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Charlie nods. “My parents, my aunts, and uncles would pull their money out. Something Maximoff built from the ground up would be destroyed overnight.” His yellow-green eyes flit up to me. “I don’t love being the life support, but it’s where I’m at.”
“When I talk to people, I love making them feel good, but with you…I never wanted it to stop. I wanted to come back for more, even when my work said, focus on your subject. I just wished that my subject was you.”
“Leo Valavanis. Beckett’s rival in the company.”
“You know, if I had to pick a side, I’d just choose yours.”
And how it’s the pretty sheen of the Cobalt Empire, the romantic one, but underneath it all, there are cracks.
I learned to believe that I can. Even when it feels like I can’t.
“as long as I’m with you, because it’s you.”
He chokes on emotion. “What do you have to lose?” “You!” I yell from my core, eyes stinging. “I could lose you!”
“Okay, promise me that whatever happens next, you won’t shut the window on me. Promise that it’s wide open and I’m on the other side with you—that it’s you and me and anyone who tries to come in, you’ll help me keep out?”
He suddenly, mightily, resoundingly bridges the gap—and his lips are on mine. Time freezes. The world recedes, and we clasp each other’s face and kiss and kiss with soul-bearing passion. Hanging on. Like we’re spinning on an axis and headed for the sky.
Our foreheads touch as our lips break, arms around one another’s shoulders, and we’re not escaping our embrace yet. He’s smiling brighter. I’m grinning stronger.
“I’ve never wanted something this badly in my life, Oscar, and I’ve wanted a lot. I’ve gotten a lot. I just haven’t had you.”
I’m dating Jack Highland. I’m with Jack Highland. Every phrase in every dictionary that means, he’s it for me.
He skims a hand through his hair, messing the strands. “I hate people.”
“Luna’s our best friend, if something of hers was stolen, we’re going to help retrieve it.” Eliot tucks his shirt into black slacks. “It’s our duty.”
Tom and Eliot exchange a look, before Tom says, “As you were.” Eliot nods. “We’ll concede. This time.” Charlie rolls his eyes, then snuffs out his cigarette on the singed couch.
“Eliot’s fans are my favorite,” Charlie says. “They’re mostly theatre nerds who send him Shakespeare love letters and dead ravens.”
Charlie waves a nonchalant hand at the crowd—more like he’s brushing away a gnat than greeting them, and they all respond with an awed noise as though he just proposed. He’s unaffected.
Charlie rams his right foot into the ladder like he’s shoving an enemy off a cliff. It careens, and the metal ladder and Clifford plummet to the stage with a loud crack!
Charlie skirts around him and squats down a foot away. “And so the psychopath says to the thief,” he says coldly, “you have something of mine, and I want it back.”
“You’re running out of time, and this psychopath is so easily bored.” He blows smoke in his direction.
Charlie’s not done. “You won’t speak to Eliot ever again. Keep away from my brother, or I will ruin you.”
Charlie lounges on a porch chaise and reads a book, bundled in an outdoor blanket.
No one has ever made me feel like the focal point. The center of attention. I’m never the subject.
“I’m every star circling around you. You need a spark, I’m there.” He says it like a promise.
“Good morning.” Charlie sips an espresso shot, fully dressed in a thick peacoat like he’s about to hightail his ass to town.
He’s a genius, and it doesn’t take his extreme IQ to put the pieces together.
He sips champagne, the bottom of his wrinkled shirt untucked from his dress pants.
Charlie smiles bitterly. “The one who wants to be alone is always wanted.” He finishes off his champagne. “Too bad I can’t be wanted by someone interesting.”
A Secret about Charlie Cobalt: He told me that he’s the one who introduced Beckett to cocaine, and he’s regretted it ever since.
“Brother, see you in the afterlife,” Eliot says. He taps knuckles with Tom, but they don’t leave Luna.
He stacks five Pringles together. “Bad luck crew.” He stuffs his mouth full, and I know he’s referring to the Hale family. He mumbles something about “Cobalts never die” with reverence.
“You could make all the stars in the sky fall for the sun.”
“Tell me a secret that you’ve never told anyone else.”
“Estou apaixonado por voçê.” I translate, “I’m in love with you.”
“Your love is one of the only things keeping me afloat right now.
He thinks for a second, then his lips quirk. “Basta ikaw,” he says in Tagalog, and translates again, “Because it’s you, as long as I’m with you.”
“sometimes people grip so hard onto the concept of hate that they can’t let go for two seconds to even try to love.”
“Don’t compare yourself to other people to minimize what that is.” He points towards my shelf. “Give yourself more credit.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know how to rewire this”—I point to my temple—“to be satisfied with where I’m at and not seek more, the it project that quells all desires, the white whale.”
Kinney created the Rainbow Brigade to feel included among trusted family members and bodyguards who are LGBTQ.
“The Rainbow Brigade,” Kinney says as she slides a button and pin to Jack. “Welcome to the club.”
I hold the back of his head, our foreheads pressed together in an intimate beat. My hand slides to his neck, and he says, “Kinney gave me the button, and I was surprised at how much I felt like I belonged.” He inhales. “That’s it.”
His voice carries a reverence whenever he talks about architecture or art.
I’m about to ask Charlie another question when he lies down flat on the marble tile. Legs and arms spread out like he’s creating a snow angel and stopped midway through. His eyes fasten on the mural like he’s studying each brush stroke.
He loves art. For someone so raw, this is one of the few soft things about him.
Charlie inhales deeply but never exhales. He holds in oxygen for an agonizing long minute.
He gasps air. Silent tears slide down his cheek. His eyes flit from me to Oscar and back to me. “What does love feel like?”
He swipes tear tracks off his cheeks. “I sometimes think that maybe it’ll stop one day. This feeling inside me…frustration…all the fucking time.” He blinks into more tears. “But it never really goes away, and…it has to be drowned out by something stronger. Either…pain or love.”
He blinks again, his tears welling and eyes growing bloodshot. “I need to talk to my dad.” He rubs at his arms and shakes his limbs like he wants to crawl out of his skin.
