Long Way Down (Calloway Sisters 4)

My father.

And then Greg, Daisy’s dad.

I’m not even upset to see them. I’m kind of relieved that they’d show up. After all that’s happened between us through the years. I’m used to discord. To fragmented things. I’d much rather these relationships stand whole. I don’t want to chip at them.

Rose sits strictly in her chair and rests her hand on her round stomach. Her eyes flit across the monitors and IV stands. “This place is depressing.”

I’ve known her long enough to read the subtext of what she says. This place is depressing actually means I’m fucking nervous to go into labor. Since her false contractions, she’s probably more aware of her impending due date.

“It’s sterilized,” Lo combats. “I thought you’d love it here.” He swings Moffy to the left, and the kid grabs a yellow paper daisy.

My lips lift a fraction.

Rose glowers. “Shut up, Loren,” she says weakly.

Connor asks his wife, “Es-tu souffrante?” Are you in pain?

She says, “Un peu, dans le dos.” A little, my back.

I’m not even sure how he fucking noticed. She seems fine besides shifting very fucking slightly in the chair.

Connor sidles behind her, one hand keeping his daughter on his side, but he rubs her shoulder and back with the other. She shuts her eyes a couple of times, obviously enjoying the massage, especially as his hand rises to her neck.

And then his gaze lands on mine.

There’s something there that I understand but can’t fully grasp. Whatever he has to say, I know what it is but then I’m not entirely fucking sure. It’s like comprehending a ripped page of a book, and Connor holds the other half.

Maybe it boils down to this: I have no fucking clue what’s going through his head. I rarely do. Not until he tells me, and for a while, I’ve been asking him to restrain his opinions.

I don’t want your fucking wisdom, Cobalt.

I’d take it back right now.

I’d give anything for him to make an arrogant comment, interject and call me a fucking dog. His silence annoys me, grates on me, and I just need him to go back to irritating me.

That’s our thing.

In this moment, everyone stares between us, Connor’s blue eyes full of unwanted truths. Never leaving mine. I need to talk to him. He was the one with Daisy and my brother.

I end up asking, “You going to fucking say something?”

“What is there to say?”

My jaw muscles twitch. “I’m glad you’re fucking alive, Ryke.”

“I’m glad you’re alive, Ryke,” Connor repeats, only with his annoying passivity.

The strain inside the room thickens like an invisible haze. It must be bad enough because Daisy says, “Hey, how about we all go grab some lunch and bring it back here?” Most everyone nods in agreement. Daisy leans closer to me and whispers, “Is a sub sandwich okay or do you want chicken?”

“A sub is good.” I kiss her before she leaves. Rose is too big to hold Janie, but Lily scoops the sleeping two-year-old from Connor’s arms. Moffy seizes three more paper flowers as he’s being carried out.

Connor rests his shoulder against the wall, arms crossed, and we both watch our friends and family exit. When the door slams closed, he doesn’t hesitate to speak.

“I was the one who carried Daisy into the hospital when she was bleeding.”

As hard as it is to hear, I want to know. I slowly bring up my sore left leg, setting my arm on my knee. Every action has so much resistance, my muscles fucking taut like a rubber band that refuses to stretch.

“Lo was horrible,” he continues. “When we brought Daisy to the emergency room, he tried to leave me and sneak out the back. I had to literally block his exit with my body. After a couple minutes, he just…crumbled at my feet.”

I run both of my hands through my hair multiple times, caught in the fucking IV lines, but I fix them. When I glance back at Connor, his eyes are glassed over.

Mine burn raw.

“I’m a man of extraordinary talents, but I need you.” He swallows. “Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Pain begins to throb in my thigh. “It’s kind of a fucking moot point. I don’t even know if I can ever climb again, so you get what you want whether I say it or not.”

“I’m not asking you to quit climbing.”

My brows knot, so fucking confused.

“I heard Daisy,” he says.

Those three words—I heard Daisy—stir more emotion in me than I can process. She’s been my advocate for a long time, and she believed no one was listening to what she had to say. Now look, Dais.

“I heard her when we went to the fertility doctor. I understand that you don’t value opportunity cost or risk and reward. I understand that we see the world differently and neither is wrong. I understand all of this. I have for a long time.” He pauses. “So I’m not asking you to quit the thing that fuels you.”

I drop my left leg. “Then what are you asking?”

“I’m asking you to care about your life,” he says, “more than you do now. Can you do that?”

I open my mouth, about to argue—to tell him how much I care about my fucking life—but that’s not exactly what he’s telling me. I wonder if Connor asked Search and Rescue what happened. In fact, I’m almost fucking certain he did. He probably read the report, knew that there was a way I could have safely guided myself to the ground—even if it meant leaving my friend on the wall.

I would have been okay.

I care about my life, but not enough to choose the sounder route for myself in these situations. Not enough to find ways we both could have made it through safely. I just wanted him to live.

That’s fucking it.

But if I reversed time, could I honestly return to that rock wall and leave Sully behind?

There’s no fucking way.

“Ryke,” Connor says in my silence. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Connor Cobalt used to put himself above every person in this world. Self-centered, conceited, arrogant as fuck—he’s still these things but somehow he learned to be a little less selfish.

He wants the opposite for me.

The selfish man is telling me to be a little less selfless.

He thinks it’ll kill me. For fuck’s sake, it almost did.

I’m lost for words. For time. And peace. And tangible fucking things. I just want to feel like I’m not breaking apart.

He takes a step closer to me and stops, and I notice that his emotions are crashing through his brick-walled exterior. In a rare moment, he drops his gaze to the floor, collecting his thoughts, before he returns his focus to me.

“There are people that love you here,” he breathes. I can practically hear the shadow of his words: I held them in my arms. I’m standing here.

Pain rips into my chest. I know he’s not being cruel. I know he understands what I lost. But I think he’s here fighting for my future that I can’t see.

And I know what he’s fucking saying, in so few words, even if it sounds impossible in my head. In the heat of the moment, I only think about what’s happening in front of me. I struggle thinking about things that I’ll lose

. My wife. My brother. Maybe even my child. What they’ll lose. I tune it all out.

“Do you remember what I wrote in your journal?” he asks. “The part in Italian.”

A Christmas or two ago, he wrote inside a journal I’d given him, all in different foreign languages, and he wrapped it and gifted it back to me. The parts I understand, I’ve read maybe a dozen times.

I lick my lips and say, “Ti rispetto e ti ammiro così tanto, amico mio. Mi hai aiutato ad essere altruista.” I respect and admire so much about you, my friend. You helped me be selfless.

I always come back to those words because they surprise me—that Connor Cobalt could admire a part of me. That he saw something else besides my blunt, rough exterior.

“I meant what I said,” Connor tells me. “I just didn’t realize, until yesterday, that this would be your downfall.”

I disagree out of instinct, shaking my head. He’s saying selflessness has been biting my ass, all along. It’s good to be these things in moderation, but too much of one thing is fatal. Too much pride. Too much arrogance. Too much spite. Too much kindness.

I never thought I’d be dubbed too fucking selfless. He’s wrong.

My stomach violently clenches. When has Connor Cobalt ever been wrong?

“All I’m asking is for you to find a way to care about your life a little more, so that you won’t end up here again. I’m a genius, but I’m not offering you an equation you can’t solve.” With intensity in his blue gaze, he says, “Dig a little deeper.”

I see the fear in his eyes. Like he’s losing me to something he sees ahead. Because there’s an integral piece of my soul that makes me me, but it’s also fucking dangerous.

Dig a little deeper.

To put myself above other people, in the very end. So that I can live longer. So that I can be there for the people I love. I’m not sure if another situation will ever arise like this—I fucking hope it won’t—but I hear what he’s saying.

Connor grabs my empty water cup. “I’ll refill this for you.”

As he heads to the door, I call out, “Wait.”

He stops, hand on the knob. His eyes are full of turmoil, letting me see more emotion than I ever fucking have. I actually think he may cry. His chest falls heavily.