Page 65 of The Rebel King

“Gone,” I say dazedly. “Y-you said Owen’s gone… Jesus.”

In my seat, I bend at the waist and hold the phone away from my ear, letting it fall to the floor. I can’t find my bearings in a world where my brother doesn’t exist. I’ve never been here before. The pain is tornadic, picking up speed, tossing out everything I knew about how something could hurt. There is no point of reference for this. The reality of Owen being gone travels through me, miles per second, and nothing is left untouched.

“Maxim,” I hear my father again, a distant echo. “Son, talk to me.”

Without opening my eyes, I feel around on the floor until I find the phone and lift it to my ear. “I’m here.” That’s not my voice, grated up with sobs, but it’s coming from my body. “I’m… I’m trying to… Shit.”

Words abandon me, and I sit in silence for a moment with my father, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse and emotion cracks it, and he says the words that I’ve often wanted to hear, but not like this. Never like this.

“Son, just come home.”

CHAPTER 26

LENNIX

There is no colder place than a waiting room when the waiting is over.

When hope turns off the lights. The held breath is released in tears. The end of faith. It all convenes in a waiting room when death has come and gone.

Millie sits on the hospital’s drab, impersonal couch, dry-eyed and lost in her own apocalypse. This is the end of the world as she knows it. I’m inches away in the blast wave of her pain, feeling the shock of it and still seeing the burning vehicle that took her husband. My friend. Maxim’s brother.

Oh, God, Maxim.

The police pulled Bob and me in for questioning right away, to reconstruct the timeline as best we could. In all the commotion, I left my evening bag and phone in the SUV. I haven’t been able to call Maxim, and I need to hear his voice. I want to be there for him, but also…I need him.Nothing settles me like being in his arms, and I’m short-circuiting at how close I came to death…again.

I was supposed to be in that car with Owen.

If I hadn’t caught a ride with Millie, Iwouldhave been.

Is death hounding me?

I haven’t had time to process the implications of what could have happened to me because I’m too unraveled by what did happento Owen; his family, suffering this unfathomable loss. Then I think about the country and the hope and enthusiasm Owen had inspired. Young people wanting to vote for the first time, older voters who had lost faith in the process, eager and wondering if maybe this time…

It’s so hard to compartmentalize right now, but I have to remember I’m a friend but also running the country’s most closely followed political campaign. Kimba and our team are flying blind right now. I need to call her, but first Ihaveto call Maxim.

I glance at the woman seated across from me, one slim arm wrapped around Millie’s shoulder. Salina Pérez, her best friend, lives in the Virginia suburbs outside DC and was Millie’s first call. She arrived a half hour ago in a whisper of cashmere and Dior perfume, ushering in some degree of calm and comfort in the waiting room.

“Um, could I borrow your phone?” I ask softly, nodding toward the phone on her lap. “I think I left mine in…” It feels wrong to even refer to that scene, to that moment Millie and I witnessed.

“Of course.” Her dark, kind eyes are slightly puffy and red-rimmed, but it doesn’t detract from her dusky beauty. She hands me the phone. “I’m sure you have many things to take care of. I’ve got Mill until the family arrives.”

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 beenblown 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 hisvoice. I needhim.

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.

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