“Ignore that idiot. You haven’t done anything wrong.” Dean ran his palm up and down my arm, making my flesh sizzle. “Tell Millie that everything is fine.”

“Is it?” I lifted my eyebrows, tilting my head to the side.

“No,” he admitted, his jaw flexed. He looked so breakable at that moment, I wasn’t entirely sure it was him I was looking at. He normally carried himself with an invincible halo, the kind of self-assurance him and his friends exhibited like an American Express black card.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning into him without even meaning to.

“Val left,” he said, his head hanging down as he twisted his fingers inside his hair and tugged, his skull probably stinging with the force of his hand. “She fucking left, Rosie. The babysitter found Luna all by herself, in an empty apartment. No clothes or shoes or mother anywhere around. Sitting in an overflowing diaper, crying her fucking lungs out. Fuck knows how long it’s been since she ate something. She was crying so hard she lost her voice. The sitter took her to the hospital to get checked. Trent’s boarding a plane in an hour to bring her here.”

“Jesus.” I slapped a hand over my mouth. His cut cheekbones were tainted red, and he looked wary. For a second, I thought he would say something else. Or maybe even cry. Even if one, lonely tear that would fall from his eyelash, as if jumping off a cliff. But he did neither, squaring his shoulders, fixing his halo and clearing his throat.

“Honestly? It’s for the best,” he said, mentally knocking me on my ass. What? “Not everyone was born to be parents. Good on Luna. It would have hurt more if Val fucked off when she was six or seven. Bet she won’t even be mad at her when she grows up.”

I took a second to look at him—really look at him—trying to read whatever it was that was written on his face, but it was gibberish. A mixture of too many feelings, too many regrets, too much everything, crammed into one, tortured expression.

“Don’t give me that look, Rosie. Trust me. Luna doesn’t need Val.”

“Okay.” I pushed his head to the crook of my neck in a hug. Pain seeped through his strong body, and I willingly gulped it, the need to feel him overwhelming. “It’s okay, Dean.”

“She’s better off,” he repeated, his voice strangled with agony.

I was blinded. Gone for. Torn apart and thrown to the floor like confetti.

I wanted to take what he was feeling and swallow it like a bitter pill. It didn’t suit him. Even with the alcohol, weed, and empty fucks, Dean Cole didn’t do sadness.

He wasn’t Sirius.

He was planet Earth.

He was oxygen.

He was everything.

I allowed his face to disappear inside my shoulder and embraced him until there was no more space between us. We melted into each other, his heartbeats against my skin, my hair in his nose, his fingers on my waist. Our bodies joined together, even more so than in the red truck.

Dean didn’t produce any tears, but that didn’t mean he didn’t cry. He did, and I cried with him. For Luna, who was only a year old, and was already going through something more traumatic than most people experience in a lifetime. For Trent, who was always somehow being forced to grow up, always the one to get screwed over. And I cried for me, because I knew, right there and then, that a part of me was already his despite my best efforts. I never stopped loving Dean Cole. Not even for one damn moment. I just convinced myself that I stopped caring.

Until I didn’t.

Until now.

FROM SADNESS GROWS LIFE. THAT’S what my dad always said.

That night, I slept in Rosie’s room.

We didn’t have sex. We didn’t mess around. We didn’t even kiss.

But our legs were tangled and our skin touched and it felt more real than any other shit I experienced in any bed, at any time. In the morning, I had to sneak so I could hop in a taxi to the airport, but I did leave her a note.

This is happening, Sirius.

Sincerely,

—Your Bronze Horseman

The flight to Vegas was a blur.

I was sober and conscious yesterday—the day I had spent with Rosie—and it felt weird…but nice. The high I got was natural, from imagining her dressing like a stripper, cuffing me to my bed, and sitting on my face until I couldn’t breathe and her pussy was completely numb. But then Trent got that phone call and my world had collapsed.

Val’s betrayal sweltered in my stomach along with what Trent said after he’d found out. “She’s never going to see her kid again unless she commits to being a parent first. I’ve had enough of her bullshit.”

As much as it pained me to admit it, he was fucking right, too. You couldn’t half-ass parenthood. It wasn’t a lazy Sunday morning fuck. Either you were completely in or you were completely out. Anything in-between was a mindfuck to the kid, and I had to remember that, now more than ever.