Chapter 6: The Morning After
The first thing she noticed was the weight of his arm. It lay across her waist, solid and warm, his hand resting open-palmed against her hipbone. The second thing was the light—a pale, honeyed gold filtering through the linen curtains she’d chosen for him three months ago, patterning the duvet and gilding the dust motes drifting in the silent air.
Leia lay perfectly still, watching him sleep.
In the months since she’d finished her internship, since the carefully constructed barriers between the office and the study had dissolved into this, she’d catalogued this sight. The way the gray in his stubble caught the light. The deep, peaceful line between his brows, so often pinched with stress during the day, now smooth. The soft, almost imperceptible sigh of his breath. She had a thousand mental snapshots, but this one, this slow Saturday morning with nowhere to be, felt like the original from which all others were copied.
Her internship had ended with a quiet celebration in his study—just the two of them, a single slice of mediocre chocolate cake from the cafeteria, and his handwritten recommendation to Harvard, which had arrived three weeks later. The professional context was gone, just as he’d said it would be. What remained was this intricate, private world they’d built in the spaces between his duties and her remote classes, between her bullet journal orders and his late-night conference calls.
She shifted minutely, turning onto her side to face him fully. The movement caused his arm to tighten reflexively, pulling her closer. A soft, incoherent murmur escaped him, his nose nuzzling into her hair before he stilled again.
She smiled, a private, helpless thing she would never let anyone else see. The Leia Windsor of a year ago would have short-circuited at the thought of this: waking up in the Governor’s bed, in the Governor’s mansion, wrapped in the Governor’s arms. Now, it was just JB. The man who stole her fries, who argued passionately about the merits of different blue inks, who had a seemingly bottomless reservoir of terrible puns, and who had, with infinite patience, never once pushed her past the boundaries she’d set.
The virgin thing. She’d told him haltingly one night on this same bed, braced for disappointment, for a patronizing smile. He’d simply listened, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. “It’s yours,” he’d finally said. “Your body, your history, your choice. It’s not a negotiation. It’s a fact. And it changes nothing about how I feel for you.” The relief had been so profound it felt like pain.
His eyelashes fluttered. He took a deeper breath, his chest expanding against hers. Then his eyes opened, slow and drowsy, finding hers immediately as if he’d known exactly where she’d be.
“Hey,” he rasped, his voice gravelly with sleep.
“Hey back.”
He smiled, that easy, unguarded smile that was hers alone. He leaned in and kissed her, a slow, deep, morning kiss that tasted of sleep and warmth and familiarity. It was a conversation in itself. Good morning. I’m here. You’re here.
When they parted, he kept his forehead against hers. “What time is it?”
“Saturday o’clock.”
A grunt of approval. His hand slid up from her hip, under the edge of her t-shirt—one of his, stolen months ago—to rest on the bare skin of her back. His touch was electric and comforting all at once. “No crises? No press calls?”
“The world is miraculously holding its breath.”
He hummed, nuzzling into the curve of her neck, placing a soft, open-mouthed kiss just below her ear that made her shiver. “Then my schedule is clear.”
They lingered like that for a long time, a tangle of limbs under the soft cotton sheets. He traced the notches of her spine, her ribs, the scar on her shoulder from a childhood fall she couldn’t remember. She played with the hair at the nape of his neck, memorizing the way the silver threads coiled differently from the brown. The silence wasn’t empty; it was lush and full, a language they’d become fluent in.
“Ben texted last night,” she said into the quiet. “He’s coming for dinner next Friday. He wants to try Mom’s lasagna.”
“The vegan atrocity?”
“The masterpiece,” she corrected, grinning. “He’s bringing his toolbox. Said something about the garbage disposal in your kitchen making a ‘worrisome sound.’ I think he just needs to fix things. It’s how he connects.”
JB chuckled, the sound vibrating through her. “Let him fix whatever he wants. I like him.” He paused. “Any more thoughts on… Elias Vance?”
The name was a cold little pebble dropped into the warm pond of the morning. She’d done nothing with it. The envelope sat in a beautiful wooden box JB had given her, nestled beside the green pen and a photo of her and Ben at the diner. It was a closed box, for now.
“No,” she said, pressing closer. “Not today. Today is just this.”
He accepted that, as he always did. His hand stilled on her back. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
He pinched her side gently, making her squirm. “About you. Living out of a duffel bag. Keeping an apartment in the city you almost never sleep in because you’re always here.”
Her breath caught. She pulled back just enough to see his eyes. They were clear, sober, utterly focused.
“It’s inefficient,” he continued, his tone deceptively light. “Wasteful. You have a dedicated drawer. Your weird herbal teas are in my pantry. Your shampoo is in my shower. Your brother is coming to fix appliances in my kitchen.”
“Your point, Governor?” she whispered, her heart beginning a slow, heavy drum against her ribs.
“My point is,” he said, his voice dropping, becoming serious. “I want you to officially move in. Here. With me. No more duffel bag. No more paying rent on a storage unit with a bed. Your books on my shelves. Your art on my walls. Your chaotic, brilliant, beautiful life woven into the fabric of this too-quiet house.”
The world narrowed to the feel of his hand on her skin, the earnest intensity in his gaze. She’d known this was coming. The logical, inevitable next step in the path they’d been walking for months. Yet hearing the words made it real, vast, and terrifying.
“JB…” she started, a thousand complications rising in her throat. The press. His staff. Her parents. The permanent, glaring spotlight.
“I know,” he said, cutting off the spiral before it could begin. “I’ve thought about all of it. The optics are a nightmare. We’d have to be more careful than ever in public. We’d have to have a story—you’re renting the guesthouse, you’re a residential policy fellow, something. My communications director might actually quit. It could all blow up in our faces.”
He shifted then, rolling onto his back and pulling her with him so she lay half atop his chest. He looked up at the ceiling, his fingers now absently combing through her curls.
“But Leia, I’m almost sixty. I’ve spent my life in rooms full of people, and I’ve never felt more alone than in this big, empty house after a long day. Until you. You leave a coffee cup on my desk and it feels like a presence. You argue with me about zoning policy and the place feels alive. You fall asleep on that couch over there reading The Two Towers for the hundredth time, and I feel… home. Not the building. The feeling.”
A tear escaped, tracking hot and fast down her temple onto his skin. He felt it and his arms wrapped around her, holding her tightly.
“It’s a risk,” she said, her voice thick.
“It’s the only risk that matters.”
She thought of her empty apartment, a place of transit, not of living. She thought of the quiet understanding in her parents’ eyes the last time she’d visited, the way her dad had simply said, “You look settled, darling,” and her mom had squeezed her hand. She thought of Ben, who now had a key to this mansion because it was where his sister was.
She thought of the long, lonely years JB was talking about, and the longer, lonelier years she’d fought through before finding her family. They were both people who had learned to build fortresses. He’d built his from legacy and wealth and duty. She’d built hers from survival and intellect and sheer force of will. They stood in each other’s fortresses now, not as invaders, but as invited guests who had decided to tear down the interior walls together.
“Okay,” she breathed into the space between his neck and shoulder.
He stilled. “Okay?”
She pushed herself up, looking down at him, her tears falling freely now. They were happy tears. Terrified, exhilarated, hopeful tears. “Yes. Okay. I’ll move in. We’ll figure out the story. We’ll manage the nightmare.”
A slow, dazzling smile spread across his face, transforming it. He cupped her cheeks, wiping her tears with his thumbs. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She laughed, a wet, shaky sound. “But my brothers will descend like locusts. And I’m putting up my Alan Rickman portrait in the main hallway. And I get to redesign the garden. It’s depressingly symmetrical.”
He laughed, pulling her down for a kiss that was pure, unadulterated joy. “The garden is a tragedy. Have at it. The portrait goes in the study. We’ll negotiate the hallway.”
They kissed until they were breathless, until the gold light had shifted across the bed, until the distant sounds of the waking city began to filter through the windows. It was a commitment, sealed not with a ring or a document, but with the simple, monumental agreement to share a space, a life, a daunting future.
Later, wrapped in his robe and sipping coffee in the sunlit conservatory, she watched him make pancakes with a fierce concentration usually reserved for budget hearings. He was terrible at it. The first one was a burnt sacrifice to the skillet gods.
“It’s the thought that counts,” she called from her perch on the counter, swinging her legs.
“Quiet, you,” he grumbled, but he was smiling. “I’m creating a domestic moment.”
Her heart swelled, almost painfully. This was it. Not the grand speeches or the stolen kisses in his study, but this: the smell of slightly-scorched batter, the warmth of the sun on the terracotta tiles, the comfortable silence, the future stretching out before them in a series of ordinary Saturday mornings.
She would move in. They would build a life inside this fortress. They would navigate the storms—the political ones, the personal ones, the ones still lurking in her past in a Chicago envelope. They would do it together.
He finally produced a passable pancake, slid it onto a plate, and brought it to her with a theatrical flourish. She took a bite. It was a little dense, perfectly golden, and absolutely delicious.
“Well?” he asked, leaning against the counter beside her, his shoulder pressed to hers.
She swallowed, looking at him—this powerful, vulnerable, wonderful man who had chosen her. She grinned, syrup probably at the corner of her mouth. “It’s a good start.”
“It’s a good start.” The next few weeks became a quiet, blissful hurricane of cardboard boxes and shifted realities. Her brothers did descend, as predicted, turning the move into a chaotic festival of takeout pizza, good-natured ridicule of JB’s minimalist décor, and Felix loudly assessing the mansion’s structural integrity. Her parents came for a weekend, her mother filling the kitchen with the scent of spices and quiet acceptance, her father sharing a bottle of whiskey with JB on the patio, their low murmurs a comforting drone through the screen door. The official story, crafted with his communications director’s pained expression, was a residential policy fellowship focused on foster care reform. It was thin, but it held.
The first real test of the facade came on a humid August morning. Leia was annotating a research paper at the sun-drenched kitchen island when JB placed a pamphlet next to her laptop. It was for the Illinois State Fair. “I have to make an appearance tomorrow,” he said, his tone carefully neutral. “Cut a ribbon at the butter cow, shake some hands. It would mean a lot if you came with me. Officially.”
Her green pen froze mid-sentence. The public, unchoreographed noise of it—the crowds, the lenses, the endless sea of strangers—sent a jolt of pure fear through her. “Officially? As your… fellow?”
“As my girlfriend.” He said it plainly, holding her gaze. “Our story is what it is. But I’m not hiding you in the shadows, Leia. Not if you’re ready.”
She wasn’t. But she looked at his face, the hope warring with the caution, and she thought of the solid ground he’d become. “What’s the protocol for that? Do I curtsy?”
He laughed, the tension breaking. “Just stand next to me. Maybe try not to look like you’re planning a jailbreak.”
The fairgrounds were a sensory assault of fried food, animal musk, and shrieking children. Sunlight glared off metallic ride parts. Leia, in a simple sundress, felt every stare like a physical touch. She stayed a half-step behind JB’s shoulder as he worked the rope line, her smile stiff, her fingers twisted together. Whispers sliced through the crowd. Who’s the girl? Isn’t she the former intern? Someone’s phone camera clicked too close.
Then his hand found hers, warm and sure, threading their fingers together in full view. He didn’t look at her; he just held on, continuing to talk to a 4-H teen about prize goats. The anchor point of his grip steadied her breathing. The world didn’t stop spinning, but it slowed.
Later, they escaped the political entourage, disappearing into the midway’s chaos. “I’m starving,” he announced, leading her to a concession stand. He ordered one corn dog. “We’re sharing. It’s a rule.”
“A greasy, bipartisan symbol?” she asked, the familiar sarcasm returning like armor.
“Exactly.” He took the first bite, then held it out to her. She bit into the crispy batter, the tang of mustard on her tongue, and for a moment it was just two people at a fair. They passed the corn dog back and forth, their shoulders brushing, ignoring the sidelong glances. He wiped a spot of mustard from her chin with his thumb, the gesture so casually intimate it made her heart stutter more than any stare.
They wandered until the crowds thinned near the livestock barns, the air rich with the smell of hay and manure. The distant screams from the Zipper faded into a low buzz. He leaned against a white wooden fence, watching her. “You’re doing brilliantly,” he said.
“I feel like a science exhibit.” She joined him at the fence, looking at the dozing Herefords. “But it’s easier with you here.”
He was quiet for a long moment. The golden hour light caught the silver in his hair. “I need you to know something,” he said, his voice low. “In all my life, with all the things I’ve built or won, I have never been happier than I am right now, standing in cow shit with you.”
The raw honesty of it dismantled her last thread of anxiety. She turned to him, saw the truth of it in the lines of his face, and didn’t think about cameras or optics or futures. She reached up, pulled him down, and kissed him. It was deep and certain, there in the open air, under the vast Illinois sky. He made a soft, surprised sound against her mouth and then kissed her back, his hands coming to rest on her waist, holding her as if she were the only solid thing in the universe.
They returned to the mansion just after one AM, the silence a welcome blanket. Leia kicked off her sandals by the grand staircase, the cool marble a relief on her soles. She was unclipping her earrings when her phone, abandoned on the hall table, buzzed with an unfamiliar Chicago number.
Her photographic mind registered the area code. A cold trickle, unrelated to the night air, traced her spine. She answered. “Hello?”
“Leia Windsor?” a woman’s voice asked, sharp and nasal. “This is Darla. Darla Vance. I’m Eli Vance’s cousin. He’s been looking for you kids for years.”
The hallway seemed to telescope, the distant clock tick suddenly loud. Elias Vance. The name from the envelope in the wooden box. “How did you get this number?”
“A friend of a friend who works records at DCFS,” the woman said, too quickly. “It wasn’t easy. Eli’s sick, you see. Real sick. Wants to make things right before… well. He’s at Mercy General. He’d love to see you. Maybe tomorrow?”
Every instinct screamed. The timing, the vague details, the pressure. But beneath the alarm, the old, lonely ache pulsed—the child’s craving for a true origin story. “I’m in Springfield,” Leia said, her voice firmer than she felt.
“We’re in Chicago. He can’t travel. Please?”
Leia closed her eyes. “I’ll need to see what I can do.” She ended the call, her hands trembling. She stared at the phone, then fired off a text to JB, who was upstairs.
Just got a call from a woman claiming to be Elias Vance’s cousin. Says he’s sick in Chicago, wants to see me. Sounds… off.
His reply was immediate. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll drive you. We go together or not at all.
She stood in the silent foyer, torn. The lure of answers was a powerful gravity, threatening to pull her back into a past she was finally building over. Yet the risk felt palpable, a door that might open onto something that could unravel her hard-won peace. She thought of his hand holding hers through the fairground stares, his steady presence a wall against the world.
She typed back, her decision crystallizing. I don’t want to go alone. Will you come with me?
Try and stop me. We’ll leave after my morning briefing.
The drive to Chicago was a study in tense silence broken by fits of mundane conversation that couldn’t mask the dread. Mercy General was a hulking brick complex on the West Side. The woman, Darla, had given a room number. The hallway smelled of antiseptic and boiled cabbage. Leia’s knuckles were white around the strap of her bag.
She pushed the door open. The room held one bed. A gaunt, elderly man with watery eyes and a respiratory tube watched a game show on muted TV. A different woman, younger than the voice on the phone, sat in a chair knitting. She looked up, startled.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Elias Vance?” Leia’s voice sounded small.
“That’s him,” the woman said, nodding to the man. “I’m his home health aide, Sharon. And you are?”
The floor seemed to tilt. “Did… did a woman named Darla call anyone recently? About me?”
Sharon’s face crinkled in confusion. “No one’s called. Mr. Vance doesn’t have any family that visit. Just me.”
Behind her, JB put a steadying hand on her shoulder. Leia stepped closer to the bed. The man’s eyes shifted to her, dull and uninterested. “Mr. Vance?” she said, her heart a frantic bird in her chest. “My name is Leia Windsor. My brother is Ben. Our mother was Sarah.”
Recognition did not dawn. He blinked slowly, his gaze drifting back to the flickering TV. He gave a faint, bewildered shake of his head. “Don’t know no Sarah,” he whispered, the words rasping. “Ain’t got kids.”
The statement was absolute, devoid of malice or hidden pain. It was simply a fact from a faded life. The woman on the phone had been a ghost, a fiction. Elias Vance was a sick old stranger who did not know them, had not looked for them, and held no answers at all.
The hoped-for revelation, the feared confrontation—it evaporated into the sterile, quiet room, leaving behind nothing but a profound, echoing emptiness. Leia stood there, the truth settling over her: some doors opened only onto brick walls.