Fuuuck. I rub my lips, nauseous as this secret starts morphing into a lie. I planned on telling him way before now, but Daisy just had surgery and my concern has been with her for so long that I really, honestly, forgot.
I’m not about to repeat past mistakes and harbor this for longer than I should. “Actually,” I say, drawing Connor and Rose’s attention too. “Willow is Jonathan’s daughter.” In so few words I explain everything our dad revealed to me, painting a picture of my proposal night without overdetailing.
Connor and Rose straighten, listening with rapt attention at new information.
When I finish, Lo visibly cringes and starts pacing the length of the foyer to the couch, silent and white-knuckling his fucking cellphone.
The only sound comes from Piglet’s whiney voice, irritating me more than that cartoon ever has. Pushing Lo to silence might be more terrifying than his outbursts. I just wasn’t prepared for this.
“Hey.” I grab his arm on his way back towards me, stopping him mid-stride. “Fucking talk to me.”
He shoves me off and then points at his chest. “I’ve had bombs dropped on me for the past five years. You think I didn’t question this once or twice? I did. I thought about it, and what I keep thinking now—out of everything—is that I’m glad he knows what it feels like to be duped for decades. Believing his familial relationships are set in stone, only to learn that it’s a fucking lie. And this is all his fault. All his goddamn fault. So yeah, I’m happy that our dad had a daughter he never knew about.”
He lets out a heavy breath, pausing for a second before adding, “Not really happy for Willow, but…yeah.” His eyes redden, empathizing with her since he’s been there.
I watch him stare past the hardwood floor. “You’re not pissed at me?”
“For what?”
“For waiting to tell you.”
He cocks his head with an annoyed expression. “Daisy just underwent surgery. You think I’m that selfish?”
He’s just not the same guy he once was. He’s grown up, not as resentful over the smallest things anymore. While I process this, he gives me one of his signature Loren Hale death stares, the kind that’d probably terrify all his billion-dollar corporate enemies.
“Thanks a lot,” he says bitterly. He lets out a sigh and then runs a hand on the back of his neck. “Since you’re now her brother too…” His face contorts like this is fucked up. It is, a little bit. “You really need to know what’s going on.”
The shit he’s worrying about. “What is it?”
His eyes flicker to his cell. “So Willow called me about a half hour ago. She went to eat dinner with Maya.” The Superheroes & Scones store manager, but more importantly she used to be Willow’s roommate. They’re good friends, but I don’t see the upsetting part here. “Willow will be here in about five or ten minutes, but she said that she had news to tell us. And she sounded really fucking nervous.”
I sit on the armrest of the Queen Anne chair. “Did you ask her what it’s about?”
“She said that it was better if I didn’t have any hints.”
Connor chimes in, “Your previous theories about her car being stolen, moving to Maine, and the illogical one about alien abduction all seem less plausible than what Ryke brought to the table.”
The alien scenario sounds more like a Lily Calloway theory. I understand what Connor is implying. “You think she knows Jonathan’s her fucking father?”
Lily suddenly appears from the stairs with a big bowl of popcorn, unable to see my clothing from her vantage point. “Are you guys making a Hale family Star Wars alternate universe?” She lowers her voice, mimicking Darth Vader, “Willow, I am your father.”
No one laughs.
A popcorn kernel falls out of Lily’s mouth. “Waaaait…this wasn’t a joke?”
“No, love,” Lo says, his arm sliding around her shoulder. He steals a handful of popcorn from her bowl.
I stand up again, thoughts fucking rolling in my head about Willow’s news.
“Think of it this way,” Connor says, “if she already knows about Jonathan, you don’t need to break the news to her.”
“It’s still shit,” I tell him, “no matter which way you spell it.”
“You would be the expert on four-letter words since your vocabulary consists almost entirely of them.”
I cast a fucking glare his way. “Whose side are you on, Cobalt?”
“The intelligent side. Whether you come over here is yet to be seen. You usually average about forty-percent, so it’s more or less up in the air.”
He’s already giving me a fucking headache.
“What are those?” Lily nearly screeches, eyes widened on my tight bat-printed girl’s boxer-briefs, not leaving much to the imagination.
I forgot to stay seated. I’m even angled towards her, and I’m about to turn around, but her arm flies to her eyes, embarrassed red patches blooming on her neck.
She says to herself, “Wake up, Lily. Wake up!” Fuck.
Her chant causes Lo to shield her eyes with his hands, sliding behind her.
He guides her over to the vacant couch in front of the kids’ beanbags. “I know, I feel your pain, love. It’s such an ugly sight.” His tone is lighthearted with his wife, and when he drops his hands from her eyes, he shows her the couch to relax.
She stays standing instead, hugging the fucking popcorn bowl. “I’m sorry, Lo,” she apologizes with so much hurt in her eyes.
A pit wedges in my stomach.
Rose’s back straightens like a stiff board, and she moves her legs off Connor’s lap, her feet slipping into her heels. Ready to be there for her sister.
I concentrate on Lo, watching confusion warp his face. I take a few steps towards him, closer to Moffy’s yellow beanbag.
Ready to be there for my brother.
“Sorry about what?” Lo asks hesitantly.
Lily licks her dried lips, guilt down-casting her eyes to the popcorn a couple times.
“Lil?” Lo says, his voice breaking a little. “Sorry about what?”
“I meant to ship them back,” she says in a soft whisper. “I really did. They were so cute though. It was the internet’s fault for sending me Batgirl underoos instead of Spider-Girl ones.”
I think we all, collectively, let out a breath of relief, the tension immediately weakening.
Lo sinks into the couch, winded for a second. “I thought something bad happened, Lil,” he almost shouts.
“I thought this was bad.”
“Like bad, bad,” he tells her, his eyes softening.
She plops down next to him. “In college, I bought a Superman phone case and you said we couldn’t be friends if I called you on it.”
Lo thinks hard to recall that memory, but I wonder if it’s gone to alcohol.
“You also burned my Halloween bat-ears, which wasn’t even a DC product.”
“You were a bat on my birthday,” he retorts. “That was worse than me lighting your little ears on fire.”
“I was nine,” she says, poking him in the chest, “and you ate all my favorite Pop-Tarts on purpose the day before.”
“Huh, so it was a revenge bat-costume,” he says like his point has been made.
Lily squints at him.
Lo begins to smile, and I’m just fucking thankful nothing serious happened. And that I’m not wearing my half-sister’s underwear.
Footsteps clap along the hardwood, and we all see Daisy emerging through the kitchen doorway. She wears my clothes: one of my gray shirts partly tucked into my black cotton track pants. I can’t even fucking explain how much I love her in them.
But my body definitely can. My muscles almost instantly constrict, blood rushing to my cock, and I swallow hard to suppress anything one degree more.
I focus on things that matter more than my fucking arousal. Whether or not she’s in pain. If she needs more meds. How she’s doing walking around.
As she comes closer to me, she’s careful about widening h
er stride. When she realizes everyone is watching her, not just me, she offers her sisters a placating smile. “I’m not going to self-destruct,” she says to them. “I’m just one ovary and one fallopian tube lighter.”
Rose rolls her eyes. “I don’t like your jokes.”
“Too bad,” Daisy smiles. “You’re stuck with them.”
My lips lift a fraction, glad that she’s willing to make unpopular jokes if that’s what she fucking wants to do.
Rose must feel the same way because she says, “As long as you’re okay.”
Daisy shrugs, pain flaring in her eyes, and it breaks my fucking heart. I can’t tell if it’s emotional or physical, but I want to take it all away.
I’m about to bridge the distance between us, but her attention plants to me, on my boxer-briefs. Her smile slowly elevates, and her pace quickens until she’s right in front of me, my hand gently sliding across her waist.
And she says, “You know your ass says, Bat Girl, right?”
I didn’t.
“That do it for you, Calloway?”