I slam the oven door closed harder than I intended. “You didn’t drop out.” I already hear her dad in my head. Samuel Stokes couldn’t shut up about the whole ordeal.
My daughter is choosing acting over a traditional education.
You’d think Captain America would be upset over the choice, but Sammy was over-the-moon. Like actually proud. I forgot that Sam had been into art growing up, kind of like Poppy, but he ditched his dreams for her. And he ultimately ended up working at Fizzle, her father’s company.
He’s happy she chose her passion.
Maria makes a face at Luna and shakes her long brown hair at the toddler.
Luna giggles but never speaks, still acting like she’s invisible. My lips curve up. My kid is cute. Example A: she’s in a dinosaur bathrobe and penguin slippers. Example B: she’s my kid.
“I kind of did drop out,” Maria says to me.
I give her a look. “What, do you want to be a dropout? You switched to homeschool. Last time I checked, the word school still implies an education.”
Maria shrugs. “It’s the same difference.”
My eyes narrow. “Take it from someone who has dropped out of higher education. It’s not the same. In one you learn…things, the other you don’t.” I stop myself from saying “learn shit” in front of my three-year-old. I set the timer on the oven and turn my full-attention to Maria. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re fifteen, and you started a career. Lil and I wouldn’t be pissed if you stopped babysitting for us.”
Maria lets out a laugh. “I was in a couple indie films, Uncle Lo. I’m not a big-time actress or anything. Plus, there are a lot of family dramas that deal with children. This is good experience for me.” She pauses and finally speaks to Luna, widening her eyes for my daughter. “Where’d you come from Lunalien?”
Luna gasps like she can’t believe she’s been found. “Outer space!”
“You have the antennas and everything.”
Luna wears a sparkly green headband with bulb antennas. Moffy called her a dinoalienguin this morning because of her wardrobe combination.
My small smile stretches. That’s my little girl. Christ. I love her more than I love most things. More than I love most fucking people. Moffy, Luna, and Xander fill this deep place in my heart that only Lily could ever reach.
“Let me guess.” Maria focuses back on me while Luna disappears into the pantry. “You’d rather stay here. Your dad is really scary, you know. Luncheons always suck when he shows up, so I can’t imagine dinner with him is pleasant. Like…” She shudders. “No.”
“It’s plesant-ish,” I say dryly. Not even surprised she has a bad taste in her mouth from Jonathan over the years.
Lily pushes into the kitchen, Xander on the crook of her hip. In a deeper sleep than usual, his cheek rests on Lil’s arm, drooling too. While Rose, Connor, Ryke, and Daisy have been dealing with their fertility stuff, the media has leeched onto us, almost cannibalizing our newborn for nine-months and counting.
It hasn’t slowed down. It won’t. His birth made international news. Not because he almost became an “elevator baby”—and really, Jane’s birth was way more insane since Connor delivered her himself in a goddamn limo. It’s not even because he was born on Christmas day.
It’s because Ryke and Lily were the two stuck in that elevator.
[Breaking News] Lily Calloway goes into labor with only Ryke in attendance! Versions of this landed on every major tabloid and entertainment news site. It’s technically accurate. He was the only one there at the beginning, so we have no room to complain.
They just twist the fucking facts. Making it seem like Ryke has closer ties to my wife than I do. That he cares for her beyond the role of a friend and brother-in-law. It’s dumb as fuck, and it’s not affecting anyone but Xander right now.
Journalists seek after him like a piece of celebrity meat. His life is newsworthy because his birth was literally everywhere. We can’t say the same for the other kids. Not like this.
Every new article they post, more people click into, which prompts them to keep writing more and more and more about him.
What’s Xander look like now?
Who is holding Xander?
Where do they take Xander?
Is he happy in so-and-so’s arms?
Moffy didn’t even have this kind of specific attention when he was first born.
When we go out, we can’t stop the cameras from hoarding around Xander. We can’t stop them from screaming his name. He cries every time we leave the house. He’s not even a year old yet, and this is just terrible. The only thing we can do is hold Xander close and tell him we won’t let anything or anyone hurt him.
Sometimes it just doesn’t feel like enough.
Maria cups her hands to her mouth. “Roll call!”
“Maximoff!” I hear from upstairs.
My daughter pops her head out of the pantry. “Luna!”
“Xander.” Lily speaks for our baby, wipes up his drool with the sleeve of her shirt, and then sets him in Maria’s outstretched arms.
Maria cradles the baby and rocks him back and forth. “You should hear the Cobalt boys do roll call. They’re awful at it. They all insist on using their full names and then correcting each other. Beckett still believes he was born before Charlie.”
Lily beams at the fact that our kids do something better than Connor and Rose’s. I bet it’s chaos at the Cobalt estate, but Connor, who’s never frazzled, probably views the hurricane like scattered showers.
Maria only babysits over there when Connor and Rose need a third set of hands. They already have two nannies on-call. Mostly, Maria helps out with our kids—and Sullivan, on rare occasions.
“Looks like I have things covered here,” Maria says in a hushed voice now that Xander is in her arms. “You two go to the pits of hell or whatever my mom calls Jonathan’s house.”
“Satan’s lair is actually across the street.” I flash a dry smile.
“Satan has great heels,” Maria says, knowing I’m referring to Rose.
I give her another look. “You’re such a disappointment, Maria Stokes. I thought for sure you would’ve taken after me.” I never believed this. Maria has revered Rose since as long as I can remember. “I have the better looks, the better comebacks—”
“But not the better wardrobe.” Maria smiles. “Rose is queen, Uncle Lo. I hate to break it to you, but she’s way more badass than you.”
I feign a wince. “My ears are bleeding.”
Luna races over to me. “Daddy! Mr. Zebra Cake will make you feel better.” She has the whole box of Little Debbie desserts beneath her armpit.
I hold out my hand. “Thank you, love.”
Luna dumps every plastic-wrapped zebra cake onto my hand. Lily grins from ear-to-ear, and my own smile expands. I grab a cake and then come up behind Lily. I drape my arms over her shoulders and rest my chin on her head.
“Let’s go, my love.” I guide my wife towards the door, my steps short as she takes small ones.
Lily looks up at me, fixated on my lips for a second.
Instead of kissing her, I lower my head and stick my tongue in her ear.
“Lo!” She slugs my arm.
“Right, I forgot.” I still don’t kiss Lily. I turn slightly back towards Maria. “No boys!”
Maria groans. “Uncle Lo.” Her brows rise. “I’m fifteen, just dropped out—I mean, switched to homeschooling—and forty-year-olds were my co-stars in my last two movies. I have no love life.”
“Good.”
She gives me a smile at that. “Have fun with the real Satan.”
My dad. Maria has no problem calling him that because we’ve all labeled him worse things in front of her. On our way to the door, I kiss Lily’s cheek. I watch her stifle a needy expression, but she licks her lips and spins around to hook her finger in my belt loop.
We reach the foyer, and I swiftly lift her in a front-piggyback. Her legs wrap around my waist, her hands on my neck. Sh
e unconsciously grinds against me. I swallow a knot in my throat, my blood heating.
I hug her against my chest. “You. Me. Car. Now.”
Then I really, really fucking kiss Lily Hale.
Forgetting about where we’re headed, just for one more moment.
* * *
“I should be in there with her.” Garrison paces in my father’s den, twirling a cigarette between his fingers. He quit smoking about a month before he married Willow, which was a year ago. So Ryke has been snatching each one—there he goes. My older brother steals the unlit cigarette from Garrison and tosses it into a trash bin.
Garrison is too anxious to care.
I lean against my dad’s desk, a ship-in-a-bottle in hand. “Willow wanted to do this herself.”
Ryke glowers at the door to the hallway, not liking where Willow is either. Down the hall, turn right, then left, and you’d reach the fine dining room of the Hale mansion. That’s where she is. With him.
I point the ship-in-a-bottle at Ryke. “You,” I snap. He barely rotates to me. “Dad’s not going to do anything to his own daugh…” I trail off at the glare my brother burns through my face. It could almost rival mine—almost, but not quite.
I hear the message: just like Dad didn’t do a fucking thing to you?
He crosses his arms.
Garrison tenses more.
When did I become the one that has to alleviate fucking tension? When Connor Cobalt chooses his pregnant wife over dinner with the real devil.
“Daisy and Lily are with her,” I tell them both. That’s the best I can do for positivity right now. “Don’t make me try to act like a candy gram to cheer you two up. I can only take so much pain.”
We’d be with the girls, but they banished us to the den. Lily pulled out the “hot-tempered triad” card, and we both relented. It’s not our news to share. It’s Willow and Garrison’s. He’d be with her, but he thinks Jonathan will flip out if they drop the news while he’s in the room.
That’s how much bad blood there is between them right now.
Connor said that Garrison is in the “most unenviable position” of being Jonathan Hale’s only son-in-law. He treats his daughter-in-laws like daughters, but that same respect for his son-in-law just doesn’t translate for some reason.
My dad has never treated women and men the same. So we’re not surprised.
Garrison knocks over a vase with his foot. He paces towards the dark wooden cabinets.
Before he goes slapping all the books and knickknacks, I say, “The maid will just pick that up.”
Garrison stops. Thinks. Then he paces towards the leather couch. He stops again and yanks at a string to his black jacket. His wardrobe has been an easy attack for my dad, and it’s been played to death already.
Do you go into work like that?
Do you even own a suit?
Ryke hates the insults the most. Mostly because he wears track pants and T-shirts to dinners and lunch, and our dad never gets onto him for it.
It’s just what Connor said. Being Jonathan Hale’s son-in-law is different and the most unenviable position.
No one has said a goddamn thing yet, and the air is still thick. I never claimed to be Connor Cobalt. Now I point the ship-in-the-bottle at the leather furniture. “I lost my virginity on that couch.”
I can touch the memory a million times without drowning.
Garrison wakes up from his rambling thoughts, his face scrunched at me like what the hell. “You lost your virginity on a couch? What happened—your demented father guarded your bedroom door on prom night?”
“Uh, no. I was fourteen.” I set the bottle back on the desk and meet Ryke’s gaze. We’re both thinking about it. Our children losing their virginity at fourteen.
Ryke shakes his head at me. “Not fucking happening. That’s way too fucking young.”
Garrison says, “You know you’re old when.”
I must be ancient then. “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—hell, twenty-seven, I’d like my children to be celibate until…hmm, forever.” I wear another half-smile. I can’t think about Moffy losing his virginity in only six years. And I’ll bust a vein in my neck if I even contemplate Luna in bed with anyone other than a stuffed animal.
“I’m fucking okay with that,” my brother agrees.
Garrison plops down on the leather chair. He rubs his face with his hands, and I realize my virginity story is off his mind now.
Ryke and I exchange concern, and then my brother throws a hacky sack at Garrison—I honestly…I don’t ask where that hacky sack came from.
Garrison looks up as the hacky sack pelts his arm. “What?”
“You and Willow are fucking adults.” Ryke doesn’t add that they’re married, which wouldn’t really matter to Jonathan. He doesn’t even add that they’re both well-off. Garrison with his job at Cobalt Inc. and Willow by opening a Superheroes & Scones in London. The store is still in the early phases, but she’s in charge of that branch, flying back to London every now and then. This wouldn’t matter to my dad either. It’s not about money.
It’s just personal.
“Like he cares,” Garrison snaps.
Ryke jabs a finger towards the door. “He has no fucking reason to be upset that she’s pregnant.”
And there it is.
Willow is pregnant.
She’s not the seventeen-year-old lost girl waiting for me at Superheroes & Scones. She’s twenty-five and knows what she wants out of life. When Willow told me, she just said, “Garrison and I don’t ever want to go backwards, back to before.” She meant to the time before they met each other. “We want a family together…” She pushed up her glasses. “Someone that’s ours.”
It made sense.
It makes sense.
Living in Philly, stable careers—they saw a clearer future together and all the things they wanted next. So they tried for a baby.
Garrison rubs his eyes aggressively with the heel of his palm. Like he’s trying to wake up from the nightmare of Jonathan Hale. “If he wants to talk to me, I think it should be alone.” He pushes his brown hair off his forehead. “Honestly, I don’t need you two flocking me. I’m not a fucking kid.”
At twenty-five, Ryke free-solo climbed the Yosemite Triple Crown, started dating Daisy, and had it out with Greg Calloway. At twenty-five, I already had Moffy, just squashed a neighborhood feud that involved Garrison, and threw a Halloween party in my backyard.
I get it.
He’s an adult, but there’s a part of me that will always see him like the little brother I never had.
“But I know my dad,” I rebut. “It’s better if we’re there.”
Ryke nods in agreement.
Garrison lets out a heavy breath. “I don’t like him. I won’t ever like him, but I’d rather him see me as a man than some scared little boy bringing his two sons as some kind of shitty backup.”
Ryke rolls his eyes.
Mine just keep narrowing, seriousness weighing on my chest and shoulders and head. We both want to protect Garrison, more than he even understands. Our relationship with our dad is toxic. I see that. I get it. And I can take all the verbal attacks. I can take everything. But I can’t take pulling Garrison into another toxic relationship—not when he ripped himself from the one with his brothers.
Garrison’s blue-green eyes fix on mine. “I can handle it.”
Silence heavies the den.
“You can probably handle it,” I say, the first to break the quiet. “It doesn’t mean you should have to.”
His glare grows hotter. “I need to do this.” I hear the endnote: for Willow.
“You don’t.” My edged voice cuts my throat raw. I stand off the desk. “You’re never going to be a man in his eyes. It has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with him.”
I feel Ryke focused on me. Like a burning lamp. Intense. Observant. Even hesitant. I spend most of my time defending our dad. Ryke is the one that shakes me. Tells me what happened. Tries to open
my eyes.
I have truths that I haven’t really said out loud. Not in a while. Maybe not at all.
Garrison drops his gaze. “Yeah, Willow has told me some stuff…but she said that he’s always nice to her.”
Because sobriety changed him. Because she’s a girl. Because Ryke and I would stop talking to him if he so much as insulted her.
“She doesn’t know everything,” I tell him, “but he’s a lot better now than he was.” My mind reels and speeds through all the years. All the progress he’s made.
He’s not as terrible as he once was. Despite nagging on Garrison, he’s always supported Ryke’s rock climbing. He’s always supported my love of comics.
I continue, “There are still some things that make him tick. I think you remind him of me when I was in prep school.” Apathetic. Even though he has a job. Sarcastic. Dead to the world. Garrison exudes this lazy vibe. Like he’d rather be anywhere but with you.
Knowing Garrison Abbey, I’d never in a million years label him as lazy. He’s smart as hell and spends more time coding than I do reading comics. And I read a fucking ton of comic books.
Garrison goes quiet again and stares at his hands. I see him start to shake his head, still stuck on the idea of seeing my dad alone. I’ve seen how they are together, how my dad spins backwards into someone we all hate. I can’t let this happen.
I lick my dry lips. “What I’m trying to say…” I take a pause. Say it. Say it. My jaw sharpens, and I shift my weight from one foot to the other, standing in the center of the den.
Say it.
From the chair, Garrison looks up at me.
Say it. “My dad verbally abused me for most of my life, and I’d rather break my knees than put you in that crossfire. So if you want at him, you’re going to have to go through me.”
Ryke lets out an audible breath. He’s stunned because I said the actual word. In the past, I’ve agreed to the statement. I’ve nodded along. But I doubt I’ve ever said it like this.
My features sharpen towards Ryke. “What, big brother?” My eyes burn and start glassing at the sight of his cloudy ones.
His chest rises and falls heavily. Then he nods at me, so much in that one action. Apologies, pride for me, love—a lot of love.
Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5) Page 38