She pales. “No.”
“Then take a shower.”
“Why are you being the hygiene police all of a sudden?” she questions, her eyes welling up with tears. My stomach drops. “You never used to care if I skipped for a week.”
I hate that I have to be a hardass. I lower my voice so Brett’s filming equipment can’t pick up the sound. “This is six months, and we live with other people now. You smelling like sex is not the way to go, Lil. They may think we’re f**king more than usual and then they’ll be all over us.” Her pleading, watery eyes try to sway me. “Skip tomorrow, fine, but I’m going to have to start being careful when I come on you.”
She frowns. “You haven’t done that in…”
“A long time, I know.” Crazy sex has been out of the picture for a while.
She glances at her boobs like she’s visualizing the event.
“Lily,” I snap. “What’s wrong?”
“I was just thinking…” She turns red all over. “…about your plans.”
I hug her close and kiss her lips lightly.
“Your phone just buzzed,” she tells me as we part. She hands me the cell, and I open the text.
Is everything okay? – Ryke
I don’t know. I type the text and think of more to add, but so many phrases pop in my head. I realize I’m just overwhelmed.
Not all days are easy.
Most of them make no f**king sense. A good handful tears me apart, limb from limb. The best days are the ones I try to remember, but sometimes, even those are swallowed by the bad.
I send the text as it is. Three words.
I’m on my way. – Ryke
I’m about to pocket my phone, but it vibrates again.
Don’t drink. – Ryke
He’s told me that a million times before, but it’s this one time that affects me the most. Don’t drink. I won’t turn this bad day into a terrible one. For me.
But really, for her.
Fear of failing Lily—it motivates me in ways that no one can understand.
15
0 years : 05 months
January
LILY CALLOWAY
Lo and I walk around the museum in deadened silence, a camera shadowing us. Ryke arrived about ten minutes ago and pulled Scott outside while Savannah, a pretty redheaded girl, films them. When we passed the glass windows, I saw Ryke shouting at the producer, but his fists weren’t raised.
The whole day, I sensed how distraught Lo was becoming. He has a lot to worry about. Halway Comics, Superheroes & Scones, his father breathing down his neck, alcohol…and me.
It hurts to realize that I can’t take away his pain today and that in a small way, I may be contributing to it.
We sit on a bench, a mammoth painting hung on the wall before us. A white angel battles a dark-haired man in red silk; the man is most likely on the losing end.
Angels always win.
I don’t know its true meaning. Or the context. But the longer I stare at the image, the sadder I become.
“I’m sorry,” I breathe.
I feel him turn to look at me. “For what?” He edges closer, his thigh against mine. I stare right into those amber swirls, seeing his agony, his love and his vice. All at once.
“You have so much going on,” I say softly. “I don’t want you to constantly worry about me too.”
He frowns. “I’ll always worry about you,” he tells me. “It’s impossible not to.”
“In a future,” I whisper, “I’d like to think that you just know wherever I am, I’m smiling…and content.” No agonizing. No stress over my wellbeing. “It’s just whether that future is ours or someone else’s.” I focus on the bench again.
He presses his fingers underneath my chin, lifting my gaze once more. “You remember when we were in tenth grade and we decided to ditch comics in Earth-616 for all the alternate universes and realities?”
I nod. “It was fun for a few months.” We read some of the most bizarre comics during that time, and months later, we preferred the main continuity in Marvel comics. Earth-616.
“And you know what we decided at the end of it all?” Lo asks me.
“That Magneto and Rogue should never be allowed to date—in any universe.”
His lips rise. “Yeah, and that alternate universes usually have the worst endings with the unhappiest conclusions.” His warm hand slides to my cheek, and his eyes bore into me, intense and unyielding. “But we’re in Earth-616, love. We’re going to have our happy ending. It just may take us awhile to get there.”
My chest lifts at his rare optimism, stirring something powerful inside my heart.
It fills me with so, so much hope.
16
0 years : 05 months
January
LOREN HALE
I check rat traps that Connor, Ryke and I set in the crawl space. Daisy found two dead ones in her room, not surprising since we saw droppings on the basement stairs when we first arrived.
“Your cat isn’t doing her job,” I tell Connor while I squat by the small door, a trash bag in hand. Ryke has already crawled through, and I wait for him to return with hopefully a dead rat or two.
“She’s already killed three of them,” Connor defends his pet. He leans his arm against the wall, staring down at me. “Anymore and I’d question her domestication.”
“I hate to break it to you, Connor,” I say, “but your cat is feral.” In private, Lily calls her the orange beast. I mean, Sadie scratched the hell out of Rose when she tried to put a collar on her. I thought Rose was impenetrable to almost everything.
“I found Sadie, you know.” He cups a mug of steaming coffee. “She was in the rain outside my boarding school. The mother was dead. So were the three other kittens.”
I don’t know how many other people he’s told this to. “I never pegged you as the nurturing type.”
“I’m not,” he says honestly. “It wasn’t like she tugged at my heart in that moment.” Of course not. “I just knew I had the power to save her life, so I did.”
That was fairly conceited, but I try to dig around that. “And now that she’s older and angrier?”
“I raised her exactly how I wanted,” Connor says. “She doesn’t need me to survive anymore. Though she loves me most.”
Huh. I scrutinize the way he rests against the wall, tired. His body isn’t stiff and straight like usual. Dark rings lie beneath his eyes. “You look like shit,” I say. Seriously. I’ve never seen him so worn down before.
He sips his coffee. “I’m a grad student trying to take over a multi-billion dollar company. If I didn’t look like shit, I’d be on drugs.”
I forgot that he’s been trying to take the reins of Cobalt Inc. I almost mention Scott, but even the thought of him irritates every nerve in my body.
I look back through the crawl space just as Ryke hits his head on one of the pipes. “Fuck me,” he curses.
“Fornicating with the rats already?” Connor asks with a grin.
“Fuck you, Cobalt.” He’s on his stomach, using his forearms and legs to army-crawl through the small area. “The shortest one of us should have crawled through here.”
That was directed at me. “If I knew you were going to bitch, I would have done it myself, and I’m only one inch shorter than you, bro.”
Ryke bangs his forehead this time. He makes an animalistic noise. “I’m still six f**king three.”