The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,65
but I was kind of a big kid, and not very nice, if I’m honest.”
A small murmur of subdued amusement ripples through the crowd.
“So nobody really messed with me,” he continues. “And you’re supposed to look up to your big brother, but when I was a kid, I didn’t look up to anyone except my father.”
I glance at Warren Cade, but the inscrutable planes of his face register no response or emotion.
“As we grew older, in a lot of ways, we grew apart.” Maxim glances down and clears his throat. “I wasn’t close to my family for a long time, but Owen never stopped reaching out to me.”
He aims a brief grin toward Millicent, seated in the front row. “He called me the night he met you at that mixer, Millie, and said he’d found the one. I laughed at him because how do you know after one night, right?”
He scans the crowd for a second until he finds me, his eyes connecting with mine almost imperceptibly, but it sends a jolt of recognition down the center of my body and arrows through my heart.
“I hadn’t seen him for months, but he wanted me as best man at his wedding. I was there when the twins were born.” He stares at the closed coffin, his eyes unfocused like he’s seeing a kaleidoscope of memories. “He never gave up on me, not just as his brother, but on us being friends.”
A deep breath swells his chest and he goes on. “Owen modeled what it looked like to be a faithful husband, to save your love for one woman and then show her every day that she was worth waiting for. He showed me how it looked to believe in your children and want the best for them, without pressuring them or making them feel they had to live up to someone else’s standards. He showed me how to really serve this country, not with charisma or charm, or with lip service, but with his heart. With hard work on behalf of people who needed help more than he and I ever did.”
A deep swallow moves the muscles in his throat. “You were a great big brother, Owen. You were a fine man, and I didn’t tell you enough, but I love you and I do look up to you.”
When he shifts his gaze to the audience, there’s a shift in his demeanor, too. Steel enters his eyes. His broad shoulders seem to stretch. “Someone killed my brother, and they think they ended Owen’s life, but they haven’t. Not really. His legacy of service goes on in every person who benefits from the laws he voted into existence. He lives on in his beautiful wife, Millie, and my niece and nephew, Darcy and Elijah, who knew his love and his devotion and will carry it with them forever.
“Someone, the person who killed my brother, thinks we should be afraid.” His mouth tightens and his eyes narrow. “I’m not afraid. Don’t you be afraid either. You know what scares me? Cynicism. Apathy. Anything that convinces people to settle, to quit. The thought that people will give up on changing this world because of one person’s cruel cowardice makes my blood run cold. I would have given up on the system, the way things work long ago, had it not been for Owen. He renewed my faith in the process by which we change things in this country.”
He grips the podium so tightly, his knuckles whiten. “Robert Kennedy said, ‘There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.’
“I say comfort, even peace, is an illusion. There is always a cause, but too few believe enough to fight.
“Owen was a believer, and if you were around him long enough, he made a believer out of you. He had a stealthy will of iron. Beneath that easy charm and boyish grin was a tough-as-nails crusader. A brawler for the things and people he cared about, and he cared about a lot of people. They were his mission. You were his mission. He was determined not to fail you. If Owen inspired you even once, don’t you fail him.”
His glance drops to the coffin, and for a moment, he looks shaken. That helpless sorrow passes across his face almost too quickly to detect before he firms his mouth and