Fuel the Fire

by Krista Ritchie

  “Your glares are far more effective, darling,” I tell him with a smile.

  He nods, returning it, even though there’s a tense layer when I make the joke. We both know it’s what’s causing the outside friction.

  Lo spins his wedding band, the giveaway that says he’s craving alcohol. “Please tell me you at least screamed or cried or something.”

  I remember how I broke down while holding Rose in my arms, but I don’t want to mention this. There’s a large part of me that craves the way Lo looks at me. Immortal. Impervious. A god among men. That has only been altered a handful of times over the years, and today I don’t want to add to the count. So I pivot the conversation, “How’s Lily?”

  He shakes his head once. I’ve poked at a sore spot.

  “That bad?”

  He rubs his temple, anxiety wounding through him. I’m causing this. Me. My past. The thought cages my breath for a second.

  “Uh…shit. She wouldn’t want me talking about her.” He taps his fingers on the desk, obviously wanting to share. To get it off his chest.

  “I won’t tell.”

  “Rose?” he asks. “Because she’ll probably feel the need to talk to Lily about it and then I’m fucked for telling you.”

  “I promise.”

  His shoulders fall and he stops twisting his wedding band. “She’s really upset about the new fandom name the journalists made for her and Ryke. Celebrity Crush has been posting about it everywhere.” Now that there are rumors of Lo and me together, the rumors of Lily and Ryke have resurfaced. “She said she’s not upset about the actual rumors. It’s just that she’s been promoting freakin’ Raisy for the past year, and now they came up with Rily. She said it makes her sick.”

  Lo looks crushed, the weight of Lily’s pain pounding him. It’s this type of love that scares me the most. Feeling that much empathy is crippling.

  “Maybe it’ll all pass in time,” I say, letting a shred of hope float into the world. It may be false, but I choose to see it as real.

  His eyes are reddened, and he lowers his head so people in the hallway can’t see, his office mostly just glass walls.

  “I’m sorry, Lo,” I tell him. I hurt him, whether he wants to believe it or not. Whether he wants to bury it with glares and I don’t give a fucks. The pain that he is going through is the result of my history.

  He shakes his head. “It’s not your fault. If anything, Lil and I should be apologizing to you. We’re the ones who started this.” He’s talking about the fame. It all began with Lily and Lo. Their addictions and the salacious headlines.

  “It’s kind of you to take credit for this, but it’s unneeded,” I tell him. “We’re all so far past the beginning that the end is no one’s to claim.”

  He stares at me for a long moment before he says, “That’s pretty fucking deep, love.”

  “I’ve been deeper.”

  The innuendo makes him laugh. His eyes trail past me to his door. “Speaking of where you’ve been,” he says.

  I follow his gaze, turning my head slightly. I see Rose approaching, a binder in her clutch. Beside her is someone I haven’t seen in years. I know Lo isn’t referring to Theo, seeing as how he has no knowledge that I’ve slept with the Hale Co. employee, but the irony isn’t lost on me.

  * * *

  “I need to wash my mouth out with soap.” Rose takes the seat across from me. “The words that came out of it were vile.” Theo remains standing off to the side, holding a folder and waiting for Lo to acknowledge him.

  Lo’s concentration is on Rose. His brows knot together. “You didn’t call anyone an ogre did you?”

  “Not to their face.” She flattens her pin skirt and places a binder carefully on the glass table. “But that’s not what I said that makes my skin crawl.”

  I press my fingers to my lips, thinking, and simultaneously keeping an eye on my ex in the corner. He’s quiet, perceptive, blending into the walls like he’s made of transparent glass. Theo Balentine hasn’t changed. I didn’t need to see him to know this.

  He wasn’t the one who told the press about my past. That alone tells me he’s still the same moral guy I met in boarding school.

  Rose takes a large breath before explaining. “I had to tell the board that I loved the patterns of monkeys eating bananas.” She gives me a look and mouths, ew. I smile. “And then there were the ones with bumble bees.” She glowers at Loren like he inflicted this on her. “Bumble. Bees.”

  “I assume everything went well then,” I say, knowing her ploy.

  “They told me they’re going to take some time and rethink the designs,” she says, her lips rising. “That’s when I called one of them an ogre.”

  Loren lets out an annoyed breath. “Great. Just great. You know, even I can hold my tongue in a board room.”

  “It was all for show, Loren.”

  Lo has been informed about her new strategy to pretend to like all the board member’s ideas that she actually hates, and every time she agrees with them, they change their minds. She’s guiding them towards her styles and designs without them realizing. So far her plan seems to have worked to her benefit.

  Lo looks to Theo in the corner. “Do you have the alternate designs?”

  “I do…” He coughs into his hand and pushes the folder on the table. He edges closer to me, his eyes flitting my way.

  Lo looks between us. “You two know each other, right?”

  “From boarding school,” I say calmly. We both meet each other’s gazes and I nod, not offering a handshake, never rising to my feet. I just don’t care enough to.

  My phone buzzes and I procure it from my pocket.

  “From Faust,” Theo nods, looking mildly uncomfortable.

  “Was Connor just as fun back then as he is now?” Lo says with a half-smile, more enjoyment from this scenario than I’m receiving.

  When was your last period? – Frederick

  I almost laugh. My therapist is off his A-game. I text: Let me guess, Cobalt and Calloway are far too close in your phone book or you just text us more than your other contacts?

  I look up and Rose is giving me a weird look, a glare that’s half contorted in curiosity and half in confusion.

  I mouth, later.

  She lets out a small huff, a lot more impatient for details than me, but I love the way she crosses her ankles and her arms, her breasts rising with a deep inhale.

  Theo answers Lo, “It was interesting. Every time he caught me smoking, he’d tell me that my ambition was being asphyxiated.”

  “I wasn’t wrong,” I say my first words to him in years. I glance at my phone when it buzzes.

  Ignore that. – Frederick

  I do ignore his texts since I have Theo frowning at me, and Lo lets out a long whistle at my statement, breaking a string of tension.

  I meet Rose’s fiery, incensed gaze for a moment and she mouths, who? She’s hardly concerned about Theo, just my texts since we’ve been working together to handle this mess with the media.

  I’m mostly worried about her OCD flaring, so I pass her my phone.

  She reads quickly and hands it back, her shoulders relaxed, probably thankful it’s not Scott. Her eyes meet mine again, and they still possess that fire.

  I remember the time I asked her what she thought of Theo. And she called him “a guppy in our ocean”—our ocean. I love Rose, and it’s easy for me to be amiable towards Theo when he sits so far in my past, a past that I don’t cradle like everyone else.

  I let people go all the time, and he’s one that has drifted a thousand leagues behind me. I don’t care enough to go swim after him. I wouldn’t. I won’t. But I do wholeheartedly appreciate his morality. It’s one of those values I admire but know I don’t always own.

  “I still have ambition. Don’t you see where I am?” Theo tells me, pulling my gaze from my wife. Rose hardly seems to mind. We have so much confidence in our relationship that it’d be nearly impossible for a person to wedge themselves between us and cause
doubt and friction in our marriage.

  Don’t you see where I am? His gray eyes repeat the statement.

  He’s in a Fortune 500 company. He’s in a higher salary-paying job than most at Faust. He’s climbing his way to the top.

  “It’s not what you wanted,” I tell him. He dreamed of writing poetry, of living off the land with life’s bare necessities. He dreamed of throwing his arms in the air, half-naked in the wilderness where he’d commune with nature and learn great, untouched meanings.

  Now he’s in a suit, in the city, stuck within a high-rise where poetry has little use except within his own mind.

  “Dreams change,” Theo says, and I can see that he’s accepted this new life now. Maybe it is what he wants.

  Dreams change.

  I think there’s good change where we see our path diverge and we willingly follow the new road. And then there’s forced change where debris impedes us from our path and we’re searching desperately for a route back onto our planned destination.

  The dream I’ve always desired—to grow a family with Rose—is being forced to change.

  And I can’t see any way around the debris.

  [ 41 ]

  ROSE COBALT

  Jane cries bloody murder, focused on the bodies cramped against the windows of Connor’s limo. I want to slaughter every person that is making her cry this way. I can’t tell if we already parked in front of the pediatrician’s building, but I’m antsy to reach our destination and bring Jane to her regular checkup on time.

  Her first birthday is in June. I’d like to think this’ll die down by then, but it’s most likely wishful thinking on my part.

  I hold Jane on my lap, wiping her tears quickly. “Mommy’s going to dropkick anyone that touches you.”

  “And Daddy’s going to bail Mommy out of jail,” Connor says, placing tiny blue earplugs in my palm.

  I give him a look. “Mommy will be within her full rights to assassinate any vile creature that harms her baby.”

  He caresses my cheek with his knuckles, the pressure how I like. “Nothing will happen to our baby.”

  He’s pacifying me. Connor can’t predict the future. He knows this, and there is reasonable probability that something could go wrong.

  “Anything can happen,” I tell him. I almost wonder if we should turn back and reschedule her appointment. We tried to lose the paparazzi, but they’ve been camping outside our gated neighborhood for the past week, waiting for us to drive out. Our neighbors have already complained, and Connor thinks another house will be up for sale by the end of the month.

  It’s very likely the media’s presence could increase by the beginning of May, so it’s hard to return home, knowing that tomorrow and the next week and the next week after that could be worse or the same.

  “I’m not leaving your side,” Connor reminds me. We’ve formed a plan to barrel through the paparazzi without Jane being harmed or even breathed on the wrong way.

  I nod, soaking in his confidence, and I fit the soft plugs into Jane’s ears.

  Gilligan, Connor’s driver, cranes his neck over his shoulder. “We’re here.” I hardly noticed the limo stopping since we’ve been inching along.

  “Where’s Heidi?” I ask Connor.

  He has his phone out, texting our bodyguards instructions. “All three of them just parked next to us.”

  I peek out his window, a camera lens literally pressed against the glass. “I don’t see them.” And just as I say the words, our bodyguards push aside the paparazzi, clearing space by Connor’s door.

  I tuck Jane to my hip, her cries escalating now that I’ve put a foreign object in her ear. Outside is too loud and caustic to remove them. “Shh,” I whisper. “Be brave, my little gremlin, and I promise they’ll all go away.” Her tears sincerely do a number on me, my chest twisting. I splay a woolen, teal blanket over part of my shoulder and her head, all the while rubbing her back.

  She settles only a little.

  I let out a tense breath. I never believed a baby could stir this type of emotion from me, but I channel her fear into motivation, prepared to bypass every lens and person that stands in our way.

  You’re a fucking category five hurricane, Rose. They should all fear your destruction.

  Damn right.

  Connor clasps my free hand, threading his fingers with mine. “Ready?”

  I raise my chin and nod.

  He opens his door, the flashes exploding. The noises and bright shutters blind me for a millisecond, almost pummeling me backwards. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, not even when the media first took interest in my family.

  I orient myself about the same time that Connor slides out. I scoot along the seat, his hand never leaving mine, and I exit with him.

  “Is your marriage fake?!”

  “Did you know Connor has been with men?!”

  “Are the sex tapes real?!”

  Connor squeezes my hand, and I can’t shut the door behind me. Vic takes care of that, staying back while Heidi and Stephen push forward. “Give them room!” our bodyguards keep shouting for us.

  I hug close to Connor’s back while he guides me forward, Jane protectively shielded between my chest and his six-foot-four towering body.

  I’d like to cast threatening glares in every direction, more territorial over my baby than I’ve ever been before, but every time I look out, flashes burst and white lights flicker in my vision.

  So I dip my head and concentrate on Jane. The brick building with a pediatric sign isn’t far from here.

  “Whose idea was the business arrangement?!”

  “Connor, do you have a boyfriend?!”

  “You should be ashamed!”

  I almost falter at this last exclamation. I’ve heard it before, but it packs a harder punch than the others. It rouses parts of me that ache to scream in reply, verbally sparring until I lose my voice.

  “A child needs love! A child needs love!” more than a few people chant. These aren’t paparazzi but rather haters that like to picket us.

  I grit my teeth. A few days ago outside Hale Co., I already screamed once: who are you to determine whether or not I love my daughter? You don’t know me! I was called “vicious, bitchy, and belligerent” for simply defending myself. I’ve yelled that I love Jane until I’m blue in the face, but no one wants my words.

  It’s the most frustrating, enraging battle I’ve ever been a part of. My natural instinct will always be to speak louder if they tell me to shut up.

  Bodies pack against me. I press Jane harder to my chest, and I can feel her heart pitter-patter in quick succession.

  I won’t let anything happen to you. I won’t.

  And then a strong, painful force snags a chunk of my hair by my temple. I can’t tell what I’m caught on: jewelry or camera equipment or a jacket’s zipper…something that I loathe right now.

  I take a step forward, and I’m not coming loose. It yanks me backwards, and I stagger in my heels.

  Immediately, I let go of Connor’s hand, afraid that if I fall while clutching him, he’ll topple backwards and crush Jane. “Give me space!” I scream at everyone around me.

  “Rose!” Connor calls. Two people already wedge between us, and we’re pulled apart. “ROSE!” He fights to reach me while I struggle to free my hair with one hand. I can’t get it loose, and I’m close to being swept back and pulled onto the cement.

  I make a split-second decision.

  I can’t fall, not with Jane in my arms, not in the throngs of people with heavy cameras, so I inhale strongly, both arms wrapped around my baby, and I charge forward with an aggressive jerk. The pain sears my scalp and wells my eyes.

  But I’m free.

  Connor reaches me, his commanding arm swiftly hooking around my waist. He leads me faster to the building. I don’t look back to see the chunk of hair that I left behind. I just remember what could’ve happened, a pile-up of people, smothering Jane.

  It didn’t happen.

 
I still shake like it did. Then quiet hits me, and I realize that I’m inside the hallway of the office building, the cameramen shut outside.

  “Rose,” Connor forces my name, slapping my cheek lightly until I focus on him. “You’re in shock…” He clutches the back of my head, protectively and in control, making the chaos feel manageable—like it won’t overthrow us, even if it almost did.

  “No…” I say even though I know I am. “…how is she?” I check on Jane beneath her blanket, and she’s no longer crying, her face pressed to my chest in contentment. She studies the shape of an orange tabby cat printed on her blanket.

  “Where were you?!” Connor shouts at Vic without letting go of me. “You were supposed to be right behind her.”

  “I got stuck in the crowds.”

  Connor’s jaw muscle noticeably contracts. “Before we leave, you need to have a path cleared for us, and I’m calling more security to help you since you can’t manage on your own.”

  He nods and says a few apologies to both of us.

  At this, I wake up. Everyone is safe. That’s what matters.

  “Let’s go, Connor,” I tell him, and his hand falls to my shoulder, partially guiding me into the pediatrician’s office. My steps still feel a little dazed, but as soon as we enter the empty waiting room, I break apart from him and sit on a chair by a stack of magazines, crossing my ankles.

  I feel safer now that we’re here. Connor goes to sign Jane in at the receptionist’s desk.

  My temple throbs and scalds. A gust of cold air blows through the vent and stings my wound. I ignore the pain and set Jane on my thighs, tucking the blanket around her. She immediately tugs at my necklace…and then, of course, my hair.

  I wince. “No, don’t touch Mommy’s hair.” I peel her fingers from the strands and procure her stuffed lion out of my purse. My brain is somewhat fogged, barely believing that my fragile, delicate child went through that hell. I can’t and won’t lock her in a tower and remove her from society, just because no one can behave properly.