Kiss the Sky (53 page)

“It’s
okay,” Lily says again. “This day is yours.”

“What?”
My voice is lost to shock.

Connor
takes my hand, and I face him. It’s quiet. The only noise from the fountain
beside us and the birds flapping in the sky. The helicopters sound far away
from the courtyard, like little insects in the distance.

“Rose,”
Connor breathes. And then he drops to one knee. He takes the black box from his
pocket and flips it open. “Will you spend the rest of your life with me?”

I
don’t even look at the diamond. “Yes,” I say, not hesitating, not thinking. I
just say the one word that makes the most sense because my heart tells me so.
I’m in such a fog that I only realize he’s standing and kissing me when
everyone claps around us.

I
smile and hold onto his face, not wanting my lips to part from his yet.

He
grins into the kiss.

I’m
getting married.

Today.

Holy
shit. He breaks apart, and Daisy approaches me first with a dress box. She
opens it, and I see the gown I sewed folded neatly underneath plastic wrapping.
“We had the bust altered so you’d fit in it and not Lily,” she admits. “I stole
the gown from your closet.”

I
run my fingers over the plastic. I designed my own wedding dress. I smile. The
dress I know I’ll love. The material is delicate, as thin as a ballet recital
outfit that’ll reach my collarbone, how I like my clothes. Connor, I realize,
found better bridesmaids gowns to match what I had created for Lily.

“It’s
perfect,” I say. I glance back at Connor and I shake my head. “I can’t believe
you did all of this for me.”

“I
know what you love,” he says, “I was happy to make this day ours.”

I
breathe out slowly so I don’t start crying all over again. My sisters begin to
trickle inside to get ready for the wedding…
my
wedding. Loren and
Ryke
follow suit. With Poppy’s
husband and my father in tow.

Connor
and my mother are the only two who linger in the courtyard.

My
mother takes my hands in hers. “Rose,” she says with glassy eyes. “I love you,
and I never thought you’d get married…”

I
can’t help but laugh because I never thought I would either.

“So
this day is a dream for me as much as I know it is for you.”

I’ll
take it. “Thank you,” I say, kissing her cheek. She kisses mine back.

“I’ll
see you inside.” She pats Connor’s arm before she disappears into the palace.

Connor
tilts his head, and he wears that arrogant, conceited smile I know so well. He
edges forward and wraps his arms around my waist. “I love you,” he says.
I love you.

The
words fill me more than anything else. His lips touch my forehead, and he holds
me so close, and I sway with him a little, as though we’re dancing at our
reception. As though we’ve already said
I
do.

 
“One day,” he breathes, “we’re going to
look back and recount all that we’ve done together. And we’re going to think,
goddamn we were only twenty-four.
”

My
eyes well. “We’re the responsible pair.”

“The
ones who clean everyone’s messes.”

“The
ones everyone turns to,” I add.

“The
most adult, even though we’re fairly new at this.”

I
laugh into a tearful smile. This is about to happen. We’re going to be
together. It feels like the start of a lifetime. Any fears I ever had, any
reservations, are gone. I trust that he’ll stay here, for me.

That
I am more than just a chase.

“Kiss
the sky with me,” Connor whispers, a beautiful smile pulling his lips, “and
don’t ever come down.”

[ Epilogue ]

CONNOR COBALT

Three Months Later

Hot, blinding spotlights bear down on me, my hands
on either side of a glass podium. Three-hundred faces stare back. And I can’t
see a single one. It’s like being supine on a hospital table, gazing at white
fluorescents with no recognition of what lies beyond.

I’m
not nervous. My palms aren’t clammy. The only sweat that beads my forehead
derive from these lights.

The
Cobalt Inc. logo rotates on a screen behind me, subsidiary names like
MagNetic
printed beneath. I already talked about my mother.
How she had a vision for this company, the typical things everyone would expect
to hear after the CEO passed, leaving her son everything.

I
step out of the podium, in a suit that embodies my confidence.

One
day, I’m at Penn, sitting in the front of class and turning in assignments
about managerial theories. And in a flash of time, I’m here.
Twenty-four-years-old. Addressing men and women twice my age about Cobalt
Inc.’s newest undertaking, with no one else commanding the stage but me.

I
smile, not able to see a thing. And I don’t even care. “Galileo said, ‘All
truths are easy to understand once they are discovered,’” I tell the crowd.
“‘The point is to discover them.’” The only one who would know how apropos that
is to my life would be the girl in the very first row.
 

“Today,
I’m going to tell you two truths.”

I
walk towards the edge of the stage with certainty.

“I
know women,” I say, which causes a wave of chuckling. The sex tapes are public
knowledge by now. And instead of shying away from the publicity, both Rose and
I have taken advantage of it—as business students would.

“And
I know diamonds.” My lips rise even higher.

The
Cobalt Inc. logo fades behind me.

Cobalt
Diamonds replaces it.

Everyone
claps, more loudly as they read the tagline:
If there’s anything we know, it’s women and diamonds.

The
industry my mother built was always meant to interconnect to others. Magnets,
paints, gemstones—we could have started a jewelry franchise years ago, but
Cobalt wasn’t a well-known name before the reality show, and we would have had
to buyout another company, something we didn’t want to do.

The
sex tapes have immortalized me as something far greater than I am—a dominant
god that can fulfill a woman’s every fantasy—and belief has more power than
anything I can ever construct myself.

It’s
given a face to my mother’s company and a much bigger future.

I
tell the crowd that our Director of Advertising will discuss marketing
strategies. I thank them, and instead of heading backstage, I walk down the
stairs to the convention floor.

My
eyes adjust slowly to the darkness, but the cheering has suddenly escalated.
And when I blink a few times, I realize that everyone is on their feet.

Rose
included.

She
claps with them, her yellow-green eyes narrowed with passion and fire. I
approach her, and without a word, I hold my wife’s hand and lead her down the
aisle of businessmen and women. A few people pat my shoulder on the way out.

“Diamonds,”
she says with the shake of her head. I’ve been keeping this secret from her for
months now. A smile lights up her face. “I’d say it’s genius, but I’m afraid of
inflating your ego. It’s already hard living with Loren’s and yours together.”

I
grin and lower my head to whisper in her ear, “Ladies and gentlemen, she called
me a genius, and she didn’t even glare when she said it.”

She
shoots me one now.

I
kiss her temple and stand up straight, pushing through the double doors into
the quiet hallway. Several people in suits and nametags walk around with
purpose, leather binders to their chests, paying attention to us only when they
recognize our faces.

I
hold her by the waist and lift her hand, pointing out the large diamond on her
finger, stones encased all around the band. “This was one of the first
designs,” I say.

“I
have a Cobalt original?”

“Yes.”

She
appraises the ring on her finger, her lips rising again. “When someone asks me
who I’m wearing, I’m going to say me and my husband.”

The
strangeness of that appeals to me just as much as it does to her. I lift her
chin so her eyes meet mine, her lipstick dark red, bolding her features. “How
much time do I have left with you?” I ask her.

“All
day,” she says. “I cleared my schedule.”

I
frown. “
You
cleared your schedule?” I
almost laugh. “I saw your to-do list this morning. It was five pages long.”

“I’m
trying something new,” she says, touching my chest with her hands and smoothing
my suit.

“And
what’s that?”

“Delegation,”
she says. “I have a store manager. She’s taking care of the inventory and the
mindless tasks.” Rose opened a boutique with her clothes in Philadelphia, no
longer under the command of a department store. She could have accepted a
couple offers from them. Many people were asking for a lingerie line from Rose,
the demand increasing.

She’s
been designing one, but not for H&M or Saks. It’ll all go in
her
new store. And even though she’s
given up millions of dollars in return for being a small business owner, she’s
happy. I can see it in her eyes. The pressure of success and fear of failure is
finally gone.

“But
we do have dinner plans,” she says.

“We
do?” My brows rise.

“Loren
and Lily are meeting us at a restaurant a few blocks over.” Rose tucks her hair
behind her ear. “I think Lily is doing better.” She nods to herself.

After
the sex tapes, Rose’s name wasn’t tarnished the way Lily’s was. Women praised
her for her openness and many wanted to ask her questions.

Rose
looks physically ill when we talk about the differences between this case and
the sex addiction leak. Even now, her eyes tighten as she stares off in
recollection of the past few months. Lily was quiet towards Rose for a while.

“It’s
not fair,” I heard Lily cry to Loren one day.

She’s
right.

It’s
not really fair.

Rose
hates that Lily was beaten down, especially since her sister was the one with
the illness. But Rose had sex with her long-term boyfriend. Lily was with many
different partners before Loren. Rose was the virgin. Lily was the slut. In the
eyes of the world, one is right, one is wrong.

And
changing the world—if that’s in anyone’s power—
time
has to be on your side. One of the few things I can’t control.

Rose’s
eyes catch a newspaper on a nearby bench. I follow her gaze to see the headline
New Connor and Rose Cobalt Sex Tape Sold
for $35 Million
. Scott just sold the rights to the footage of us in the
bathroom. The one where Rose gives me head. It’s a reminder that he’s profiting
off us even months after the reality show ended. We dropped the lawsuit about a
month ago. The time and stress to battle him in court wasn’t worth what we have
now.

We
surrendered. And Scott Van Wright won.

But
he didn’t win what matters.

Though,
I do take solace in the fact that he doesn’t have footage of us in the Alps,
the night Rose lost her virginity, the night we slept together for the very
first time. He can sell as many sex tapes as he wants, but that moment is ours,
and only ours, forever.
 

When
I reroute my attention from the newspaper and back to Rose, I realize she’s
already left the headline in the past. She’s studying me with an entranced,
wistful gaze.

“What
is it?” I ask. My heart lightens and soars as I keep watching her look at me
this way.

She
shakes her head with a smile, and tears crest her eyes as she says, “I love you
more than anyone.”

My
mouth falls a little. I never thought I’d reach that place in her heart, above
her sisters. It seemed unfathomable, for however much I wanted it to be true.

When
the shock passes, I smile deeply and grip the back of her head, my fingers
sliding through her silky hair. “I love you more than I could ever love myself,”
I whisper the words and lift Rose’s chin again, raising her gaze to mine, not
to say anything else. I just smile as I watch her eyes churn with a familiar,
unbridled emotion.

I
love knowing I’ll fall asleep and wake up to those impassioned eyes. I love
that the most terrifying
what if
—the
one without her—is the path that won’t ever come true. My new dreams are in the
faraway future, filled with children. And love.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is about dreaming big. And we want to
thank our parents for allowing us to dream the biggest dreams of all, for
encouraging us to go after them and giving us support that we will never be
able to repay. The most we can say is thank you, right here, for being the
whisper in our ear that told us we could be anything and do anything. Thanks
Mom and Dad. We owe you big time.