The Phoenix Candidate(75)

The video shows my face in profile, my hair tumbling down my back in wild waves, and I look like I could be a student, not a vice presidential running mate.

But Jared says when Conover saw this video, he put me at the top of his list.

My speech continued: “We value the ability and in fact the duty to hold our own views, and proclaim them proudly. And that is why I’ll go unflinchingly forward, for as long as the voters of Oregon will have me, to proclaim what’s unpopular, to touch the third rail, to go down in flames so long as I’m standing up for what’s right. Because a phoenix rises from the ashes.”

Conover asked Jared months ago to start building a file on me. Jared labeled it The Phoenix Candidate.

I glean details from early vetting during the Conover campaign in bits and pieces, and I begin to see how much Jared needed to know me even before he approached me in that bar.

I was never a fling for him. Never an idle distraction.

“I needed to know you, Grace, in every way I could,” he tells me fiercely as we’re wrapped around each other on a quiet night a week after the convention, both exhausted from the whirl of media and strategy sessions.

“And now that you do know me?” I pull away from his face to get a good look at him, to see his honest response.

Jared closes the distance between our mouths, his lips demanding, devouring. “I need more.”