Oh God. That fucking hurts.
I hold Jane with one arm and grip Connor’s bicep with the other. He checks beneath the gauze, and beneath his fortitude, I spot the glimmer of a pained reaction, lines creasing his forehead.
“It’s bleeding?” I question. He wouldn’t have that response unless there was blood. “Let me see.” He reaches for my purse. He’s literally the only man I will let dig through it, and it’s not long before he finds my compact mirror, holding it up to me.
Slowly, I inspect the damage. Blood already seeps through the gauze. Connor gradually removes it. Right by my temple hairline, two quarter-sized clumps are missing, left only by a reddened, scalped mess. And as awful as it looks and for however long it’ll take to heal, I know I’d do it again.
Connor watches me carefully, most likely worried I’ll lose sleep over hair, something I’ve always nurtured like a child, but it’s not my child. It’s just a building block that creates my orderly life, and even though it feels like knocking one out of place knocks the whole tower, I have to keep reminding myself that I’m in control.
This doesn’t destroy everything. What’s important is that she’s safe.
You’re in complete control with me.
“Hair grows back,” I tell him.
Connor nods. “And you can style your hair to cover it if you need to.” The thought should comfort me, but I realize something…
“No,” I tell him as he snaps the mirror closed. “Everyone needs to see, then maybe they’ll stop putting Jane in harm’s way.”
He kisses my forehead and murmurs French, too inaudible for my thumping brain to translate. He kisses Jane’s head next, and she smiles, at peace in the quiet waiting room.
Connor returns the gauze to my temple, caring for my war wound. I want to lessen the tension that pools between us. I’d like to travel towards a place where he grins arrogantly, and I roll my eyes, trying desperately to suppress a smile.
I raise my chin a little, showing him that I’m better, and I quiz him, “Which sixteenth century scientist is often said to have ‘stopped the sun and moved the earth?’ You have thirty seconds, same stakes.” I’ll have to ignore him for twenty-four hours if he answers incorrectly.
I know he knows this one though.
He removes the gauze again, nearly all red, and my stomach overturns. He folds it to find a white space (there is none) but he carefully presses it back anyway. I catch anger, frustration, hurt in his eyes—a whirlpool of emotions that he rarely ever expresses so outwardly.
“Richard,” I snap, wanting him to not worry and to focus on my quiz. “Ten seconds.”
“Galileo,” he answers…incorrectly.
My mouth falls. “What?” He knew this one. I knew that he knew this one. I wouldn’t have tried to trick him, not now.
His eyes tighten in a cringe. “It’s Copernicus.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head once. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Clearly,” I mutter. Wait…I can’t speak to him now? Can I? I bite my gums. “Maybe there can be a stipulation or exception for…overwhelming events.” I grimace and glare at the ceiling even as the words leave my lips.
Once we make an exception as big as you don’t lose when you’re supposed to lose, none of our stakes hold the same weight. The games aren’t taken as seriously.
His brows rise. “You know we can’t. What’s a realistic amendment: you begin ignoring me when we’re in the limo again, safely on our way home.”
I nod in agreement, and my lips lift at a thought. “Are you prepared to be ignored by me?” I’ve done it before, when we’re fighting about philosophy or scientific theories, and it drives him mad. Not a lot unnerves Connor, but the silent treatment always does.
“It’s my least favorite kind of torture.”
“You have a favorite kind of torture?” I question.
He smiles. “Are you going to be able to ignore me, darling?”
I shoot him a glare. “Please, I already tune out half of what you say.” I’m not really being truthful. I listen to almost every word he speaks, unless I cover his mouth with my hand and bar them from exiting.
“Such lies,” he tells me, his lips continuing to curve upward. “You’re forgetting how much we talk and text and speak to each other in a twenty-four-hour period.”
Am I?
“Even when you claimed we were broken up in college, we still called each other,” he reminds me.
We did. Every day. “Let me gloat at the image of you pouting for at least five minutes before you claim that I’ll be pouting too.”
He almost grins fully. “We’ll see.”
Yes we will.
42
ROSE COBALT
Only four hours since arriving home and I keep unlocking my phone, a heartbeat away from texting Connor a Fuck, Marry, Kill game or a random thought that tosses around my brain.
It turns out his punishment is an annoying consequence for both of us. So he was right thinking it would be. I’m hiding my distress as best I can.
If he sees it, he’ll just gloat.
And he’s supposed to be the loser here, not me.
Losers can’t gloat. This is my law.
“We should be able to tag you out with Connor,” Lo says with a bitter half-smile. He camps out on the bar stool, watching me roll pizza dough on the kitchen counter. Flour plumes each time I use the rolling pin, and I simultaneously wipe down my mess and flatten the dough. It has taken me an excruciatingly long time, but my mood can only handle clean, tidy places right now.
It’s pizza night, and we drew three names out of a hat for the cooks. Unfortunately, I was paired with Loren and his older brother, neither of my sisters to keep me company.
And no one was more displeased to see my name than me. Except maybe Loren.
“Tag Connor in?” I snap. “I’m sorry, am I wrestling you, Loren?”
“Just being five feet across from you is like enduring a backbreaker, so yeah, it feels like it.” He gives me another dry smile and then sips a Fizz Life. His daggered eyes almost soften when they hone in on my temple, bandaged with gauze.
“You’d make more progress if you stared at the pepperoni and not my face.”
He pretends to take interest in slicing the pepperoni, only two pieces on his cutting board.
“You don’t want to trade in Connor today,” Ryke tells his brother, chopping the bell peppers on the other side of the sink. “He’s moody as fuck. I passed him in the hallway, and before I even opened my mouth, he told me to go bark to my owner.”
Loren eats a pepperoni. We’re never going to finish this pizza. “Huh,” he says. “I thought Connor was your owner.”
Ryke tosses a bell pepper at him. God, no. I don’t want to find random bits of food strewn along the floorboards.
“I’m serious,” Lo says.
“Yeah, me fucking too. I don’t know what’s up with him…besides the shit storm.” The shit storm. That’s what we’ve officially begun calling this round of media invasiveness.
Loren points at my face. “Could be that his wife’s all battered and he wasn’t able to stop it from happening.”
I jab the rolling pin in Lo’s direction. “It’s not Connor’s fault. He knows this.” My husband thinks logically and he’d know that there was no conceivable way he could’ve changed the outcome. I consider it fate. He considers it a terrible circumstance, dictated by the people surrounding me.