Maggie didn’t suffer crises of confidence. If anything, she probably had too much of it. It took a certain kind and a certain amount of ego to run for office. To think that she and her team of friends and colleagues could solve problems for millions of people.

She had that kind of ego. She always had.

But Jay saying he couldn’t be around her anymore crumpled her like a tissue.

“What…what do you mean?” she asked, feeling breathless and stupid. Like the girl she’d been.

Jay hammered back his shot. The man was getting drunk. Jay was a good drunk. Sweet. A little baffled. Argumentative, but he never went for blood the way he did when he was sober. It was like all his sharp edges were rounded and he was…touchable.

Knowable.

Sober and working he could seem like a too-bright star. Something she had to look at sideways or stand back from.

He was brilliant, there was no doubt about it. But he ran hot.

He always had.

Right now he was so hot the air was difficult to breathe.

“What do you think I mean?” he asked, looking at her with his green eyes. He needed a haircut. He looked like a wild man right now. Though, personally, she liked him like this. There’d been times in the last month she’d barely stopped herself from rubbing her hands along that beard of his. He was a man who’d gotten better looking as he aged. Like time had honed him to his most elemental self.

She was constantly battling the effects of time.

Of course Jay would have them working in his favor.

How incredibly like Jay that was.

“Jay,” she snapped, her fingers pressed to her stomach, because that’s what she did now instead of biting her thumbnail when she was upset. “Stop talking in code.”

He turned again, and…there…yes. His knee pressed against her thigh, and she felt the heat of him through her suit. Through his suit.

She breathed carefully, trying not to reveal how disconcerting his touch was.

How…exciting.

Friends, she thought. You are friends and you are only imagining this...heat.

This feeling was familiar. The first semester of college. The Ethics and Policy class when she’d been holding out hope that Jay, with all his bright hotness, all his fierce intellect and wild eyes, would look her way.

He never did.

But now he was. He was looking at her like he needed something from her, and she had no idea what it could be.

Well, she had an idea…and if it had been any other man, she might have been bold enough to say something. Do something. But this was Jay, and the stakes were far too high.

And if he didn’t want her when they were in college, what could possibly have changed his mind?

“Do you really not know?” he asked. “All these years and you have no idea?”

Maggie blinked. “I have no idea.”

His lips pursed, and his expression folded into one of disappointment and exasperation—she’d seen that look a lot over the years. He was hard on staffers. But it was so rarely directed her way.

She glanced down at her hands. Not because she was chagrined but because when he pursed his lips like that, well…he had nice lips. Beautiful lips, really. She’d once heard Belinda, her assistant since the dawn of time, saying they were sexy. That Jay had sexy lips.

That’s exactly what they were. Framed by his beard…she’d spent far too much time thinking about his lips. His beard.

What is wrong with me?

He opened his mouth and she held her breath. For what, she wasn’t sure. For something…anything.

All these years, and you have no idea.

“Lloyd!” he yelled. “Put this on my tab.”

And then he stood up and walked out of the bar.

“Jay!” she yelled, following him out into the night. It was a warm October, but the nights were getting cold, and the evening air bit right through her suit jacket.

Jay was half a block ahead of her, looking around the street.

“Jay! Wait!” She heard her security trotting up behind her, keeping their distance, but always there.

“What are you doing?” she asked when she caught up to him.

“Looking for another bar.”

“You just left one.”

“A bar where my boss won’t follow me. My…ex-boss. Where’s a strip club when you need it?”

“Are you trying to hurt me?” It sounded so plain when she said it, much more plain than she’d hoped.

He stopped, the neon of the city lighting him up in blues and reds. Crowds of people walked by, none of them looking up. She and Jay were just one more New York City drama.

Jay stepped closer. And then closer again. The lights were in his beard. His hair. His eyes. He was so…exciting.

“The last thing I want is to hurt you,” he said. “For as long as I’ve known you, I have done everything in my power to make sure you’re not hurt. To stop you from feeling any kind of pain. If I could have kept Ben from dying, I would have done it. I would have taken his place just so you wouldn’t have had to feel the pain of mourning.”

“Jay—”

“You think I’m joking or exaggerating, but I’m not. And it has hurt me,” he breathed, and then smiled like saying that felt good. Was a relief.

“How?” she asked. Demanded. The implication that she was hurting him didn’t sit well with her, even if the hurt was unintentional. He was her best friend. There was no one she cared for more. “How have I hurt you?”

“Because I love you.” The silence after his words was deep. Complete. It was an all-encompassing silence.

Because I love you? Did he say that? Did I imagine that? Is this really happening?

She glanced around, looking for clowns or the sudden appearance of her third grade teacher, anything that would indicate this was, in fact, a dream.

And then he laughed. He tilted back his head and howled up to the night sky.

Maggie tried not to flinch.

“Oh my God, it feels so good to say it. I love you. I have loved you since freshman orientation. I have loved you since Ethics and Policy. I have loved you every damn day of my life in your company.”

He laughed like it was all a good joke.

“And I fucking want you, Maggie.” He curled his hands into fists in front of him like he was clutching something and shaking it. Maggie’s stomach bottomed out. Her heart climbed into her throat. She couldn’t think. She could only feel. And she felt so much. His words like fingers brushing over her skin, when her skin hadn’t been touched in so long. “I am fucking dying for wanting you. That’s why I’m quitting. Because I can’t be around you and not…touch you. Not for one more day.”

“Hey,” A stranger stopped, pulled from his own thoughts by Jay’s wild laughing. “Aren’t you that guy who punched out Bill Bishop on CNN?” He lifted the phone he carried in his hand. “Can I get a picture?”

“No,” Jay said, reckless and rude. Which was the privilege of being a private citizen, and Jay was not. She certainly was not.

“No?” the guy asked.

“You don’t understand the word?”

Oh, no.

“You don’t have to be a dick about it—”

“I’ll take a photo with you,” Maggie said over the man. Jay was unraveling faster than she could pick up his pieces. She hadn’t seen him like this…ever. Not even when Ben died and they both fell apart so hard.

“Holy shit, Maggie Perkins.” The guy with the phone turned the camera on her, and she smiled for the picture. A small crowd started forming, and she was shaking hands and taking pictures, all while keeping one eye on Jay, who went back to looking for a bar.

“You have my vote,” a woman said, and Maggie thanked her.

“Mine too,” said the man the woman was with.

She caught Rick’s eye, and he came up behind her, escorting her through the crowd to the black limo sitting at the curb.

She paused at the door.

“Ma’am?” Rick asked.

“Get Jay.”

And then she slipped into the backseat of her car.

---

Fifteen minutes later, Jay fell into the backseat beside her, huffing like a kid sent to the principal’s office. Rolling his eyes, he slammed the door shut behind him.

Her body felt electric at his nearness. It was familiar this wildness. But she’d been pretending not to feel it for so long. Because she was his boss. Because they were friends.

Because he’d never – not once – indicated he felt anything more than friendship.

She’d put these feeling away for so long that she didn’t know what to do with them. How to handle them.

“You better have something to drink in here,” he muttered, rummaging through the limo’s storage area.

“There might be a bottle of champagne left from the nomination.” She pulled down her jacket, searching for some kind of composure. Equilibrium.

It felt like the world had been tipped over. This new information changed everything.

“How drunk are you?”

“Not drunk enough. Ah-ha!” he said with ecstatic discovery when he found a half-full bottle of whisky. “I wondered where this went.” He pulled a red plastic cup from a small compartment, and she could taste the champagne they’d had out of those same cups just months ago.

They’d been so happy. Or she had. And she’d believed that he was, too, but was all of that wrong? Had he been in pain? Had she been hurting him all along?

“Want some?” he asked.

She shook her head.

He poured a shot, stopped, seemed to consider something, and poured himself more.

It had been a long time since she’d seen Jay so reckless. College. Her wedding. That weekend in Buffalo when the team got snowed in.

I can’t be around you and not touch you.

That night in Buffalo they’d had to share a room. And he’d acted like it was nothing. Like she was his sister. His mother. Some sexless roommate.

Though he had spent most of the night in the twenty-four-hour restaurant.

And she’d spent the night thinking of how she could convince him to come to bed with her. Rewriting their history, casting them as different people.

Feeling foolish the whole damn night.

“Have I been hurting you all this time?” she asked. Because of all the things she could think, all the things his confession made her feel—this was the worst.

That she’d been such a shabby friend, so focused on hiding and managing her own feelings, that she didn’t even notice she’d been causing him pain.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he said and took another drink. A long one.

“Is…is it awful being here? Working with me?”

He set the cup down on his knee. Lifted it and set it back down again.

Jay at a loss was a rare sight. She’d seen only once before. The night Ben died.

“I never should have said that, either.”

“And you want me to forget it, right?”

“That would be ideal.”

“I can’t,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and rolled his head. Tired. He was tired. They all were. Yesterday she’d imagined for about ten minutes what it would be like to sit on a beach. To take off her shoes. To get a sunburn. To not have her phone. She’d imagined herself there alone for a few minutes, but that didn’t really make sense. She didn’t actually want to be alone on that imaginary beach.

The rest of the time, those delicious ten minutes of vacation, Jay was by her side. His tie pulled off, his shirt sleeves rolled up. His shoes kicked off.

“I’m drunk,” he said.

“Not that drunk.”

“Hey.” Jay found the button that controlled the dark screen between the front seat and the backseat, and he lowered the glass just enough that the driver’s head was visible. “Take me to my apartment,” Jay said.

“Sure,” Gary said, and Jay pushed the button so the screen went right back up. The silence in the backseat was thick. Stifling. It was hard to breathe.

He’ll reach for his phone in five…four…three…

He fished through his suit jacket pulled out his phone and turned it on, and she could do the same. She could turn toward the window. Pull out her phone. She could make plans. Pretend not to feel anything more than friendship for him. She could go on the way she’d been going on.

“Put your phone away,” she said. Because she didn’t want to go on the way she had been. The status quo was falling apart and there was no pretending. He ignored her, and she, frustrated and restrained for so long, smacked the phone out of his hand. It thumped to the floor.

He looked up at her with wide eyes.

“I won’t let you pretend like nothing happened.”

“Pretending like nothing happened is what I do, Maggie. It’s what I’ve done with you…my whole life.”

“Then stop.”

“And do what?” He shrugged as if he didn’t know.

The temperature in her body skyrocketed, and suddenly all she could think about were all the things she hadn’t let herself feel, hadn’t let herself imagine about his beard and his thin, wiry strength, about his mouth. She was flooded, bombarded by everything she’d pushed away and tried to ignore.

Because he’d never, not once, indicated he’d felt that way about her.

“Whatever it is you want to do.”

She tried to sound firm. Like the candidate.

But she sounded like a forty-year-old woman who hadn’t been touched in a long, long time. And wanted – desperately – to be.

By him.

He lifted his eyebrow, one gesture, one small thing, and it felt like her skin was burning off. She opened her mouth, trying to pull in a breath.

“What I want?” he asked. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”

“You said you wanted me.” That tremble in her voice wasn’t good. Wasn’t strong. But she couldn’t stop it.

He tossed the empty red cup on the floor. “What do you want?”

“You,” she whispered, and immediately his hands touched her waist. The flat of his palms cupped her tummy, his fingertips spread wide like the boning of a corset. She gasped. Moaned in her throat. Agonized by that touch.

“You want this?” he asked. “My hands on you?”

She couldn’t speak. Her mouth was too dry. Her brain too burned up.

Her silence he took for nonconsent, and he pulled back. She reached forward and grabbed his hands, pressing them back to her stomach.

His eyes searched hers.

“What are you doing, Maggie?” he asked.

“Being touched.”

He groaned, dropped his head, and they were close enough she could lean forward, press her cheek to his head.

Finally, she thought. Finally.

His hands slid around her waist, up to her shoulders, and then back down. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t reach for her breasts. He just touched her, stroked her, and breathed her in.

“I fucking love this suit,” he said.

“Me too.” Her body was igniting, small flames everywhere. She was damp, and the emptiness inside her felt unfillable. Unsatisfiable. She was restless and agitated with longing. With desire.

So long. It had been…so long.

And it seemed she had wanted him forever.

The car stopped, the engine idling, and at the sound of the window between the front and back seats being cracked, they jumped apart.

“We’re here.” The driver said and then the window was rolled back up.

Jay was wiping a hand over his face. “This…this was—”

He was about to say a mistake. Or something equally preposterous. Something that would send them both home alone. And she couldn’t take it. Not tonight. Not…feeling like this.

“Invite me in.”

“To my apartment?”

She nodded.

“Maggie,” he moaned like she was hurting him again. And a pain so sharp it brought tears to her eyes lanced her right through the stomach.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Never mind. I don’t…I don’t know how to have you and not hurt you.”

“Have me?”

“Isn’t that what this is?” Having each other. Wasn’t that what sex was? It was what she’d been thinking of for months. Years, if she was being honest. Having him. Taking him. Being taken. God…just thinking the words made her half crazed.

He grabbed her hand, his big wide paw curling over hers. Even that seemed more sexual than it should.

“Maggie,” he said. “I need you to be really clear. You want to have sex—”

“Yes.” It burst out of her like the alien in that movie.

“With me?”

“Who else is here?” She laughed, sounding hysterical. But then she realized what he was thinking. Who he was thinking of.

“Ben’s been gone five years, Jay.”

“Yeah, but if I take you upstairs are you going to be pretending he’s back?”

She gaped at him. Did he really think that? That he meant so little to her? That he was simply a stand-in for her long-dead husband?

She touched his face, put her fingers through all that fur, forced his attention back to her.

“No. No…not…at all, Jay. Not at all.”

He stared down at his shoes. He did that when he was thinking. When he was weighing things out. Consequences. Cost–benefit analysis.

The staff made jokes about his shoes being some kind of oracle.

She wondered what she could say that would reassure him, but apparently it didn’t matter. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the car. Jack and Rick got out of the SUV behind them, and she waved them off.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. You can stay here.”

“Let them do their jobs,” Jay said, dropping her hand.

“Jay—”

“The death threats?”

“You think they followed me here?”

“I think after tonight I probably have a few of my own. And I won’t risk you getting hurt.”

That sobered her, and she nodded. Because she wouldn’t risk him getting hurt, either.

Jay gave Rick his keys and her security went in to sweep his apartment.

Jay went back to studying his shoes, his body inches away from hers. But it felt like he was miles away. Miles and miles. Because she didn’t know what he was thinking.

And she realized that all these years she’d actually never known what he was thinking.

Not even a little.

This man she thought she knew as well as she knew herself was suddenly a stranger.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.