Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters 3)

needed her to support Connor and my love for him, even if she didn’t fully understand it.

“No, I don’t blame you.” She touches her necklace, not her usual strand of pearls. This time, it’s a silver locket. “I rushed to judgment…me and your father did.” Before she can say anything more, the sunroom door opens and Connor and my father slip inside.

They both seem at ease, and Connor wears his usual complacent expression, not divulging much. He nears, tickling Jane’s arm, and she giggles and squirms against my hip.

“Your father apologized,” he explains, eyes flitting back to my dad.

My father nods repeatedly and clears his throat. “It’s easy for me to go on the offense when I feel like my daughters and my company are being threatened at the same time. It wasn’t right, but…I was just seeing red. I’m sorry.”

It’s nice to be back on these terms, and I sincerely hope it’ll last. “I appreciate the apology,” I say.

“Did you hear that Scott wasn’t granted bond?” he asks both of us.

Before we can say yes, my mother chimes in, “He should get a maximum sentencing after what he’s done.” I spot the rage in her stiff posture. She can be a protective mother hen, I suppose. It just takes the right kind of bullet to head towards us before she grows horns and breathes fire like me.

“Connor doesn’t think he’ll go to trial,” I tell them.

Scott is stuck in jail since the judge denied him bond, so he has to sit there and wait for what could potentially be months. He’s being tried in federal court, so it’s likely he’ll try to worm his way out by a plea deal.

My mother looks horrified at the notion. “A jury needs to convict him.”

“If he pleads guilty,” Connor says, “and takes the deal, it probably won’t be much better than a trial.” Scott Van Wright is looking at five to ten years in prison.

And his name will not cloud the jubilant atmosphere of Jane’s first birthday, so I decide to change the subject. “Mother says you’re dieting,” I tell my father, a clear digression but I’ve never been subtle.

He laughs once into a smile. “My cholesterol is high.”

“Where’s the birthday bunny?! We come with presents!” Daisy exclaims before the door even opens. My parents turn to greet the large group of people, all squeezing into the sunroom, and I go near the other end of the table with Connor, settling in the head wicker chair with Jane on my lap. He sits adjacent to me.

I won the right to sit here after a thirty-minute game of Scrabble this morning. I only beat him by two points.

“Winners sit at the head of the table, Jane,” I tell her.

She waves around her stuffed lion and looks up at me with big blue eyes. “Mommy…” I can’t really understand anything else. Sometimes I think I can, but then I realize I just want to hear actual sentences, and it’s my mind pretending her noises are intelligible words.

“You’re glowing,” Connor says. He has his finger to his jaw, his grin widening as I meet his eyes.

“I’m not pregnant, if that’s what your oversized brain is thinking.” The mention of pregnancy downturns my lips. Jane is supposed to be an only child, Rose. Whatever other babies I birth will belong to Daisy.

“I wasn’t, but clearly you were,” he says easily, as though the topic hardly plagues him. I don’t see how it doesn’t.

I think about our lost dream almost daily, and never once do I begin to smile.

Happy thoughts, Rose. It’s Jane’s first birthday, a momentous, joyful occasion on June 10th. Being sad about not having more of my own children on my actual baby’s birthday is downright mean and almost sacrilegious.

I try to be better. Maybe this is what life is always like.

Connor scoots his chair closer to me.

“Are you cheating, Richard?” He’s trying to sit at the head of the table with me.

“Would you love me if I was a cheater?” he asks. In my peripheral, I notice our friends and family beginning to take their seats.

“Why do you ask me questions that you know the answer to?”

He steps over my comment. “You love me so I couldn’t possibly be a cheater.”

Mind games. Riddles. Paradoxes. My head beats with them all. And I’m transported to us at sixteen and seventeen, when we were locked in a janitorial closet at Model UN together. I never knew he had the means to let us out, not until he admitted it at the press conference.

“You told everyone a memory of ours,” I say, jumping to a new page of our book, and he follows me.

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I don’t,” I say softly. “But you forgot to tell them the part where you leaned in to kiss me, and I face-palmed you.”

He gives me a look and shakes his head. “That’s not how it went.”

I glare. “Yes it is. I have a perfect memory, Richard.”

He scoots even closer. Until his shoulder bumps into mine. “Moi aussi.” So do I. He lifts my chin with two fingers. “That day, you stared at me like you’re staring at me now.”

“And how’s that?”

“With passion,” he says it with his own bout of passion. “You looked at my lips and I looked at yours.”

He’s already roped me in, and I draw nearer, our knees knocking.

“We never touched, but I made love to your mind. When you had enough, that’s when you face-palmed me.”

I made love to your mind. He’s never uttered those words before, but I think I’m in love with them. “Hmmm,” I say.

His brows rise. “Hmm?”

“Your memory isn’t terrible.”

He laughs into another grin. “You do love me.”

“And you love stating the obvious,” I point out. I don’t stare at him to see his full-blown grin that overtakes his face. I rarely agree that I love him to the extent that he claims, even if it’s always true. Someone clinks a wine glass, and I redirect my attention to the filled table, every family member and friend seated.

We’re all here, including Willow, Sam, Poppy…and Jonathan. He’s positioned between my father and Sam, and his hair looks thinned on the sides, as though he’s been battling stress.

I’m surprised that he stays quiet, and maybe he’s a little guilt-ridden like Connor has claimed.

Loren rises with chilled water in his left hand, his right hand in a black cast. As the table hushes, I take in the moment, the smiling faces of my three sisters, my parents with their hands clasped together beside a coffee cup, the quiet morning in my childhood home, Connor so close that his arm fits across my chair, and my daughter here, on my lap, hugging her lion.

“I know it’s Janie’s birthday, but after everything that has happened to you two”—he gestures with his water glass to Connor and me—“I have something to say.”

This could go fairly bad or fairly well, but I have a lot more faith in Loren Hale to swing in a direction that won’t cause World War III, me leading a platoon against him.

“I may always say that Rose is as cold as ice and Lily may always say that Connor must be a planetary alien,” Lo begins, Lily nodding beside him while bouncing Maximoff on her knees, “but you both have astronomical-sized hearts, you know that?”

I look to Connor, and his fingers have returned to his jaw in contemplation. We have hearts. It’s not an earth-shattering realization. I know I have a heart. I know Connor has one too, but for other people to acknowledge this is rare. Our hearts are submerged beneath the thickest, densest armor that we only let a select few through.

Loren continues, “You’ve both never judged me for being an addict, and even when tons of people judged you and questioned you—you forgave them.” He shakes his head in disbelief at the notion, that we’d all congregate together peacefully in the end. “This table is full because of your compassion, and I want you to know that I can see it.” He turns to my parents, his father, Sam and Poppy. “And everyone here sure as hell better see it too.”

At this, my father rises with his mimosa, a

nd then my mother follows suit in solidarity. When Jonathan rises, water in hand, the tension strangely untangles. He has a ways to go to repair his relationships with his sons, but being here without being an ass is a start.

I watch Poppy join them, then Sam and their daughter, Maria.

When Lily stands beside Lo, she clears her throat, already turning red. I watch her raise her chin triumphantly and then pull back her shoulders. Go, Lily. And she says with confidence, “I think if we can come together after everything that’s happened, our kids are better for it.” She nods in resolution.

I breathe through my nose, holding back emotion that swells my chest. I don’t like the feeling of people towering over me, so I rise next with Jane on my hip. Connor is quick to follow.

Ryke and Daisy are the only two still seated, which isn’t entirely surprising. Out of everyone, they’ve faced the most dissention from inside the family.

Ryke leans back and shakes his head. “Is this for real?” he has to ask. “Because I’m not standing up if in three months this side of the table”—he motions to our parents—“make our lives hell because you believed a fucking tabloid rumor over us.”

My father clears his throat and pauses, trying to find the right way to share his emotions. “…I know I’ve doubted a few of the men here with my daughters.” His eyes ping from Sam to Ryke and lastly to Connor, a fresher doubt than the other two. “I can’t apologize for caring about my girls, but I can apologize for putting a strain on your relationships and feeling as though you had to choose between the people you loved and your family.” He pauses. “It’s time for that to change.”

Ryke’s lips slowly part in disbelief. Over the course of a year, I knew my father has warmed to Ryke and Daisy’s relationship, but I don’t think he ever outwardly expressed this to Ryke.

My mother straightens, knowing half of Ryke’s statement was directed at her. “You went through liver transplant surgery for your father, and you want to know what I told Jonathan—you’d never do it.” Her hand loosens on her mimosa glass. It’s a subtle acknowledgement that she’s misjudged Ryke too. “I don’t want to live like everyone is out to get my family, and it starts by trusting the people we should trust.” She says, “And I trust you.”