The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,52

I laugh, knowing she won’t believe what I’m about to tell her. “Under the right conditions, you might hear conversations up to almost two miles away.”

Her pretty mouth drops open and her eyes go round, and it’s such a look of almost childish disbelief, I want to freeze this moment of wonder and innocence.

“You said you see different things, too,” she says after a moment. “Like what?”

“Well, the hot and cold air bend light rays, and that makes the light bounce off clouds, water, and ice to create optical illusions.”

After all these years, I finally get to share what makes Antarctica special to me, and how it made me think of her even when we were apart.

“There’s this one optical illusion called water sky. Sailors have used it forever to navigate because the light projects open lanes of water onto the clouds, and shows them how to avoid dangerous ice floes. I thought of your eyes every time I saw one.”

“You did?” Her smile softens, grows tender.

“Yeah, you have water-sky eyes.”

“I’m not sure how, but you’ve actually made me want to visit Antarctica.”

“You just have to be prepared to take the beauty with the bad.” I scoot forward and grasp her hands between mine. “You go months with no sun, but then you go months where the sun never sets.”

“That’s a great way to describe forever.” She traces my palm, the thinner skin of my wrist, exciting a response through my body from every point she touches.

I don’t answer because I know I’ll screw this up—say the wrong thing. The “not yet” thing. The “too soon” thing—that I want an endless day with her where the sun never sets on us. So I don’t say any of that, but let her guide the conversation, like the paddle in the water, lighting our way with each stroke.

“That was a crazy time in our lives,” she finally says.

“Which time?”

“When you went to Antarctica and I graduated college and started working in politics.” She glances up at me. “I wonder how different things would have been if I’d listened to you—given you a chance when you came to see me at Jim’s campaign headquarters.”

“Very different. I’d probably have a lot less money.”

“What? Why?”

“You see how I cancelled Germany because you had a week free in D.C.?”

“Yeah.”

“It would have been like that all the time. I would have dropped everything all the time, followed you anywhere, I think.”

She stares at me, confusion or disbelief gathering in her eyes.

“You were it for me before I even knew what it was, Nix,” I say with quiet honesty. “What I’ve done in the last ten years, most people don’t do in a lifetime. I don’t say that to brag, but to say it required everything, all my focus, all my life to build what I have now. It’s in my DNA to do that. My father, his before him, his before him—they were pioneers, businessmen, entrepreneurs who, when others saw flat plains, saw oil fields. When others saw disaster, they saw opportunity. That’s who we are, but I wouldn’t have been that with you. I’m already changing.”

“You are?”

“It’s impossible to be that single-minded when your mind is always somewhere else, and I think my mind would have always been on you.”

Is always on you now.

“When we were held hostage,” she says, her voice subdued and her eyes lowered. “I kept thinking we wasted so much time not being together, but maybe we needed that time. We were really young.” Her words, the look on her face, is wistful. “We wanted to change the world.”

“We still do. We still can.”

She nods, her mouth lifting slightly at the corners, and crawls carefully over to my side of the boat, turning so her back rests against my chest. I cross my arms at her waist and pull her warm, pliant body into me. I’ll never let this woman go, and I hope with everything I have that she’ll always hold onto me.

“When you’re young, you have ideals,” she says, her voice a wisp in the chilly air. “You take that simplicity, that purity, for granted. You don’t know how much harder it will be later.”

“What’s harder?”

“Everything. I used to run to change the world and protest to make my voice heard. Now I’m running campaigns and giving interviews on television and analyzing electoral maps.”

“Right. And I’m testifying before congress.” I laugh into the clean scent of her neck. “By the way, I’d rather spoon my eyes out than ever do