Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters 3)

“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.