Commander in Chief (White House #2)(70)

“HAMMY! GO GET IT, HAMMY!” someone shouts.

“I will,” he promises, grinning, then falling sober.

“Today, I want to discuss something with you. Last night, I got word that I’m to be a father again. The first lady is expecting.” The smile on his face is absolutely dazzling, and so contagious there’s not a sad face in the house.

I feel giddy remembering when I told him—how he plucked his glasses off, then just grabbed me to him and swept me clean off the ground. “You make me so happy, so fucking happy,” and the rest was smothered with his kiss.

“So it’s something I want to talk to you about. Our children,” he continues—and pauses. “It is with our children that our greatest potential as a country lies. We are raising world-changers, leaders, girls and boys who can make a real difference. And it all begins with you. With me. With us.”

I feel Matty’s hand slip into mine, and he’s frowning—not too happy he’ll be dethroned soon. “You’ll still love me best?”

“I’ll love you as my best firstborn, yes,” I promise, and he nods and starts to get restless. “Sit here with me. Watch Dad,” I whisper, hushing him, clinging to Matt’s every word.

I just love for people to see him as I do, to know the real man, the one behind the fa?ade, the name, and the presidency.

The Matt Hamilton we all love.



I watch out the windows of Air Force One, the clouds beneath me looking like a carpet of cotton candy.

I lay my hand over my belly and think of Matt.

I’m so in love with him and I can’t believe I’m four months pregnant with our second child.

The debates are over, the campaigning has been exhaustive but inspiring, and now we’re heading back home.

Our little family of three, soon to be four.

I know from looking at my parents that no matter how strong the love, relationships are always tested. Boundaries are pushed, some promises broken, and disappointments happen. That’s just life. No road is ever perfectly smooth or straight.

But I also know from looking at my parents that love is a choice. Sometimes the hardest choice of all. And I know as I turn to look at Matthew, his profile showcasing perfect masculine beauty, his lips pursed thoughtfully as he looks quizzically at a stack of manila folders in front of him with his glasses perched on his nose, that I will always choose him.

A realization that comforts me.

I chose him over a normal life. I chose him over privacy. I chose him over insecurity about whether or not I would ever be enough, as a wife, as a mother, as a first lady. I chose him over fear. I chose him over everything . . .

Love can be passionate, wild, consuming, mesmerizing. It catches you in the wake of what seems to be an ordinary life and it turns it upside down until you are fully living with every cell, every pore, every atom in your body. It makes you live life to its fullest potential. Love heightens all your emotions, until your past life looks like you were living on mute, like you were living with senses that were partly numbed.

This awakening to experiencing everything to its fullest potential is what makes life the most joyful and blissful experience, and also the most painful one. Looking down at the clouds beneath me and the blue sky stretching out before me, I simply let myself embrace it all, whatever comes.

I see myself with Matt. I see myself having kids with him. I see myself stretched out between his legs, reclining on him, while holding hot cocoa in my hands, hearing the crackling of a fireplace.

I see myself holding his face to my chest, quietly soothing him after a hard day. After having to make some tough decisions.

I see him climbing into bed beside me and nuzzling my neck, telling me how much he loves me, how I am his angel.

I see him holding our daughter’s hand (yes, it’s a girl—we got confirmation just last week!), her red hair in two little pigtails as she skips besides her father, looking up at him with all the love and awe in the world, and him looking down at her as if she were the greatest treasure.

I see myself thirty years from now, sitting next to an old and still ruggedly handsome Matt, talking about how we met, how he won the presidency, how he proposed, the life we’ve had.

Because even if he wins, four more years as president is not much compared to the years he will be an ex-president, and I his wife. The term is not the only thing that counts. What really lasts is what you did, your legacy for all time.

It’s a simple choice, really. I choose him. Always.

And despite his own fears and concerns, disappointments and ideas about his ability to be both president and husband, president and father, president and man . . . he chose me.

Whatever happens, we chose each other.



It’s cold outside, but that’s where Matt and I spend the November evening of Election Day. I bring out a small speaker and I play some music, settling for a song Hozier played on our wedding, “Better Love.” And we dance, like we sometimes do. I sway in his arms while our team watches television in one of the White House rooms, and Matt Jr. sleeps, and the country waits with bated breath, and I just dance with Matt.

And that’s how Carlisle finds us, when he steps outside.

“Well, Mr. President,” he says, smiling wryly as he spots us. “Looks like you’re up for a second term.”

I gasp, my hand flying to my mouth. Matt’s hands tighten on me, his jaw clenching, his eyes flashing with happiness—with gratefulness.