Page 133 of See You Next Tuesday

Except…

“Kira’s in there, right?”

He swallowed hard. He missed his best friend almost as much as he missed Anya.

“She is,” Anya confirmed. “And Simone. And Preethi and Dale.”

“And the senator?” Gabe asked.

“Mm-hmm. And her husband.”

“Really? Chase is here?” Gabe felt a little lift; he and the senator’s husband had always gotten along exceptionally well. But that was before this campaign cycle. Gabe had no idea how Chase felt about him now—or how any of them did.

“And my dad, obviously,” Anya went on. “He just totally blew up your spot, by the way.”

“My spot?” Gabe frowned in confusion.

“About Orcas,” Anya explained. “He told me it was your idea for Sierra to run, and for me to go and help her.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s true.” Gabe smiled at Anya, and she squeezed him tightly.

“You’re a good person,” Anya told him. “Everyone in that house knows it just as much as I do. I promise, okay?”

“So you don’t think…You don’t think it’d be weird? For me to be here?”

Anya tilted her head and peered at him.

“Do you want to be here?” she asked. “I mean, do you want to work for Jo again?”

It felt like too much to hope for, let alone voice out loud, that Gabe could somehow reverse all his mistakes of the past year in one fell swoop. That he could be back with Anya, back with Kira and Simone and the team, back working for Jo.

“Anya, how could that even be a possibility?” he asked. “I worked for Wheeler—”

“And you’re the reason he’s out of this race. You’re the only reason Jo has another shot at this. If you hadn’t come forward, who knows what the FBI would have done? They probably would have waited to arrest Wheeler until the week before the election and we’d have lost for sure.”

“Jesus, I hadn’t even thought of that,” Gabe said. “You’re right.”

“As usual,” Anya joked, and Gabe laughed. The sound came out awkward and wrong, but it felt good, like it was breaking up some of the tension inside him.

“So listen,” Anya said, her tone encouraging. “We’ll go inside. We’ll explain the situation, and we’ll see. Whatever happens, we’ll figure out what we do next together. I go where you go, yeah?”

Gabe looked up sharply. “You don’t mean that. You can’t quit working for Jo.”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do.” Anya jutted out her chin, and he wanted to kiss it, to nip at her face like a puppy, to press her down into the grass and give her the most intense pleasure of her life; he didn’t care if the entire neighborhood was watching.

“You’re still so goddamn stubborn,” he said. He hoped she could hear what he really meant, which was, I will love you for the rest of my life.

“Come on.” She stood up and offered him her hand. “Let’s go.”

His heart was pounding as they approached the front door. He could hear the buzz of activity behind it, people talking and arguing—obviously, they’d abandoned all pretense of going to sleep. Someone had put on a pot of coffee, and it smelled amazing. As nervous as Gabe was, he couldn’t help but smile. He loved campaign people.

But when Anya pushed the door open, all the activity stilled for a moment. Gabe’s heart lurched into his throat as he locked eyes with Kira.

Please don’t hate me, he tried to tell her with only his face. She cracked a wry smile. Even working past midnight in the most hectic possible environment, she was still chill and debonair.

“So glad you’re back,” she said, and he felt like his heart was about to burst open. “Can you get over here? I need Dale to know every single piece of information in your brain about which superdelegates are Wheeler diehards and which ones only endorsed because they thought he was a shoo-in.”

“The second one,” Gabe said, his heart still pounding. “Almost all of them.”