After one minute, she frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know.” Each word sounded wrong from her lips.
“It’s Minoan,” I announced.
Everyone groaned behind her. Everyone cheered behind me.
I tried to tune them out, leaving just her and me. I craved more time, maybe even alone. I wanted to talk. I wanted to explore her. I wanted so many things in that moment that my brain went five directions at once. I was overwhelmed.
More overwhelmed than I’d ever been.
“Congratulations!” she said, having to raise her voice through the applause and groans. She pushed the keycards in my chest. I thought she’d put up a bigger fight than this. I would’ve tried a different avenue, an alternate path, to obtain what I wanted.
“That’s it?” I asked, dipping my head towards hers so she could hear me.
“You won fairly. But I’ll beat you fairly this week.” She wasn’t willing to make a bargain, a barter, something more. She wasn’t giving up. She just played by the rules, whereas I always searched for loopholes.
Rose wasn’t a carbon copy of myself, I recognized. She was someone else entirely.
“You’ll see a lot more of me,” I realized. If she was this smart, I’d see her around the academic circuits. I’d see her even more if I asked her out, but that wasn’t nearly as alluring as being her competitor. Not yet at least.
“Then you’ll need to buy me some barf bags.” She looked me up and down. I was always physically fit, and I appeared exactly as I dressed: well-off, cultured, proper, rich. An elite boarding school prick.
“Do you always vomit on guys you like,” I asked, “or just me?”
She glared. “The more you fish for compliments, the more I want to puke on you.”
“So it is just me then.”
She growled.
I grinned.
And our respective friends began pulling us away, towards our different hotel rooms. I never realized how bored I had been with life. How mundane my surroundings looked. How unchallenged I’d become.
I never realized all of these things.
Until I met her.
ELEVEN YEARS LATER
1
ROSE COBALT
Take directions from your husband, Rose Cobalt.
Who, who fated me with this night? You, Rose. A sour taste fills my mouth. I am partly to blame, I’ll admit. I refused to let him drive. I thought if I was behind the wheel, he’d tell me where we’re headed.
Instead, he’s given me the barest of directions. I’m driving blindly, at his will.
Take directions from Connor Cobalt, outside of the bedroom. I’d rather drown myself in hot, bubbling magma.
“Turn left at the light,” Connor says, his fingers to his lips. I catch his smug smile, illuminated in the blue glow of the dashboard.
I itch to do the opposite, to take a sharp right, but wherever we’re going, I want to be there as much as him. The endgame—which I am privy to—means more to me than starting a fresh rivalry with my husband. So I suck up my overwhelming pride and whip my Escalade left.
I can feel him gloating. “The more you grin like I’m giving you a quickie in a disgusting public bathroom, the more my ovaries wither and die,” I tell him. “So just think about all of our future children you’re annihilating, Richard.”
He outstretches his arm behind my headrest. “I’m so extraordinary that my mere grin can make you infertile?”
“I was insulting you,” I retort, my eyes flickering to him.
His brow arches with more satisfaction. “It was partially a compliment and partially erroneous.”
I scoff. “Erroneous?”
“Illogical, irrational, senseless—”
“I know what erroneous means. I just want to cut off your tongue for using it against me.” He may be right. It’s not a rational statement, but I would hope my ovaries would stand with me and not firmly on his side.
“You forget that I use my tongue for your pleasure—turn right.”
I swing the car to the right. “I don’t need your tongue,” I refute. “I have other means of pleasuring myself.” Though masturbating isn’t quite as good or substantial, but I’m avoiding another compliment towards a man who finds them in insults.
His fingers drum the headrest. “Are these means battery-operated?”
I shoot him a sharp look, not denying the truth.
His thumb brushes my cheek, and I actually relax some. “Your argument lacks evidence, darling. Turn left after this light.”
I roll to a stop, the red light gleaming along the nearly deserted street. It’s 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving night, everyone eating pie with their families indoors. Not gallivanting across the back roads of Philadelphia on a bizarre mission.
“Where are we going?” I ask for the fourth time.
“A parking lot,” he says again.
“I’ve passed about thirty of them already.” I motion to the empty one beside a dimly lit gas station. “Will that one not suffice?”
“A specific parking lot,” Connor amends. One that he had to Google on his phone, the device clutched in his palm. “We’re almost there. Do you think your ovaries will survive until then?”
“Do you plan on impregnating me in this parking lot?” I glare, spinning fully towards him while we wait for the green light. He wears a blue button-down and suit jacket, tailored perfectly for his six-foot-four frame. Connor Cobalt is as classy as he is conceited. Both attract me.
Both annoy me.
I’m a paradox. And maybe that’s why he loves me.
“I plan on impregnating you seven more times,” he declares, “but not tonight.” He cups my face, and his thumb brushes my bottom lip in a slow, measured line.
My chest falls shallowly, especially as his eyes flit to my mouth. He wants eight kids. An empire. We already have one child together, but there are stipulations that we haven’t discussed in full detail yet if we want more. For another time. Another day. We have too many crises to stir another one.
“You’re taking too much pleasure in this,” I say a bit quieter than I intended. I’m not even sure what I’m referring to: our proposed empire, him controlling our destination, or turning me on?
“You’re the one out of breath,” Connor says calmly, but I hear the humor behind his voice. After being married for almost two and a half years, I’ve learned the subtlety in his tones. Either that or he’s decided to ease off the façade for me. I like to think it’s a little of both.
But I doubt I’ll ever know.
“It’s green,” he announces without breaking my gaze.
I turn my head, and his hand drops. I drive to “wherever the hell he directs me to”—which is my least favorite destination.
After another five minutes, he tells me to slow down and turn right into a parking lot. I pick my foot off the gas and the car lolls.
“Right here.” He gestures ahead of us.
I swerve into the empty parking lot and digest my surroundings: the front of a closed fabric store, lights off, the building as dark as the starless sky.
I park my Escalade in the third row and switch off the ignition, my heart thudding against my tight ribcage. The quiet blankets us, the reality of our choices starting to catch up to my head.
Connor watches me, not speaking. Maybe he thinks I’ll back out.
I won’t.
I understand who and what this is for.