I’d never forgive myself if something happened to Rose’s son.
“Charlie.” His name sounds like a goddamn curse on my lips. I exhale a tight breath, shifting my weight to my other foot. He’s nine. Connor might say it’s meaningless, but it means something to me. I’m in a position of authority, and I don’t want to make him feel small—but I can’t treat him like he’s as tall as me.
He fucked up.
“Don’t be like me,” I say curtly.
It must surprise him because he sits up. “How was I like you?”
“Uncaring about your own life.” Before he refutes, I care, I snap back, “You must not care about whether you live or die—because there are people who’d hurt you. Who’d want to lure you to places you’d never want to go.”
“I’m smarter than that, Uncle Loren.”
My face twists. It doesn’t matter how smart he is. He’s a nine-year-old boy, and that fact isn’t changing until he grows older. “Oh, so you can overpower two, three men? Maybe even women. All older than you. With what?”
“My words.”
“They gag you, they blindfold you—then what?” The kids are eerily quiet, but I’m not sugarcoating their reality. They’re getting older. They’re meeting the world too fast. I nod to Charlie. “I’m smarter than that. Tell that to every person with hands larger than yours. As they grab you. See if they care.”
Charlie goes rigid, shaking his head once, then twice. He stares at the ceiling. “I hate irrational people.”
But they exist. And how many times have we met them?
Christ. I take another breath, feeling the massive cement block I unloaded on them. Disneyland. We’re in Disneyland. This is what happens when you bring a known villain to the party.
Kidding.
I’m not the villain, but I’m the kind of hero who forgets an overly happy theme song for the credits. I’m too bitter to be that sweet.
*
In a piggyback, I carry Lily out of the Star Tours 3-D motion simulator, my big brother and the older kids skipping ahead, talking about the attraction. We dropped Charlie off with his parents, and Xander asked softly if he could stay with Ben and Luna for a while.
After letting him go, Lil looked crestfallen in the most magical place in the world. I told her she was a sopping jellyfish that washed ashore my beach.
“You’re not too happy yourself,” she said and poked my forehead where my scowl formed.
“Have you forgotten me already, love? This is my normal face.” I gestured to my glare and then gave her a dry half-smile.
Lily eyed my lips. “I have not…forgotten.”
Then I whispered beside her ear, “Have you forgotten that you and me—we know what happiness feels like?” Her green eyes welled with years of victories. Victories that we’ve shared. Obstacles that we’ve hurdled.
So we’re not with our youngest kids for a couple hours at Disneyland.
It’s not even close to being the worst thing in our world.
Lily nodded firmly.
Now we exit the Star Wars simulator together, Lily riding piggyback, and we sing the theme song that we know and love. Not even a second through, and Moffy and Jane join in. Jane pumps her fist in the air like a sword.
Beckett and Sulli are talking down the hallway, disinterested. Some people quickly snap pictures of them, but they don’t pay attention. I try not to either.
“Duuh duuh da da da,” we sing.
Lily is so off-key that Ryke, nearby, keeps shaking his head like he has a migraine.
“Hey,” I snap in the middle of our song. “Don’t rag on my ‘puff.”
“I didn’t say a fucking thing.”
Moffy’s laughter and smile slowly die down, his gaze pinging questioningly to me, to his mom, to Ryke. I’m just messing with my older brother, but the look in my son’s eyes—it practically stops my fucking heart.
He’s quiet.
The rest of the day. When Jane asks what’s wrong, he just shakes his head. Lily and I don’t pressure him to open up yet.
Lily has been biting her fingernails to the beds, but she’s the one who tells me, “We just have to take what comes.” She turns only a bit red. “Not like coming, coming. The normal type of come.”
I almost smile, but my stomach never unknots. It’s not until dinnertime. It’s not until we order room service at the hotel so everyone can chill out, relax, without the fear of cameras and giant crowds. It’s not until everyone congregates in the Cobalt’s suite with burgers and fries—it’s not until this moment that Moffy separates from the pack.
He dazedly opens the door, almost in a trance. I follow at a distance. Lily, Ryke, Connor, Rose, and Daisy all see me leave into the hotel hallway with him. By the time I shut the door, Moffy has stopped halfway down, clutching the archway frame to the vending area.
His hand touches his eyes. And I know my son is crying.
He disappears inside the vending enclave, and I follow, rounding the corner. Rock in my throat. Moffy is slumped by the ice and Fizzle machines. He looks up, and his reddened face shatters, crying harder. Guttural sobs that pull his body forward.
I instantly sit next to him, before he even tries to stand.
He attempts to wipe at his face, but he just sobs into his palms, cheeks soaked with tears.
I hug my kid tight. He’s just twelve.
He’s just goddamn twelve, and he tries hard to act like he’s twenty-two. We include him in a lot. When Ryke, Connor, and I go out to eat, we’ll invite Maximoff. He likes feeling older. Like he’s one of the grown-ups, but he’s not.
It’s a weird balance because I need him to stay a kid. He deserves that. But the universe might be saying Maximoff Hale, you have to grow up now.
I don’t push my son to talk. I just tell him, “You can cry, Mof. Whatever it is, you can cry.”
Moffy takes short inhales and leans back, his head thudding against the black and gold Fizzle machine. Silent tears draw tracks down his cheeks. My arm rests across his shoulders, and he holds one of my hands strongly—like he doesn’t want me to leave.
Lily thinks that every day our oldest son looks more and more like me. But there’s no malice in his sharp jawline. There’s no spite in his daggered gaze. He has my features but his soul is clean.
Moffy stares up at the ceiling, tears flowing with each blink.
My eyes burn, and I swallow that rock. He usually doesn’t take this long to open up with me. He’s comfortable talking about almost anything. Not much fazes Moffy.
We hear the ding of the elevator and a few kids fighting while parents scold them. Their door shuts, and the hallway goes quiet again.
I stare down at my son. “I can listen,” I whisper.
More silent tears cascade. Then, very shakily, he says, “I have to ask you something.” His voice cracks, but he musters the courage to look me right in the eyes.
Most people can’t stare at me for longer than a second, and he holds my gaze, his face broken. Pained.
And he asks, “Am I your son or am I Uncle Ryke’s?” I open my mouth, but he speaks again, fast. “And I don’t mean in the metaphorical sense. I mean, biologically.”
“Biologically, metaphorically, spiritually—any which way you turn it,” I tell him, my voice clear and proud and full of never-ending love, “you’re mine.” I take my hand off his shoulder, touching my chest. “You’re my son. I don’t know what you’ve read online, but it’s a load of shit. Your mom and Uncle Ryke were never together.”
When I was younger, I thought I could protect him from this. I wished he’d never experience doubt. As I grew older, I knew it’d come. I knew it would, so it doesn’t hurt the way that it would’ve years ago. I was just hoping he’d meet these rumors when he was sixteen, seventeen.
Not twelve.
Moffy searches my features like he’s trying to find me in him.
“I look just like you, bud.”
“Not our hair color.”
“You have your grandfather’s dark hair. So what?” I shrug, shoulders taut. “It’s Ryke’s hair color? So what, Moffy, you’re still mine.” I gesture from him to me. From me to him. “You’re my son, and I love you.”