The Kingmaker (All the King's Men, #1)(88)

He brushes a knuckle over my cheek and pushes my hair back. “I’m not here for Owen, Nix. I’m here for you.”

“Maxim,” I say, my breath trapped in my throat. “I don’t think—”

“What do I have to do?” he asks, bending so our mouths line up, so the question waits on my lips for an answer. “What does a man like me, used to getting anything he wants, do when the woman he wants more than anything won’t forgive him for a mistake when he was too stupid and too young to know better?”

I close my eyes against the urgency in his stare, dark green like a forest I’d get lost in. My chest heaves as if I’m running, but the only exertion is staying out of his arms; is not throwing myself on top of him and kissing him like it’s been ten years since I had anything as good as what we had. It takes everything to remain still, mute.

I want to tell him there’s no relationship to respect. There’s nothing to forgive, but if I say any of those things, there will be no barrier between us—nothing keeping the wolf from my door. And if he gets in . . .

With swift steps, I make my escape to the elevator, duck in and press the close doors button. I probably won’t see him again until the announcement. When I look up, he stands there, frustration clearly painted on his strong face.

“Happy holidays, Doc,” I say as the doors close.





44





Lennix





“Merry Christmas, Mama.”

I say it every year here in this place where I whispered her name. It’s not much, but it’s all the closure I have. No body and no grave. A story with no end. I can only hope she found peace because I’m not sure I ever really can.

“Rest in peace, Liana,” my father says, his sober gaze fixed below.

I’d almost forgotten he stood beside me, I was so turned in on my own sadness. He comes every year, though I haven’t asked him to in a long time. They never married and weren’t together when she died.

Guilt stabs at me.

“Dad, you don’t have to keep coming.” I take his hand and squeeze. “You should be home with Bethany. I could have come alone.”

“Bethany’s fine,” he says of the English professor he married after dating a few years. “It’s just an hour and she understands.”

She is pretty awesome. Since she came into my father’s life, Christmas has become festive again with trees lit and tables laid.

“Besides, Liana was a woman who deserves to be remembered.”

I nod. She was indeed. A warrior. Fierce and principled.

“You’re so like her,” Dad says, a gentle smile quirking his lips even though his gaze is trained on the sky, not on me. “She would be proud of you—of how you fought to protect this place.”

“And failed,” I mumble, misery making my eyes burn. “I couldn’t save . . .”

Her. The land. Tammara. Too many losses to name over the years. It makes me tired. I stare at the smooth expanse of dry land, with the pipeline trail cutting over it like a scar, healed, but jagged.

“You can’t save them all, Lenn,” Dad says, slipping an arm around me and pulling me in tight. “But you’re your mother’s daughter, so I know you’ll always try.”

I nod against his shoulder, tears stinging my eyes.

“Just promise me you’ll stop fighting for everyone else long enough to find something for yourself,” Dad says. “Liana never did that, but you can.”

He’s right. It usually feels like everything I want most is for someone else.

Not everything, that damn voice reminds me again.

I clench my eyes closed against the images that flood my mind—images of Maxim and me. My desire for him was a living thing that writhed and screamed and demanded for itself—took what it wanted. Took him however he came. Wanted him with no holds barred, even if it hurt.

But then it did hurt, and I ran away.

The barren land mocks me, an open casket holding nothing more than a whisper and my pain. God, so much pain. Pain I don’t think I can live through again.

Mena says I cut myself off so I never have to feel this again—never have to lose like this again. Does never having someone to lose mean I’ll never have someone . . . at all?





45





Maxim





“And then Lennix says, ‘Happy holidays . . .” I pause for emphasis. “. . . Doc.’”

David and Grim don’t look as impressed by this last bit of information as they should. They actually look slightly disinterested.

“You get the significance of that, right?” I demand. “Remember I told you she used to call me—”

“Doc Quixote,” they both finish flatly, arms crossed over their chests. They’re slumped into the sumptuous sectional that takes up a quarter of the room. We’re at my place embedded in the slopes of the Aspen Highlands. Neither of them have immediate families, and mine . . . well, it’s obviously complicated.

“Not all the time. Mostly she would just call me Doc, but there was that one time we went—”

“Bike riding,” they say together again, exasperation creeping into their voices.

“I told you guys about that?” I frown. “About the windmills when we went bike riding in Amsterdam?”