For three weeks, Adam didn’t call or text Maddie, and it was awful. For months he’d told himself they weren’t having a relationship because he hadn’t touched her since the night they’d kissed, but after she froze him out, he knew: they had been together, and it had been the most intense and meaningful connection of his life.

He’d dated, but exactly as he had kept his distance from his job back in LA, those relationships had been causal and he’d been vacant. They’d been nice women, smart women, lovely women—and he’d only been half there with them.

Since running home, his life wasn’t half anything.

Putting a clock on his time in Montana had done it. Everything counted, and he didn’t have a moment to waste. Or maybe what had exploded out of him at the partner hadn’t been merely rebellion. Maddie had said certainty grew over time, but he still didn’t know. He was a vacillating prick, and he felt like shit about it.

Unfortunately, even if he was an asshole, he still needed to face Maddie. He left Choteau a week before the election and headed toward Fallow. Once he was in front of her house, he sent her a text. I’m out front, and I’d like to talk. If you don’t want to, though, I understand.

She appeared in the doorway a minute later. Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and she was in workout clothes without glasses. She had to be the most beautiful woman on earth.

“How are things going?” he asked once she let him in.

“Fine. All the GOTV is on track. But I haven’t had any time off in years, and I feel…” She gestured around her living room at the evidence of all the work she was doing to get the job at which she’d be amazing.

“Lazy,” she finished.

“I hear you’ve been anything but.” Except he didn’t need Chad and the rest of the staff to tell him she was perfect; he already knew.

“Well, I promised that first day I was going to win.” She wouldn’t look at him and her voice had scrubbed shiny quality. This was how she talked to other people, not how she talked to him. Not how he wanted her to talk to him.

“I can tell you’re still pissed, but I just need to tell you some things, okay?”

Still falsely chipper, she said, “Sure.”

“Last October, I blew up in a meeting. I refused an assignment—a political thing. Two years ago, three, I would’ve done it, no questions asked. But now, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to use my knowledge like that. It would’ve been wrong.”

At last, Maddie gave him her attention. Her jaw was fixed and her eyes cold. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but he needed to know she was hearing him.

“This is going to piss you off. But it’s true: it rattled me, what I did. Because I’m not exactly a true believer. So I didn’t trust it. I wasn’t sure it was real. When I came home to help Chad, it was a thing to do. A thing that might make my huge screwup okay. If I left for a year and ran some campaigns, I could go back to corporate life with a story, you know?”

It wasn’t unheard of for someone to go on hiatus for a bit. Or at least that’s what he had told himself when he’d been leaving California.

He’d never known a time when he hadn’t wanted to leave Montana. He couldn’t remember when he hadn’t mocked it and been frustrated by it and despised it.

Then he’d spent a year driving over every inch of it. Eating its food. Talking to its voters. Shouting about it and raising money for it and cursing it—and when he thought about Montana now and whether he could live here forever, the question was so tied up with her. With the beautiful, brilliant woman standing in front of him with scorn in her eyes.

He wanted to tell her he was staying. But more than that, he wanted to know that he should.

And simply, he didn’t.

“But you were planning to go back?” Maddie asked pointedly.

“Yes.” She would hate that and probably hate him, but he wasn’t going to lie to her anymore. “At least at first, yes I was. But now, I don’t know.”

“That night at Floyd’s you said—”

“I know what I said, and I’m sorry for it. But even by then, I was having doubts about going back. Just a few months of doing this, and I was already hooked.”

“And now?”

She’d been an amazing lawyer, and she’d still be an amazing lawyer when the legislature wasn’t in session. He had no idea how witnesses ever lied to her.

“I would tell you if I knew. I haven’t given my firm a date when I’ll be back. I told my landlord in Helena I wasn’t sure if I wanted to renew my lease. I’m just…I can’t see past the election.” That was absolutely true. Everything for a year had been about the next Tuesday. It was like the edge of the cliff, and he couldn’t see over it yet.

“Ah.” She walked away and with her back still to him she said, “I was needy, I think. How I approached you in Helena. It’s my fault.”

“No, it’s mine. I meant every word I said. I had fallen for you, and—”

She flicked an annoyed glare at him. “You meant every word after that first night, maybe.”

“Yes. I can’t defend what I did. And if you never accept my apology, I’ll deserve it. But, Maddie?”

He waited until she turned, until he could see her face.

“I’m in love with you.”

She blinked. Several times. But she didn’t respond.

He’d expected that, and it still felt like shit.

“This next week…I know that it’s what you’ve been working for. And I’m sorry, again, and I’m sorry to do this now. But if I never get another chance to tell you, I’ll regret it. I think you’re incredible, and I love you.”

He would’ve given anything in that moment to have been able to touch her, but as much as it hurt to have her stay silent, he didn’t want to push. If things were broken, he had broken them, and he would have to live with the damage.

“That’s what I needed to say. I’m going to go now, but if I can help in any way, please call me. You know I’ll do anything for you, even if we never talk about this again.”

With that, he left. Because the only thing he could still give her was space.

Election day was smeared and dreamy, partly because of the snow storm that had started raging over night and partly because Maddie got to vote for herself.

How fucking weird was that? Even when that had been the object of eight months of work during which she’d distributed countless yard signs and bumper stickers and T-shirts, seeing her name on the ballot gave her a jolt.

Also electric: knowing she wanted to see it there again and again.

She’d been dragged into this kicking and screaming, but she wanted the chance to make a difference. Whatever happened, this wasn’t going to be her final election.

After she voted, Maddie went to several popular diners and a strip mall. She must have shaken hands with half the people in town. Then she and her mom served a potluck lunch for volunteers. They were frosty and cheerful, at least once they’d loaded them with carbs and hot cocoa.

As she carried dishes into her kitchen, Maddie’s mom said, faux nonchalantly, “I’m surprised Adam isn’t here.”

Subtle, Mom. Super subtle. “They have other candidates who need them.” She was tempted to text Adam for updates on Ted’s race, but they hadn’t spoken since the day he’d shown up at her house to say he loved her.

She’d done her level best to try to forget that day entirely. The man didn’t know where he wanted to live or what he wanted to be. He was in no position to say what he had.

If he settled down, if he stayed here, if he made a commitment to something, perhaps she’d be ready to hear his pitch. But not now. She couldn’t risk her heart on a maybe.

Her mom started to fill the sink with soapy water. “But when you’re in Helena for months and months during the session—”

“First, I haven’t won yet and everyone needs to stop jinxing me. And second, he’s moving back to California.” Probably tomorrow. Probably she’d never see him again. Probably all of this was moot.

“I just think he’s a very nice young man.”

“He’s no such thing.” He’d told her himself he wasn’t nice, and she wouldn’t have fallen for him if he had been. A nice guy wouldn’t have pushed her to get into the race. A nice guy wouldn’t have kissed her. A nice guy wouldn’t have made her need him.

“I like Adam,” she said, knowing what she felt wasn’t so anodyne. “But he doesn’t know what he wants, and I’m too old for games.”

She went home and tried to work, but mostly, she ended up pacing. A few hours later, she bundled herself up and went to the fanciest hotel in town for a victory party. Her margin over Hoagland ended up being substantial: more than twelve hundred votes out of seventy-five hundred cast. That leeched some of the suspense out of things, though it also made everyone giddy.

“I still can’t believe this,” she told the crowd. Everyone cheered, and she had to take a step backward so the mic wouldn’t amplify the sob in her throat.

She was going to be a state senator. Holy shit.

She thanked her family and parents, and she had to pause for a much-deserved Clark-led round of applause. She talked about how the volunteers had inspired her. She told the voters she was grateful for their support, and she promised to listen to them even if she disagreed with them. She even thanked Mike Hoagland for fighting a good race. It was easy to be gracious in victory, she supposed.

“Finally, he’s not here, but I have to recognize Adam Kadlick. Everyone at Montana Tomorrow has been incredible, but I wouldn’t be speaking to you tonight without Adam because he’s the one who convinced me to run. Wherever you are, Adam: thank you.”

You broke my heart and I feel lost without you, but you have my gratitude. She was glad he wasn’t here to see this. Her voice was quivery and she couldn’t hide that she was shaking.

She sped up as she tried to get through it. “I didn’t have any ambition to go into politics. But Adam believed in me. He was—”

The doors to the dining room opened, and Adam came striding through them, covered with a non-trivial layer of snow.

“What happened to you?” she almost shouted that into the mic, and it reverberated off the walls.

He pushed his scarf under his chin, and his skin was red from the cold and glazed with melting snow. “I left Helena six hours ago. The highway is a disaster. Once I finally got here, I couldn’t find parking, and I had to walk three blocks. It’s really coming down.” He grimaced apologetically before pulling off one of his gloves and holding out his hand to her. “Congratulations on your big win, Senator Clark.”

No one had called her that yet, and it made her lightheaded. She was Senator Clark. And the man she loved was standing right in front of her.

She jumped off the riser, and they didn’t shake so much as take hands.

He was here. In the not quite frozen flesh. Clinging to her with so much hope in his face.

People were taking pictures and talking and slapping Adam and her on the back, but all she could see was the question in his eyes.

They couldn’t do this with an audience. She turned on her heel and towed Adam after her. “Sorry,” she called. “Play some music or something. We’ll be back.”

Out in the hallway she found a quiet corner. “Are you okay?”

He was watching her, not smiling but not not smiling. “Yes. I’m fine. But in a larger sense, no. No, I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

He bit his lip. “I told my firm today I wasn’t coming back.”

Her heart sputtered. He wasn’t running back to California. “Uh-huh.”

“For months, I’ve thought about whether I’d freaked out in LA because I was having an early midlife crisis or if I had meant it. About whether I should stay. Life there is easy, you know? There’s money and it’s comfortable and it’s nice, and it would be…painless. But it doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t excite me. It’s not—it’s not here. I want to be here.” His eyes were laser focused on her, willing her to believe him.

She nodded, encouraging him to go on.

“I thought about what you said, about how certainty didn’t happen all at once. I think I was waiting for fireworks or a bolt of lightning. But the truth is I’ve been happy this year. Like legitimately excited for every day. The only dread I felt was about going back to my firm and pushing paper at a job that bores me. And at losing you.”

She huffed.

“That’s my fault,” he said quickly. “I’ll live with that. But the calmness I’ve felt grew into sureness. Just like you said it would. I emailed my firm and quit this morning. And at lunch, I told Chad the job wasn’t done, and I was going to stay until it was.”

She constricted her grip on his hand. “Only until then?”

“No.” He shoved his gloves in his coat pocket, and then he wrapped his free hand around her neck. “I’m going to stay. Permanently. This place has what I want. It’s enough. More than enough.”

He didn’t blink when he said it. He didn’t hesitate.

When he’d asked her to run, he’d been asking her to take a risk. Now he was doing it again. This was personal, but it felt every bit as a weighty.

“Then I got in my car and tried to drive straight here, but the weather kinda got in the way. But I had to tell you, face to face, that these races have made my life feel worth it.”

“Adam, I…” She could feel herself swaying into him. She already knew she was going to kiss him, to ask him if they could try being together again. She just wanted him to understand the stakes first. “You really hurt me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t need him to be sorry as much as she needed him to understand why she’d been crushed. “Most of all because I depended on you, and then you were gone.”

His fingers dug into her for a moment. “If you can see a way to forgive me, Maddie, I promise I won’t leave again. I did it once, and it was almost impossible. You’re the person I want to talk to when I have a shitty day. I want you to tell me when I’m wrong about policy, and I want to help you take over the world. I want to make you dinner when you’re having a long day and laugh together about all the bullshit. You make me believe the system can be better. You make me want to make it better. And I love you.”

He did. She knew he did. And someday, like probably when they woke up together tomorrow, she’d give him the words back.

But for now, every bit of her softened, relaxed. “When you showed up in the spring, I didn’t think I could do this. Maybe I had sort of…not settled but narrowed myself. You believed in me so much, who would I be if I couldn’t believe back? I grew because you told me I could.”

“You’re going to be the governor someday.” His confidence was potent—she could become addicted to it. She probably already was.

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’re going to be incredible.”

She wasn’t certain about running for governor—honestly, the fundraising alone made her want to cry—but she was certain about him. She took hold of his jacket and pulled him toward her. “You’re just saying that because you want to kiss me.”

“No, I want to kiss you because I think that.”

“Flatterer.”

When he lowered his mouth to hers, he tasted of snow, cold and fresh. But together, she had to trust they were fire and hope and change.