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“You’re welcome, Senator.” Ricky turned to Hank with a grin that was half charm, half assessment. “You clean up nicely, too. Very supportive boyfriend. Very, I’m here for the art and not the open bar.”

“I am here for the art.”

“Of course, you are.” Ricky’s phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen—his expression relaxed, unguarded, then gone. He typed a short reply, slipped the phone back, and the grin returned.

“Anyway. I’m getting more wine, and I’m going to go tell that woman by the charcoal drawings that she’s standing too close. It is stressing me out. Chad, your painting is incredible. Hank, take care of him. Everyone enjoy the evening.”

He was gone before either of them could respond.

“Is he okay?” Hank asked.

“Ricky’s always okay. That’s his whole thing.” Chad watched his roommate cut through the crowd, all shoulders and charm. “He’s fine.”

He didn’t sound entirely sure.

Martin appeared while Chad was deep in conversation with a former classmate, leaving Hank temporarily alone with his wine and his thoughts.

Forty-eight days. They’d lasted twenty-one. If it were a bill, it wouldn’t have made it out of subcommittee.

“Senator.” Martin extended his hand. Salt-and-pepper ponytail, wire-rimmed glasses, the elbow patches that Chad had once described as the most committed bit in academia. “I’m glad you came.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it.” Hank shook his hand and felt the bruise in his knuckles—faded now, yellow-green, but still announcing itself when pressed. “The show is wonderful. You should be proud of your students.”

“I am. One in particular.” Martin’s eyes moved to where Chad was gesturing at a painting, explaining something to his classmate with the same quick hands, the same total engagement. “He’s the real thing, you know. I’ve been teaching for twenty years. I know what the real thing looks like.”

Hank watched Chad. The confidence in this room—the ease, the authority, the way people listened when he talked about color or composition or whatever he was talking about—was different from any version of Chad he’d seen before. Not the bartender’s watchfulness. Not the vulnerability of someone in bed. This was someone standing on his own ground.

“I know,” Hank said.

Martin nodded. Didn’t elaborate. Moved on to greet another guest.

A photographer from a local paper drifted past, camera raised. Hank felt the familiar prickle at the back of his neck—the awareness of being watched, recorded, stored. He straightened slightly. The photographer took a shot of the ceramic installation and moved on.

Background hum. Not the main frequency. Not tonight.

The crowd thinned as the evening wound down. The servers collected glasses. The string quartet—two students from the music school, Chad had explained, doing it for course credit—packed up their instruments.

Chad was across the room, talking to Diana Thorne. Hank could see them from where he stood near the entrance—Chad’s posture relaxed, hands in his pockets now, nodding at something she said. Diana said something else. Chad laughed—the real one, surprised, not performed—and Diana’s expression warmed by a single degree.

Hank didn’t cross the room. Didn’t need to be part of it.

He looked at First Kiss on the far wall. In three days it would be back on his wall at home. He was surprised how much he wanted it there.

Four days until the election. Patricia’s number sitting in his phone. The campaign, the polls, the machinery that would grind forward whether he was ready or not.

And over there, in a gallery at the university where he’d learned to be what he was, Chad was laughing at something a stranger said about his painting.

Hank finished his wine.

He was, he realized, the least important person in this room.

It was the best he’d felt in weeks.

CHAPTER 18

The boiled peanut sign was what got him.

Hand-painted, leaning against a fence post at a crossroads somewhere north of Atlanta, the letters sun-faded to the color of old teeth: BOILD P-NUTS 2 MI. Not boiled. Boild. Chad stared at it as it slid past the window and thought, You are a long way from Dupont Circle, buddy.