with his father, but I hadn’t known what kind of work he’d done.

  “Yeah, this place is a really great find. Your parents chose well.”

  My cheeks heated, and I hastily pulled up Netflix. I’d fallen asleep on the couch the night before in the middle of an episode of Parks and Recreation, and it picked up where I’d left off.

  “The campaign episodes?” Sam said, shifting the topic away from my apartment. I nearly sighed with relief. “Those are my favorite.”

  “Ben and Leslie are perfect for each other.”

  “Yeah, but Aubrey Plaza.”

  “I know, right?” I said with a laugh. “April always says everything I think.”

  “No way are you that dark.”

  “You have no idea,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows.

  “Nah, you’re like the sweet girl from the city.”

  I laughed, setting my ice cream on the coffee table. He couldn’t be further from the truth. “There are no sweet city girls, Sam. That’s something you just invented.”

  Sam reached out and pushed a strand of my hair behind my ear. Our eyes locked, and I swore I stopped breathing. His hand trailed over the shell of my ear and then to my neck. The softest touch, as if he knew that he should stop but he didn’t.

  “You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

  I swallowed. “You give me too much.”

  “Well, whatever we might have been before, we’re here now, in the same place, doing the same thing. I think that’s all that matters.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered in agreement.

  We didn’t break eye contact. He was still touching me. My heart hammered in my chest. We were so close and yet so far. And I didn’t know if I should cross that line. All the logical reasons floated out of my brain. Logic and reason were secondary to matters of the heart.

  We moved as one, as if pulled by a string. Magnets seeking out the other. My hands pushed into his hair. His grasped my waist, tugging me tight against him. Our lips hovered an inch away and then crashed together. As if the weeks we’d spent in that small office and days of working together and hours of mentoring and every minute and second in each other’s presence had coalesced into this moment.

  Our lips moved together. Hands roamed. Tongues met. Fire and tension and rapture exploded all around us. Every kiss before this was muted and then utterly disappeared. There was no kiss before this. There was nothing before this.

  Just me and Sam.

  Two bodies.

  One heart.

  Then, we slowed and stopped and looked on in a state of euphoria and wonder.

  “I’ve wanted to do that since the first time I saw you,” Sam said breathlessly.

  His hands had somehow become tangled in my hair. I was practically sitting in his lap.

  “Me too.”

  I kissed him again—thoroughly.

  “We should probably stop.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said against his lips.

  “Or not,” he said and then kissed me some more.

  And then some more.

  Heedless of our different backgrounds or what lay ahead, we didn’t stop kissing until long into the night when I fell soundly asleep on the couch, wrapped in Sam’s arms.

  SPRING

  I

  If I’d had a two-bedroom apartment, Sam would have moved in with me.

  I wanted him to. As irrational as that was. Here I was with a secret identity, and I wanted to bring a stranger into my safe haven. It was close enough that he’d been to my apartment, let alone stayed there for the week before he could get his own place.

  It was worse when he left.

  Because I didn’t want him to. And I was pretty sure that I’d never cared this much about anyone. I never wanted anyone to stay.

  It wasn’t the way I had been raised. The Upper East Side was its own version of fucked up. I’d grown up with controlling parents, four crazy best friends, and too much money. I’d gotten everything I ever wanted and never had any boundaries…except to fall in line with the family.

  I’d been raised to follow my family’s footsteps. I’d gotten my bachelor’s from Brown and a JD from Columbia, and I was supposed to magically take over St. Vincent’s Enterprise. Until I’d seen Governor Woodhouse speak in the city, and it had changed everything. He was a man I could get behind. A person I believed in. And I suddenly didn’t want to follow the perfect trajectory. I wanted to make a difference.

  Which was how I’d ended up here with a one-year term from my parents before I came home and took over my legacy. I intended to make the most of it.

  But none of that would make a difference if Woodhouse wasn’t nominated for the presidency. He was the front-runner after winning the New Hampshire primary and a spatter of other early states. Wisconsin’s primary race was right around the corner, and the campaign was laser-focused on it.

  I had planned a vote-athon at the university for the day that early vote opened up. A twenty-four-hour dance party inside the Union ballroom. It would end the next morning with everyone walking from the party to the polling place on campus.

  Fifteen hours into it at midnight, I could barely keep my eyes open. The students were really in charge of it all. I’d gotten the student party association to host the event so that we could have it on campus. The campaign hours left me so run-down that pulling an all-nighter sounded like a nightmare, which I hadn’t considered when I suggested the event.

  “You look like you could use this,” Sam said.

  I desperately reached out for the coffee. “You are a lifesaver.”

  He laughed. “I don’t want you to pass out. Sleep is our greatest ally. Forgoing it for a night does not seem like your best idea.”

  I took a long sip of the steaming hot black coffee. “It really isn’t. But I’m here now. I can power through until morning.”

  “That’s seven more hours, and you look dead on your feet. Maybe you should get a few hours of shut-eye while your volunteers handle this.”

  “Don’t be reasonable,” I said with a grin.

  “Just looking out for you.”

  I waved my hand. “I know. I know. But this is my first big event. I don’t feel comfortable walking away, even for a few hours.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” he said, swiping a hand back through his dark hair. My eyes followed the motion with keen interest. “I’m going to have to stay up with you.”

  “What?” I asked with a laugh. “Don’t be silly. You need your sleep.”

  “You think I’m going to let you early vote before me?”

  I rolled my eyes. “They all count the same.”

  He stepped forward, closer and closer. My heart rate picked up. He was so close and yet so far. We’d kissed a few more times since that first night, but we hadn’t decided on anything. We hadn’t confirmed anything. This felt like another step. An unknowable step for us.

  Slowly, his pinkie slid around my own pinkie. A small, simple motion, and still, electricity zinged through my body. Everything jolted as if he’d zapped me awake for the first time.

  We stayed like that for I didn’t know how lon
g, watching the night blur on. All the college students moved along to made-up choreography that they planned to dance on their way to the polls. We even joined in with some of them to keep ourselves awake.

  We grabbed burgers from our favorite burger joint, which I’d convinced to donate to the event. With only a matter of hours before we could get out of here, Sam and I sank onto the floor of the ballroom and ate our favorite food.

  “Lark,” Sam said when he finally finished.

  I took my last bite of my burger and set the wrapper aside. After I finished chewing, I asked, “Yeah?”

  “You don’t mind me being here, do you?”

  My cheeks flushed. “Mind? No. I…I want you here.”

  He nodded. “Good. I don’t want to step over any boundaries. I know that we’re coworkers…”

  I put my hand on his. “You’re not overstepping.”

  If anything, he was going slow. So, so slow. I wasn’t used to guys like Sam. Southern gentlemen who cared whether or not they were going too fast or overstepping. Guys who wanted more than sex from me. We’d been circling each other for weeks and not done more than kiss. To think that he’d thought that was overstepping, I never even would have guessed.

  “I just…I really like you,” he admitted.

  A smile came to my face. “I really like you, too.”

  I leaned forward then, capturing his lips against mine. It was gentle. None of the hurried rush that I was used to from guys. This was the settling of what had already been brewing between us. The rightness of it sliding into place.

  He groaned against my lips and pulled back. “You make it really hard to not just pick you up and steal you.”

  I chuckled, drawing him in again. “Who said I wouldn’t want that?”

  He kissed me one more time. “You’re too special for that,” he said against my lips. “You don’t rush perfection, Lark. And I don’t want to rush us.”

  “Us,” I breathed the word like a lifeline.

  “You are mine, right?” he asked.

  I swallowed and nodded, meeting those deep, dark eyes. “I am.”

  “Good.” He tucked a lock of red hair behind my ear. “I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for you.”