I flick my blinker and take 19th . “Does your mom live alone?” Last month, I asked if he was close to his parents. We didn’t have long to chat at the time, and all he could get out was that his parents divorced when he was twelve.
Thatcher studies the traffic ahead of us. “My grandma still lives with her.”
Reading into his voice is difficult. Everything sounds cut and dry and simple, and possibly that’s just how it is for Thatcher. I’m used to a family that speaks in riddles and confounding subtext. If a Cobalt is blunt, usually we’re blunt with added flair.
He adjusts his seat again. “My mom remarried, so her wife is with her too.” He hawk-eyes the paparazzi behind us. “She’s openly bi. Been that way since she was a teenager. She dated girls before she met my dad—take a right on Porter up ahead.”
I nod, and my eyes flit to him. “Your dad isn’t still here then?”
“No.” Thatcher shakes his head. “He hasn’t been in Philly for a while. He trains SEAL recruits in Coronado.”
I do remember Thatcher said his dad isn’t an active Navy SEAL at the moment, but he used to be.
I crane my neck to check the rearview mirror. The Toyota is encroaching my bumper. “I have to go a little faster.” I press the gas and then rotate the wheel. Turning a sharp corner onto Porter.
I watch the Toyota mimic me and then slink right on up to my exhaust pipes. “Really?” I crinkle my nose at the mirror. “You’re still going to ride my ass?”
Paparazzi are either about to force me to push twenty-over the speed limit or to endure a minor collision with their car.
Thatcher is already rolling down the passenger window. He sticks his head and muscular arm a little bit outside, and the more he leans, the more he lifts his ass off the seat.
My eyes dart down to his black slacks that mold his butt like perfectly rounded fruit.
“Oh my God,” I breathe underneath my breath. I just checked out my bodyguard’s ass. It wouldn’t be the first time. “You’re most surely going to hell, Jane,” I whisper more softly to myself.
Two out of my five brothers will certainly be there, so at least I won’t be alone. But knowing Tom and Eliot, those two menaces will destroy all eternal pits of fiery damnation the second they enter.
There will be no hell left for me to even occupy.
“Back up!” Thatcher waves for the car to move.
The Toyota hardly budges, and I tighten my grip on the wheel.
“BACK THE FUCK UP!” Thatcher yells in a deep, threatening voice that I’ve heard before. Life-or-death seriousness coats each word, and I can only imagine his features are as caustic.
The car drifts back from my Beetle, paparazzi finally granting me some breathing room.
Precisely why I prefer having a bodyguard as a co-pilot. And Thatcher, in particular. He intimidates cameramen far easier than me. Most of the paparazzi in Philly have seen me in diapers.
“You follow Jane Cobalt on Instagram, don’t you, Cathy?”
My ears perk up at my name on the radio. At the same moment, Thatcher rests his ass on the seat and begins to roll up the window.
I should switch stations, but my curiosity outweighs rationality sometimes.
“You bet I do,” Cathy answers. “Jane Cobalt. Oldest daughter of Rose and Connor Cobalt.”
My lips rise. My mom is a brilliant, ball-busting woman who takes no shit from anyone, especially not from her husband. My dad acts like her rival, but they’re equals in every way, shape, and form.
I love them dearly.
“Get this, Cath,” Jackie says on air. “Just last night, Jane Cobalt posted on Instagram. Did you see it?”
“Let me pop it up.”
Thatcher crosses his arms. Eyes narrowed on the street before veering to me. “You want me to change the channel?”
“It’s okay.” I frown a little. I’m perplexed, really. “I posted nothing terrible last night. Just a picture of my mom and me and a book…” Jane Eyre , my namesake. My voice fades as the radio host, Jackie, describes the photo.
“…and listen to this caption. Jane wrote, spending time with these beauties. ”
I gape at the car speakers. “And what’s so wrong with that?”
Jackie continues, “Jane Cobalt clearly isn’t spending enough time with her mother because she’s nowhere near the same caliber of woman as Rose Calloway.”
My jaw drops further.
Thatcher is glaring at the row houses that pass us by.
“Oh, for sure,” Cathy agrees. “Jane Cobalt is so ditzy in comparison. Rose Calloway is fierce and dominant. It’s hard to believe Jane Cobalt is even her daughter.”
My eyes flash hot at the radio. “Wow. Stomping on me just to uplift my mom.” It happens too often, but when other women try to pit me against her, it hurts a little more.
The media will run bogus stories about how I’m jealous of mom’s success. Celebrity news loves to define most of my female relationships in my family as catty, competitive, and jealous. Perpetuating an ugly stigma that we cannot work together or support one another.
I would much rather cheer in the stands and watch Sulli win an Olympic gold than ever hope she loses. I can’t imagine rooting against people I love. It must be a lackluster truth since it’s never graced a tabloid.
But the more the media compares me to my mom—just to point out my shortcomings—it does become harder to ignore my failures.
“Now that I think about it, Jackie,” Cath continues on the radio, “what has Jane Cobalt even accomplished in comparison to her mom?”
Here we go.
I press my lips together. What have I done? Not much, really.
Jackie laughs. “She bought her way to Princeton with her last name and notoriety.”
“I did do that,” I admit aloud. Because I will never truly know if I would’ve been accepted to Princeton based on academics and merit alone. I’m very conscious of how much of a leg up I have in life.
“Such a shame,” Cathy says. “Jane Cobalt was so intelligent in math. She could’ve been an engineer.”
Jackie makes a disappointed noise. “Instead, she just rode the coattails of Maximoff Hale and helped his charity.”
“Which Maximoff Hale was kicked out of!” Cathy exclaims with a laugh of disbelief.
“But you have to remember, Cath, his parents are addicts. The fact that Maximoff Hale has stayed sober is a real feat—”
“It is,” I interject in agreement.
“—and Jane hasn’t even come close to him. What is she doing with her time now? She’s living off Mommy and Daddy.”
Thatcher grumbles an Italian word that sounds like a curse, but I can’t be certain.
Cathy snorts. “And she probably actually believes she’s as successful as her mom.”
My shoulders sink.
Of course I haven’t achieved anywhere near what my mom has in her lifetime. My family is full of overachievers and goal-oriented prodigies, and as the eldest of the brood, I am pressured to live up to the Rose Calloway Cobalt ideal every day.
My mom started her fashion company when she was only fifteen. Ladies and gentlemen, let all of that sink in.
Fifteen.
I’m twenty-three and I can hardly decide which brand of toothpaste to use.
It’s becoming shamefully easier to say, I am not worthy to be a Cobalt.
Confidence should be engrained in my DNA, but to reach into the well, I have to constantly remind myself that I am good enough.
I won’t devalue her achievements just to find value in myself.
My mom is brilliant and beautiful.
And so I am. Just in my own way.
“It comes down to this. Jane Cobalt is nothing more than a conceited heiress to a billion-dollar fortune,” Jackie tells the listeners. “She continues to be a disappo—”
Thatcher turns the radio off. “Fucking horseshit—sorry,” he apologies quickly to me, his muscles flexed and jaw tensed.
“Are you apologizing for swearing or for cutting off the radio?” I wonder, eyeing the road.
“The radio, but if swearing offended you—”
“It doesn’t offend me,” I say quickly. I want him to feel comfortable being himself with me.