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I slam the oven door closed harder than I intended. “You didn’t drop out.” I already hear her dad in my head. Samuel Stokes couldn’t shut up about the whole ordeal.
My daughter is choosing acting over a traditional education.
You’d think Captain America would be upset over the choice, but Sammy was over-the-moon. Like actually proud. I forgot that Sam had been into art growing up, kind of like Poppy, but he ditched his dreams for her. And he ultimately ended up working at Fizzle, her father’s company.
He’s happy she chose her passion.
Maria makes a face at Luna and shakes her long brown hair at the toddler.
Luna giggles but never speaks, still acting like she’s invisible. My lips curve up. My kid is cute. Example A: she’s in a dinosaur bathrobe and penguin slippers. Example B: she’s my kid.
“I kind of did drop out,” Maria says to me.
I give her a look. “What, do you want to be a dropout? You switched to homeschool. Last time I checked, the word school still implies an education.”
Maria shrugs. “It’s the same difference.”
My eyes narrow. “Take it from someone who has dropped out of higher education. It’s not the same. In one you learn…things, the other you don’t.” I stop myself from saying “learn shit” in front of my three-year-old. I set the timer on the oven and turn my full-attention to Maria. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re fifteen, and you started a career. Lil and I wouldn’t be pissed if you stopped babysitting for us.”
Maria lets out a laugh. “I was in a couple indie films, Uncle Lo. I’m not a big-time actress or anything. Plus, there are a lot of family dramas that deal with children. This is good experience for me.” She pauses and finally speaks to Luna, widening her eyes for my daughter. “Where’d you come from Lunalien?”
Luna gasps like she can’t believe she’s been found. “Outer space!”
“You have the antennas and everything.”
Luna wears a sparkly green headband with bulb antennas. Moffy called her a dinoalienguin this morning because of her wardrobe combination.
My small smile stretches. That’s my little girl. Christ. I love her more than I love most things. More than I love most fucking people. Moffy, Luna, and Xander fill this deep place in my heart that only Lily could ever reach.
“Let me guess.” Maria focuses back on me while Luna disappears into the pantry. “You’d rather stay here. Your dad is really scary, you know. Luncheons always suck when he shows up, so I can’t imagine dinner with him is pleasant. Like…” She shudders. “No.”
“It’s plesant-ish,” I say dryly. Not even surprised she has a bad taste in her mouth from Jonathan over the years.
Lily pushes into the kitchen, Xander on the crook of her hip. In a deeper sleep than usual, his cheek rests on Lil’s arm, drooling too. While Rose, Connor, Ryke, and Daisy have been dealing with their fertility stuff, the media has leeched onto us, almost cannibalizing our newborn for nine-months and counting.
It hasn’t slowed down. It won’t. His birth made international news. Not because he almost became an “elevator baby”—and really, Jane’s birth was way more insane since Connor delivered her himself in a goddamn limo. It’s not even because he was born on Christmas day.
It’s because Ryke and Lily were the two stuck in that elevator.
[Breaking News] Lily Calloway goes into labor with only Ryke in attendance! Versions of this landed on every major tabloid and entertainment news site. It’s technically accurate. He was the only one there at the beginning, so we have no room to complain.
They just twist the fucking facts. Making it seem like Ryke has closer ties to my wife than I do. That he cares for her beyond the role of a friend and brother-in-law. It’s dumb as fuck, and it’s not affecting anyone but Xander right now.
Journalists seek after him like a piece of celebrity meat. His life is newsworthy because his birth was literally everywhere. We can’t say the same for the other kids. Not like this.
Every new article they post, more people click into, which prompts them to keep writing more and more and more about him.
What’s Xander look like now?
Who is holding Xander?
Where do they take Xander?
Is he happy in so-and-so’s arms?
Moffy didn’t even have this kind of specific attention when he was first born.
When we go out, we can’t stop the cameras from hoarding around Xander. We can’t stop them from screaming his name. He cries every time we leave the house. He’s not even a year old yet, and this is just terrible. The only thing we can do is hold Xander close and tell him we won’t let anything or anyone hurt him.
Sometimes it just doesn’t feel like enough.
Maria cups her hands to her mouth. “Roll call!”
“Maximoff!” I hear from upstairs.
My daughter pops her head out of the pantry. “Luna!”
“Xander.” Lily speaks for our baby, wipes up his drool with the sleeve of her shirt, and then sets him in Maria’s outstretched arms.
Maria cradles the baby and rocks him back and forth. “You should hear the Cobalt boys do roll call. They’re awful at it. They all insist on using their full names and then correcting each other. Beckett still believes he was born before Charlie.”
Lily beams at the fact that our kids do something better than Connor and Rose’s. I bet it’s chaos at the Cobalt estate, but Connor, who’s never frazzled, probably views the hurricane like scattered showers.
Maria only babysits over there when Connor and Rose need a third set of hands. They already have two nannies on-call. Mostly, Maria helps out with our kids—and Sullivan, on rare occasions.
“Looks like I have things covered here,” Maria says in a hushed voice now that Xander is in her arms. “You two go to the pits of hell or whatever my mom calls Jonathan’s house.”
“Satan’s lair is actually across the street.” I flash a dry smile.
“Satan has great heels,” Maria says, knowing I’m referring to Rose.
I give her another look. “You’re such a disappointment, Maria Stokes. I thought for sure you would’ve taken after me.” I never believed this. Maria has revered Rose since as long as I can remember. “I have the better looks, the better comebacks—”
“But not the better wardrobe.” Maria smiles. “Rose is queen, Uncle Lo. I hate to break it to you, but she’s way more badass than you.”
I feign a wince. “My ears are bleeding.”
Luna races over to me. “Daddy! Mr. Zebra Cake will make you feel better.” She has the whole box of Little Debbie desserts beneath her armpit.
I hold out my hand. “Thank you, love.”
Luna dumps every plastic-wrapped zebra cake onto my hand. Lily grins from ear-to-ear, and my own smile expands. I grab a cake and then come up behind Lily. I drape my arms over her shoulders and rest my chin on her head.
“Let’s go, my love.” I guide my wife towards the door, my steps short as she takes small ones.
Lily looks up at me, fixated on my lips for a second.
Instead of kissing her, I lower my head and stick my tongue in her ear.
“Lo!” She slugs my arm.
“Right, I forgot.” I still don’t kiss Lily. I turn slightly back towards Maria. “No boys!”
Maria groans. “Uncle Lo.” Her brows rise. “I’m fifteen, just dropped out—I mean, switched to homeschooling—and forty-year-olds were my co-stars in my last two movies. I have no love life.”
“Good.”
She gives me a smile at that. “Have fun with the real Satan.”
My dad. Maria has no problem calling him that because we’ve all labeled him worse things in front of her. On our way to the door, I kiss Lily’s cheek. I watch her stifle a needy expression, but she licks her lips and spins around to hook her finger in my belt loop.
We reach the foyer, and I swiftly lift her in a front-piggyback. Her legs wrap around my waist, her hands on my neck. Sh
e unconsciously grinds against me. I swallow a knot in my throat, my blood heating.
I hug her against my chest. “You. Me. Car. Now.”
Then I really, really fucking kiss Lily Hale.
Forgetting about where we’re headed, just for one more moment.
* * *
“I should be in there with her.” Garrison paces in my father’s den, twirling a cigarette between his fingers. He quit smoking about a month before he married Willow, which was a year ago. So Ryke has been snatching each one—there he goes. My older brother steals the unlit cigarette from Garrison and tosses it into a trash bin.
Garrison is too anxious to care.
I lean against my dad’s desk, a ship-in-a-bottle in hand. “Willow wanted to do this herself.”
Ryke glowers at the door to the hallway, not liking where Willow is either. Down the hall, turn right, then left, and you’d reach the fine dining room of the Hale mansion. That’s where she is. With him.
I point the ship-in-a-bottle at Ryke. “You,” I snap. He barely rotates to me. “Dad’s not going to do anything to his own daugh…” I trail off at the glare my brother burns through my face. It could almost rival mine—almost, but not quite.
I hear the message: just like Dad didn’t do a fucking thing to you?
