Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters 3)

He kisses me on the lips.

And he says, “I will.”

Translation: We’re done having children together.

[ 45 ]

CONNOR COBALT

“I misjudged you back during Princesses of Philly,” Scott Van Wright says. “You’re actually cool, Connor.”

I head to the door, nodding a couple times. “Same to you, man.” I block out Rose’s voice in my mind, unable to hear her truth and cope with what just took place in Scott’s house an hour prior.

What happened was a price I had to pay to reach a greater benefit. It was a loss leader. There are no emotions in facts.

I turn around and shake his hand, pat his back, and say goodbye.

“We should grab lunch tomorrow,” Scott tells me as I skip the steps down his porch.

I casually wave to him like sure thing, and then he smiles, accepting our friendship wholeheartedly, no trace of doubt, no hesitance—exactly what I wanted. He shuts the door, and I walk along his driveway, my house diagonally across the street from his.

On my way back home, I call Frederick.

He answers on the second ring. “I’m not talking to you about Daisy.” He won’t ever share more information about her progress, but that’s not why I called.

“Remind me, Rick, why do people choose to feel?” Because Richard, it’s—I shut out Rose’s beliefs. They’re not helpful anymore. I was able to pass Scott’s test this afternoon only because I pushed her voice away. In my mind, she’s restraining me from completing goals. She’s making this more difficult than it has to be.

“You know why,” he tells me.

“Emotions stifle me. It’s a straightjacket that superior people know not to put on.”

I hear papers rustle on his end, as though pushing them aside to concentrate. “What happened, Connor?”

“You don’t have an answer do you,” I realize, “because you know I’m right.”

“Emotions make you human.”

“Then I’m more than human.” I’m indestructible this way.

“No,” he says. “When you don’t feel, you’re less than human.”

I swallow distaste. “No. I accomplish more than they do.”

“You love less.”

“There is pain in love,” I suddenly say, hurt flaring and swelling my chest. I submerge it all, feeling nothing. Richard—no, Rose. I can’t hear her. I can’t feel what she wants me to feel. “I don’t want any part of it.”

“Greater men would experience pain just to love.”

I reach my mailbox, and my hand tightens around the phone. “Are you trying to incite me, Rick?”

“You feel, Connor. It’s there, inside of you. You’re just afraid.”

“No.” But I have no other defense than that one.

I’m scared.

I’m scared to feel agony tear through me, and I’d rather return to the time where my choices were driven by selfish pursuits, where my decisions never emotionally impacted me. Where I could wake up the next morning and never waver. I’d never feel my soul wither.

“I won today,” I say. “I don’t want to feel like I lost.” Not again. I step onto my porch and unlock the front door.

“Concentrate on what you have…”

I tune out his voice as Rose rushes into the foyer, barefoot, no socks or clean heels that she’ll usually wear indoors. Off my gaze, she says, “I was in Jane’s nursery, and I saw you returning. How’d it go with the devil?”

I say a short goodbye to Frederick and hang up. “It was easy,” I tell Rose, locking the door behind me. Then I pass her and head to the kitchen.

I have no problem being what other people need, to be the level head, the calm in the face of a raging, undying storm. I like being needed, being useful. Rose knows this, but she also knows, as well as I do, that Scott is different.

I’ve never despised a human being quite like him, and to be anything else but enemies has been far from easy.

She follows me with a blistering stride. “Last week at the golf course, you said it was hard not calling him a twat and decking his head with the nine-iron.”

I open the fridge. “I was thinking irrationally last week.” I glance over the water bottles and leftover Lucky’s burgers. I don’t know what I’m searching for.

“Richard,” Rose snaps.

“Rose,” I say calmly, shutting the fridge and turning to face her.

The longer she looks at me, the more her nose flares, her rabid, sweltering emotions bubbling to the surface. It’s beautiful…just not something I personally want to share.

“What happened at his house?” she asks.

They’re just words.

I should be able to say them without falter. I’m superior that way. “I knew he was going to see if I contradicted myself, to test me.” I take a step near Rose, towering above her. She raises her chin to appear taller, even when she’s not. “And he chose something I said at Saturn Bridges.” The bar where Rose picked me up. “That night, I told him that I didn’t care about the sex tapes but you did.”

I’d never bad-mouthed Rose in my life, not to climb a social ladder, not to fake my way through the corporate world, and that night at Saturn Bridges was the first time I degraded her. The words I spoke today are worse. They’re unforgivable, so heinous that I struggle to crawl back to an hour prior in Scott’s house and remember them.

If I just focus on my goals, on what I achieved, and not stare into her eyes—then I can be free of these crippling emotions.

It’s hard to avoid Rose, seething in front of me.

I do look at her, and her hot gaze burns holes right through me. She’s fine. I didn’t hurt her.

She sets her hands on her hips. “It wasn’t easy for you to tell him that lie.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw your face in the car that night, and you looked distraught.”

Distraught? “No,” I say flatly.

“Yes,” she sneers. “It was in the corner of your eyes.”

I raise my brows at her. “The corner of my eyes?” I rub my lips, wondering if I want to laugh or if I want to scream. Maybe I’m just numb to everything. “And what’s in the corner of my eyes now?” I wear the blankest face I have.

“Ugliness,” she retorts.

“You’re the only person on this Earth that’s ever called me ugly,” I muse. “Do you know that, Rose?”

“Then you’ve fooled everyone but me.” She stomps over to the breakfast table. I don’t understand what she plans on doing, but she drags the wooden chair to the other side of the island counter where I stand.

“You’re scratching the hardwood,” I point out.

“I don’t care about the floor,” she retorts, positioning the chair across from me. And then she stands on it, gaining two inches on me for height advantage. It’s comical if not entirely ridiculous.

“Feel better?” I ask.

“Cut the bullshit,” she tells me. “I know you, and you may be arrogant, you may be wholly conceited and unabashed to the millionth degree, but you’re not cold-hearted. You’re not unfeeling, so stop pretending to be.”

“I can’t be you,” I remind her. “I can’t stomp my feet and scream and shout. It gets me nowhere.”

“I’m not asking you to do those things.” Her yellow-green eyes push me towards the imprisoned parts of myself, and a forty-ton weight tries to descend on me. Why would anyone want to feel this? For years, I’ve watched secondhand as Lo’s hurt affected Lily, and Lily’s hurt affected Lo—never did I believe I’d reach my own tipping point with the pain of love.

Never did I believe it’d be too overwhelming for me.

I look at Rose. “Then what do you want?”

“The truth,” she says. “Not just facts.”

“You can’t handle it, Rose.”

She almost appears wounded. She’s fine. Then her eyes flash hot, indignant again. She points a manicured nail into my chest. “You can’t handle it, Richard. If you could

, you’d tell me the full extent of what happened.”

I don’t want to confront her or tell her the truth. I’ll see her pain. I’ll feel it churn through me, and I won’t—I can’t bear this weight. I’m stronger alone. “Let me live with this knowledge. You don’t need it.”

She fists my shirt. “I won’t let you lie to yourself. I made you that promise, and I’m keeping it.” She stares down at me, her forehead nearly pressed against mine. I match the rhythm of her heavy, vexed breath.

“Everyone except you loves this version of me, so maybe it’s you who’s wrong.”