Fuel the Fire

by Krista Ritchie

  “Sure.” I hear him begin to walk. “I just need to know if it’s Lil.”

  “No,” I tell him. “It’s about me. I’ll see you soon.” I hang up, dialing the next number.

  “Hey, Connor,” Lily says over chatter that sounds like her employees at Superheroes & Scones. “I was just about to call! How’s Moffy doing?”

  “Can you come home?” I ask, knowing I have to explain a little more for her and a lot more for my next call. “Something’s about to play on the news about me, and it’s better if you’re not in public when it happens.”

  “Okay…” Concern drapes her tone like curtains closing on a comedy show. “How long do I have?”

  “You should leave now.”

  “On my way.”

  My last call. The line rings three times before it clicks. “Hey,” Ryke answers in a heavy breath. He went on a run with Daisy and their husky, but a “run” for Ryke sometimes turns into an all-day affair, time passed leisurely and peacefully, which is why he texted me earlier.

  “Where are you?” I ask, refreshing the Celebrity Crush site. No updates.

  “Down the fucking street,” he says. “Everything okay? Is it my brother?”

  “No. It’s not about Lo or Daisy. It’s not Lily either.” He has to know it’s about me now or Rose.

  “I’ll be at the house in less than two minutes.” His sympathy surprises me but also awakens me. I’ve never, in my life, needed Ryke’s concern. Not even for a moment.

  I shut off the phone and wait for my lawyers to give me good news that I’m certain won’t ever arrive. Moffy and Jane have fallen asleep on beanbags in their playpen. I lean back against the couch for the first time. I’m left alone with silence and my raging, turntable thoughts.

  I’m attracted to people.

  To the words they speak, to the actions they take, to their full-bodied mannerisms and soulful gaits. I am attracted to people. To impassioned hearts that beat out of sync, the ones that skip a measure, heard in hushed places and violent spaces—I am attracted to people.

  There is no other truth I can yell as loud as this one. And it won’t help. They’ll want a label to understand me, and I’ve never truly defined myself with any.

  Nothing will fix this but a lie.

  It’s not a lie to one person, which is easier to swallow. It’s a declaration to millions of people. It’s condemning a belief that I’ve lived by, one that makes me me.

  So what the fuck do I do now?

  The door swings open, and the white husky pants as she tiredly walks to the window nook, lying on her fleece pillow.

  Ryke emerges from the foyer with Daisy. He tosses his backpack aside. “Are they asleep?” he asks quietly, gesturing to the playpen.

  I nod once and refresh the computer, check my phone for texts. Nothing new yet. I think I have five minutes. The sky seems to darken outside, clouds rolling over the sun, most likely.

  I stand as Ryke nears with Daisy. I open my mouth to explain, but I falter, my stomach overturning.

  “I’ll get you some water,” Daisy starts.

  “No,” I tell her.

  Ryke runs his hand through his hair, slightly damp from his run. “Maybe you should take a fucking seat?”

  Daisy nods in agreement, rocking on the balls of her feet.

  I frown and scrutinize her overly concerned expression that matches her boyfriend’s, no shades of confusion. “Do you know me?” I wonder. It’s a vague statement, but they’re both intelligent enough to understand what I’m implying. They could’ve deduced what this was about if they had one single fact: I’ve slept with men before.

  She nods once.

  I don’t understand… “Both of you sit down,” I order.

  They take a seat on the coffee table together, cautious and respectful of my feelings. I stay towering above them.

  “Who told you?” I ask.

  Daisy twists the bottom of her lime-green tank top, restless. “You did.”

  I cover my eyes with my hand. “No.” She was sleepwalking. There was the smallest, barest chance that she’d remember the things I said when she woke up.

  I drop my hand, my eyes burning. Maybe there was a place inside of me that wanted her to remember, and that’s why I took the risk.

  “I’m sorry,” Daisy whispers, her face contorting in guilt. “It wasn’t my secret to share, but it was weighing on me—and I knew Ryke could keep it too.”

  I dazedly sit back down on the couch, my eyes flitting up to meet Ryke’s.

  He knew this entire time that I’d slept with a guy before, and he never said a thing. He never changed around me. Never pressured me to explain or elaborate. Never felt uncomfortable. I think back to St. Patrick’s Day. He shared a bed with me, and he never acted differently.

  Daisy springs to her feet. “I’m going to let you two talk. I can take Moffy and Jane to their nurseries.” Ryke watches her collect both tired babies from the playpen, and his normally hard eyes soften a fraction the longer they pin to his girlfriend.

  He scratches his unshaven jaw and turns back to me when she disappears upstairs. “How’d this get out in the fucking media?” How.

  “It hasn’t yet…”

  His brows jump. “So everything’s okay?” He knows it’s not. I wouldn’t have called him if it was.

  I shrug. “You tell me.” I’m referring, of course, to his knowledge of my past. Sitting in this silence, with the weight of the truth, feels like a forty-ton pendulum swinging at my chest.

  He holds my gaze. “I was fucking surprised when Daisy told me what you said to her, but that’s all I was.”

  I have a hard time believing this, and I wear the doubt in the corners of my eyes.

  Ryke notices, and he lets out a deep breath. “Look, I may speak harshly, we may disagree on more fucking things than we can ever agree on, but after years of, I don’t know what to call it…I guess shit we’ve plowed through together…I’ve realized that you care about other people just as much as me. You can twist it how you want, but the truth is, half of what you’ve ever done has been to protect someone else. And you’re good with words, so what’s the definition of that, Connor?”

  Selfless.

  A trait I’d never claimed before. It’s still hard to now.

  He continues, “When Daisy told me that you’d slept with a guy before, I was shocked but I wasn’t fucking disgusted; I wasn’t repulsed. I didn’t question your feelings towards my brother or me. I can differentiate when someone fucking cares about a person and when someone’s sexually attracted to them. I was just surprised.”

  I rub my lips, my eyes clouding. “I wish I could say I thought better of you all this time, but I sincerely thought you’d put a hundred-foot barrier between your brother and me.” To protect Loren. From me.

  It’s something Jonathan Hale has tried to do, and maybe this is all his doing…maybe he’ll finally succeed. Lo knows about me. He accepts me, but I imagine other people won’t be as understanding, as comprehending, of my relationship with him anymore.

  Ryke shakes his head and rests his forearms on his knees. “There was a time I didn’t trust you, but never because I believed you were into him like that. You’re manipulative as fuck, and he’s…fragile.”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s why I was easy on Lo when you were hard on him.”

  Ryke nods, understanding how I only tried to brace Lo from falling over every time Ryke needed to push him. We’d been at odds with each other for so long, disagreeing on how to treat a recovering alcoholic. His brother. My best friend.

  “So tell me,” I say, “if you were in my position, what would you say to the media?”

  “I would tell them to fuck off.”

  “Of course you would.”

  He almost smiles. “Come on, Cobalt, you don’t take fucking advice from dogs.” It’s his attempt at cheering me up—because it’s obvious to him that I’m knee-deep in quicksand and sinking fast.

  “You are not a dog, my friend.
” I lean forward to refresh the Celebrity Crush site, my laptop sitting next to Ryke.

  “Don’t mess with the status quo.”

  The status quo has already been trampled over a hundred times in the past forty minutes, a fucking carcass of what it once was. Not even I can reverse time to put it back together again.

  A brand new headline appears on the landing page of Celebrity Crush, and my world comes to a standstill, an unquantifiable moment with a stagnant heartbeat.

  The headline: Connor Cobalt has slept with men! Marriage to Rose Calloway called into question!

  My phone rings incessantly, as though someone close to me has died. I imagine the calls belonging to board members of Cobalt Inc. and my father-in-law and every person who knows me, wanting a quote or an answer. The whys and the hows and the who knews all tangled together.

  Half of their headline is true. I can’t deny my past, but they have warped it in a criminal way, invalidating the one thing that has meant the most to me.

  I struggle to read the article, to accept the permanence of the situation. I breathe through my nose, my jaw tensing. Read the fucking article, Connor. I stare unblinkingly at the computer screen. I stare faraway, disappearing beyond the words.

  I need to read it, but I’m afraid.

  Loving someone else isn’t easy. It doubles pain. It doubles worry. It doubles sentiments that I dislike in one dose. Loving someone else is a complex web of emotions, trying to ensnare me.

  And I’ve been caught before.

  When Rose went into labor, I truly thought this may be the day where I lose everything. Stuck on a freeway in my limo, her survival rested in my hands. I was terrified at the idea of losing love. Love—of all sentiments, of all things. It’s a gut-wrenching, nearly debilitating idea, and I tried to push it away as I delivered our daughter and while Rose bore the pain.

  People called me a hero, but I never felt more human.

  I suddenly feel a hand slide on my shoulder and a body sinks beside me. I look to my left, and Rose curls her fingers around mine. I wear apologies in my eyes, but her enflamed, narrowed gaze pins to the laptop screen, prepared to battle things that I’ve let drive over me.

  “Have you read it yet?” she asks, lifting the computer off my lap. I notice Ryke standing to greet Loren and Lily in the foyer.

  “Not yet,” I breathe.

  “We’ll read it together then.” Her voice trembles, her yellow-green eyes alight with destruction.

  I hold her closer to my side, bracing her stiff frame to my body. I focus again on the article, and I graze over information Henry has already explained, exact names of my exes never written or mentioned. Just “a source” and “we’ll reveal more as the story continues to break”—meaning this isn’t the end.

  I land on the words that surprise me the most. Rose inhales sharply, reading it too.

  Sources claim that Connor Cobalt knew the truth would be exposed soon. It explains why—for the past four months—he’s been amplifying any public displays of affection towards his wife. To name just a few: he went down on his wife in a parking lot back in January, visited a sex store in February, and performed a striptease in March.

  It’s all been an act to fool people.

  What we believe: they’re not in love. Their marriage is nothing more than a business arrangement. Celebrity Crush has reached out to the Calloways and Cobalts respective representatives and neither has issued a statement yet, but we’re certain someone will speak out soon. And when they do, we’ll be here to report it. So stay tuned.

  I shut the laptop violently, and I stand, clasping Rose’s hand in mine before she can even speak. I lead her out of the living room, her rigid body moving mechanically, in the daze that I’ve been crawling through for the past five minutes.

  I’m more awake now. They’re spinning our game—everything we’ve done in the past four months to protect the babies—around on us. They flipped the script, yanking guns out of our hands and pointing them directly at our heads.

  Our six-month plan just backfired.

  I saw consequences and the risk. There was always a cost attached. I’m not foolish to believe it was ever infallible. By nature, tests are meant to fail or they’re meant to succeed.

  I just never believed it would fail like this.

  There’s not a forty-ton pendulum hitting me anymore. It’s two-hundred-tons of cement, burying me beside my wife.

  “Where are you going?” Lo asks as I pass him, Lily, and Ryke to head upstairs, Rose in tow.

  “We need a minute.” Or five. Or an hour.

  Rose is rooted to the center of my being, and I ache to scream—to yell at anyone attempting to dig her out, to hollow me. To leave me soulless and meaningless.

  My defenses waver in my mind.

  We have sex tapes.

  Staged, they will say.

  We have a child.

  Business arrangement, they will argue.

  I am hopelessly in love with her.

  Who else can see this but you?

  [ 35 ]

  ROSE COBALT

  Connor shuts our bedroom door, my brain on fire. I am on fire, my arms shaking from something much greater and hotter than rage. My phone buzzes in my fist, and I ignore the calls and texts from my mother and father, setting the cell on the dresser.

  Slowly, I rotate to face my husband, ten feet separating us—tension entrenched within my solid bones. His eyes are bloodshot from restraining emotion, but he stands tall, all six-foot-four of him. His gaze holds acceptance of our fate that I’ve only just hatefully consumed.

  He studies my reaction, the way I rub my hands together and inhale short breaths.

  “Lily has been in this situation before…” I remember how the media casted doubt about her relationship with Loren, and then three-way rumors surfaced with Loren, Lily, and Ryke in the center. They made it out of that unscathed. So can we.

  “And?” His deadened voice drums against my heart.

  My nose flares, and I raise my chin. My efforts to instill confidence in myself feel more like an ill-fitting mask. “What other people think doesn’t matter…because it’s a little rumor.” My voice betrays me, quaking each syllable. “It’s what I told her before…that people can say whatever they want, but you know the truth. You love him.”

  As the words leave my lips, he closes the space between us, clasping my wrist and pulling me into his chest. Our rigid bodies weld together, and he clutches me in a firm, comforting embrace, but I catch sight of his jaw muscles, constricting. He submerges as many pained sentiments as me.

  Very softly, he whispers, “I’m so sorry, Rose.”

  I choke out a breath. Do not cry. “You shouldn’t apologize for this.” I fist his button-down, my gaze piercing him between the eyes. He stares unflinchingly at me. We need battle armor. We need guns and cannons. We need to hit them like they’ve hit us. Revenge—blood-curdling, soul-screaming revenge blares in my charred brain.

  Connor is more logical.

  He values no part of revenge the way I do. We’ll feel better once it happens, doesn’t he see? They’ll pay, whoever betrayed him, and we’ll rise again.

  He cups my face, his large hand cloaking me, and his deep blue eyes pour roughly through me like an invisible riptide. “It matters,” he says, shoveling the coldest truth in my direction, and a chill snakes icily across my neck. He’s never been one for false hope, not towards me. “I’m sorry that it does. This isn’t a baseless rumor like the ones with Lily, Loren, and Ryke. The media has actual evidence that discredits us, our marriage and our love, and public perception will be overwhelmingly against us, unlike anything they faced.” His thumb strokes my cheek. “This isn’t close to the same caliber.”

  I swallow hard, my nose flaring again. Do not cry. “Our companies can handle the blows.” Calloway Couture is now attached to Hale Co. It has an iron-structure that’ll support any crippling movement. Cobalt Inc. is usually sturdy, and previously led by Katarina Cobalt—I bet the bo
ard members are just as progressive as she was. Connor shouldn’t be shunned by them.

  “It’s not our companies I’m worried about,” he tells me.

  Translation: I care only about our future together.

  Jane…and all the kids we’ve thought to have along the way.

  The other kids may be gone now, but we have Jane. It will affect her. I can’t even begin to picture the type of ridicule and judgment she’ll face from her peers. Everyone will believe she was born from a cold, heartless arrangement by robotic, unfeeling parents. I’ll wrap her in my unbending arms, no matter how rigid I may be or how mechanic I may seem, and I’ll shield her from this unjust storm the best I can.

  I say to him, “You’re worried about Jane.”

  “And you.”

  I press a hand to his chest, taking a single step back. “I can handle this, just as you can. We’re equals.”

  “No.” He clasps my wrists, stopping me from rubbing my hands again.

  “No? What do you mean, no?”

  “I don’t want to be equals with you,” he announces, his voice terribly flat.

  My lips part, pain clawing at my lungs. “You don’t mean that.”

  His eyes redden. “I mean everything I say to you.”

  Tears threaten to well. Do not fucking cry, Rose.

  “I want you to be better than me,” he declares, tugging me back to his body by my wrists. We can handle this. We can handle this. We can handle this. I’ll repeat it until it becomes a truth and not a mocking sound in my head. He holds my cheek. “Look at me, Rose.”

  I’ve been avoiding his clarity, and he tries to pull me towards it.

  When I meet his gaze, he says, “This is the worst.”

  The King Lear quote punctures my head: The worst is not. So long as we can say, “this is the worst.”

  He can’t fix this.

  We can’t fix this.

  “No.” I try to push him off, but he holds me tighter, my wrist aching from one of his hands.

  “Yes,” he forces. “There is nothing we can do but bear it.”

  “I’ll defend my love for you,” I retort, fire scorching my heart.