Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 108242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 541(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
I take the phone, stand, but then hesitate. “I’ll be right back, Millie.”
Millie’s vacant stare shifts to me, and an odd little smile quirks her bite-marked lips. “I keep playing that damn speech over and over in my head,” she says, as if I hadn’t spoken. “We still have the future, and we still have each other.”
She nods, and a solitary tear slides over her cheek, meandering into the corner of her mouth. “It’s a good line. Good speech.”
I stand there helplessly. Shock and grief and this tight dress make it hard to breathe and move. I don’t know what to say, how to function in this alternate universe. Last night, Millie was cuddling with Owen on their couch, sneaking kisses and sharing a mug of hot chocolate topped with marshmallows. Now parts of him have been blown away, incinerated. A death so gory I can’t even contemplate it and keep moving forward.
After a few seconds of silence and a few more tears, Salina squeezes her arm, and I nod. “I’ll be right back.”
I duck around the corner and lean against the wall, allowing myself a moment to feel the loss of Owen for myself. To feel my friend gone. To feel my own hope lost for what he could have meant to this country—the possibilities he represented to me and to so many. I choke back a guttural sound, and with the phone like a slab of marble in my hand, I swipe at my tears, clear my throat, and dial Maxim.
I want to slam the phone into the wall when it just rings. There’s no message, only a beep. I hang up, completely unprepared to speak into the void of an empty line. I need his voice. I need him.
Resolving to try him again later, I call Kimba next.
“Hello?” There’s an uncharacteristic edge of panic in Kimba’s voice. This woman would remain calm facing an army of zombies with a toothbrush, but she sounds like she’s falling apart. I recognize that sound.
“Kimba.”
“Thank God,” she says, her voice breaking. “Answer your damn phone, Lenn. I thought… We didn’t know… 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.”
CHAPTER 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 “shh” 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.