Whenever Adam flew home, he’d land in Missoula and drive east, watching the state go from green and mountainous to gold and flat. Tourists lingered in the western strip, which was new and corporate and shiny, and rarely saw the rest.

His hometown, closer to Calgary than to any major city in Montana but hours from both, didn’t rate. His college girlfriend had made it two days before she’d insisted they go see the “real Montana,” meaning Glacier and Yellowstone. He understood. The Hi-Line was…shabby.

But the endless sky, the echoing quiet, and the austerity made every other landscape feel gaudy in comparison. His parents’ house was so tranquil you could hear the mantle clock in every room. Montana, and especially the spare, windswept, godforsaken north-central corridor where you had to be hardy or you got the fuck out, radiated solidity. It had always been, and it would always be.

No wonder he’d run back here after what had happened.

Here didn’t typically include the Fallow public defender’s office, where Maddie’s assistant, Ruth, was watching him incredulously.

“Are you sure you have an appointment?”

“Yes, ma’am. I made it with you over the phone yesterday.” He’d had to negotiate to get the last slot of the day and to promise he didn’t mind waiting.

In the past five months, he’d made calls, crisscrossed the state a dozen times, pumped hands, given promises, and played with kids. He’d begged, pleaded, and reasoned, and in almost every case, he’d gotten the candidates he wanted.

Maddie was perfect for District 14 and, with the filing deadline only three days away, she was also his last shot. He’d wait as long as the secretary wanted him to if it meant he could try to sell Maddie on this in person.

When Chad and Adam had hatched this plan, or really when Chad had let Adam join him on it, they’d known the crucial number was fifteen: they needed to pick up fifteen seats to flip the Montana Senate. Eight of those seats were up this year, and Maddie was going to be candidate number eight. Maybe.

“Ah. Here you are. Adam Kadlick, the one with all the demands and the secrecy.” Ruth tapped a few computer keys with long manicured nails that were two shades too dark purple to be professional. “She wasn’t too pleased about this. You got me in trouble.”

“I’ll tell her it was entirely my fault.” He winked, and Ruth’s eyes narrowed.

“She already knows that.” Maddie’s words came from over his shoulder.

When he turned, his heart gave a familiar double thump.

In high school, Maddie had been ten times smarter and more poised than anyone else in the room, including him. She’d been unassuming looking except for her eyes, which could never hide how little he’d impressed her. They’d matched her smart, sarcastic mouth and her slightly haughty attitude.

The logistics had been impossible, of course, since she both hated him and lived a few hours’ drive from his hometown, but he’d never not gotten a buzz debating her. Watching how she’d flush when he got in a good barb in cross examination or enjoying the self-satisfied toss she’d give her hair during the 1AR—the hardest speech in Cross-X debate.

Twelve years later, her red-brown hair was longer and she wore glasses, but she was still magnetic as hell. If she’d been a woman across the bar, he would have left streaks marks on the floor along the way, and some part of him wished that was how they were reconnecting.

He couldn’t for the life of him understand why she hadn’t blown this Popsicle stand right away. If they were going to reconnect, he would’ve thought it would have been in some Manhattan firm where she would’ve kicked his ass six times before breakfast. But at the moment, he was grateful to find her here—and perfectly positioned for his scheme.

“Maddie, it’s lovely to see you again.” It really was.

“Spare me the sweet talk. It’s almost closing time on Friday, and Ruth probably wants to go home. What do you need?” Maddie set a pile of manila folders down.

“Have one drink with me. I’ll pay, you’ll listen, and you can be home by six.” He could go back to her office and make his pitch there, but he knew you were better off trying to sell something when you established some trust with the would-be client. He needed Maddie to give, just a little, and then he could reel her in.

A few tense moments went by.

Finally, Maddie closed her eyes and exhaled. “Give me ten minutes to wrap up.”

“You can even make it twenty.”

She muttered something that might’ve been a string of curses and stalked back to her office.

Thirty minutes later—which honestly, he respected the hell out of—after everyone else had left, Maddie came out of her office. She was bundled against the cold and the message couldn’t have been clearer: you can’t touch me.

Sadly, he already knew that.

She gestured him out the front door, turned off the lights, and fumbled with her keys. “Follow me to Floyd’s.”

“Perfect.”

A few minutes later, she settled the two of them into a table in a quiet corner of the bar and ordered a local microbrew. She took out her phone and set a timer for fifteen minutes. “Let’s hear this pitch then.”

He’d threaded the needle carefully with every candidate he’d approached. Some he had flattered, some he’d reasoned with, and for some, he’d talked logistics. With Maddie, he planned to appeal to her idealism.

The Maddie he’d known in high school hadn’t been especially principled. Debaters weren’t, as a rule. They had to take all of the positions on all the issues. But Chad had assured him Maddie had the soul of an activist—hell, she wouldn’t languish as a public defender if she didn’t—and so this felt like the right wedge for her.

“What would you fix about the state if you could?” he asked.

“If I had fiat?” Such much disdain there.

“Like if you were in the majority in the legislature.”

She didn’t roll her eyes, but he could tell she wanted to. “I’m not going to run, so I don’t see why I should engage in this thought experiment—”

“Humor me. It’s how I’m using one of my minutes.”

For several seconds, he wasn’t certain she was going to answer. She watched him, blinking intently. There were a few lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there in high school and more tension in her mouth.

He wanted to pretend they were just two old friends catching up. Maybe even that this was a date. But those weren’t professional thoughts to have given the context, so he shoved them aside. He hoped Maddie was going to be his client soon; he didn’t need stale lust clouding his judgment.

At last, she took a swig of her beer and checked off a few things on her free hand. “Ending mandatory minimums for drug sentencing. Prioritizing treatment and restorative justice over incarceration. Encouraging community policing models. No more private or for-profit prisons. Funding better early childhood education.”

“See, that wasn’t hard.” And from his point of view, it was spot on. Everyone he’d recruited agreed with her.

“Coming up with a progressive agenda for Montana isn’t the tricky part.”

“Fair enough. I just think—”

“Why do you even care?” She gestured with her bottle to punctuate the question and took no pains to hide the scorn. “You don’t live here.”

Ah. That. “Sure I do. I have an apartment in Helena.”

“Since when?”

“Since November.”

She made a tsk-tsk noise. “You’re a real resident. Where did you live in October?”

“Los Angeles.”

“You’re a freaking Californian?”

People in Montana hated Californians because they thought they were destroying their state. Land values had skyrocketed, you had to wait for the ski lift sometimes, and there was traffic in towns that had previously had none: Californians had ruined everything and were giving nothing back.

As a kid, he’d heard all the arguments and had probably parroted them too before he’d moved away. Now, those arguments just annoyed him.

“I’m surprised to hear this from…you know what? Never mind.” Arguing with her wasn’t going to help even if the ways the state was changing should’ve been to her liking. “I’ve got a Montana driver’s license and plates, and I’m registered to vote here. I’ve applied for an Admission in Motion, so I should be licensed to practice soon.”

He was planning to keep up his license in California, and he’d only rented out his condo, but she didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t relevant to whether she was going to run for Mike Hoagland’s seat.

“This is permanent?” She said that with an adorable wrinkle of her nose.

That word—permanent. What did it mean? She sounded like his mom. “We’re getting distracted. The point is I took a look at my life and—”

None of the other candidates had asked about this, probably because everyone else he’d approached had been a stranger or friend of a friend. Whereas Maddie…well, he’d admired her, had a crush on her, and that was enough to make this feel different.

I’m on leave from my firm because I insulted a partner and refused to help draft legislation to undermine public sector unions. Hell, the truth might even help him with her. But it felt unethical to use it for that. He still wasn’t entirely certain why he’d melted down; he couldn’t bring it into this.

So instead he finished, “—I didn’t love being a corporate lawyer.” That was true, and it had pissed off his former professors and colleagues. His girlfriend from law school had dumped him over what she’d seen as a lack of ambition, but he’d known it was ambivalence more than anything. He’d gotten the right job, put in the hours, and had felt empty.

Maddie, though, wasn’t pissed. Instead, she gave him a no shit look.

He went on. “And I didn’t love California.” He liked the food, the weather, the culture, but it had never clicked into place, had never become home. There would always be something lacking, and no matter where he went, only this place could fill it.

He was exactly the kind of asshole who was repelled by but also loved his hometown. He knew that was a cliché; he’d read James Joyce. Okay, he’d been to lectures on Joyce. But he got that you could try to leave your home but somehow not ever be anywhere different. He’d never gotten away from Montana, not really.

“Uh-huh.” That was a bit softer.

“I realized I could make a difference here. With this.”

“You’re recruiting politicians?” From how she said politicians, Maddie didn’t seem to like them, but she didn’t have to like them to be one.

“Kinda. My goal, well Chad and my goal, is to flip the senate and then maybe the house. You misunderstand me. I’m not recruiting one or two people. You’d be number eight.”

“Eight?”

“Yes, and I’m not just recruiting them. Chad and I have set up a firm to be a bridge between the party and the candidates. We’ll help with fundraising, event planning, recruiting volunteers—all of it. We provide a full-service campaign, and you just have to show up.”

Maddie’s mouth dropped open.

For two seconds, Adam stared at her kissable bottom lip. But she wasn’t available to him, so with a head shake, he turned his attention toward the bar and thought cold, professional thoughts.

When his mind stopped being scrambled, he hazarded a glance back at Maddie. She wasn’t shocked any longer. No, the look on her face wasn’t disgust—it was curiosity. She was intrigued.

Feeling more confident, he said, “There are only fifty state senators in Montana, that’s what makes it manageable. This wouldn’t work anywhere else.” As soon as Chad had made the offhand remark, they’d started deep diving into maps and turnout numbers and polling data. It wasn’t going to be easy—but it was possible. Tantalizingly possible. Get the right candidates, give them great support and staffing…it had gotten Adam’s blood pumping in a way nothing had since, well, high school debate.

“Hmm.” She shuttered her emotions again.

He waited. If he pushed too hard, she could still say no.

At last she asked, “Aren’t I lucky? And while we’re changing the legislature, what do you get out of this?”

“Hopefully better policies for my state.”

“It isn’t yours. You abandoned it until you saw an opportunity. And you’ll be taking a cut from the fundraising.”

“Only to cover overhead and very reasonable salaries.” He was going to make less than his LA firm spent on file folders, but that wasn’t why he was doing it.

She set her beer down and leaned forward onto her elbows. The front of her dress gaped, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to look at her cleavage.

“How is that not gross and disgusting?” she demanded.

“Because I’m doing it for good.”

“And I’m just supposed to trust that because you’re a nice guy?”

“I’m not nice.”

Her glare was Olympic-level, and Adam loved it, though he guessed her attitude didn’t go over great with judges who tended to expect a bit more deference. He also wanted to tell her that she’d need to get better at shielding her emotions for the debate and with constituents—but that wasn’t his place. Yet.

He mirrored her position, bringing them nose to nose. He could almost, almost taste her from this distance.

“We have to change things,” he told Maddie. “Not one thing, not two things, but ten things. A dozen things. Because when government doesn’t work well, people lose faith in institutions.”

Adam wasn’t even sure he’d had any trust in government. When he and Maddie had been debating back in high school, it had all be theoretical: should the US change foreign policy to limit the use of weapons of mass destruction? Yes, no—who cared!

He’d spent a summer after college working for the House Judiciary Committee in Washington—and then had been seduced by a mid six figure salary. It was all a game. One big, friendly thought experiment.

But nothing got done. The idea that Congress might enact a big program like Medicare or even create a mid-sized New Deal type agency today was unthinkable. They might manage to do some technocratic stuff, sure, but when a government website that was supposed to help people sign up for government subsidized but still private health care plans didn’t work, why would anyone trust them with something larger, like say a single-payer system?

If Democrats seemed incompetent, Republicans were craven. They’d spent twenty years attacking the legitimacy of the press and of governing itself, so it wasn’t too surprising when their constituents didn’t care about the truth or believe government could or should do anything. Maybe the only shock was that the press itself was so goddamn vulnerable to those critiques and bent over backward to prove their lack of bias through both sides-ism.

After the 2016 election, the truth of it had splashed over Adam: the system wasn’t a thought experiment, and it hadn’t ever been one. Cynicism infected everything, made everything worthless. He’d only been able to pretend because he was isolated from the consequences of government policy as a rich white guy. But if the country couldn’t find some hope again, they might as well pack it in and let the zombies take over.

All of that had churned in his gut for the better part of a year. Fermenting. Growing more corrosive. Then he’d walked into a meeting where a client and senior partner had instructed him to write legislation to attack public sector unions, and he’d said no. Not just no, but hell no.

The truly unfortunate part was his confidence hadn’t lasted, and he’d gone home and had a breakdown. Had he actually trashed his career because of some idealistic bullshit? What the fuck?

He’d marched back in his office the next day and apologized. They’d offered him a one-year sabbatical, and then Chad had hauled him into his lifeboat. Adam wasn’t sure what he’d done had been pure or stupid or both. He was paddling too hard for those kinds of questions.

“Chad knows everyone in the party,” Adam told Maddie. “Hell, everyone in the state. And I’ve spent a lot of time glad-handing in the past five months. We’ve hired a good speech writer, a fundraiser, some PR folks. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need you, if I didn’t think this was achievable. I know what I’m asking is a sacrifice, but you should take this leap.”

She was still now. So very still. Then she leaned back in her chair and crossed one ankle over the other. “That’s…admirable.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“No. I’m just kind of surprised to hear all of that coming from you.”

“Maybe I’d surprise you a lot if you got to know me.”

“I doubt it.” Her words were sweet-tart. “And besides, I don’t want to be a politician.”

So he threw his hand grenade, the line he knew would get her. “When people like you don’t get involved, who the hell do you think gets in the game?”

She swallowed and turned her attention to the chipping paint on the tabletop.

Nobody wanted to be a politician. Well, scratch that, nobody ethical did, but they were precisely the people who should. Their hesitation was why they had to. Their hesitation meant they’d be better than all the people who hadn’t hesitated.

He tugged a bit more on the strings. “We need people who don’t want to be in politics to get into politics, and you know it too. And to throw one more log on the fire, why can this state elect Democrats to the US Senate and the governor’s mansion, but not to the legislature?”

“The last person to challenge Hoagland was…terrible,” she admitted, though she still didn’t look up. “I can’t even remember his name.”

“Yup. People split their ballots. They voted for Hoagland, and they voted for Democrats in other races. That’s just bizarre. We have to get new blood, better blood, into these races. If we do, we can win.”

Maddie drained her beer and set it aside. Her fingers were fidgety. She was so close to saying yes.

“My job, though,” she finally said. “I’d have to take a leave of absence to campaign. Who would help my clients while I was off on this quixotic clusterfuck?”

He’d had no idea she was so foul mouthed, and he loved it. They’d have to get her to nip that in the bud, at least in public. The fact that she was considering minutiae was fantastic—it showed she was taking him seriously.

“The money part is a bummer. In federal elections, campaigns can pay challengers while they’re running—but not in Montana races. You can continue to work and run for office here, but your job is pretty demanding.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“You’d probably want to take at least a few weeks of leave before the election, and you’d be relying on your savings. I’m not certain if we could slot a temporary replacement in for you or not. When you win, though, you can keep being a public defender. Dual state employment is totally legal since the legislature only meets a few months a year. The pay sucks, but you already know that.”

She blew out a long breath. “I guess you’ve thought of everything.”

“Let’s find out.” At the very least, he had a hundred more arguments, but he suspected if he made them, she’d only get into a defensive posture and he didn’t want her to say no to him again. Repeating that pattern wasn’t helpful.

Also, he hated hearing her turn him down.

He stood up and set some money on the table. He had to trust that he’d done enough. “Let’s agree to this instead: you’ll think about it this weekend.”

“Okay, but—”

“We can stop there. I like okay. I’m going to email you a packet with all the details, and you have my cell phone number. Call anytime. But you should know that Monday is the filing deadline, and you’re the only one I’m asking in this district.”

She tipped her head back to look at him, and he enjoyed the glow of the bar’s neon across her cheeks, down her neck, and along her collar bones. Red and blue on one side of her face, green on the other. He wanted to kiss every divot and shadow—but more than that, he wanted to see her kick Mike Hoagland’s ass.

“There isn’t a Democrat in the race right now?”

“Nope. He’ll be unchallenged unless you get in it.”

“He’s such a waste of space.”

“Let’s knock him off the board, then.” After a few beats, he added, “Please say yes, Maddie.”

She didn’t answer, but he could feel her eyes on him all the way to the door.