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Lo nods. “Horrible way to go out.”
Moffy smiles more and then looks down at his cousin. He nudges her foot with his foot while she ties her laces. “Sorry, Sul, I tried.”
Sullivan rises to her feet. “Do you want to play checkers on the porch?”
“Yeah, sure.” Moffy nods to her. “Race you there.” He takes off with a wily fucking smile, and she determinedly follows suit, trying to beat him.
Lo and I finish stretching in five minutes, and then we both head inside, entering through the large kitchen. Lights on, almost completely silent. I shut the door behind me.
Just in drawstring pants, Connor plugs in a coffee pot, his blue eyes flickering to us as we near. We’re all older, but this guy—he doesn’t fucking age. Years will never wither him, never defeat him—he’s still incomparably confident, his dominance like a morning wake-up call. Can’t miss it. Not even before dawn.
He’s not alone, by the way.
He supports a sleeping three-year-old girl on his side, only using one hand to make coffee. She drools on his shoulder, dressed in pink floral PJs.
Lo heads to the fridge for water.
I help Connor with the coffee pot, which looks fucking broken. We stand side by side, only an inch height difference, but we’re both aware of how polar opposite we are—how we go at life at varied speeds and in contrasting directions.
I never stopped caring about him, and he never stopped giving me his wisdom.
He knows I like the quiet of the morning. So he doesn’t hassle me. I know he likes his coffee, so I try to fix this fucked-up thing.
We just understand one another—and I remember Dais once told me a theory. The relationships that take the most effort and time become the mightiest in the end.
Maybe she was right after all.
In my quietest voice, I ask him, “She okay?” I try to turn the machine on, but the lights never glow.
Connor soothingly rubs his daughter’s back, and he whispers, “She was afraid last night and didn’t sleep well.” His toddler is conked out now, rose-shaped clips in her red wavy hair.
Connor’s mother had red hair, but not exactly the same carrot-orange that Audrey Virginia Cobalt has. She’s really fucking adorable, even passed out on her dad.
A long nine years after Jane was born, Rose finally gave birth to another girl. Connor and Rose made good on their promise and stopped having children when girl number two came into the world.
Audrey is their youngest and last child. The girl that bookends the Cobalt family.
“Scared of what?” I ask quietly, having to abandon the broken coffee machine. We might have an extra in storage. I’ll look later.
“A great and terrible boogey,” Connor whispers. “Her words.”
Lo passes me a water bottle and whispers back, “What’s up with this boogey? My kid was crying all last night because of the same thing.”
I uncap my water. “Which kid?”
Lo has a lot.
“Kinney.” His youngest girl, also three like Audrey.
“The monster is fictional,” Connor tells us, “from the imagination of Eliot Alice Cobalt.” He purposefully frightened the little kids with a ghost story then.
Cobalt boys.
They all have some kind of mischief running through their fucking veins. All but Beckett.
I take a swig of water and nod at them like I’ll come back soon. To help with breakfast. As I walk away, their whispers drift in the background, but I’m certain whatever they had to say ended with love and darling.
The house is still asleep. Passing the spacious living room, dark and empty, I eye the indoor balconies. No one clamors across to annoy their siblings or chase after their cousins.
It’s just still and fucking calm.
As I climb the staircase, someone else does wake. It takes me less than a fucking second to figure out who. Always in pastel colors—pinks, blues, yellows, purples and greens—tired-eyed Jane Eleanor Cobalt descends the staircase, brown hair uncombed, frizzy and tangled. Teal sleep mask on her forehead that says meow, a zebra sweater, and knee-high socks with pink fuzzy tassels.
Her outfits never match, but that never prods her to change.
I can’t say that Janie is a spitting image of her mother, not with the brush of freckles across the tops of her cheeks and nose. I do see Rose in her longer face and her frame, but she’s without a doubt a mix of both parents.
Janie inhales a lungful and stretches her arms above her head. “Is that coffee?” she asks me in the softest voice.
“Coffee pot is broken.”
She sighs in a resigned way. “Merde.” Shit.
Janie has been cursing in French for the past year. A question lingers in her eyes as we pass on the stairs. “Where’s Moffy?”
“Outside playing checkers.”
Just as poised as her mom would be, she descends the rest of the stairs like she’s entering a royal fucking castle, not the living room of a multi-family lake house. I watch her head outside to find her best friend.
Then I continue up to the second level.
I thought she might’ve tried to work me over for something. I’d say Janie likes trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes, but all the girls do that with me.
Yesterday, Lo said that I’m a pushover. I let his eight-year-old daughter draw an alien on my arm and stars on my cheek with Sharpie. If Luna Hale asked to pen a spaceship on my forehead, I probably would’ve said just not in my eye.
So maybe what he told me is true, but when it comes to serious shit, I always stand my ground with the kids. No cellphones and internet here is something I’d enforce without question or fucking hesitation.
All the kids need a mental break from the media; it keeps them healthy. A lot of them don’t even put up a fight when we take their phones. It also keeps them from accidentally posting about our location.
This is the one place we can just exist peacefully. No paparazzi. No chaos. Just all of us, somewhere in the world, living freely. Doing commonplace things. Together.
I walk down the hall, not going far before reaching a certain door. It’s cracked. In fact, most of the bedroom doors are ajar. I shake my head—the ghost story must’ve frightened more than a couple kids.
I slip inside, our suitcases not unpacked yet, clothes and blankets littered everywhere along the rustic room, bear-patterned rug and log-framed bed. A half-bag of dog kibble has spilled on the floorboards, fuck.
My sole crunches the food, and I freeze, watching the two bodies beneath the quilt. One of them stirs, the other stays fast asleep.
Curled at the end of the mattress, our thirteen-year-old white husky blinks at me and then shuts her eyes again. Nutty doesn’t have a lot of energy to leap or run and play much anymore, but she seems content.
As quietly as I fucking can, I pull off my shoes and near my side of the bed. Daisy has her head on her pillow, blonde hair splayed wildly and fucking madly. Her tired eyes are already smiling at me.
My lungs practically flood. Just meeting her beautiful gaze. Pulling me towards her. Where I want to be.
She smiles like she knows. She smiles like she loves me just as much, just the same. And she whispers, “Hey there.”
I crawl gently onto the bed beneath the covers. “Hey,” I whisper back.
She grins more, eyes dancing over my sweaty body and damp hair. On her side, Dais reaches out and touches my unshaven jaw.
“My wolf,” she yawns into a larger smile.
And I just think, Daisy Petunia Meadows can sleep eight to ten hours. She can dream. She can feel that fucking peace. It took a long time, but it didn’t take forever. It didn’t pass her by.
I lean over the tiny mound between us and kiss Daisy’s cheek, then her lips. “How do you feel?” I whisper.
“Mmm, happy.” While I hover over her a little bit, she runs her fingers through my hair. I watch her green orbs twinkle at me. “You must be my husband,” she murmurs.
“Why?
” I think she’s going to make a joke about me being dirty or fucking sweaty.
Instead she says, “He asks me that every morning and every night.” She grips my hair a little harder like, don’t stop. Always ask me how I feel.
My brows rise. “That fucking so?”
“Oh yeah.” There’s an I love you in her features, and I wear my affection just as much.
I’m about to climb over to Daisy’s side, to wrap her in my arms, but the tiny mound between us begins to shift. We both pull back the quilt.
A four-year-old girl in blue dolphin-print PJs squeezes a stuffed sea turtle to her chest, and she giggles as soon as she sees us, like she’s been awake the entire fucking time.
Daisy mock gasps. “Who’s this in our bed?” She flings the covers back over the girl’s head, who giggles again, unable to hide her delight.
I can’t contain a smile at that noise.
“Ryke,” Daisy feigns surprise, “I think an animal has crawled into our bed.” She’s having trouble not laughing.
My brows rise again. “Maybe we should send her to the zoo.”
“No!” the girl says with laughter attached.
“And only eat blueberries,” Daisy adds ominously.
