You’ll Love Me More

The stretch of the pool felt endless, the air brisk and the light of the rising sun blocked by the shadow looming behind them. Kennedy pulled her jacket closer to her body, though it did nothing to warm her more than it already was. Her hands were stuffed in her pockets, gloveless and numb. She would never tell her brother that she wished she would have listened to him and slipped something on to protect her fingers before they’d left.

They were making their way along the Reflecting Pool from the obelisk that was the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, or, as her father called it, Abe’s Temple. “One day, they’ll build one for me too,” he had said to her when he was running for his first term in the Oval Office. She hadn’t quite understood then, but now, a month after his second inauguration, she was starting to see what he meant. He wanted power and control, but he also wanted to be loved. He wanted to be commemorated for his contributions to his country just as Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, FDR, and MLK Jr. all had. He wanted to be among the greats.

“You’re quiet,” she said, glancing over at her brother walking stony-faced beside her. His hair was silver, tousled by the steady breeze, and his gaze was trained on the sky, its orange reflecting in the dark, liquor-like amber of his eyes. “Lucius?”

He glared at her. “You talk loud enough for the both of us.”

“Lucie.” Something halfway between a laugh and a scoff rose from Kennedy’s chest, as she clicked her tongue. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Look, you asked me to bring you, I brought you, and if we aren’t careful, they’ll find us and I’ll be the one in trouble. I don’t know what more you want from me.”

He wasn’t wrong—the Secret Service had to be looking for them by now—but she couldn’t help it. This was exciting. She may have walked it what felt like a hundred times before, but still, the stretch from Washington to Lincoln never got old. 

When she had begged him the night before, fresh off his flight from New York, if he would bring her here and help her get away from the White House’s prying eyes if only for a little while, he had been reluctant. He was only home for the weekend and didn’t understand why she wanted to come here of all places—why waste their time somewhere so familiar and so out in the open—but she had insisted. If her time with her brother was limited, she wanted to spend it somewhere important to her.

So, they had slipped out at the crack of dawn and managed to smuggle out a car despite Lucius insisting the entire time that it would never work, even as he turned onto Independence Avenue to park still entirely unimpeded.

“You’re always in such a mood,” Kennedy said, and pulled her hands from her coat pockets. They were bright red and felt like dead weight as she brought them to her face.

“And you never think,” Lucius said. “It’s cold out. I told you.”

The heat of her breath against her skin was making very little difference, and her eyes, much to her dismay, were starting to water. “I didn’t think it’d be a big deal at the time.”

“Here.” He slipped off his gloves and took her hand, bringing them to a temporary stop. His touch was almost impossible for her to feel, as she watched him slide the soft leather over her fingers. When he was finished, he let her go and started to move again without a word, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat. 

She stared at him, scrambling to catch up, but he didn’t look back at her. His eyes were set dead ahead. “Thanks.”

“You’re lucky, you know,” he said, as he sighed. The puff of his breath hung like smoke in the air. “You get to be the younger one. I have to take care of you.”

“You have to?”

“Yeah. It’s my job, Ken.”

This was the way he always was—the way he had been since they were young children—but she still couldn’t fight the urge to roll her eyes. The weight of his absence had been heavy on her since he’d first left for school the previous August, but when she spent so much time missing him and he was indifferent to her when they were together, she couldn’t help but feel silly. If she was going to experience unrequited love, she had thought it would be the romantic kind. 

She didn’t understand why he was like this, but she wondered sometimes if the difference between him and herself was that he had always spent more time with their father than she had. Maybe it was the pressure, being pushed to study political science and become a president too when it was the last thing he wanted for himself. 

She nudged his rib with her elbow, ignoring the downturn of his lips. “Didn’t you miss me?”

“You know I miss you. I always do,” he said, albeit somewhat begrudgingly. “It’s easier to when you’re not around.”

His words, she reminded herself, typically needed to be taken with a grain of salt. He was mean, but not because of her. That was his own problem.

She clicked her tongue. Her hands had started to hurt, as the warmth of his gloves brought the blood back into them. “So you’ll love me more? That’s what you’re saying?”

Finally, he looked at her, eyebrows furrowed and nose scrunched. “What?”

“Spending time apart makes you love me more?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She thought she saw an upward quirk on the edge of his lip. “I’ll forget how annoying you are.”

“So…” she said, watching his face, “you do love me, though?”

“I didn’t say that.”

His eyes darted away from her again, staring ahead as they closed the space between the Reflecting Pool and the steps up to the Lincoln Memorial. They weren’t the only ones there, but it was quiet, everyone minding their own business. If anyone knew who they were, they didn’t give any indication.

“Really?” Kennedy could feel her chest growing as warm as her fingers, even as she shivered with the breeze that swept through. “How can you love me more if you don’t love me a little bit to begin with?”

“Don’t twist my words.”

Why was it so hard for him to just say it? It was so simple. I. Love. You. Eight letters, three words, one sentence. 

Sooner or later she was going to give up and wonder not only why she had asked him to bring her here in the first place but why he had agreed. “Well, Lucie, you may not feel the same way, but I love you.”

A silence passed between them. She was telling the truth—she did love her brother—and she couldn’t see a world where it would ever be a lie. They may not have chosen each other, but they were what they had, and she wouldn’t dare to trade it for anything else. She wouldn’t dare to think about it.

He was biting his lip—his dry, cracked, worried lip—as his shoulders rose with the intensity of a deep inhalation. She could see in his eyes at that moment, even if he wouldn’t look at her, that someone had hurt him. She didn’t know who or when or how, but she knew that admitting to love was admitting to vulnerability, and she had never known him to open himself up like that. Now, it was as if he had tried to and had been met with proof that his previous conclusion was correct. Love was weakness.

But then, as he came to a stop against one of the pillars at the top of the steps, Lincoln staring at them from his towering, yellow-lit chair, he looked at her again, and the shadows in his eyes weren’t quite as dark. “I love you too.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

“You heard it.”

“No, I didn’t hear it.” She wanted to see how far she could push it. Could she get him to really admit to her that someone meant something to him, that she meant something to him?

He laughed—the annoyed, ironic kind of laugh—rolling his eyes. She hadn’t crossed his line quite yet. “Kennedy, I’m not going to say it again.”

“But I want to know what you said,” she said, pitching her voice up to a whine on purpose. 

“I LOVE YOU.”

His voice echoed off the marble and stone, and he earned himself a few concerned glances. He cursed under his breath. Even stuffed in his pockets, she could see that his hands were balled up into fists.

She grinned. “Awe, that’s so sweet.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“How much?”

“Don’t push it,” he said, but he was smiling too. He looked down at his feet and then back up, meeting her eyes. He shook his head. “Kennedy, if I let myself spend too much time thinking about who I missed or how much I missed them or loved them, I would never be able to get anything done. You know I miss you; you know I love you. But do I really have to say it?”

She shrugged. “It’s nice to hear.”

He scoffed but didn’t appear to have a snappy comeback for her, as he usually did. His gaze had moved behind her, looking over her shoulder and through the trees. She didn’t have to follow his gaze to know what he was looking at, but she turned her head anyway. Sure enough, black SUVs had pulled up, and men in black suits were getting out.

His shoulders slumped, as he exhaled. He took his hands from his pocket and took her arm, pulling her back as the men approached them. They didn’t run, but they moved quickly, trying to avoid a scene as if their appearances weren’t enough on their own. 

“So Dad’s mad?” Lucius asked, as one of the men stopped a view paces in front of him. He was tall, taller than Lucius, and bald, his dark, permanently furrowed eyebrows. Kennedy had never been able to read his face.

“He will be if he finds out,” the man said. His name was Marco Knight, Agent Knight, one of the Secret Service agents assigned specifically to Lucius when he was away at school. “But if he finds out, I’m fired.”

“I know, sorry,” Lucius said, although he didn’t sound all that apologetic. He started to move, dragging her with him as he and Agent Knight started on their way down the Memorial steps. 

The sun had risen now, and though they were both shivering in the frigid breeze, Lucius’s body wasn’t quite as tense as it had been before. He almost seemed lighter, as he glanced back at Kennedy, a Cheshire grin on his lips and mouthed, It was worth it. For a little extra time with him and finally hearing him say that he did love her, even if he didn’t usually admit it, she would agree.