The Lying Season (Seasons #1) - K.A. Linde Page 0,29
was in charge. By the time I handed the phone back, she was a little more composed.
“Shawn is on top of it now,” I told her.
“Why are you taking care of me?”
I sank into the seat next to her. “Because…we’re friends.”
Her impossibly green eyes found mine. They were wide and watery and disbelieving.
“Friends,” she repeated. “Can we be that?”
No.
I didn’t think that we could. But I had to be around her for the next six months, and I didn’t know how I’d survive it any other way. The last week of cold shoulders and anger hadn’t helped. And we couldn’t be more. We just…couldn’t. Not with our history. Not with the pain between us. Not with…Claire.
“Yeah. Friends,” I lied to her.
It was a simple lie. One that was hardly even there. Meant to comfort someone. It shouldn’t have made me feel like an asshole for saying it. But it did. Because I was a total jackass. Lark and I would never just be friends.
She was trying to read my expression. To see the lie I’d told. But I hid it the best that I could. Let her see that this was possible. Because she needed it tonight.
“Okay,” she finally said.
And even I wanted to punch myself for the break in her voice on that word. The lie she had just accepted as truth.
12
Lark
The mayor’s prediction came true. As I had known it would.
The press latched on to Court’s arrest like leeches trying to suck us all dry. They were camped out in front of the campaign office, City Hall, the Kensington residence. Court was under unofficial house arrest. Which I’d gathered meant his mother had threatened him within an inch of his life if he left his penthouse.
It wasn’t ideal.
A week ago, we’d joked about the opposition using the word feminism against us for a sound bite. Now, we had this mess.
I could already see the television ads screaming how the mayor claimed to be tough on crime while she had a delinquent son. Whether Court had done anything or not was irrelevant. It was the headline, the flashy story, the sensationalized side of it that sold newspapers. And so that was what would be reported.
We’d all had to show our campaign clearance to get into the building, passing the reporters. What a nightmare.
“We just have to make it clear to everyone that if they talk to the press, they’re fired,” Christine said. She swiped her blue hair out of her eyes. “It’s already in their contracts, and we coached everyone, especially field workers, on it when we brought them in. But this is different. And we need to be vigilant.”
I nodded absentmindedly, writing notes onto my legal pad. We’d been in this meeting for an hour. Leslie had only slipped in a half hour ago, after she got away from City Hall. She’d scheduled a press conference that afternoon to address what had happened.
The party line was, Court had done nothing wrong. The arresting officer had made a mistake. Justice would be had.
Not that the media gave two fucks what she said. I’d seen the press conference and still cringed. How she’d kept her composure before letting her press secretary take over was beyond me. I knew she was furious. I was furious. We’d worked so hard to get to where we were. No scandals in almost four years. And now…this.
Christine continued speaking about what we could and couldn’t say while Matthew kept chiming in with messaging information from the political department.
But my eyes drifted out the glass door to the offices beyond this conference room. I still couldn’t believe I’d called Sam last night. I didn’t know what had possessed me to do it. One minute, Penn and I had been waiting for the mayor to show up, and the next, I’d felt like I just couldn’t sit there and do nothing. So…I’d called.
Or at least…that was what I’d told myself and Penn when he asked. Though he hadn’t been any more convinced than I was.
I’d confessed to Penn that Sam was in New York. That we were just friends, just working together. But he remembered the mess I’d been after I came back from Madison. He remembered the shell of a person I’d been as I forced myself to work for my parents. Before something had shaken loose and I’d realized it was all a mistake and come back to the campaign.
Penn didn’t want to see me become that person again. I didn’t either.