Wha….is this?
Abort! Abort! Instinct and panic overtake me. I roll off this cardboard thing about as graceful as someone unfurling a burrito. I shut my eyes tight and repeat a good mantra: I did not lie on top of Connor Cobalt. I did not lie on top of Connor Cobalt.
I only stop rolling when my body hits the back of the couch. I sense someone crouching over me, and I open my eyes to dimpled cheeks, a rising smile, and warm amber eyes. I don’t know how it’s possible, but Loren Hale has grown even more handsome with age.
When I look in the mirror, I’m still gangly Lily, a girl who could be mistaken for a fifteen-year-old, no matter how much time passes. Inside, though, I feel older. Stronger. Maybe even a tad bit wiser.
It’s the insides that count the most.
Not sexually being inside, just inside, inside. I scrunch my nose at my thoughts.
His smile curves higher. “You alright, love?”
I shake my head. “That thing came out of nowhere. I was doomed from the start.”
“I did the same thing,” he tells me. “So it looks like I was doomed with you.”
I try hard not to smile. “From the very start?”
Lo nods. “From the very start, Lily Hale.” And then he lifts me in a front-piggyback. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, his lips close to my lips. I like Lo’s lips much better than Connor’s.
I’m entranced by him and only him. His hands cup my ass as he holds me around his waist, and his gaze dances around my features with this headiness that I know I share.
I abruptly kiss him, my heart racing, and before I worry that I kissed him at an inappropriate time, he reciprocates with almost as much need. One of his hands leaves my ass, and he clutches the back of my head, deepening the kiss until oxygen cages in my lungs.
I grind forward.
He slows, and my heart lurches sideways.
I can’t pounce on him like a horny tiger. Not right now at least. I remember that we’re in a semi-public setting, filled with friends and children. Maximoff is busy making “confetti angels” in the heap that covers the hardwood, Jane with him. My toddler is oblivious to my own struggle, which is how I like it.
Lo strokes my hair once, and his lips brush against my ear. “It’s okay, Lil.” His encouragement relaxes my shoulders, and I tell him I’m going to shift to his back.
Front-piggybacks can be dangerous territory.
He sets me down, and then I jump on his back. Now in a regular piggyback, I go to the kitchen with Lo, a fresh bowl of salsa and a bag of chips on the counter.
“Happy fucking Birthday,” Ryke says as he picks up the half-crinkled cardboard cutout of Connor Cobalt.
Connor has Beckett in his arms while he appraises the cardboard version of himself.
“He loves it,” I whisper to Lo, who hands me a chip. I crunch, glad he didn’t put too much spicy salsa on mine.
“Nah, he seems ambivalent.” Lo nods towards Rose who rocks Charlie back and forth, the little baby falling asleep against her chest. “Queen Rose looks ready to call this a birthday failure.”
I squint towards my older sister. She seems her natural self. Rigid but not in a I’m-calling-this-party-a-shit-show kind of way. She’s as likely to roll her eyes and smile as she is to glare and huff.
“Who bought the cutout?” I ask in another whisper.
“Daisy found it on some celebrity site.”
I imagine fans putting a life-sized Connor Cobalt in their bedroom, right next to a Damon Salvatore or a Harry Styles. I don’t think Connor would mind either.
Connor finally reacts, his million-dollar grin as rich as his clothes. He captures Ryke’s gaze. “So my birthday present is you admitting you’re my biggest fan.”
Rose tries to contain a snort with her hand.
Lo actually laughs aloud, tossing another chip in his mouth.
Ryke flips them both off, and then glowers at Connor. “It’s a fucking decoration.”
“If you desired to look at me everyday, I’d suggest the real version, not this inferior one, but I’m sure this is the best you could do.”
Ryke nods a couple times. “Me not punching you right now is your real fucking birthday present. So you better get it all out while you can, Cobalt.”
Instead of giving Ryke a hard time, Connor scans the first floor: the gold and black decorations, the banner with Happy 30th Birthday Connor!, the balloons, all of us here together.
“I never thought I’d appreciate this day more than any other,” he says, his smile lifting at the sight of Jane covered in confetti, “but I do. I am.” He looks to each one of us. “Thank you.”
“It was mostly Rose and Daisy,” I tell him since my part was so small. Rose planned the event, and she left a lot of the details to my little sister, who volunteered to be a big role in today’s execution.
Connor and Daisy exchange this friendly smile, and he nods at her in thanks.
“We ordered salmon from your favorite restaurant,” Rose explains, “and we’ve all agreed to read passages from your favorite books before dinner.” I was given The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. I reread the passage Rose highlighted fifteen times so I don’t stumble over the words, but I still have no idea what any of it means.
Lo and Daisy said they’d trade with me. They have Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Middlemarch by George Eliot, but I didn’t want to learn their passages, only to find out they were just as confusing.
Connor grins. “I’m intrigued.” He looks entranced mostly by his wife holding his son.
I whisper to Lo, “He’s going to kiss her.”
“They’re not close enough,” Lo replies, just when Connor takes two steps forward.
“Ha.”
Lo munches on a chip. “He has the I want to fuck you look, but he’s not going to do a goddamn thing until he’s alone with her.”
I frown. Maybe he’s right. We’re the two that cling to one another in public. Even if intensity brims off their shoulders like electric sparks, magnetizing Connor to Rose and Rose to Connor, they won’t act on the pull if we’re around. Not unless they forget.
And they rarely forget anything.
Rose tries to fasten a cold glare. “Today is about you, but you have one rule.”
“I’m listening.”
“You must contain your ego for the sake of your children. It’ll asphyxiate the room.”
“My ego won’t hurt them, darling.” He steps even closer.
She snaps in French and raises her hand at his chest.
He smoothly replies back in the same language and clasps her hand, only to kiss her knuckles. I perk up like I won a prize, but his lips never move to her lips.
“Even their sons are bored by this,” Lo says. Beckett has fallen asleep in Connor’s arms like Charlie has in Rose’s.
I poke Lo’s arm. “Hey, this is love. Love isn’t boring.”
Lo mockingly yawns. “What was that, Lil? I just woke up from a nap.”
He can be so mean. I rest my chin on his shoulder, still clinging onto him tight. I instantly forget my thoughts at the sight of a tabloid…next to the bowl of salsa.
“Hey,” Garrison greets Lo before sitting on the counter. They begin a short conversation, and I fixate on the headlines in view.
Lily Calloway, Pregnant Again!
False, but they put an unflattering picture of me on the front. My face is all red and splotchy. I wear a gray baggy sweater that reaches my knees while exiting Superheroes & Scones, hand-in-hand with Moffy. At least they didn’t say anything rude about him.
Sometimes I worry about the day where they go from Little Maximoff Watches a Philadelphia 76ers Game! to Maximoff Hale Has a Zit! He’s just like us! I can’t even imagine my own awkward puberty phases put on blast. Neither can Lo.
Look away from the magazines. Look away.
I do, only to see Connor, Rose, Daisy, and Ryke in a conversation together. “I wonder if Connor’s DNA is superhuman too,” I mumble beneat
h my breath. And his eyes flit to me!
I’m not making this up.
Maybe he truly does have superhuman hearing. “Lo,” I say softly, breaking up his short conversation with Garrison.
“Hmm?” he asks, swishing around the salsa with a chip. His other hand clutches my leg while I’m on his back.
“Do you think Connor might be Batman or Superman?”
Lo drops me.
I land on my ass, and I gape up at him. “Lo!” It’s not the first time he’s dropped me mid-piggyback for speaking about a DC character.
He waves his chip at me. “There are a goddamn thousand superheroes, and you chose two that I can’t stand?”
“They make the most sense.”
“They make about as much sense as calling Connor the Swamp Thing.”
I pick myself off the floor. “That’s just silly. Swamp Thing isn’t even close to being Batman and Superman.”
His sharp glares simultaneously says they’re all DC characters and you’ve betrayed me, love. “Please let me know where I can find my other wife. This one in front of me is a sellout.”
I touch my heart. It’s like he shot an arrow through it. “I’m not a sellout. I just happen to not be an elitist about the whole Marvel versus DC thing, and I can appreciate all superheroes equally.”
“You think they’re all made equally?” His passion about comics brims to the surface, so alluring that I actually near him, despite his double-edged glare. “Do you want to talk Green Lantern? We can talk Green Lantern.”