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There is never a dull moment in the company of Loren Hale.
Altering the boundaries of our friendship makes it change shape, and I’m not sure if it’ll ever be the same as it was.
“You need to do what’s best for you,” I tell Lo, trying to make it easier for him.
His jaw sharpens, restraining emotion. “And ignoring you every day outside of this house is what’s best for me? Pretending like you don’t even exist? Now we can’t carpool to work. We won’t be able to pick up our kids from kindergarten at the same time, or eat lunch at the same restaurant. I can’t call you. I can’t text you. I can’t act like I care at all about you—it’s ass backwards.”
I try to find better words for him, “Lo—”
“You’ve helped me for years.” His brows pull hard. “Now it’s time I help you, and I’m not acting like you’re a leper because this guy tells me to. You may be fucking weird as hell when you and Rose start verbally sparring, but you’re my weirdo best friend. That’s not changing.”
Before I can even accept his declaration, shoes clap along the hardwood. I didn’t even hear the door shut, but Jonathan Hale stuffs his hands in his pockets, standing tall behind my couch. I immediately rise—the how part of this massive leak slapping me across the face. How did those three guys become pressured to break their agreements?
“It is changing, Loren,” Jonathan says. “You protect your wife, your son and your company. You don’t protect him.”
There are only three people that could’ve fucked me over:
Jonathan.
Theo.
Frederick.
Hearing the spite in Jonathan’s voice, I’d bet everything on him.
[ 37 ]
ROSE COBALT
Loren Hale’s features could kill, his jaw a battleax and his eyes steel blades. “When the entire goddamn world thought you molested me, I didn’t ignore you,” he tells his father. “And guess what? They still believe that, and here you are and here I am.”
“Our relationship has no affect on your family,” Jonathan sneers. “This does. Don’t be a fucking idiot, Loren.”
About three people, including me, prepare to interject, but Lo beats us to it. “You don’t get to speak to me like that—ever.” He rises off the loveseat and gives Lily a singular look like take Moffy out of here. She nods once before leaving for the kitchen.
Loren’s self-respect is a beautiful sight amid treachery, which first began with the crisis management to-do list, tallied with lies and shame, and now ends with Jonathan’s unwelcome appearance. I don’t like how Connor studies him, each standing on either side of the couch with strict postures.
There are answers that no one wants to hear. We’ve handled disloyalty at a grander, nastier scale once before and that person has been shunned from our group.
Ryke’s mother, Sara Hale, leaked Lily’s sex addiction to the press. I can barely imagine someone trying to repeat that mistake and the damage she caused.
Jane stirs in my arms, and I lift her a little, resting her head against my chest. She clutches onto my gold necklace.
“I’m helping you,” Jonathan retorts, drawing my attention to him. “If you can’t see that, then you need to open your…” he trails off at Lo’s scathing glare. I’m sending one too, but it’s not effective when Jonathan only concentrates on his son.
I can admit this: when I was a little girl, I was frightened of this man who crept into our house, bringing with him a kid that irked me to no end. Jonathan was always refined, dressed in thousand-dollar suits, tailor-made, with even more expensive liquor in hand. He had a tyrannical demeanor that crushed everyone in his wake.
He was the villain in classic James Bond films, but as I grew older I saw his flaws, the underbelly of the beast. Jonathan was so insecure, so tortured by the idea that his son would discover his rotten innards and then leave him. He’d do anything to keep Lo in arm’s reach.
He’d even become sober for him.
So while I was scared of Jonathan many years ago, he seems more human, less like a two-dimensional criminal. He’s frailer now. Not just in his age, sideburns graying and lines pulling by his eyes, but in his words that are riddled with fear.
Loren crosses his arms. “Connor is my best friend, so you’re telling me that you wouldn’t help Greg if he needed it?” He points at my father, who stands beside the Queen Anne chair. “That’s your best friend.”
“If you were the cost, no. I’d let Greg burn.”
Oh God.
My hand dazedly rises to my lips. My father has always been my buffer between Jonathan and Connor. If Jonathan hurt my husband, it’d mean he was hurting me, his best friend’s daughter. What he’s saying destroys that last piece of armor we had.
“What’d you do, Jonathan?” my father asks, his fingers gripping the top of my mother’s chair.
“Lo is running my company now. I’m trying to guide him, and then I learn about this one”—he jabs a finger in Connor’s direction—“the kind of things he’s done.”
Connor finally speaks. “Done, as in past tense. Your broad use of ‘things’ doesn’t help plead your case, and since you can’t articulate yourself, let me help you. I’ve had sex with men and women before I ever began dating Rose. I’d hope you at least know the anatomical difference of ‘men’ so I won’t clarify that for you.”
We all hang on every precisely constructed word, and my pulse skips with each tight breath Connor releases between them.
“Now this may be hard for you to understand,” Connor continues without missing a beat, “but I personally practice monogamy. I also believe in the customs of marriage, the promise to be faithful. I realize this term holds no grounds for you since you cheated multiple times on your ex-wife, but you shouldn’t use your experiences as weight against me. It’s illogical, fallible and frankly annoying.”
Jonathan opens his mouth, but Connor never gives him room for an interjection.
“Bypassing your sheer ignorance, you know that I am exceptionally loyal to my wife, so on what basis would I ever try to fuck your son?”
Jonathan goes to speak.
“That was rhetorical,” Connor cuts him off. “There are no rational grounds for what you’ve done. So when you tell me that you contacted these three guys from my past and pressured them to out me, you better believe that it was the stupidest decision you could’ve ever made. To put it plainly, you’ve just shot yourself in the fucking face.”
I stand next to Connor, supporting Jane on my hip. My brain fires synapses that say, claw Jonathan’s eyeballs, rip him to shreds. I envision a heinous, bloody murder, but my legs are congealed magma, unable to move even a step towards him.
“Je veux lui faire du mal,” I whisper to Connor, my voice trembling with pain and rage. I want to hurt him. It frightens me how badly I want to hurt this man.
Connor slides his arm around my waist, his lips to my ear. “It solves nothing, Rose.” He’s so outwardly calm, and I can’t for a second believe that’s what lies inside. His speech was one of anger, even if his words held very sparse inflection.
“Jonathan?” my father repeats, disbelief in his voice.
“Dad?” Lo frowns. “Tell me you didn’t do anything…”
He glares at Connor, never shifting his gaze to confront the people he never meant to wrong.
My mother stands all of a sudden. “Jonathan,” she scolds. “We’ve put our neck out for you multiple times, and if you knew anything at all about Rose’s husband, you had a duty to tell us first, not the press.”
I’m not surprised by my mother’s loyalty. She may be a lot of things, but when it comes to protecting the Calloway name, she takes a front row seat. I may be Cobalt legally, but to the media, I will always be Rose Calloway.
I protectively keep a hand on Jane’s head while she sleeps. “Do you even know what you’ve done?” I ask him.
Jonathan outstretches his arms. “I did what I felt was right.” He looks to Lo. “You don’t kn
ow what your friend is capable of, and if you weren’t going to separate yourself from him, I had to find a way to do it for you.”
His admittance makes me stagger back, but Connor holds me closer, his hand tightening as though he needs me by his side as much as I need him.
Guilt and pain shatters Loren’s expression. “No…” Lo shakes his head.
My face heats, and my eyes burn and narrow to sharp points. I keep wanting to say: If you ever come after my family…or if you ever try to hurt my daughter…or if you destroy the people I love…
But these threats have already expired.
Jonathan gestures to Connor. “You keep staring at me like you think I’m a fucking idiot, but you didn’t even stop this from happening.” His tone is less hostile, and his eyes flicker to Greg, seeing hurt scrunch my father’s face.
Jane is awake, and she lets out a high-pitched wail. I bounce her a little and stroke her head. I take a quick glance at Loren, his gaze haunted and plastered to the rug. I hear commotion from the kitchen, along with howls from a dog, and I can only guess that Daisy and Lily are trying to restrain Ryke from storming in the living room.
Connor watches that door as closely as he watches Loren as closely as he watches Jane and me. He’s that idle river, but for the first time, this is about him more than anyone. It has to be eating at his core, even if he barely shows it.
“I work within the realm of the law,” Connor tells Jonathan. “I don’t cast threats against someone’s livelihood or family—so when I face someone who plays a more immoral game than me, I’m not blind to the fact that I’m at a disadvantage. But it doesn’t mean that I can’t win.”
