Fuel the Fire (57 page)

“My scale.” He grins.

I roll my eyes. “Well, on
my
scale, the cost of your soul outweighs everything else.”

“How selfish am I going to be, Rose?” he asks me.

Baaaaa!
Jane hits the same button. She giggles, and Connor leans forward and flips the page to a frog on a lily pad.

“Fate says you should be as selfish as you want.”

“I can’t listen to your fate or lambs in children’s books. I just have to listen to the facts.”

“You can’t listen to your heart?” I roll my eyes again at how banal it sounds.

“If I listened to my heart, it would only say to protect my girls, nothing more.”

“If you listened to your heart, it would ask if you’re alive,” I combat. “After the press conference, will you truly be? And I’m not talking literally, Connor, so don’t bring up anatomy and blood vessels.”

A fraction of a smile appears and then falls back into deep contemplation. “I don’t know, Rose.”

I don’t know
. It’s a phrase Connor rarely utters. Hearing it now pulls at me.

“Let’s do the crossword,” I say, setting my mug aside and gathering the newspaper. “I’ll let you choose the topic.”

He arches a brow. “You’ll let me?” His grin almost returns, and it’s enough to shove the press conference in the back of my mind, shelving it once more.

[ 53 ]

CONNOR COBALT

I help Lo clean out the lake house’s fridge before we leave. We toss anything that might spoil in a black garbage bag. My mind is always at work, but it’s been spinning faster today, roaming through hundreds of thoughts.

“You okay?” Lo asks again, chucking leftover scrambled eggs.

I wear this faraway look that I can’t quite extinguish. “You remember your wedding?” I put an extra packet of hamburgers in the freezer.

“You’re thinking about my wedding right now?”

I’m thinking about everything.
“It’s taking up a portion of my brain,” I say easily. I officiated his wedding, so I had an opening speech prepared. I only shared it with Rose before I spoke that day, and the girl who rarely sheds tears started bawling in our bedroom. I knew it was right, but after everything I’ve personally been through recently, the meaning holds greater power for me.

“I can’t forget my wedding day, not that I would ever try,” he tells me with a smile, opening the trash bag wider as I chuck the milk.

I hold his gaze. “When I said that you and Lily were the strongest people I’ve ever had the honor to meet, I meant every word.” I can’t even imagine, for a moment, battling the type of demons that they have
every day
of their lives, where it affects the person they love, where it tears them down equally. It’s torture that I can barely experience, and I am in awe that they came out alive, together.

Lo nods a couple times, watching me to find the origin of my thoughts. “You and Rose—you’re pretty much superheroes in my world, you know? If anyone wins in the end, it’s you.”

I have trouble believing words I always thought to be true.

My doubt is new, but it’s lingering softly. I know in a few days, I’ll push it away. It’s just the uncertainty, the gray-washed future with no detectable paths that clouds my usually sound and assured judgment.

“Lo!” Lily calls from the top of the staircase. “Did you already put Moffy’s diaper bag in the car?!”

“Shit,” he curses, hesitating to leave.

“Go,” I tell him, taking his trash bag.

“Thanks, love,” he says. “You always know how to finish strong.”

I smile as he leaves. I spend a couple minutes tossing mostly empty and half-eaten items. We don’t have enough room in the trunk to pack coolers and save perishable food. I grab the quarter-full carton of orange juice.

“Hey, don’t fucking toss that.” Ryke approaches and steals the carton from my hand. He unscrews the cap and chugs the juice. While he drinks, he shoves something hard in my chest.

I take hold of the item…a decent-sized
book.
The title and part of the cover is obscured by a sticky note. I make out his handwriting that says,
Merry fucking Christmas.

I can’t hide my surprise, not today.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I planned to give it to you next Christmas, but I couldn’t wait.” His voice is less rough than usual. He nods to me. “Page two-sixty.”

I’m honestly speechless, but he doesn’t linger for a reply. He trashes the now empty carton of orange juice, leaving me alone.

I peel off the sticky note and skim the cover, orange and yellow hellfire blossomed around gargoyle creatures, like they’re nestled in flowers made of flames.

It’s the Penguin Classics edition of
Man and Superman
, a four-act drama by George Bernard Shaw. I’ve read it once before, but in no way can I recall what’s on page two-sixty by memory. So I do as he instructed and turn to the precise location.

The play ends on two-forty-nine, and Shaw’s
Maxims for Revolutionists
begins. In a section titled “Reason”—Ryke highlighted a quote in yellow.

I silently read the words:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

I rest my forearm on the counter, and the trash bag falls out of my grasp. The passage hits me harder than I thought it could.

I’ve always been the reasonable man. It’s easier. I tend to go after the harder challenges, but not when it’s like beating my brains against a brick wall.

To be
unreasonable
for the first time in my life—can I even do it? 

[ 54 ]

CONNOR COBALT

“Mr. and Mrs. Cobalt won’t be taking questions from the press, so if you have any planned, we suggest you put them away,” Naomi advises the collection of journalists and photographers that have gathered for the press conference. I stand backstage with Rose, our daughter, and her parents and our friends, waiting for my cue to greet the media.

Lily whispers, “It’s already streaming live on GBA News.” She has Lo’s cellphone cupped in her hands, and she flashes the screen to us. Sure enough, my publicist stands behind a podium with about ten microphones attached, insignias of each news station printed on them.

In seconds, that’ll be me.

I can’t determine what I feel in this particular moment. I don’t have time to call Frederick to ask. Rose lifts Jane higher on her hip, and Jane says, “Daddy!” Her exclamation echoes in the speakers of Lily’s phone, which means the microphones caught her voice.

I rest a hand on Rose’s back and then kiss Jane’s cheek. She touches my jaw with a wider smile, and I say quietly so only Rose and Jane could possibly hear, “The only apology I will make today is to the two of you.” What I decide affects them, more than anyone else backstage.

“It’s unneeded,” Rose tells me, her shoulders pulled back, chin raised, ready for war. I love her for it. “So pocket your unnecessary apology.”

I smile at the passion in her voice. “My pockets are full, darling.”

She rolls her eyes. “Of what?”

“Of love.”

She presses her lips to stop from smiling, but she’s doing a horrible job hiding it.

“She’s smiling for me,” I muse. “It’s a standing ovation before the speech has even begun.”

She controls her expression and it morphs into a glare.

I grin. “Rose, Rose, Rose,” I feign contemplation, “always making me work for the win.” Just how I like.

“Richard, Richard,
Richard
,” she practically smites my name. And then she pauses, her eyes drilling into me. “Go win.”

It brings me back to the moment, and Naomi pads through the black curtain, entering backstage. “They’re waiting for you,” she tells me.

I kiss Rose’s cheek and then Jane’s again. I leave their side.

Corbin lingers by the stage entrance. “Where’s your speech?” His eyes dance around my suit.

“In my head,” I say easily.

He curses like this is going to go terribly.

“Do you know me?” I ask him. I never cower, not an inch of my six-foot-four build. With every ounce of confidence I possess, I remain upright, assured and tall.

He takes too long to answer, so I extend my hand to shake his, as though we’re meeting for the first time. By the guile of my assertive demeanor, he does shake my hand.

“I’m Richard Connor Cobalt,” I tell him. “The man whose IQ doubles yours. I would suggest scripts for yourself, maybe line-by-line and in large font, but I won’t ever need one.” I pat him on the shoulder. “I’d tell you to remember this, but I’m extremely hard to forget.”

I push past his startled body and enter the main stage. Cameras flash in quick succession, journalists seated in about eight rows with tripods stationed around the parameter, filming the conference. I stand behind the glass podium.

No paper.

No teleprompter.

I haven’t rehearsed a poignant speech for hours on end. I haven’t recited anything to Rose or in the mirror. I construct what I need to say in the moment, and I trust myself wholeheartedly to accomplish this to my high, impossible standards.

I’m used to the bright flashes, and I hardly blink as they appear in waves. Every journalist sits erect, eager for answers:
Did you really sleep with those guys? Have you had sex with Loren? Do you really love Rose? How does Jane fit into all of this?

When the cameras settle and I’m no longer bathed in blinding light, I finally speak. “There is nothing that the media could say to me that would justify the way they’ve acted. You can hound me. You can follow
me
, but in no way should you frighten those around me. To harm my
wife
and potentially harm my daughter—there is no excuse that could put any of you on the right side of morality.”

The day where Rose almost fell in a hoard of cameramen floods me. Many news stations condemned the paparazzi for surrounding us, for causing Rose to rip out her hair just to protect our daughter, but not much has changed since then.

“Is she your wife only in the legal sense?!” a reporter yells. Security squeezes through the rows to escort him out, but he struggles to stay put, clinging to the frame of his plastic chair.

I don’t acknowledge him. “I met Rose when I was fifteen and she was fourteen, and through what she would call fate and I’d call circumstance of our hobbies, we’d cross paths dozens of times over the course of a decade.”

I’m unlocking a private history book for millions of people to read, and maybe they still won’t understand the love I share with Rose, but they’ll at least know how much I desire her.

“At seventeen, I attended the same national Model UN conference as Rose, and a delegate for Greenland locked us in a janitorial closet. He also stole our phones.”

The journalists chuckle at the image.

“He had to beat us dishonorably because he couldn’t beat us any other way.” I stare around the room, at all of them, and they quiet at this statement. “Rose said being locked in a confined space with me was the worst two hours of her life.”

They look bemused, brows furrowing. I can’t help but smile.

“You’re confused because you don’t know whether she was exaggerating or whether she was being truthful. But the truth is that we are complex people with the ability to love to hate and to hate to love, and I wouldn’t trade her for any other person.”

They jot notes, the cameras flash again.

“So that day, stuck beside mops and dirtied towels, I could’ve picked the lock five minutes in and let her go. Instead, I purposefully spent two hours with a girl who wore passion like a dress made of diamonds and hair made of flames. Every day of my life, I am enamored. Every day of my life, I am bewitched. And every day of my life, I spend it with
her.
”

My chest swells with more power, lifting me higher.

“I’ve slept with many different kinds of people, and yes, the three that spoke to the press are among them.”

The flashes increase, along with mutterings, but I never waver.

“Rose is the only person I’ve ever loved, and through that love, we married and started a family. There is no other meaning behind this, and for you to conjure one is nothing less than a malicious attack against my marriage and my child.”

I pause, and they all wait intently again. As though I’ll slam the gavel right after I announce what I am. After I step into their box so they can better understand.

“
Anything
else has no relevance. I can’t be what you need me to be. So you’ll have to accept this version or waste your time questioning something that has no answer. I know acceptance isn’t easy when you’re unsure of what you’re accepting, but all I can say is that you’re accepting me as
me
.”

They go from bewilderment to being aware that this may end with loose threads.

In my eyes, it’s all tied up.

I rest my hands on either side of the podium. My eyes grazing the journalists, the camera lenses, and I settle proudly and comfortably with the choice I’ve made.

I leave them with a quote from Sylvia Plath.

“‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.’” My lips pull higher, into a livelier smile. “‘I am, I am, I am.’”

With this, I step away from the podium, and I exit to a cacophony of journalists shouting and asking me to clarify.

Adapt to me.

I’m satisfied, more than I even predicted.

Some people will rewind this conference on their television, to listen closely and try to understand me. I don’t need their understanding, but my daughter will—and I hope the minds of her peers are wide open with vibrant hues of passion.

I hope they all paint the world with color.

[ 55 ]

ROSE COBALT

It’s 3 a.m. and I barely drove to Manhattan undetected. As I enter a wealthy apartment complex, I lift my oversized sunglasses to my head. They’ve been obscuring my vision in the dark of night, but I needed a decent disguise. Since Connor’s poignant speech this afternoon, the media hasn’t lost their rabid bite. They’ve tried to leech all of us for a clearer, more definitive answer.