The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,62

. . where the hell are you? I was worried about you and the press is up my ass.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What’s going on? There’ve been reports of some explosion after the fundraiser, but the scene is closed. No press allowed, but there have been rumors that . . . are you okay? Owen? Millicent?”

“Yes. No.” I close my eyes, blow out a painful sigh. “Millie and I are okay. It’s Owen.”

“Oh, God.”

“A car bomb. There was an explosion. Millie and I were riding together in her car, and Owen . . .”

“What about Owen?” The question tilts up at the end, hanging, waiting.

“Kimba, he didn’t make it.”

Her silence on the other end is an epoch, marking our new reality and mourning what we’ve lost.

“No, oh my God, Lennix.”

I slide down the wall, sitting on the floor and pulling my knees up while we cry together, a commiseration of sniffles and hiccups and tears.

“Shit.” She blows her nose, and I already hear the necessary shift in her voice, sense it in her famously iron will. “Okay. What do we say to the press? What’s the plan?”

“I don’t think we can plan without consulting the family. Maxim and his parents are en route.”

“Maxim. How is he?”

“I haven’t even gotten to talk to . . .”

A shadow falls over me in the narrow hall, and I look up to find Maxim standing there, the green of his eyes swallowed in a pain so dark it makes them look almost black.

“Hey, I’ll call you back,” I say, never letting my eyes leave his, even though it hurts to see him drowning in agony this way. “Maxim’s here.”

27

Maxim

I didn’t know how badly I needed to see Lennix until I rounded the corner and found her there, wearing the whole night like a heavy cloak slumping her shoulders and etching lines of tension around her mouth. Her eyes snare mine, and I breathe, not realizing how anaerobic I’ve been since my father called. She’s my air, and I don’t even wait for her to stand, but reach down, scooping her up in my arms. I fold my elbows under her bottom, savoring her warmth, the wing-touch of her breath at the base of my neck.

Leaned against the wall with her clutched to me like that, I don’t care who walks by or what anyone thinks. Without this, without her, I won’t make it another step. Every moment I hold her, is resuscitating.

At first I don’t realize where that sound is coming from. That wrenching, bleating sobbing noise. It’s the comfort of Lennix’s fingers ghosting over my neck and sliding into my hair. It’s the sibilant, soothing “shhhhh” she leaves in my ear that lets me know I’m making those sounds. It’s me shaking in her arms even though right now, hoisted up against me, her feet don’t even touch the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, her own grief and pain dampening the collar of my shirt where she huddles into me. “I love you so much.”

I absorb her words into my lungs like a deep breath, and slide down the wall to the same spot on the floor where I found her. She settles across my lap and pushes my hair back. Peering into my face, her water-sky eyes are brilliant and stormy and raining tears.

I pull her to my chest again, compulsively needing to feel her heart thumping into mine. Even though Dad told me she was okay. Even though I’ve already seen Millie, safe and devastated and desolate, in the waiting room, I had to see Lennix with my own eyes. And now I can’t let her go. She’s slim and small and willowy against the width of my chest, but she’s my tree in this storm.

She pulls back.

“Don’t,” I mutter with a swift shake of my aching head, tightening my arms around her. “Don’t let go.”

She nods, the cool, tumbled strands of her hair brushing against my neck.

“When Dad said there had been an accident at the fundraiser, you were the first person I thought about. I could have lost you both tonight.”

“You didn’t.”

“But Owen . . .” My voice breaks. Something inside me breaks, and my emotions are ungoverned, an anarchy of relief for Lennix, grief for Owen, rage at whomever set this tragedy in motion. If I’d lost them both, I’d be living in darkness. Lennix feels like my one tiny point of light, and still I can’t see.

“Maxim.”

My father stands over us, startling me. His bleak gaze moves between Lennix and