Fuel the Fire

by Krista Ritchie

“At Faust, he was a lot like that,” Theo says, “and he was popular. It wasn’t because he was connected and rich as hell, but yeah, he was all of those things too. Connor was just someone you wanted around because he said things everyone was afraid to say. He knew when to be quiet and when to speak, and when he spoke he was the only one who could get away with calling you inferior and have you smiling afterwards. He was the only one who could say these things without being hated.” He shrugs. “At the end of the day, he was just likable.”

  Likable.

  If he was so likable, how did it take me so long to like him? You loved me, Rose, I hear his voice in my head.

  I click my pen, mulling this over. “You realize that he was manipulating all of you?”

  Theo nods. “Yeah. He would tell us as much. We always joked that he was the type of person who’d explain how he was going to stab you in the front before he actually shoved the knife in…and you’d let him. Of course. In some circumstances, he’d probably even pass you the knife so you can shove it in your own chest, and you would.”

  They would let Connor hypothetically kill them. God. If he could hear this right now, I think his ego would literally engulf the planetary system.

  What interests me most—Theo never said anything about blackmail. Connor’s tactics are apparent, visible enough that the person recognizes what’s happening but they do it anyway.

  That power is frightening, and if Connor saw revenge as anything other than fruitless, I’d be terrified every time someone slighted him.

  I veer back on topic. “So you’re Mark’s assistant. Do you share his opinions about the labels?”

  He takes a deep breath. “I’m at a crossroads here. I could tell you that it’s a stupid idea to have HC on the label. That people associate Hale Co. with diapers, baby products, and oils. High-end clients aren’t going to buy clothes with the same labels as the things their babies shit in. But if I tell you that, then I’m disagreeing with my boss. You may have power, but Mark is the one who can fire me.”

  I click my pen again, thinking. Theo does agree with me, but he cares too much about his job to budge on my side.

  “What if I could guarantee your job?” I offer. I’m sure if I talked to Loren I could shift Theo’s job title, securing him on my team rather than Mark’s. I need another voice in my corner, even if it’s as subdued as Theo’s. It’s something more.

  A wave of pity overtakes Theo’s face. I grip my pen harder. Don’t look at me like that, I try to translate these words into a fiercer glare.

  “It won’t matter. You’re going to lose, Rose.” Sincerity blankets his voice. “Everyone knows that CCB should be on the labels. But that’s not why you’re going to be outvoted. You’re dead-center in a corporation that has been run by a misogynist for thirty-plus years. They’ll fall on their swords before they let a twenty-six-year-old woman win.”

  I can’t believe this, even if, deep down I know it’s true. Jonathan Hale may never speak ill of me because I’m his best friend’s daughter, but I’ve heard him say heinous things about women before. However, Jonathan isn’t running this company anymore. “Loren—”

  “Has sway, but most of the board regards him as young and inexperienced. He needs time to build relationships before being able to win over the majority. You two…you’re standing in the minority right now. Two against fourteen. It’s a losing battle.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I ask. He’s just an assistant.

  “I hear things,” he tells me. “People tend to forget I’m in the room. It’s a useful quality.”

  He is a shadow. In his eyes and in his life.

  It’s a losing battle. I can’t roll over and quit. The board wants me to shut up and use my face as a marketing ploy, taking advantage of my celebrity status. There are blogs dedicated to what I wear every single day and even the outfits I choose for Jane. Paparazzi photographs help us on this account, ironic that the invasiveness grows our businesses but puts our children and privacy at risk. There’s a safe line somewhere between the two, and we’re all still trying to discover it.

  I retrieve a blank piece of paper from Loren’s desk drawer. I won’t be a voiceless tool for any of these people. Loren hired me knowing exactly who I am, and if the rest of the board won’t accept me, respect me, or agree with me, then I need to go about this a new way.

  The solution rests at the edge of my brain. I tap the paper with my pen.

  What.

  Can.

  I.

  Do?

  I shut my eyes for a moment.

  “Are you okay?” Theo asks. I hear the leather squeak beneath his ass as he shifts.

  I raise a finger. One second. Calloway Couture Babies: CCB. Hale Co: HC. There has to be a middle ground…

  My eyes snap open, and I quickly pull the paper closer to me and begin drawing. Theo cranes his neck, trying to see my illustration over a stack of file folders.

  I finish in a couple more seconds and spin the paper to face him. I push the folders closer to Lo’s desktop computer. Theo peers at the simple sketch: the letters HC inset within the center of the letter B of CCB.

  His expression remains unreadable, and my pulse races. I notice his eyes flickering to a pen in the mug.

  “You have art skills?” I ask, plucking a pen out for him. I set it down on the paper. “Make this prettier.” I’m good at drawing. I have sketchbooks upon sketchbooks of numerous designs, but I’m not too proud anymore to pass a task to someone else.

  He straightens up, more eager to add his vision to mine, and he begins to extenuate the letters with longer lines, cursive, resembling brushstrokes. He places the HC lower, lining it up with the bar of the B. When he finishes, he rotates the paper to face me.

  It’s beautiful. He somehow made a few letters look elegant and whimsical.

  “I need you to give this to Mark,” I instruct. If Mark approves, he’ll pitch it to the rest of the board. “Tell him exactly what you told me. No one wants to buy clothes with the same label their babies shit in, and tell him that you hate me. That you’d never let me have my label, but this”—I gesture to the paper—“will be the best of both worlds. A middle finger to me, but a success for the brand.”

  Theo rocks back, my words slamming against him. “You have to still outwardly hate it.”

  I’m not the best actress. Being in bed with the media has proved that enough, but I’d still try my hardest. “I will throw one hell of a tantrum.” I pull back my shoulders. “How dare they stick HC into my label. And now there’s five fucking letters? You all said that three letters was too many, so your resolution is to add two more? This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Whoever thought of it should burn.”

  He puts his fingers to his lips, a smile peeking through. “This is crazy,” he says and then laughs. “Now I know…” He shakes his head in realization.

  My shoulders lower some. “Know what?”

  His stormy grays land on me. “Why he married you.”

  I stiffen. “He loves me,” I say on instinct. I believe every syllable. I never question it for a second, but I see the pity in his eyes again. He’s disbelieving…maybe that Connor can love anyone. But the joke is on Theodore Balentine. Connor is more than what he was. He learned to accept love into his life and to live by it, and that makes him a different man. It makes him a better one.

  “You shift the pieces to suit yourself,” he explains. “Not many people can do that, and not many people want to play that game. I’m sure he values that aspect in you.”

  The only person I’m questioning is Theo. Is he really as weak as he appears? If he’s aware that there’s a game at all—that people manipulate and deceive, that some of us choose to be snakes beneath the grass—then maybe he’s slithering too.

  My bones harden, wary and cautious.

  I think I’m mindfucking myself.

  Or he’s mindfucking me.

  Theo stands, the paper in his grasp. “I’ll give this to Mark and slander yo
ur name in the same breath, if that’s what you want.”

  “It is.” My veins run cold.

  He nods, and I watch him head to the glass door. He opens it, practically one foot outside before he pauses and turns his head to me.

  “I want you to know,” he says, “that as uncomfortable as this all is…I hope we can be friends in the future.”

  A rock lodges in my throat. Is he manipulating me? Why does it feel like he is? Maybe because it takes more than just words for me to trust people anymore. Friends. Those are hard to come by, even harder to believe are real.

  “I’m not sure you possess the right qualities to ever be my friend,” I tell him, my voice colder than warm. All I want is loyalty, and part of me is as watchful of him as I’d be of a tornado’s funnel swirling in the sky.

  He draws in a short breath, nods once, and exits the office.

  I barely relax. My hands shake suddenly, and I busy my nerves by organizing Lo’s cluttered desk, alphabetizing his file folders in a neater stack. I try not to zero in on a certain memory, one that amplifies this situation, but it floods the hollow spaces of my mind.

  My senior year of college, sometime after Spring Break in Cancun, Connor and I played Scrabble on my bed—our eyes bloodshot but neither of us could sleep. I didn’t want to be alone either, so I didn’t ask him to leave. We played the board game throughout the night. Lily’s sex addiction was just publicized a week prior, and our lives were changing faster than we could seize them.

  Connor had less to lose from the onslaught of cameras, from the intrusiveness and bad press, but he had to make phone calls every day. I was trying to save my fashion company. He was trying to protect something else. At the time, I wasn’t sure who the calls were to or what they were about.

  I remember forming a mediocre word with the wooden letters: Star. Too frazzled and spent to think well.

  “How come you haven’t asked me?” Connor wondered, vaguely interested in his tiles. He focused solely on me.

  “Your riddles are even more infuriating without sleep.” I was waiting for him to retort, you love my riddles.

  Instead, he stayed serious. Not even a silhouette of a grin. “You’re not curious as to who I’ve been talking to?”

  It had crossed my mind more than a few times. “It’s not my business,” I told him honestly. “Unless you’re cheating…” My eyes seared.

  “No,” he said. “I would never cheat on you, Rose.”

  I didn’t want to pry into personal parts of his life without his consent, just as I expected the same in return. We’d only been together for eight months, and it’d be a lie to say that I understood him completely. I only understood the real parts that he let me see.

  He continued to ignore the board game. I couldn’t read his features. In hindsight, I think he was nervous to bring up a subject that we never discussed in depth.

  I mentioned, “We haven’t even dated for an entire year. If it doesn’t affect me, you’re not obligated to tell me anything, Connor.” I wanted to know, but I wouldn’t force anything out of him. Not if it was personal. Not if it was so soul-bearing. I’d wait, just as I would’ve waited for Lily to open up about her sex addiction, even if it took her years to share with me.

  He rested his forearm on his bent knee. “When we’re married, it could affect you.”

  I snorted. “You’re delusional if you think I’d ever marry you, Richard.”

  He almost grinned, but the truth weighed heavy on him. “Then in years, when we’re still together, it could still affect you.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “I want to tell you who I called. In case you’re ever pulled into this, I want to be completely, entirely, back-breakingly honest with you, Rose.”

  I was scared. “Okay…”

  He flipped a wooden tile between his fingers, mentally forming the precise words before he spoke them. “I’ve been locating all of my exes.”

  My chest caved, but I let him talk before jumping to irrational conclusions.

  “Only the guys I’ve been with,” he said in a short breath. His eyes flickered up to me, to gauge my reaction. I nodded, encouraging him to continue. “I paid them off, and they’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement. I couldn’t take the risk of any of them outing me to the media. It could make things more complicated with our relationship, and it could harm…” His reputation. Cobalt Inc. He wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure. Connor barely expressed this part of his life with me back then, and he wasn’t ready to announce anything to the whole world. Not with unknown consequences hanging over his head.

  So he did damage control and swept his past into dark corners.

  I was glad he told me—that he’d even trust me with this information. It said more than enough. I would’ve supported his choices. “Okay,” I said more confidently.

  He still hesitated. “One of them wouldn’t sign, no matter how much money I offered and no matter what I said.”

  I froze. “Who?”

  “Theodore Balentine.”

  I remembered him. “What does he want?”

  “Nothing,” Connor told me. “He said that he morally couldn’t do this to me. He didn’t want to slam me into a closet, even if I was the one shutting the door.” Connor shook his head repeatedly. He was pissed that a string was going to be left untied. “I just have to trust that he won’t say anything to the press.”

  “If morality is his reasoning, he won’t.”

  “People change,” Connor said, leaving me with those two haunting words before he returned to the board.

  I have no idea if Theo has changed since then. It’s very likely corporate America has had some impact on him.

  So even if I just acted like his boss…he silently holds all of the power.

  [ 17 ]

  CONNOR COBALT

  Rose carries Jane on the crook of her hip around the kitchen, gathering a tray of mugs. The early start of Christmas morning is quiet with everyone still asleep at 8 a.m. and no time planned to wake. I enjoy this more than spending all day and night at my mother-in-law’s house, which was reserved for Christmas Eve.

  I finish pouring pureed peaches into a pink bowl with a small spoon.

  “There are three things you can never go without, Jane,” Rose says, setting six mugs along the wooden tray. “A great pair of heels, an outfit to your liking, and coffee. Or if you prefer hot tea, that will work too.”

  “Amending your own declaration already?” With the bowl in hand, I block Rose’s path to the coffee pot.

  “If I could, I would’ve amended your personality on the first date.”

  I smile. “And then you would’ve downgraded me. You should be happy you don’t have that power.”

  “I’m happy that I have the power to do this.” She covers my mouth with her hand, and my lips lift beneath it. “Stop grinning.” I don’t, and she lowers her hand with a growl.

  “Clearly your power is limited, darling.”

  Jane giggles, dissolving the heat in Rose’s eyes faster than usual. “That’s right,” Rose says, “your daddy likes to boast. It’s his worst trait.”

  “That’s debatable.”

  Rose snorts beneath her breath and then brings Jane over to her highchair by the breakfast table. Of course I follow. Jane babbles a few syllables, reaching out for the bowl in my hands. She kicks her little legs. I set the bowl down, and she curiously observes the pureed peaches first, as she usually does. We’ll spoon-feed her after she grows comfortable with what she’s eating.

  Rose spins around to me, much shorter in just slippers and no heels. She crosses her arms over her silk robe. I take the opportunity to hold her around the waist, drawing her closer to my chest.

  She asks, “What English monarch was born near London but her mother near Madrid?” Her eyes flit to my lips. “If you answer wrong, I won’t be speaking to you for the rest of the day.”

  The way she declares these rules almost hardens my cock. The stakes are relatively high for me. Unansw
ered texts, dropped calls and refusals to banter back—it’s a particular torture that would only derive from Rose. Anyone else, I think I’d be fine ignoring.

  I go quiet for a moment, passing through my knowledge quickly.

  “You have thirty seconds.” She raises her chin, her eyes still on my lips.

  Do you want me to answer or to kiss you hard, Rose? I rub my own lips, her lingering stare pooling my desire.

  “Ten seconds.”

  The answer hits the front of my brain. “Mary Tudor.”

  She nods once. “Congratulat—”

  I kiss her hard, pulling her into my body with force, and her arms uncoil, palms flat on my chest—and she breaks us apart with a push.

  She breathes shallowly. “Richard.” She’s not finished toying with me. I’ll try to wait, only because I’m curious what else she has in store. I take note of how my hand is in hers. Rose doesn’t seem to notice, and I won’t enlighten her to the fact. I want her hand in mine. Always.

  “Yes?” I ask.

  She looks to Jane once. Our daughter sticks a finger in the peaches and then puts it in her mouth, tasting the food in measured steps. Rose walks to the bar counter and obtains a thin napkin that I never spotted.

  Then she shoves it in my face.

  I can’t hide an overwhelming grin. There are three names scrawled neatly on the napkin: Snow White. Ariel. Rapunzel. I lower her hand. “I have an impeccable memory, and I clearly remember giving you three Disney princes to choose from years ago, and you argued about it.”

  She waves her hand. “Then I grant you the right to argue, but you still have to answer like I did.”

  There is a wrong answer in this Fuck, Marry, Kill game. There’s always one that will make us question each other more than usual. When I test her, I have an idea of her answer, and if she chooses something different, my mind goes into a tailspin with intrigue, craving to understand why.

  She places a pen in my hand, not wanting me to say the words aloud. We never do. This game is written in text or on paper. These rules haven’t been amended in years.

  I stumble on Rapunzel’s name. Daisy’s hair used to be that long and that blonde, and in the media, journalists compared her to the fairytale character too often.