Everyone chuckles and keeps eating, dividing attention between their plates and their new candidate.
“Thank you all for coming. Mill and I wanted to have you here in our home,” Owen continues. “To have you meet our kids, Darcy and Elijah, and my brother, Maxim, who’ll be pivotal in our strategy. For some reason, people love this guy. I don’t get it.”
Maxim shoots him a wry look before dropping his eyes back to his plate, his mouth set into a firm line. For a second, I feel awful for ignoring him, deceiving him, but I have to protect myself. I know how it feels to hurt for that man. I won’t do it again.
“Lennix and Kimba,” Owen says, jerking me out of my thoughts. “anything you’d like to say?”
Kimba hates public speaking of any kind. She gives me a nod and the look that says girl, don’t even. With a sigh, I take a deep gulp of my water and stand. I search the faces of the men and women assembled around the table, and I search for what I should say.
“My mother once said injustice never rests and neither will I.” A sad little twist of my lips is as close as I can come to a smile. “She was an agitator. One of my earliest memories is of her hoisting me onto her shoulders at a protest. It’s in my blood.”
I find and hold every set of eyes on my team. “I’m counting on it being in yours, too. We have a remarkable candidate in Senator Cade, one I know we can all get behind. It’s no secret that Kimba and I have made our life’s work empowering candidates who will champion the causes of the marginalized. That’s what gets me out of bed every morning. It has been my complete focus for the last ten years, since I left college.”
Maxim’s stare singes a hole in me, but I ignore it and go on.
“On this journey, there will be times when we think we’re losing. Things will happen we never saw coming and aren’t sure how to negotiate. There will be times when we want to give up, but I descend from a long line of warriors. The Apache were the last to surrender. I take a certain amount of pride in that. I embrace it as part of who I am and how I fight.”
I look down the table to Owen. “I’ll fight for you, Senator Cade, because I trust you to fight for the people I dedicate my life to serve. Every person sitting at this table was selected for not only their brilliant mind, but for their fighter’s heart. You’re a dream candidate, but we’re a dream team.” I allow the smallest smile to bend my lips before softly saying, “Don’t let us down.”
My team cheers. Owen offers a solemn smile from his end of the table, and his wife studies me with new interest, her eyes darting between her brother-in-law and me. I sit and reach for my glass of water, praying this will end soon so I can go home.
It’s only a blessed half hour before things start breaking up. A nanny comes to take the twins upstairs. The staff clear away the remnants of our last course and everyone starts collecting their coats and saying their goodbyes.
Wallace is sliding my coat onto my shoulders when Maxim walks over. He just stands there. I sense him, even though I don’t look up from my Stuart Weitzman pumps. The silence encompasses the three of us, wrapping around and restraining me like barbed wire biting into my flesh.
“Can I have a word before you go, Lennix?” Maxim finally asks, his voice subdued.
A word. He means to bundle me off to Owen’s office or to the library. He’ll whittle my resistance down to a nub. He’ll make me forget he lied and that I shouldn’t allow him within ten paces of my body or heart. He wants to remind me how he feels and smells and tastes. He used to camouflage the wolf, but not anymore. He’s tamed his hair, cut the burnished waves that used to nearly kiss his shoulders, but his spirit is still wild, howling on some frequency I shouldn’t be tuned into, but I am. He’s now completely wolf and unashamedly Cade. He’s still the rebel, and I’m afraid I’m no more able to resist him than I was in that conference room a decade ago.
Afraid. I’m afraid. That’s an emotion I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge in this scenario with Maxim. Is this self-awareness? My therapist will be so proud.
Without lifting my head, I answer before I turn to leave. “No.”
40
Maxim
Last night did not go well.
I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t for Lennix to bring a damn date. Not just a date, but a relationship apparently. One where they go on service projects and build wells together, and generally make the world a better place. I grudgingly admit Wallace Murrow is not a bad guy. Not at all. I made sure of that when they dated before, but they’re back together? In the decade we’ve been apart, I took heart in the fact that Nix never dated any one guy for long. Wallace was the longest relationship I knew about, and for her to go back to him?
I stepped back before. The wounds were fresh. Her anger still burned hot and she’d ignored every attempt I made to contact her. Not to mention I was in the fight of my life trying to save my company, but a lot of time has passed. We’re both in different places now, and I’m done waiting.
I’m not sure how serious she and Murrow are, and . . . this makes no sense, but I don’t know if I buy it. There’s something missing with them. I’d never felt anything like the hot, addictive urgency that surged between Lennix and me, and I haven’t experienced it since. I guess I wanted to believe she hadn’t either. Maybe that is just the arrogant part of me—which I freely admit is a good portion of my personality. Whatever I expected, it bothers me that she isn’t available.
How’d Grim miss that? His security firm was one of the smartest investments I ever made. It pays dividends that have nothing to do with profit. Information is often just as valuable, and Grim deals information like a king pen.
After the last argument with my father, I continued seeking answers on climate change, but also turned my attention to doing what Cades do best: building a fortune. What really exploded the coffers was innovation. Finding inventors interested in creating the things we use every day more sustainably. Not just sports bras and clothing, but tiny parts in electric cars that I now hold a patent on to make that entire industry more efficient.
Grim has, through the years, kept loose tabs on Lennix for me. That wasn’t hard. Her star in the political world rose steadily and spectacularly, which didn’t surprise me at all.
What do I want from Lennix? To know
if my memory tricked me, and she wasn’t as fantastic as I remember? Do I need that reassurance to move forward? I can’t call this love, the near-obsessive burn in my gut when I think of her, when I saw her last night. She was a candle lit and extinguished too quickly, but the smoke of what we had has endured, lingering in the air all these years.
I wouldn’t call it love, but it’s something I’ve never found elsewhere, and I need to know if I could have it again.
If I could have her again.