by Shen, L. J.
“Look, Poppy, I know you said we’d give this a chance…”
“Please.” She cleared her throat again, chuckling in embarrassment. “Please don’t make me beg. I know you don’t feel it yet, but I do. I can feel it. There’s something here. And Luna is heading back to North Carolina in a bit. It’s not like you can explore whatever it is between you two.”
All valid points, but I didn’t think it was right to string her along.
Thing was, Poppy was practically pleading to be strung along, and I had too much shit on my calamity plate to muster the self-control I needed to push her away. She begged to be here for me, and, the orphan mutt that I was, I couldn’t deprive her of the dubious pleasure. She was convenient as hell. Plus, I no longer had to pretend to be fucking anyone else. I had a steady ride now.
“I get what you’re saying, but I’m a shitty boyfriend,” I gave it one last run. “I cheated on you. In your face. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I did.”
“No. I know. It’s just that…” She looked around, shrugging. “I saw the look on both your faces. Luna is not going to let you kiss her again. She regrets this. I want this, and I’m willing to take the risk.”
Was that what she’d seen? Luna regretting it? My blood sizzled in my veins.
“You’re going to regret it,” I said quietly.
She grinned, standing up and ambling my way. She parked her ass in my lap, knotting her arms around my shoulders.
“I’m not the queen, you know,” she said huskily, her gaze dropping to my lips. “You can touch me whenever you want.”
I took her mouth in mine and tried to drown myself in her beauty, giving her a sweet lie to hold on to.
“Yes, you are.” I erased Luna’s kiss from my lips, replacing it with Poppy’s sweet, soft petals. “You’re my queen.”
When the next letter arrived on Christmas Eve, obviously violating my request, I burned it in my backyard and sent Dixie a video of the whole thing.
Knight: Is it a wonder that the no-show who knocked you up left your ass? You’re clingy as all fuck. Get it into your head: I’m not interested.
This was my best Vaughn impression. Being an asshole was goddamn hard work.
“You smell like ashes,” Dad pointed out as we slicked our hair back in front of his gold-leafed mirror.
Two peacocks in Kiton Ombre suits—it was one of the rare times this past year we’d actually done anything together, which didn’t escape me. Before Mom’s lung transplant debacle, we’d still had hope, so we’d still been close. We’d spent a lot of time together. Not anymore.
“Are you okay?” He ripped his gaze from his reflection, giving me a sideways glance. I used two fingers to dab Clive Christian cologne on my neck.
“Are you?” I asked casually.
“Don’t dodge the question.”
“Ditto.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“I am yours,” I said by way of explanation.
He grinned proudly. I liked that look on Dad, the one that made me feel like I belonged in this world. In this house. In this family.
“I’m working night and day looking into experimental treatments.” He shook his head, referring to my mother. “She’ll be fine.”
“Do you actually believe that?”
“I have to, or I’ll go mad.”
“Don’t go mad. You’re already straddling the line of insanity.”
“Straddling is quite the feminine word.”
“Then you’re punching sanity in the face sometimes. Hard.”
“Much better.” He let out a sad laugh. He caught my gaze in the mirror. “Break up with Poppy yet?”
I passed him the cologne, rearranging my moussed hair. “She’s a little young for you, old man.”
More laughing, without the sad aftertaste.
This felt good, like old times.
“So you haven’t forgiven Luna for that guy yet.”
“She hasn’t asked for forgiveness,” I admitted, taking a step back from the mirror, wondering if I should confide in him.
Mom wouldn’t understand this part. I didn’t think any woman would. Dad might, although we hadn’t had talks like that in months. Still…
“I can’t stop thinking about them.” I dropped my hand from my hair. “I mean, about him…”
“Inside her,” Dad finished for me, turning around and leaning against the sink, eyes blazing. “You keep rewinding it in your head. How he touched her. How she felt to him. How he felt to her.”
“Stab me with your razor and get it over with.”
“I would, but what about the new tiles?” he deadpanned.
I pretended to scratch my nose with my middle finger. We had the same four-year-old sense of humor. He swatted the finger away, grinning with confidence.
“At the risk of sounding ancient…” he started.
“Here we go.” I rolled my eyes.
“Know what the problem with your generation is? You refuse to understand that love has a price. That’s what makes it significant, pungent, rich. It costs you anger, jealousy, heartbreak, time, money, health…” He stopped, snarling at his last word like a wounded beast.
I looked away. Watching my dad love my mom sometimes felt like watching a chest being shredded open, the heart still beating inside. It was too raw, too real.
“Food for thought—is she worth it? You have to pay your dues, you see.”
I snorted, thinking about what he was going through with Mom. “No one is.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “When you refuse to pay your dues to love, sometimes the price goes up. There’s an inflation, and you end up losing more than you’d bargained.”
Don’t I fucking know it, Dad. I shook my head, thinking about Dixie. Don’t I fucking know it.
If you ever wondered how douchebags were born, this is the exact recipe: admiration that leads to false self-entitlement, multiplied by enough money to sink a battleship, divided by good genes and formidable height.
I was allowed to open my Christmas gift first, since I’d won the state championship earlier in the month, leading All Saints High as captain. It was on the night I took Poppy out for the first time. The night I’d had to finish an entire bottle of vodka to go through with fondling her. She’d tasted different than Luna, and smelled nothing like her. It was like making out with a bottle of Chanel No. 5—bitter and about as sexy as licking a fish.
As it happened, my gift was a blue-leather belted Ronde Solo De Cartier watch, with my varsity number—sixty-nine—(yes, they allowed it at All Saints High when your name was Knight Cole) in gold.
As I said, I wasn’t born a douchebag. It took hard work.
“We’re so proud of you.”
Dad and his best friends and business partners, my extended family—Vicious, Jaime, Dean, and Trent—squeezed my shoulders. Even Penn gave my arm a friendly punch.
“Thanks.” I secured the watch on my mammoth wrist.
“Man, you could go pro with your stats. Why the hell aren’t you trying?” Penn whistled, slinging his arm over his fiancée’s shoulder.
I threw a pointed glance at Mom, who was talking to her sister, Emilia.
“Yeah. Foot-in-mouth moment on my part. My apologies.” Penn winced.
After consuming three Marines’ bodyweights in food, hearing Daria and Penn going on about how fucking amazing they were (file under: jerks. The recipe for making them is different), Vaughn announcing that he wanted to study in Europe to a room full of people who let out a collective sigh of relief (file under: mega asshole. Don’t ask me how to make a Vaughn. Only his ruthless father is capable of that), and Luna working really hard on making herself extra-invisible (which only made my ogling more apparent), we all retired to the Rexroths’ drawing room with alcohol and dessert.
My parents, of course, had no idea just how intimately I was acquainted with alcohol at this point. Mom was busy not-dying, and Dad was busy helping her not-die. Plus, I’d always been a resourcef
ul son of a bitch. I’d been able to hide, disguise, and downplay how drunk I was, in and outside of the house. I was a high-functioning shitfaced drunk at this point.
Luna, of course, was right. Even when I hid my alcohol breath, she could tell when I was intoxicated, because when I was, I was mean to her. I didn’t want to be. But staying sober, sharp, and present felt slightly worse than dealing with her disappointed gaze.
Luna tucked her legs underneath her butt and settled on the carpet by the fire. She nibbled on a cookie and cracked open a book called The Dark Between Stars. The doorbell rang.
“Who has the social audacity to drop in on Christmas Eve?” Uncle Vicious seethed in his usual diplomatic fashion as I stood up to get the door.
“Ask your son,” I told him.
I knew it was a dick move to invite Poppy and Lenora, but in my defense, it really wasn’t my idea, nor my doing. Vaughn had practically requested I extend an invitation to the sisters. Since he and I were still beefing about the kiss with Luna—which had occurred because he’d thought he was teaching me some fucked-up lesson, and I thought he was being a little pussy about it—I figured why the hell not?
He’d said he needed to talk to the younger Astalis about some internship she was about to steal from him. Didn’t know. Didn’t care. I just knew it was a good opportunity to cement the fact that I wasn’t heartbroken.
Because I wasn’t.
Fuck Luna.
Oh wait, someone else already had.
Awesome. The inflation on my love was clearly skyrocketing through the roof. But really, I cared more about the fact that I didn’t care than anything else. Confused? So was I. All I knew was Luna, once again, had managed to friend-zone my ass in the treehouse, and I’d taken it, again, because apparently, I had a side gig as her doormat. To make everything much, much worse, Luna was now flirting with people like Jefferson in front of me and kissing my best friend. And I shouldn’t care, but I did.
The girls moseyed into the drawing room, carrying a homemade funnel cake and an awkward silence like a half-dead animal behind them. Luna refused to look up from her book, acting completely oblivious to the situation.
Daria pinned me with a death glare from the couch, curled around her fiancé. “Smooth, Cole.”
“Also thick, long, and hard. Your point?” I flashed her a smirk, whispering under my breath.
“Astalis.” Vaughn stood up.
Didn’t take a genius to know which sister he was referring to.
Lenora offered him a steadfast gaze. “Spencer.”
“Did you make the funnel cake?”
“No, why?”
“I would very much like to see my family and friends avoid being poisoned this Christmas,” he quipped.
“Lo and behold, he does have a heart. Would you believe I am literally surprised to hear that?”
“I might not know my insects, but you clearly have no clue what the word literally means. A quick word,” he demanded.
“I know quite a few.”
“I’m well aware.”
“Why is Vaughn talking British now?” Daria mumbled, looking around, dumbfounded.
Emilia and Baron stared at their son and the English girl, fascinated. It was like watching a car crash—or your pet Chihuahua standing up on two legs, reading Shakespearean poetry while sipping on black tea.
“Shall we…” she said at the same time he huffed, “Let’s go upstairs to…”
I glanced at Luna. Her eyes were still stuck on a page, but she was grinning.
Lenny nodded. “After you.”
They disappeared upstairs, leaving the rest of us in the drawing room.
I made quick introductions, noting the chilly smiles the Rexroths offered my girlfriend, before retiring to the backyard with Penn, Daria, Via (Penn’s sister), and my new best friend of late, beer. Daria invited Luna. She politely declined.
An hour later, I went in for a quick bathroom break. It was locked. Instead of going to any of the others, I waited. Luna opened the door a minute later, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Yo,” I said. Which sounded horribly stupid.
She bypassed me, but I snagged her wrist. Her shoulder pressed against my chest.
I grumbled into her ear, “I’m sorry.”
She froze in her spot, staring at an invisible dot on the opposite wall.
“I am. I do. I…” I shook my head. “I didn’t mean it, last time we saw each other.”
“Which part?” She looked up at me, her eyes a shade darker.
“The words. Only the words. Not the kiss.” I did mean the kiss.
“Why are you still with Poppy, then?”
If nothing else, her directness was admirable.
“Because forgiving you comes with a price I’m not willing to pay,” I admitted.
“I never asked you to forgive me.”
I smiled tiredly. “See?”
She shook her head, slipping from me. From us. But I wasn’t ready. I wanted her tortured, not gone.
“Ride or die, Luna Rexroth,” I yelled to her back. “You’re my ride or die.”
There was nothing I wanted more than to avoid the Cole residence until I flew back to Boon, but I couldn’t deny Rosie.
In her defense, she had pointed out in a text message that Knight wasn’t going to be home. I felt stupidly grateful. Rosie’s only request had been that I bring a blank notebook and a pen.
I showed up at her doorstep at six in the evening, wondering if Knight was with Poppy, then reminding myself I wasn’t supposed to care. Lev led me to Rosie’s bedroom upstairs. The Coles’ mansion was a nod to everything soft and southern. The furniture was classily upholstered or painted khaki and beige, with iron and crystal chandeliers everywhere, a vintage pottery collection, and ivy covering the courtyard walls.
As I moved down the vast hallway, a nurse brushed past me, making a quick dash downstairs while rummaging in her bag. My heart twisted in pain. I wondered what it felt like to be just a job for some people.
People who were in charge of your fragile life.
I pushed the bedroom door ajar. Rosie sat on the throne of her bed, looking like death.
I took a step back as I absorbed the image of her gaunt figure and braced against the wall. I’d seen her on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but she’d been wrapped in luxurious gowns and well-tailored coats that had hidden how thin she was. Her cheeks were sunken, her eyes rimmed with dark shadows. She motioned to me with her clubbed finger, holding a piece of used tissue.
“My darling girl.” She smiled through what I could see was great pain.
Gingerly, I stepped into her realm, forcing myself to return a beaming smile. I was so wrapped inside my own heartbreak, I hadn’t fully considered what Knight had had to deal with in my absence.
His mother was dying. That was the blunt, awful truth.
Rosie patted the space at the foot of her bed, and I perched on it, my eyes never leaving hers. She had all kinds of machines hooked up on her nightstand, and an emergency button installed on the wall.
You have a nurse, I wanted to scream, to sob and collapse into her arms. You never had a nurse before.
But I’d die before making it more difficult for her.
“How are you?” I asked instead.
“I’m going through menopause.” She stared skyward. Tears began to pool in her eyes.
I didn’t know what to do. What to say. I hadn’t been expecting that to come out of her mouth. Foolish and self-centered as I was, I thought she wanted to talk to me about Knight, about our obviously strained relationship.
“I’m too young for menopause.”
Rosie wasn’t one to dwell in self-pity, and she’d never once complained about her illness, so I wondered why menopause was the tipping point.
I put my hand on hers. Squeezed. “It’s okay.” Was it, though? “Does Dean know?” I searched her soft eyes.
She shuddered in a breath, nodding and wiping her tears with the tattered tissue, lea
ving clouds of it on her damp face. “Yes, but I don’t talk to him about it. I don’t talk to any of them about those things. I’m strong for my boys. But sometimes…” She bit her lower lip, her teeth shaking against it to the rhythm of her sobs. “Sometimes I need to break, too.”
“You can always break with me.” I held myself together with everything I had, willing myself not to cry. “Tell me how I can help.”
I meant it with a ferocity I didn’t know I could feel. I wanted Rosie to get better, even if it was obvious she couldn’t. She’d always been there for me—taking Knight and me on playdates and getting me out of my out-of-his-wits, then-single, father’s hands. She’d gifted me special editions of her favorite books on my birthdays—the number of books equal to the age I was celebrating—because she knew I valued her literary opinion. Growing up, when I’d had no clue what to do with my hair, she and Emilia—Vaughn’s mother—had learned how to braid it because they knew how much I hated going in for an appointment with a stranger.
When Edie had stepped into the picture and took over, Rosie still came to braid my hair every few weeks, just to keep seeing me. “Havana Twist or Cornrows?” she’d ask. I’d always signed cornrows. “Good girl. That’s the only thing I know how to do.”
“Luna…” Rosie held my hand now. She stared at our laced fingers like she was committing the image to memory, before it was too late.
I tried stopping the shudders rippling through my body, the tears that demanded to come out. How come my parents hadn’t told me it was this bad? But of course they hadn’t. I’d been so busy on me-me-me island, I never bothered to sail to other territories and check in on her. Sure, I’d asked. But why hadn’t I called? Why hadn’t I done more?
“I’m not sure how long I have,” she admitted, “and I need your help regarding a few crucial matters.”
I already hated the sound of this, because I knew whatever she was going to ask me to do would break my heart, and that I was going to do it without fail. Because she wasn’t being melodramatic. She was dying.
I nodded.
“I need you to be there for Knight, even when he pushes you away. And he will push you away. He will do anything he can to make sure you don’t see him break. But he will break—in outstanding fashion, as he does everything else,” she chuckled the words.