My brows slightly furrow in intrigue, not panic. I rest my arm on the bathroom door and click into a tweet: @Lalipop2476: Connor Cobalt’s hot-as-fuck father heart eyes #wefoundhim I don’t want to waste time thinking about Jim Elson. I send a quick reply to Naomi and then click into several texts my wife sent me from the room next door.
How is she? – Rose Is she sleeping? If she needs another blanket, I have one here for her. Does she need anything more? – Rose If you’re deleting my texts, you’ll be making a bed for yourself on the floor, Richard. – Rose I begin to grin, but then I see the next text has no relation to our daughter.
Twitter has lost its mind. – Rose I take her word for it and pocket my phone.
I push into the bathroom. I expect to see nothing out of the ordinary, but I didn’t factor in a variable: the most likely outcome isn’t always the outcome that happens.
Daisy is collapsed next to the toilet, cheek on the tiles, blonde hair splayed over her eyes, dressed in yellow cotton shorts and a long-sleeve top.
Quickly and as soundlessly as possible, I rush to Daisy’s side and crouch over her while taking out my phone. I do what I would want Ryke to do if Rose were in this situation.
I dial his number.
“Daisy,” I say gently. I put my hand to her forehead, my phone to my ear. She’s much hotter than Jane, and I roll her onto her back. I smell vomit in the toilet, and just as I put my fingers to her neck, her eyelids flutter open. Like she’s waking from a sleep.
“Connor?” She yawns and then cringes, probably at the taste in her mouth.
Ryke answers on the fourth ring. “What?” He’s not as groggy as most people would be.
“Don’t yell or stomp around,” I say, hearing the squeak of his bed as he stands up, “but Daisy is sick in the bathroom—” He hangs up on me.
I know he’s on his way because I know him, but he could’ve at least used his words.
Ryke acts the exact opposite of how I would most of the time, and convincing him to follow my logic is like telling a wolf to sleep in a lion’s den.
There’s no point in trying anymore. He does what he does. He is who he is. And I’ve grown to like him best that way.
“I can help you stand,” I tell Daisy as she recollects her location. Her skin is pale and clammy.
“I fell asleep,” she says with another yawn. “I got sick, and I just conked out. I didn’t faint or anything.” She tries to pick herself up, hanging onto the toilet seat.
I assist her, my hand on her waist.
“You probably shouldn’t touch me,” she says softly and slowly. “I accidentally… I think I gave Rose strep throat when I was seven…you should’ve seen her…” She blinks and blinks. “Rose…she acted like she’d been damned with the bubonic plague. And she’s pregnant now…” Daisy weakly attempts to push me away.
She looks like she’s patting a couch cushion instead of swatting me.
“Unfortunately for you, I don’t know how you feel.” I see puke in strands of her hair that I’m positive her husband will help clean. “I lived in a boarding school as a child. I was subjected to most common pathogens, so I have a stronger immunity than most people.”
Daisy smiles weakly and almost topples onto the toilet. I catch her and lift her back up. She hangs onto my shoulders for support.
“Of course you do,” she says sluggishly. “You’re Connor Cobalt—”
The door quietly but swiftly opens, Ryke storming through with unbridled concern. I let go of Daisy the same time she turns into her husband’s arms.
Ryke holds her face and puts a hand to her forehead. “What fucking happened? Are you okay?” While she explains in an agonizingly slow manner, I have to squeeze past them to reach the sink.
I turn on the faucet and start lathering my hands and wrists with pine-scented soap.
Ryke flushes the toilet and puts down the lid. Daisy takes a seat, shivering and feverish, blinking like she’s trying to make sense of everything. I’m certain she’s not entirely coherent.
“I should’ve never let him…in my room. Or that house…” Daisy shudders.
Interesting.
I dry my hands with a towel and lean against the sink counter. Ryke stands above her with furrowed brows.
“Who the fuck is him?” Ryke growls.
“…What?” Daisy presses the heel of her palm to her temple. “What’d I say?”
I repeat it since Ryke’s version will be riddled with unnecessary fucks. “You said you should’ve never let ‘him’ into your room or that house.”
She licks her dry lips. “…the townhouse. When Princesses of Philly was going on…you were there.” She looks up at me.
Ryke’s darkened eyes set aggressively on my calm, unwavering expression.
“Relax,” I tell him.
“What were you doing in her fucking room?”
“No, no,” Daisy says and winces at herself. I’d guess for bringing this subject up at all. If she didn’t have a fever, she probably never would have. “He interrupted…him…us.”
I understand. “She’s talking about Julian.”
Ryke lets out a heavy breath and rakes a hand through his thick, disheveled hair. And then his eyes meet mine in apology.
I nod once. “You should’ve listened to me. Ninety-nine percent of your problems would go away.”
He flips me off. “Ninety-nine percent of my fucking problems are you, Cobalt.”
“It’s strange…whenever you say fuck, I miss half of what you say. Which is every time you speak. Actually, it’s not strange at all. I call it a choice.”
He flips me off with both hands.
My grin widens, and I fold the hand towel and set it aside.
“Thank you.” That’s not Ryke. It takes me a second to realize she’s speaking directly to me. “…you knew, didn’t you? Back then, you knew I didn’t want to do anything…with him. And so you interrupted us…on purpose.”
I remember it clearly like I remember most everything. I knocked on her door, hearing her with Julian, and when I saw her reaction, which she tried to conceal, I knew she’d rather be anywhere but there. I waited until Julian left, and Daisy and I never spoke about that moment ever again.
That was five years ago.
“I did,” I admit.
“Thank you,” she repeats, eyes welling, maybe from exhaustion. She trembles, and Ryke rubs her arms but he looks to me.
“I never knew that.”
“What would it have changed?” I don’t see it affecting our relationship, which has been up and down and side-to-side and one of the more difficult things to read.
His nose flares, and he shrugs.
Daisy is so lost in thought that she just asks aloud, “Have you ever been in a bad relationship that you thought wouldn’t stay with you…but it did?”
I shake my head at the same time as Ryke.
Daisy’s gaze drags to the tiles. “Sometimes I feel like…the people I chose clawed into me…and it’s impossible to erase the marks they made.”
Ryke hugs Daisy almost immediately, and she reciprocates, burying her head in his chest. I leave them alone, just as another text buzzes.
I’m checking on Jane. – Rose Don’t. I’ll be back in less than a minute. I reply, glancing at my daughter, still asleep, as I exit into the hallway.
Only one room away, I open the next door to find Rose propped up against the wooden headboard with a multitude of hand-stitched pillows. Cellphone in hand.
She reaches over and tugs on the bear lamp, illuminating the room. “Updates.” She raises a manicured nail at me. “And you are so lucky I am this pregnant or else I’d already be out the fucking door.”
By this pregnant, she means that her stomach is much rounder, her curves visible in her black silk robe. Nearing the bed, I can tell how much her back aches. The baby kicked her awake last night, so she hasn’t been sleeping well.
“Richard,” she snaps.
“I’m assessing you.” I sit on the bed by her feet.
“Excuse me? Don’t assess me. We have a sick daughter, and a one-year-old with gastrointestinal disruptions, also known as intense midnight diarrhea.” Beckett. I smile at the way she sits straight and eases forward like she wants to cram the words inside my eardrums. “And not to mention our other one-year-old that already knows forty-words and chooses to say wrong more than hello.” Charlie.
“Anything else?” I go to massage her foot.
She jerks it out of my hand, her toe pointed at my throat in threat. “I’m seconds from decapitating you.”
I arch a brow. “With your toenail?”
She growls. “Richard.”