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Loving someone else isn’t easy. It doubles pain. It doubles worry. It doubles sentiments that I dislike in one dose. Loving someone else is a complex web of emotions, trying to ensnare me.
And I’ve been caught before.
When Rose went into labor, I truly thought this may be the day where I lose everything. Stuck on a freeway in my limo, her survival rested in my hands. I was terrified at the idea of losing love. Love—of all sentiments, of all things. It’s a gut-wrenching, nearly debilitating idea, and I tried to push it away as I delivered our daughter and while Rose bore the pain.
People called me a hero, but I never felt more human.
I suddenly feel a hand slide on my shoulder and a body sinks beside me. I look to my left, and Rose curls her fingers around mine. I wear apologies in my eyes, but her enflamed, narrowed gaze pins to the laptop screen, prepared to battle things that I’ve let drive over me.
“Have you read it yet?” she asks, lifting the computer off my lap. I notice Ryke standing to greet Loren and Lily in the foyer.
“Not yet,” I breathe.
“We’ll read it together then.” Her voice trembles, her yellow-green eyes alight with destruction.
I hold her closer to my side, bracing her stiff frame to my body. I focus again on the article, and I graze over information Henry has already explained, exact names of my exes never written or mentioned. Just “a source” and “we’ll reveal more as the story continues to break”—meaning this isn’t the end.
I land on the words that surprise me the most. Rose inhales sharply, reading it too.
Sources claim that Connor Cobalt knew the truth would be exposed soon. It explains why—for the past four months—he’s been amplifying any public displays of affection towards his wife. To name just a few: he went down on his wife in a parking lot back in January, visited a sex store in February, and performed a striptease in March.
It’s all been an act to fool people.
What we believe: they’re not in love. Their marriage is nothing more than a business arrangement. Celebrity Crush has reached out to the Calloways and Cobalts respective representatives and neither has issued a statement yet, but we’re certain someone will speak out soon. And when they do, we’ll be here to report it. So stay tuned.
I shut the laptop violently, and I stand, clasping Rose’s hand in mine before she can even speak. I lead her out of the living room, her rigid body moving mechanically, in the daze that I’ve been crawling through for the past five minutes.
I’m more awake now. They’re spinning our game—everything we’ve done in the past four months to protect the babies—around on us. They flipped the script, yanking guns out of our hands and pointing them directly at our heads.
Our six-month plan just backfired.
I saw consequences and the risk. There was always a cost attached. I’m not foolish to believe it was ever infallible. By nature, tests are meant to fail or they’re meant to succeed.
I just never believed it would fail like this.
There’s not a forty-ton pendulum hitting me anymore. It’s two-hundred-tons of cement, burying me beside my wife.
“Where are you going?” Lo asks as I pass him, Lily, and Ryke to head upstairs, Rose in tow.
“We need a minute.” Or five. Or an hour.
Rose is rooted to the center of my being, and I ache to scream—to yell at anyone attempting to dig her out, to hollow me. To leave me soulless and meaningless.
My defenses waver in my mind.
We have sex tapes.
Staged, they will say.
We have a child.
Business arrangement, they will argue.
I am hopelessly in love with her.
Who else can see this but you?
[ 35 ]
ROSE COBALT
Connor shuts our bedroom door, my brain on fire. I am on fire, my arms shaking from something much greater and hotter than rage. My phone buzzes in my fist, and I ignore the calls and texts from my mother and father, setting the cell on the dresser.
Slowly, I rotate to face my husband, ten feet separating us—tension entrenched within my solid bones. His eyes are bloodshot from restraining emotion, but he stands tall, all six-foot-four of him. His gaze holds acceptance of our fate that I’ve only just hatefully consumed.
He studies my reaction, the way I rub my hands together and inhale short breaths.
“Lily has been in this situation before…” I remember how the media casted doubt about her relationship with Loren, and then three-way rumors surfaced with Loren, Lily, and Ryke in the center. They made it out of that unscathed. So can we.
“And?” His deadened voice drums against my heart.
My nose flares, and I raise my chin. My efforts to instill confidence in myself feel more like an ill-fitting mask. “What other people think doesn’t matter…because it’s a little rumor.” My voice betrays me, quaking each syllable. “It’s what I told her before…that people can say whatever they want, but you know the truth. You love him.”
As the words leave my lips, he closes the space between us, clasping my wrist and pulling me into his chest. Our rigid bodies weld together, and he clutches me in a firm, comforting embrace, but I catch sight of his jaw muscles, constricting. He submerges as many pained sentiments as me.
Very softly, he whispers, “I’m so sorry, Rose.”
I choke out a breath. Do not cry. “You shouldn’t apologize for this.” I fist his button-down, my gaze piercing him between the eyes. He stares unflinchingly at me. We need battle armor. We need guns and cannons. We need to hit them like they’ve hit us. Revenge—blood-curdling, soul-screaming revenge blares in my charred brain.
Connor is more logical.
He values no part of revenge the way I do. We’ll feel better once it happens, doesn’t he see? They’ll pay, whoever betrayed him, and we’ll rise again.
He cups my face, his large hand cloaking me, and his deep blue eyes pour roughly through me like an invisible riptide. “It matters,” he says, shoveling the coldest truth in my direction, and a chill snakes icily across my neck. He’s never been one for false hope, not towards me. “I’m sorry that it does. This isn’t a baseless rumor like the ones with Lily, Loren, and Ryke. The media has actual evidence that discredits us, our marriage and our love, and public perception will be overwhelmingly against us, unlike anything they faced.” His thumb strokes my cheek. “This isn’t close to the same caliber.”
I swallow hard, my nose flaring again. Do not cry. “Our companies can handle the blows.” Calloway Couture is now attached to Hale Co. It has an iron-structure that’ll support any crippling movement. Cobalt Inc. is usually sturdy, and previously led by Katarina Cobalt—I bet the bo
ard members are just as progressive as she was. Connor shouldn’t be shunned by them.
“It’s not our companies I’m worried about,” he tells me.
Translation: I care only about our future together.
Jane…and all the kids we’ve thought to have along the way.
The other kids may be gone now, but we have Jane. It will affect her. I can’t even begin to picture the type of ridicule and judgment she’ll face from her peers. Everyone will believe she was born from a cold, heartless arrangement by robotic, unfeeling parents. I’ll wrap her in my unbending arms, no matter how rigid I may be or how mechanic I may seem, and I’ll shield her from this unjust storm the best I can.
I say to him, “You’re worried about Jane.”
“And you.”
I press a hand to his chest, taking a single step back. “I can handle this, just as you can. We’re equals.”
“No.” He clasps my wrists, stopping me from rubbing my hands again.
“No? What do you mean, no?”
“I don’t want to be equals with you,” he announces, his voice terribly flat.
My lips part, pain clawing at my lungs. “You don’t mean that.”
His eyes redden. “I mean everything I say to you.”
Tears threaten to well. Do not fucking cry, Rose.
“I want you to be better than me,” he declares, tugging me back to his body by my wrists. We can handle this. We can handle this. We can handle this. I’ll repeat it until it becomes a truth and not a mocking sound in my head. He holds my cheek. “Look at me, Rose.”
I’ve been avoiding his clarity, and he tries to pull me towards it.
When I meet his gaze, he says, “This is the worst.”
The King Lear quote punctures my head: The worst is not. So long as we can say, “this is the worst.”
He can’t fix this.
We can’t fix this.
“No.” I try to push him off, but he holds me tighter, my wrist aching from one of his hands.
“Yes,” he forces. “There is nothing we can do but bear it.”
“I’ll defend my love for you,” I retort, fire scorching my heart.
