The Kingmaker

“So you want the power.”

“I want to spread it. Create it. Put it where it will be used better,” I say, indignation riding the blood in my veins. “Yes, there’s usually more than one ‘right.’ Right is relative sometimes. Not life or death, or cruelty or those absolutes. All you can do is fight for the right you believe in. There aren’t enough people fighting for my people’s ‘rights.’ What is right for us and the basic rights it seems are so quickly afforded to everyone but us. That’s what I plan to spend my life fighting for.”

He smiles, and it’s almost sad.

“What?” I ask. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” he says, pushing my shoulder gently until I fall back on the blanket, and he hovers over me, “that you are going to be so damn incredible.” Our eyes catch and his smile fades. “And I wish I could to be around to see it.”

He told me. I knew this wasn’t permanent. He said no attachments and that he would walk away, but the finality in his words hurts so much.

“You’ll be off on your expeditions, huh?” I ask, reaching up to push back the dark hair falling in his eyes. “Saving Mother Earth?”

“Something like that.” He runs his thumb over my bottom lip. “Antarctica. Then I’m going to the Amazon. You know twenty percent of the world’s oxygen comes from the Amazon?”

“No shit. You learn something new every day.”

“You can if you wanna,” he laughs. “Then possibly the Maldives, which within just a few decades may be uninhabitable.”

“Wait, like the islands? Like great vacay Maldives?”

“They’re only six feet above sea level. By the middle of this century, parts of it and even parts of Hawaii may be under water.”

“You’re serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. The shame is that by the time people start believing how serious this really is, it’ll be too late.”

“How did you get into this? Why is it so important to you?”

“Let’s just say I grew up thinking a lot about our natural resources,” he says with an ironic smile that tells me absolutely nothing. “And didn’t always like what I found.”

“So you’re off to save the planet.”

“And don’t forget I want to make a lot of money.”

“Capitalist,” I whisper, straining up to kiss his neck.

“Crusader,” he whispers his retort over my shoulder, licking and sucking my collarbone.

“We’re going in completely different directions, aren’t we?” I hate the pathetic sound of my own voice—the way my heart constricts at the thought of him in the wilds of Antarctica and the Amazon while I toil on behalf of the future Senator Nighthorse in Oklahoma.

“Yeah, we are.” He tugs on my hand and pulls us to a sitting position on the blanket, seating me between his knees with my back to his chest. “Let me show you where I’ll be.”

“What?” I peer at him over my shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“Gimme your hands,” he says, his voice resonating in my back. His arms bracket me as he reaches for my hands, holding them out in front of us.

“Let’s go back to the days when the world was flat for a second.” He places my hands side by side, palm up. “I don’t have a globe, so we’ll make a map. Here’s the good old US of A.” With his index finger, he sketches what roughly looks like the shape of the United States at the far edge of my left palm. “You’ll be there in Oklahoma.”

He draws a line down and across to the far lower quadrant of my right palm and stops at my wrist. “I’ll be all the way down here in Antarctica.”

He moves up a little, leaving tiny needles of sensation across my skin with every touch. “The team will leave from here to get there.”

“Where is that?” I ask, my throat closing up and my eyes stinging.

“New Zealand. It’s closest.”

“I always think of New Zealand as hot, not that close to the coldest place in the world.”