Queen Move (All the King's Men, #3)

by Kennedy Ryan

Who would call me by that name? Now, when the only people who use it, my family, are all preoccupied with their own pain? A tall man stands in front of me, his thick, dark brows bunched with sympathy. I don’t know him. I would remember a man like this, who stands strong like an oak tree. A well-tailored suit molds his powerful shoulders. Dark brown, not quite black, hair is cut ruthlessly short, but hints at waves if given the chance to grow. His prominent nose makes itself known above the full, finely sculpted lips below. His eyes are shockingly vivid—so deep a blue they’re almost the color of African violets against skin like bronze bathed in sunlight. No, a man like him you’d never forget. Something niggles at my memory, tugs at my senses. I’d never forget a man who looked like this, a man with eyes like that…but what about a boy?

“Sounds like Daddy’s winning,” I say, pressing my nose to my son’s. He gurgles back, laughing and stretching his little starfish palm toward my face. He squirms as I lower him into the warm water. A grin squints the corners of eyes the same color as mine, a blue so deep it’s almost purple. The contrast with his golden skin and cap of springy dark curls is striking. Some of me. Some of his father. Wholly himself.

I look over my shoulder to find Janetta Allen, one of my new neighbors, whose husband is in law school with Al. She stands in the bathroom door, arms extended keeping her baby girl, Kimba, away from her body.

The Atlanta Child Murders case, two years of more than twenty unsolved murders and disappearances, transfixed the whole country. My mother mentioned it as soon as she heard we were moving here.

Janetta shrugs, leaning a hip against the bathroom counter. “Loving was what? Just fifteen years ago? We’re not that far removed from your marriage being considered criminal, and in the South, ignorance about race likes to linger as long as it possibly can.”

Its a little hamfisted. Very unlike Ryan…

I think every morning when Ezra wakes up, God gives him a tiny jar of words. He only gets so many, maybe a quarter of what the rest of us do. And he’s so scared he’ll run out, he uses as few of them as possible. Half his sentences are one word or a grunt. Weekends, he talks so little, I bet at the end of the day, he has leftovers.

Neither of my parents really know what it’s like to live here as me. To look around and see no one who looks like you. To live with the stares and questions about “what I am.” To feel like a puzzle, pieces hidden and scattered, and always trying to find and fit all my parts together. To see myself not as half this or bi-that, but whole.

There are so many things I could say to Kimba. I want to explain how splintered I feel sometimes—how there’s something always moving inside me, searching for a place to land, to fit, to rest. I want to tell her it’s only ever still when I’m with her—that she’s my best friend in the world, and I’d rather get punched in the stomach every day than move away and not have her anymore. But that’s too many words that don’t even come close to telling her what I feel.

“Be strong, very strong.” His fingers tighten on mine and he doesn’t drop his gaze or slide a hand in his pocket, or any of the other Ezra things he does when he’s unsure. “And we will strengthen each other.” The words are seeds sinking deep into my soul, into my heart. They take root and bloom. We’ve taken care of each other our whole lives. I don’t know what to do with these feelings. What I feel for Ezra is as old as we are, and yet brand new. It’s familiar, but blushing and breathless.

I wish I could be that bold—could just walk out onto the dance floor and tell Jeremy to let Kimba go. I’d remind her that when we were six years old, she married me, and that it should count for something. Even though everything’s different now, and we’re about to enter high school, and our bodies are changing and I feel weird around her most of the time, some things should always remain the same.

“Our pact is that we’ll always be friends,” he says, his voice quiet, sure. “That nothing will come between us, not even each other.” Not even each other.

“Now, Ezra!” his father roars so loudly I’m sure Mrs. Washington got an earful while fake-watering her plants.

Mrs. Stern’s face is tear-streaked and her hair is mussed, unusual because her appearance is always neat. Her mouth trembling, she looks at me for a long moment before speaking.

Once the box is laid out, I tear through the packaging to find another box inside, this one white, emblazoned with the word gLo, and tied with a wide purple ribbon. “I didn’t know it was one of Lotus Ross’ designs,” Lennix breathes, touching the silk bow. “You guys know each other?”

So happy i waited to read this because i wouldnjt have caught the reference

In the midst of this thorny conversation, a memory sprouts, a fragile bud that opens, reminding me of my earliest ideas of marriage and family and what it meant to choose one person for the rest of your life.

I look up to meet Ezra’s stare, and I know he’s remembering that day in Mrs. Clay’s class. I’d forgotten this kind of telepathy we share, seemingly conducting thoughts between our minds with nothing more than a glance. There’s a disconcerting intimacy to it that feels wrong when his mind isn’t mine.

Cocoa butter. She always wore it when we were kids. Her mother practically bathed them in it. Hell, more than once Mrs. Allen said I was ashy and randomly slathered it on me.

Lolz

She doesn’t need my help but wanted me here. She doesn’t just want me to bond with the kids. I could be wrong, but I think my sister wants to bond with me, too.

“You’re not saying that because he’s white, are you? Barry is literally and figuratively invited to the cookout.”

Mona is hilarious

And there’s a napkin in my head with Kimba’s name scribbled all over it.

“Ko, you know how you get. You’ve got a jealous streak a mile wide. How would that even be helpful or healthy?”

I know what she means. The pull between us is alive, is burning beneath my fingertips on her skin. Even surrounded by friends and colleagues who know I’ve been with Aiko for a decade, who know I would never cheat on her, who don’t know we aren’t together anymore and would judge me…even knowing the necessity of discretion, I can barely keep my hands off Kimba.

He’s your typical entitled male, but a liberal, so in some ways he’s even blinder to his own privilege because wanting to save the world assuages his guilt for getting all he wants from it.

The years fall away like a torn veil separating him from me, then from now. It hasn’t been years. There has only been one long day for us on which the sun has never set. We were never lost, and this place has always been waiting for our wandering hearts, for our prodigal souls to finally, together rest.

And if love is not just an emotion, but a type of eternity, an infinity that lives in our hearts, then we have always been in love. It’s an ageless thing that isn’t about puberty or chronology, or even if we get to live our lives together.

He leans in to cup my face with one big hand, his palm rough, his touch gentle against my skin. “I don’t think it will be easy, Tru. I just know it will be worth it.”

“Remember when I did the big chop?” “Oh my God.” Kayla cackles. “Mama is still not over you cutting all your hair off. She called you Florida Evans for months.”

My preferences aren’t defined by what a woman has, but by who this woman is. I’m a Kimba man, and I think she’s ruined me for anyone else.

anoxic

“Ruth is a good woman and was once one of my best friends,” Mama says, her voice low but sharp. “Keep her name out of your mouth, Keith.”

My guess is the women got it on

“It absolutely is not true,” she replies, her voice curt. “So you deny it?” “Do I deny having an affair of any kind with Joseph Allen? I unequivocally do.”

Lake Lanier’s surface shines like volcanic glass under the moonlight, black and bright.

No.

“I know this is the first campaign without Lennix and you feel like you have something to prove, but you don’t. Mateo Ruiz just made the best decision of his life. He chose you. Not your father or your family name or your partner. You seized that opportunity. You set aside your own fears and insecurities to go on that show. You spoke truth to power and called Colson out on his shit. In front of millions.” He squeezes my waist and drops his forehead to rest on mine. “And I’m so incredibly proud.”

“Last night you trusted me with something hard.” He tilts my chin up, searches my eyes. “I don’t just want you when you’re strong. I want you when you’re vulnerable, when you’re lost, when you’re not sure. I see the armor you have to put on to make it in your world. I just want you to know here, with me, you can take the armor

“I came home early because I’m pregnant.”

“No. It was just Ruth and me.” Defiance and dread vie in Mama’s eyes. “The reason I was so sure Joseph never had an affair with Ruth is because I did.”

Called it

“Love is not a tidy thing, Kimba. It can’t ever be perfect because none of us are. Someone at some point will make a mess. The test of that love is how you clean it up. Your father stayed and we cleaned it up together.”

“When it comes to love, some messes take longer than others to clean up.” Mama’s smile is wise. “Believe me—I know.”