Fuel the Fire

by Krista Ritchie

  “How?” he asks.

  I think about Princesses of Philly, how the reality show helped justify Loren and Lily’s romance. They needed a way to showcase and validate their relationship. The plan worked perfectly. The public fawned over them after Princesses of Philly aired. People rooted for them and championed their affection. Their desire was painstakingly clear within each frame.

  Loren would pin my little sister against the kitchen counter, kissing as though breathing life into each other. She’d cling desperately to him, like she’d fall if not for his existence, and when she cried, he’d cling desperately to her—bracing her soul together while she braced his.

  Their love is emotional.

  Their love is outward and apparent.

  I think of our time during Princesses of Philly. Connor wasn’t well-received by fans. More people liked me with Scott Van Wright—a man I despised—than they did with the man I loved.

  Our love is inward and intellectual.

  It’s of the mind and spirit.

  Who else can see this but me?

  I’ve never had to defend my relationship on this grand, massive scale, and Connor is repeatedly telling me that it’s impossible. I recount the past four months. If we act like Lily and Loren, increasing our PDA again—we’re faking it.

  If we act like ourselves—we’re stiff and detached.

  So we just bear the criticism then. Let it roll off our backs, no matter how much it burns and scars us? “When a volcano erupts, we don’t stand beneath it, Connor.”

  “Where do you suggest we go?”

  I don’t know. I shake my head a few times. I’m scared.

  I’m terrified of what our future looks like. My breathing staggers, and I hold up a finger, so he’ll give me a minute. My smothered emotions threaten to rise and take hold of me. “I’ll be right back,” I whisper. “I need to change…into something better.” I smooth my dress.

  “Rose,” he says my name with worry, but I leave him and head for the closet. I just need a minute. I’ll be okay afterwards. I’ll withstand anything, just like him.

  I walk quickly and tensely to the closet, and he stays behind, searching the room for something. Once inside, I shut the door and leave the lights off. In the pitch-black, I use my memory to find my fur coat, unhanging the soft garment.

  My legs buckle the moment I clutch the coat to my body. My knees dig into the carpet, my chest tight and lungs bound. I can hear the television suddenly through the walls, the volume escalating. Connor must’ve been looking for the remote.

  “…they have a child together, but a source close to the Calloway family believes that Rose had a child for Connor—”

  I scream into the coat, the violent, excruciating sounds muffled. My body vibrates in agony, at the invalidation of my love and now my daughter, who I carried for nine months. Who I love more than anyone else can possibly see or know or even realize.

  I scream again, my throat raw and enflamed.

  “…there are multiple accounts on Princesses of Philly where Rose states point-blank that she hates children. She’s never liked kids, and her old friends from Dalton Academy have attested to this and spoken to GBA News.”

  People can change. People can grow. People can realize that the idea of something is more frightening than the reality.

  Am I not allowed all of that? Am I just supposed to be identical to myself at eighteen and at twenty-two and twenty-six? Can I never decide differently or think in a new way? Why must I be the same?

  An onslaught of maddened tears squeezes from my eyes, and I scream into a cry that originates in my core. I sense a crease of light in the closet, but it darkens to blackness once more, the door opening and gently shutting.

  I can’t cease the waterworks, even if I tried. I purge my emotions, the television faint in the background, and I feel Connor kneel behind me. His strong chest melds against my back, leaning forward along my curved spine to whisper, “Vous êtes en sécurité avec moi.” You’re safe with me.

  His arms slide around my hips, holding me with care that no one else will ever see, these moments kept in dark closets. I scream one last time, every gaping wound tearing open and tunneling through me.

  His chest rises and falls deeper, and he clutches me tighter. I tremble, my throat burning, and he turns me towards his body. Our limbs lost in the pitch-black. I simply feel him pulling me onto his lap, my legs splayed to the side, one of his hands resting on my thighs. He guides my head to the crook of his shoulder, my silent tears dampening his shirt.

  Our heavy breaths fill the quiet.

  He kisses my forehead, his lips brushing my cheek. “I wouldn’t trade our love for any other.”

  A tremor passes through my body, and I reach up and feel for him, my palm skimming his neck, his jaw…

  He clasps his hand over mine, lifting my fingers higher to his cheek, where I want to be. I raise my head off his chest, sensing my lips nearing his in the dark.

  I whisper, “I can hear our hearts breaking.”

  A tear wets my fingertips, his tears, and his other hand encases my face, the way mine does him. His lips nearly skim mine. “I’ll shield your ears from the sound of heartbreak.”

  My chest swells. “And what happens when I ache to hear your voice?”

  “I’ll whisper beyond every anguished sound.” He closes his lips over mine, once, before murmuring, “Tu m’entendras toujours, où que je sois.” You will always hear me, no matter where I am.

  He has shaped my life, shaped me, so entirely, and I think about him in every action, in every extraordinary or commonplace thought. I wonder what he would do or what he would say. I’m independent, self-sufficient, and singular—I’m all of those things while carrying and feeling and living out love.

  “And can you still hear me?” I wonder, a breath between our lips.

  “Toujours.” Always.

  I brush the wetness on his cheek, the rarest tears my fingertips have ever felt, hidden in the confines of the dark. “I’m here for you,” I remind him. “I will stand beside you, whatever you want to say to the press.” It’s his sexuality, his choice, and if he’d rather lie about his past or if he’d rather try to explain the truth—I’d support him equally and with wholehearted vigor.

  He’s quiet for a long moment, his thumb caressing my tear-streaked face. I worry that he thinks it’d be better to let me go. To disentangle himself from Jane and me and fight this alone.

  The darkness conceals the answers in the creases of his face. I can only feel him against me, his muscles firm and his eyes wet.

  So I ask, “Would you choose to drown with me beneath a river or burn with me in flames?”

  “Neither,” he whispers.

  We’re together in those choices, no matter which way we fail—we’re together. I don’t understand… “You have to choose one.” A heavy, cold pain weighs against me.

  His fingers disappear into my hair, clutching my face, his lips so very close. “I will die with you when we are old and withered and gray, and I’ll live with you every day until then. This is what I’ll always choose.”

  I nod, my shoulders relaxing, even if he can’t see it. “You’ll die with me then,” I breathe. It’s a Shakespearean tragedy at its finest, and I can almost feel his lips rise, just by a fraction, in thought of this.

  “Yes, darling. I will die with you.” And he kisses me, powerfully and forcefully. He draws back to whisper, “But not today.”

  Still, I think we both recognize that this media uproar has begun to hurt us, much greater than anything has before.

  [ 36 ]

  CONNOR COBALT

  “Don’t blink,” Rose says, squirting drops in my eyes while I sit on our bed. I’d do it myself, but Jane is fast asleep in my arms, and every time I set her down, she wakes and cries.

  “You’re enjoying this,” I mention, referring to her towering above me.

  Her red lips never pull upward. “I’m not.”

  I reach out and hold
her by the waist, her body molded in a sleek black dress, her yellow-green eyes accentuated with mascara and liner. No one would expect that Rose cried an hour earlier—that my eyes have burned and leaked in accompaniment. Or that an uncomfortable, foreign pain still gnaws at me.

  “Blink,” she says.

  I do, a few times, the drops soothing my raw eyes, and I rise with Jane in arm.

  Rose touches Jane’s tiny, delicate fingers, our daughter’s lips parted with deep breaths. Her fragility, her purity, reminds me that we’re the only ones who can protect her during this time.

  I never thought about sheltering a child from the pangs of reality. My mother never sheltered me in my early adolescence. You’re smarter for it, she said. I learned to shut out my feelings. I lost all empathy for anyone other than myself. I needed Frederick to remind me that I’m human.

  I’d rather Jane believe in fairies and magic than follow in my footsteps, I’ve realized. I’d rather she become more like her mother than like me.

  I fear that cameramen will traumatize her. I fear that her innocence will be shattered faster than it ever should be. These fears sat in the back of my brain, even while we were enacting our six-month test. Now they’ve slammed to the front.

  My two priorities are Rose and Jane. What happens to me in the process, I don’t care nearly as much as I used to.

  “Ready?” Rose asks. Everyone is waiting in the living room downstairs, our publicists, her father, her mother, her three sisters, Sam, Ryke, Loren and his son. Before I face the world, I have to face the people closest to us.

  And the severity of the situation is clear with one fact: this has become an extended family affair.

  “Wait,” I tell Rose. I comb her hair over one shoulder.

  She inhales strictly, her collarbones jutting out.

  I kiss the nape of her neck, and she clutches onto my arms. I kiss the line of her jaw and the softness of her cheek. She may be tentative and rigid, but this woman in reality is the same woman in my fantasies. No one else may ever understand this, but many people won’t ever come to understand me.

  “I love you,” I whisper before kissing her forehead, my free hand holding her face.

  Her yellow-green eyes narrow, scorching a hole through me. The corners of my lips begin to rise.

  “I can’t cry again, Richard.” She’s afraid she might, and she just put on mascara.

  I grin more. “Does love make you cry?”

  “Not all love.”

  “Just ours,” I say, as though pocketing a first place prize.

  She covers my lips with her palm. Rose never steps away from me. We draw closer, our daughter between us. When she drops her hand, I still wear an unrestrained grin.

  “Why are you smiling like that?” Her gaze flits to my lips.

  “Because I love all of you.” Now I’m ready.

  * * *

  The minute we descend the stairs and round the corner, everyone rises off various pieces of furniture. I sometimes receive this royal treatment, my confidence propelling people to their feet. While I am fully poised—standing straight, expression composed, hand firmly in Rose’s while cradling my daughter with the other—I recognize that this is more of a trial proceeding than a kingly salutation.

  Rose and I say nothing. We sit on the vacant couch, and everyone else follows suit. Our two publicists are seated across from us on wooden chairs. The one on the left works for the Calloway family: Corbin Nery, mid-fifties, extremely focused and bold enough to be a shark in high-profile crises, but also paid to protect Greg and Samantha’s reputation, even at the cost of mine.

  The publicist on the right works for me: Naomi Ando, astoundingly diplomatic, rational and objective—all valuable assets.

  Corbin and Naomi act like they’re working in conjunction—friendly, side-by-side allies—but they’re no more accomplices than I’d be to Jonathan Hale…who is suspiciously missing from this formal meeting.

  Naomi clasps a folder. “We have a lot of ground to cover, Mr. Cobalt.”

  Corbin unfurls his legal pad. “First, we all need to know what we’re dealing with here. Regardless of how we plan to approach the press, we need to know the truth.”

  I unbutton my suit jacket, my daughter asleep on my lap, and I look straight at my father-in-law, seated next to his wife in the two Queen Anne chairs. In so many words, he’s basically telling me that he wants the truth, using Corbin as his mouthpiece.

  Greg Calloway may be quiet-spoken and benevolent, but he loves all of his daughters above the men they attach themselves to. He’s only appreciated me for my business skills, my ability to kiss ass and paint a fake smile. He has no idea who I really am. I’ve been in the game of building relationships, not destroying them, and the truth will ruin everything.

  Samantha touches her pearls once. “It has to be a lie.” I sense her judgment before I even utter a word. My irritation almost translates to my expression, but I force back any facial movements, remaining impassive.

  Rose is biting her tongue, ready to lash out, but she won’t unleash this answer before me.

  It’s mine to set free.

  “Be more specific,” I finally speak. “What exactly am I acknowledging?”

  Naomi says bluntly, “GBA News and eleven other outlets are suggesting you’ve been in a sexual relationship with three men, two of which were former students at Faust Boarding School for Young Boys.”

  “Is this true or false?” Corbin asks.

  In this room, there are a handful of people unaware of my past: Sam, Poppy, Samantha, Greg, and maybe even Lily if Lo hasn’t caught her up yet.

  I choose to meet my father-in-law’s stern gaze. I can’t falter this time, not like I have with my friends. I want it to come out like it means nothing, even if it may change everything.

  As easily as if I’m stating the temperature, I say, “True.” My core tightens, but I’m the only one who feels this.

  Greg turns his head, unable to look me in the eyes. He practically grinds his teeth. I think his hatred stems from a father trying to protect his daughter, so he must believe the whole story then—that’d I create a business arrangement with Rose. If someone in our inner circle actually believes this dramatic elaboration of the truth, then we’re as sincerely fucked as I thought we’d be.

  “Rose,” Samantha says in a scolding tone. “Did you know about this?”

  “Yes,” Rose says powerfully. “And I don’t care. We all have past relationships…” she trails off, and I glance at her in my peripheral. She made a slip—since she’s never been in a relationship before me.

  I squeeze her hand in comfort, but her shoulders lock.

  Samantha rocks forward, her trembling fingers pressed to her mouth. Greg is glaring at the wall, and I’m more concerned with how Rose is handling their reactions. While she’s had many disagreements with her mother and sometimes even her father, none have been this serious.

  I study her sharp breathing, about to move this conversation along, but Rose’s older sister interjects.

  “You’re really comfortable with this, Rose?” Poppy asks as though trying to make sense of the truth.

  Lo chimes in, “For Christ’s sake, he slept with some guys—he didn’t commit a fucking murder.”

  Corbin makes a checkmark on his legal pad. “It’d be helpful if you stayed quiet, Loren,” he says. “You’re going to make this worse if you talk at all.”

  The bottom of my stomach sinks, but I’d been waiting for Lo to realize the shredder our friendship is about to be put through.

  “What was that?” Lo sends a scathing glare at Corbin and then passes Moffy to Lily, his family of three cuddled on the loveseat.

  “It’s one of our talking points,” Corbin states. “We’ll reach it in a minute. Let’s not go out of order.”

  Lo clenches his teeth and turns to me for answers, his questioning, baffled look asking, did you know we’d be a fucking talking point?

  Yes. I knew.

  “Why w
ouldn’t I be comfortable?” Rose suddenly spouts at her sister. “I’m married to him. We have a child together. Do you worry about all the people Sam has fucked in the past?”

  “Whoa.” Sam raises his hands in defense. “Please don’t drag me into this.”

  “No,” Poppy tells Rose, her tone calm. “I don’t worry about his exes, but this is a little different, don’t you think?”

  My mother-in-law, Samantha, pipes in, “Why wouldn’t you tell me if you knew this entire time? I’m your mother.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” Rose retorts. “Have you told me everyone your husband used to bang before he slept with you?”

  Greg yells, “It’s not the same, Rose!” He rises to his feet.

  “It should be!” Rose stands with the same ire. It should be. Maybe one day it will be, but right now, today, me having sex with a woman and me having sex with a man does not hold the same connotation to them the way it does to me, the way it does to Rose.

  Yelling isn’t the solution, even if I’d love to rise by her side and scream as loudly and as passionately. I clutch her hand, pulling her until she sits down again. I rub the small of her back and whisper, “Give them time to process.”

  She whips her head to me, eyes on fire. “I just want them to understand.” Her low voice is only audible to me.

  “Patience, darling.”

  She lets out a vexed breath.

  Greg remains standing, hands on his waist, pacing to the window and back to his chair a couple times. He motions to Corbin to continue, unable to produce the words, unable to look me in the eye and ask me himself.

  So I must speak to someone who works for him. I imagine myself laughing in frustration, glaring at the ceiling, shaking my head, every reaction that I can only internalize. I don’t wear my antipathy or my outrage or my aggravation—but it fucking exists inside of me, scraping at my brain.

  Corbin asks, “Did you marry Rose to hide your sexuality? And is this arrangement consensual between both parties?”

  I can feel my jaw muscles try to contract. Consensual. As though I forced her into our marriage. “I married Rose because we love each other,” I state plainly. They wait for an emotional downpour from me. It’s not in me to kick and scream and drop to my knees. Rose thinks she may have a hard time convincing the world that she loves me, but I’m going to have a much harder time convincing her parents that I love their daughter. “We had no ulterior motives,” I conclude.