The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,115
long time, I had nightmares wondering how she died.”
I shake my head, heedless of the tears or the way my voice cracks.
“I don’t dream anymore about how Mama died. I celebrate how she lived. One of her favorite quotes was, ‘They buried us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.’ My mother was a seed. She died when I was thirteen, but today, look at her harvest in this bill that will search for, find and save so many of our women in time. Look at her alive in me. Every morning I wake up and live with purpose, decide to make this world a better place, or decide not to just live for myself, but to help those in greatest need, Mama lives on. I am her harvest.
“I used to despair that no one remembered her, that no one said her name or the names of the thousands of native women who go missing and are never found. But today, I say her name. This bill bears her name. Liana Reynolds.”
The applause of the crowd, the smiling faces fade for a moment, and I’m back on that open plain for my dance. When I was a girl, I ran in the four directions, gathering the elements to myself—everything I would need to become a woman. According to tradition, that day unleashed my ability to heal myself, others and my community, but being a woman is more than making the pain go away. It’s living through it, learning from it, and putting it to good use, like we did today.
When Changing Woman heads east every morning, hoping to run into her younger self, I wonder what she would say if she ever did? Because now I know what I would say.
Nistan.
Run.
Keep running.
You don’t stop running because it’s hard. You don’t stop running because it hurts. Don’t you dare stop running because someone says you’ll never finish the race, or even that it’s not your race to run.
Prove them all wrong.
Blaze your own trail.
Girl, woman, they’ll never give you the world. You have to make your own.
And then I know. That thing I’ve been wrestling with, in this moment it’s as clear as that girl running on a distant plain, cheered on by her community, by generations of ancestors.
Blaze your own trail.
Make your own world.
I won’t let anyone define who I am, who I love, how I live. I’ll do that. Will I have to make sacrifices? Of course. Compromises? Of course.
But will I have the chance to do something no one who looks like me has ever done before? And with a man I love more than everything else? A man who loves me the same way?
I signed on for you, whatever that means, wherever that takes us.
Maxim’s words land on my heart, plant seeds, take root. All these years, I’ve been searching for the once-in-a-lifetime candidate, and I’ve found him. Maxim is my once-in-a-lifetime, and I’m his. Once in a lifetime and for the rest of our lives.
I excuse myself from the group of well-wishers and rush to the back of the room. Maxim leans against the wall, his smile spreading wider the closer I get, and the closer I get, the harder my heart pounds. Not caring if there are cameras, or what people will say, or what anyone will think, I reach up to take his face between my hands and kiss him long and possessively, claiming him. He shifts, his hands sliding down my back, tightening at my waist. He groans into the kiss, breaking away to bury his face in my neck.
“Nix,” he breathes into my ear, chuckling. “Give a guy some warning. You want everybody to see the effect you have on me every time you walk into a room?”
I throw back my head and laugh, feeling freer than I have ever felt in my life. “Yeah, I think I do want them to see.”
He cups my cheek, brushing my hair back from my face, the love in his eyes apparent.
“Let’s change the world, okay?” My smile fades and so does his. He searches my eyes, caresses my mouth with his thumb.
“Together?” he asks, his voice sobering.
I nod, pressing my hand to his heart. The compass charm on my bracelet catches the light, glimmers like the love that guided us from our first unlikely moment to this one.
“Yeah,” I answer, practically feeling my face glow with the love in my heart, with the peace I’ve made. “Together.”