Page 69 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
“We’ll find a way for you to meet,” I promise. “You need to know him. And I—well. I need you to know him.”
“I’d like that,” she says. “And Ash…Ash should meet him.”
My eyelids burn and I blink fast. “Yes.”
“Do you remember that first time after you brought me back to Camp David? The three of us?”
“Yes, of course.”
“There was this moment, when you told me you loved me, do you remember? You said it so only I could hear.”
My mind is still thinking of Ash’s strong arms carrying my son, and it takes me a minute to process what she’s saying, but then when I do, guilty heat warms my face. I remember that moment well, and I’m not proud of it. “Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
I chew on my lip, searching for the right words. The honest ones. “I wanted you to know that I loved you, that I wasn’t loving or fucking you through my love for Ash…and I wanted you to know because I was jealous of him. Of how you looked at him that day. Even though I’d just brought you home, it seemed like child’s play compared to how well he took care of you after. Like he was doing the real rescuing. And Ash is so—he’s so everything—he’s like water and he fills up every space—and I had this moment where I wanted just this one thing for myself. Loving you.” I inhale. “And I know that Ash and I have years and years of history, that it would be easy to think that what I felt for him was more than what I felt for you, but you needed to know that it wasn’t true. There was a part of me that was only just for you. That still is.”
She lets out a breath, nodding. “I know,” she replies. “I mean, that’s what I thought you might say.”
“Why are you asking about this?”
She takes a long time to answer, and when she does, her voice is soft. “Because sometimes I wonder if we would have lasted as a three, even if you hadn’t left. We love each other so much, but we’re all so tangled up and snarled together, how could it have ever worked?”
“Ash,” I say. “It would have worked because of Ash—and because of us. I believe that, Greer. I really do. That no matter how jealous we were, how broken and how messy, we would have made it.”
“And if we had made it, what then?”
“I would have been in your bed every night,” I say with a smile. “And there every morning to feed you coffee and pet you awake. And eventually after all the politics were done, we’d find a nice place out in the country and fill it with babies and grow old together.”
“Babies,” she smiles. “That sounds nice.”
“Maybe I got you pregnant tonight.” I barely dare to say it, but I’m too caught up in what our lives could have been like to stop myself. “Maybe it’s happening right now.”
“Oh Embry,” she says, rolling on top of me. Her hair is everywhere, sweet-smelling and soft. “I hope so. I hope so with all my heart.”
And we don’t say much after that, letting the hopeful thump of our hearts and the slow swells of our breath carry us to someplace dark and peaceful. Someplace where the woman I love can hold my son, where her belly is full of a child we made together. Ash is there too, and the four of us are happy and laughing and expansive and safe, and in this place
, there’s only us and our love and the family we grow together.
There’s no Carpathia.
No Abilene.
No election and no debate.
There’s no balling dread that I might take the stage against Ash and fall to my knees before he ever says a word.
There’s no tentative, prickling excitement that I might take the stage against him and hold my own, that I might win, that I might find myself stronger and smarter, at least for that one crucial hour.
There’s no fear that I’ll wake up to an empty bed, with only the boot-heel shaped bruises on my back and the lingering smell of fresh shampoo to remind me that it wasn’t a dream.
No fear that tomorrow will find me alone.
And defeated.
EIGHTEEN
EMBRY
