I’m not sure if she can fucking understand him, but she rubs her eyes with her fist, her hiccups lessening.
“We can either send Sadie to live with Frederick and she’ll return to us in a year or we can send you away and you’ll never see us again.”
Her lips part in horror.
What is this? “That’s your fucking solution?” I ask him. Connor Cobalt as a father is a fucking insane idea.
Connor completely ignores me. Like he knows better.
“She can’t go,” Janie blubbers.
“Toi ou elle,” Connor says. You or her. “Who do you want to stay with us?”
She sniffs, “Moi.” Me. She hugs tighter to my side, like she’s just said goodbye to someone she loves.
I’d say Janie is too young to comprehend the entire meaning of the two choices, but she must’ve understood some fucking part.
I rub Janie’s back, her cheek against my bicep. “You’re all about the fucking choices, Cobalt.”
“Always,” he says, but I see the understanding in his eyes, knowing that I can’t live my life like him. That when the day begins and ends, I just ride along the path that feels right. Instead of stopping and forecasting the most beneficial one.
I would’ve twirled my daughter around until her tears stopped.
I would’ve taken her mind off the cat by leading her outside to play.
Both ways are okay. Just different.
My lips rise at him, and he smiles back at me.
Janie touches my jaw and garbles something that sounds like, “Why do you have hair on your face?” She giggles a little, patting at my unshaven jaw.
“You want to answer this one?” I ask Connor.
He grins. “Not really.” He’s fucking entertained.
I instinctively look for Daisy. She’d have a better answer than me, but as soon as I find her, seated on the other side of the couch, my features darken in worry.
Her head is drooped towards her cellphone, her brows pinched with this twisted sort of hurt. “Dais?”
She doesn’t hear me.
“Dais?” I call louder.
Just as she raises her head, Beckett spits up on Rose’s shoulder, her high-collared black blouse dirtied with white vomit.
Her shoulders and neck are strict, and she collects her hair to her other shoulder. Connor distances himself from me and approaches his wife. After burping up, Beckett finally quiets.
I glance back at Daisy, and she stands, cellphone in hand. I watch her pace to the sliding door that leads to their backyard. I’m about to follow but she stops mid-step, staring at her fucking phone.
My muscles flex, and I set Janie on the couch cushion.
“It’s fine,” Rose tells Connor, Beckett on her lap. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” She actually pulls off her dirtied blouse. Wearing a sheer black lingerie corset-looking thing underneath. A bodice? I don’t know the word, but I’ve never seen Rose be this fucking flippant with changing clothes in front of people.
Not since maybe Comic-Con, a long time ago.
Connor has a hand on her waist, whispering to her rapidly. Her joints are stiff and unbending, her collarbone jutting out with short breaths.
He says, “Do you remember when Penn and Princeton faced Harvard at the Quiz Bowl Quarter-Finals, and we were both certain that George Lansidle was cheating?”
She nods. “It was my first year in college, and I despised you.”
“And you spent two hours in the convention’s banquet hall with me.”
“To figure out how to expose George’s treachery.” Fire flames her yellow-green eyes.
His grin starts rising. “We were used to competing against one another, but this time we willingly worked together. Do you remember?”
She nods again, her gaze softening, and his hand slides into hers.
“I’ve loved you, always,” he says. “I was just too blind to see how much and for how long. There’s a nineteen-year-old boy, handing you his blazer in a bathroom, and if he could, he’d tell you this. All over again.”
A tear rolls down Rose’s cheek.
He kisses her forehead and then says, “Ensemble.” Together.
“Ensemble,” she whispers.
They glance down at their newborns, both fast asleep. Everything starts to calm down except for Daisy. I rise without a cane and limp slowly towards my wife.
Janie springs from the couch and races over to her parents. She hangs onto Rose’s leg, and Rose says to her in a self-assured tone, “You’re a sister now, Jane. At some point, your brothers will need you, and you’ll need them. They’re the best thing you have in this world.”
Janie nods confidently, like she understands, even if she has no fucking clue.
Connor bends down and kisses her head and whispers to her in French, then Janie says to Rose, “I love you, Mommy.”
Rose shoots a glare at Connor, but she’s smiling. “You can’t tell our children to tell me they love me, Richard.”
“I can if it’s the truth.” He grins again.
“It’s not from the heart.”
“It’s from someone’s heart. If not theirs, then mine.”
Rose rolls her eyes and says to Janie, “Your father thinks he’s smart.”
“Your mother thinks she’s fierce.”
Rose scoffs.
“Aren’t we telling truths now, darling? You are fierce, and I am brilliant.”
She raises her hand at him. “I called you smart, not brilliant.”
While they’re having a great fucking time, I’m sucking down shooting pain just to walk across the room. I have to hop more than once.
And with the worst limp yet, I finally reach her. “Dais?” I touch her shoulder.
She startles.
“Sorry,” I say. What the fuck is going on?—my brain is doused with curses. I see more red than she probably does.
She blows out a breath, eyes bloodshot. “It’s okay.”
Calloway girls say that a lot, but they forget how much we fucking love them, how much we know them. How much we want to take care of them.
“Yeah? What is it?”
Her arms shake, and I hug her to my side while she says, “They won’t stop texting me.”
“Cleo and Harper?” I guess, my stomach in fucking knots.
“They said that they’ll come over to our house every day to show me why I need to do Queens of Philadelphia. They keep getting my number, and if they show up at the house—I have to prepare. I need to call security at the gate, and I have to get our lawyer—”
“Hey, hey,” I say quickly, cupping her face. I take her phone with my other hand. “I’m calling the fucking lawyer. I’ll print out the texts and he’ll send these girls a cease and desist again. The neighborhood security should already have their names blacklisted.”
“I want to double check with security,” she says.
“Okay.” I nod. “I’ll triple-fucking-check everything with you. Whatever you need to feel safe, we’re doing.”
Her fingers touch her lips, staring past me.
“Daisy, I’m right here.” I comb her hair back, hoping she’ll see me.
“Will it always be like this?” she asks so fucking softly.
The public is against us. Her old friends aren’t listening to her protests or the law. The best she can do is ignore all of it and focus on staying healthy. “No, Calloway,” I tell her fucking strongly.
Her eyes meet mine.
“It’s going to be better than this, but you’re tough enough to walk through shit and cheer on the other side. I know you are.”
Her smile briefly toys with her lips. “Will you walk through shit with me?”
“Every fucking day of my life.”
I pull her into a hug, and her arms wrap around me. That’s when I see Lily and Lo in the living room, Lo peeling back the aluminum foil on the cake.
His amber eyes lift to us. “And you think we’re fucking weird?”
“What does that say, Mom
my?” Moffy asks.
Lily’s eyes widen and she stumbles over her words before blurting, “Sorry we had fun on your couch.”
“Fun is really bad,” Daisy teases, her eyes a little fucking watery. “It’ll eat you up and spit you out.”
Lo covers Moffy’s ears. “Brother, tell your wife not to confuse my son.”
“It sounded fucking right to me.”
Daisy smiles more. Don’t stop, sweetheart. I kiss the top of her head, holding her so fucking close—I can feel her pulse still beating from fright.
Connor says, “Ryke and Daisy’s future progeny will no doubt be a strange influence on ours.”
“You’re waiting for it, Cobalt. Admit it.”
He smiles. “Maybe.”