The Lying Season (Seasons #1) - K.A. Linde Page 0,3

team.”

“Thanks,” he said softly.

Brown eyes met green in the space between us. There was so much more that needed to be said. So much that had been left unsaid when I returned home all those years ago. I’d never thought that I’d see him again. And now that I was, I had no fucking clue what to do.

“Well, come on, Sam. Lark is late to her banquet meeting, and the mayor just got in,” Kelly said in her default chipper tone. She strode out of the break room and called over her shoulder, “You’ll get your first intro on day one!”

“Ugh, my meeting,” I groaned, turning in place to follow Kelly.

“Wait,” Sam said.

He reached out and this time gripped my elbow. I turned back to face him with wide, shocked eyes. He towered over me. I’d forgotten until that moment how huge he was. All tall, wide-shouldered Southern boy who actually knew manual labor with calluses on his fingers and biceps for days. A man who liked to use his hands…in all the best ways.

“What?” I whispered. I was conscious of Kelly mere feet away and the meeting I was currently supposed to be in.

“We need to talk. Later.”

A dormant, broken butterfly wing beat for the first time in ages. I hated my heart for responding that way. But fuck, despite all the shit we’d gone through and how we’d both fucked up so royally, it was Sam.

“Okay.”

He released me slowly, almost reluctantly. Something uncurled further in my chest…or perhaps lower, much lower, at the way his fingers withdrew from my skin. Oh fuck, I was screwed.

I scurried away from him. My heart raced, and my hands were clammy. I couldn’t seem to get my head on straight.

Sam Rutherford was in New York City. Something I’d never thought he would do. He certainly hadn’t considered it for me. And now, what the hell was I going to do? After what had happened, could I disentangle the anger and pain from the love and lust? Could I find a way to move on from what had happened and work next to him?

It felt impossible.

Honestly impossible.

And by the time my meeting was over, I hadn’t come to any better conclusion. In fact, I’d sat through the whole thing with my head in the clouds. Which was something I absolutely could not afford. I had too much to do to sacrifice even one meeting.

Somehow, just seeing Sam for a few minutes had left me feeling like the inexperienced twenty-four-year-old girl who had never been on a campaign before. Rather than the deputy campaign manager to the mayor of New York City.

I needed to shake it off. Get him out of my head. I’d worked hard to help Leslie get elected as the first female mayor. I absolutely deserved to be one of the highest-ranking people on this team. Many people had come and gone since we started, but I’d stuck with her, forgoing other campaigns to work with a candidate that I believed in. Which was the whole reason I’d moved to Madison six years ago for the presidential campaign in the first place.

Before the campaign, my parents had controlled every aspect of my life. I was their perfect little Upper East Side princess. Read: monster. I had all the right friends and boyfriends and high school accolades. I attended Brown, of course, because I was a legacy and got a business degree with the goal of taking over the company. Even when I decided to get a law degree, it didn’t ever feel like a choice. I went to Columbia Law so that I could work with my parents and be close to home.

But then something happened. Something changed. Governor Woodhouse held a rally at Columbia. English had heard he was an awesome speaker and dragged me and Whitley to the event. Then I heard him speak. Heard the eloquent speech he delivered to the packed, entranced audience, and something shifted in me. This was a man I could get behind. A race I could believe in.

I applied for a position the next day in every swing state.

Two weeks later, I’d gotten the job in Madison.

It was the only real choice I’d ever made in my entire life. And it was the start of everything. The start of getting out from under my parents’ thumb and finding my own life.

And then there was Sam.

I shook my head. He was all jumbled with that choice. Inherently connected to it in a way that