11. All the King’s Men #2
We stop near the door, where Spencer watches me with a scowl. He takes a step closer, eyes flicking over Ava and me before he decides I must not be a threat, because he steps away.
I look out the window where the snow has started melting into thin rivulets. The sun is pale, like it’s not sure it wants to come out of hiding just yet.
She doesn’t speak again right away. Just stands beside me, arms loose, gaze far-off.
“Have you seen Ezra?”
The name lands sharp. My nephew. Or, I guess… our nephew. My hand goes to the back of my neck before I even realize it, and I look down at the ground.
“No,” I say. “Not since he was born.”
She hums. “You’d like him.”
I don’t answer.
Behind us, I hear footsteps.
I don’t have to turn around. I know who it is. Ava says nothing. Just pats my arm once—warm, intentional, perhaps even pitying—and slips away with that eerie grace of hers to clean up the yoga mats.
King steps up beside me. “Are you okay?”
His voice is neutral. Not prying. But I turn anyway, surprised.
He’s watching me with the kind of expression I’ve never seen on him before—open, curious… like he’s offering me something by asking.
I shouldn’t answer.
I don’t owe him anything.
But something in my chest cracks open sideways, and the words spill out.
“Yes and no,” I say, voice rough.
“Because of Ava?”
I shrug. “Ari and I were together for two years. I thought she was going to be it. I expected her to be it, even though I realize now that I always kept her at a distance. Never let myself get too close.”
King stays still, listening.
“She left me for my twin brother. Then, they got married and had a baby.” I pause. “And do you want to know the worst part?” I ask, breath stuttering. “I can’t even blame her. He’s the guy she wanted in the end. And I was just some kind of… insurance policy. The safe bet. The easy one.”
King doesn’t respond right away, and I take a few steadying breaths.
“Did they lie to you?” he asks eventually.
“No,” I say. “Not really. They just… didn’t let me see what was happening until it was already done.”
“You speak like someone who thinks you deserved what happened.” I freeze, and he turns to look at me. His dark eyes are steady, and his voice is quiet as he delivers his next line. “You didn’t.”
And just like that, the knot in my chest loosens by a fraction.
“Is that why you haven’t mentioned him? Your brother? I get the feeling there’s bad blood between the two of you.”
I huff a laugh. “You could say that. But no, that’s not why.
” I can feel King’s eyes on the side of my face, burning into me as he waits for me to elaborate.
“It goes back further than that. He had a wife and daughter who died, and he turned into someone I didn’t recognize.
I was too busy with my life to see how much he was unraveling.
I said some things I can’t take back. And then he… ” I look away.
“One time, when I was really drunk, I was out at a local bar. I was with someone I shouldn’t have been with, and he saw. He saw everything. He tried to talk to me, but I shut him down. It got physical. Two months later, he was arrested, and I didn’t see him for twenty years.”
King blows out a long breath of air. “Sounds intense.”
I nod. “Yeah. Things are a little better now. We text sometimes—there’s even a joke or funny meme thrown in from time to time. But it’ll probably never be how it once was.”
“And you blame yourself?”
“Yeah. Maybe if I’d been there for him, he wouldn’t have gone rogue. He wouldn’t have done what he did, you know?”
“Do you believe in fate?” he asks, and the question catches me off guard.
“No. Do you?”
King gives me a tight smile. “Kind of. Sometimes. So, take this with a grain of salt. But maybe it was all supposed to happen the way it did for Ari and—” He pauses.
“Maddox,” I supply.
“Right. Maybe it was all supposed to happen the way it did for Ari and Maddox to end up together.”
I grimace, thinking about how perfect they are together. “I guess.”
His hand comes to my shoulder, and the heat from earlier is still there, but it’s softened now. Settled . I turn to face him fully, his mouth parting like he’s about to say something else, but Ava walks back over to where we’re standing.
“Ambrose?” Ava says warmly, holding his green sweater. “Here. You left this next to your mat.”
My whole soul stumbles like it missed a step.
That name— Ambrose —hits my brain like a foreign word I’ve always known. It fractures and rebuilds itself in my chest—recognition not yet understood.
King thanks her, voice smooth. Ava smiles and walks off.
But I’m no longer standing in the studio—not really.
I’m standing on concrete in the dark, ten years ago, drunk on grief and nicotine, mouthing a name that feels all too familiar in the deep, dark crevices of my fucked-up mind.
Touching my lips.
Hard as a rock.
Freaking the fuck out because I’d kissed the nineteen-year-old intern.
Plotting his downfall so that I never had to face that mistake again.
I twist to face him fully, and my voice is quieter than I mean it to be. “Ambrose?”
He doesn’t blink or flinch, but something in his jaw feathers—just for a second.
“Not now, Asher,” he says.
And it’s not the denial that undoes me. It’s the way he says my name like he’s been carrying it all these years.
Like he’s been waiting to use it.
I stare at him, and the rest of the world fades around me.
And suddenly, I remember everything.