“Maybe he needs to assess who his enemies are a little more carefully.”
“You think Blair’s an enemy for him.”
“I don’t think she’s far off.” She’s currently talking to the Secretary of State for education, a man who’s fairly normal and isn’t interested in anything bar his actual role. He’s probably unaware of who Blair actually is and I catch a glimpse of half a smile at something he’s said.
“Has she made any decisions? I see Lloyd MacPherson’s been making noises in the press these last few days.”
MacPherson was one of her cousins. If Blair decided to step away from the limelight she’d been thrust into, he’d be a candidate for Paden Stewart to name as his successor.
“Nothing. Both cousins are due to meet with her father next weekend, before the funeral.”
“Are you okay?”
Isaac’s hand is back there, touching. No one can see and even if they could, Isaac wouldn’t give a shit.
I’m not okay. I don’t know which way is left.
“No.”
“What will make it better?”
To drop to my knees and confess my sins before I sin some more at the feet of a man I shouldn’t speak to. A man that presents all that is bad and wrong in two thirds of my family.
A man I have thought about continuously since I last saw him, leaving him with hurt in his eyes.
“This shit storm to be over.”
“Trying to make that happen, Benjamin.” His hand drops lower to my ass, rough fingers pressing through the material of my dress pants.
I don’t tell him, because I can’t, but I’m part of the reason he’s having to try to make that happen. This threat is real for all of us.
And I’m part of it.
* * *
Isaac slips down towards Blair, approaching her with his slight smile. I know she’ll see the intense look in his eyes, the one he’s used on me and has started to use with her. Brown eyes the colour of dark chocolate that can become as hard as stone.
Blair turns to him and her expression lightens. Her arm extends and she holds out a hand that he takes, his fingers trailing up the soft skin of her arm.
I should be jealous.
I don’t know who I should be jealous of.
Isaac has lost his jacket, his shirt sleeves now rolled up. He looks nothing like a politician should. Instead he’s a pirate disembarked from his ship, because I’m not the only one who’ll notice the gleam he gets in his eyes when he’s thought of an idea.
He talks to Blair, his body suggesting that he’ll protect her, listen, keep her safe. For the first time in days I see her relax and she steps closer to him.
He whispers something and she laughs then looks for me. I smile. I think of when Isaac saw us fucking on the island, of him holding her hair while I came in her mouth, of the three of us sitting by the pool in the sun before we truly knew what any of us were.
Then I see a look pass between them and neither glance my way. It’s intimate and there are words contained in it that I can’t read.
The Kingmaker and a future queen.
I wonder which chess piece I am.
And I wonder who’s the player.
Eleven and a half years earlier
