Hothouse Flower (26 page)

Do I say:
I can’t
sleep at night because I think about the man who crawled into my room to snap
pictures. I think about the paparazzi who’ve cornered me. I think about all the
friends who hate me, scorned me and terrified me. I think about all the men who
believe I’m Lily. And you’re the cause, big sis. You’re the reason I can’t
sleep. If it wasn’t for your sex addiction, I’d be free. So fucking free.

You’ve
hurt me.

I can’t say those words.

Not tonight.

Maybe not ever.

No one brings up
Ryke
again, but
after one minute, Lily winces. “
Ow
. Don’t pinch,” she
tells Rose.

“I didn’t,” Rose snaps. “Stop rubbing up against the rock.”
And then Rose’s gaze drifts to me, and her eyes slowly grow.

“What?” I say. “I know you don’t like my haircut, Rose—”

“It’s not that,” Rose says softly. “Lily, get out of the
water.”

“What?” Lily says, and then she follows Rose’s gaze.
“Oh…shit.” Lily motions to my neck and then she turns and crawls onto the rock.
The moment she does, I see, on Lily’s back, what Rose is internally freaking
out about.

Leeches.

We’re swimming with leeches.

< 38 >

RYKE MEADOWS

I chug a water bottle after finishing my burger.

Lo tosses his dirty paper plate into the fire. No one
mentions how long the girls have been, but with every pause in our switch of
conversation, it’s the unspoken thing that’s said. We ate without them because
none of us wanted to eat cold fucking food.

“Lily looks like she’s gaining more weight,” I tell Lo.
She’s always really bony, naturally skinny and gangly, so it’s a good sign when
she’s bigger. It means she’s getting healthy, not so consumed by her sex
addiction.

“Her boobs are bigger,” Lo says, taking a sip of his water.
He twists the cap, lost in thought for the hundredth time since the camping
trip.

“Or
Daisy’s
are smaller,” I add.

Lo glares. “I shouldn’t even have to fucking say it.”

“What? That I shouldn’t be looking at her boobs? It’s not
like there’s anything there,” I say the fucking truth, but I realize
immediately that it sounds bad. I don’t need a girl to have big breasts in
order to love her or find her attractive. None of that matters.

Connor arches his brow at me.

Yeah, this is exactly what he told me not to do. Fucking A.

Lo waves his
plastic
butter
knife at me. “How many times in two years do I need to remind you
not
to talk about her boobs? Seriously?
It’s fucking weird.”

Now I feel like shit. I keep reminding myself that she’s my
girlfriend, but it’s really fucking hard when Lo is looking at me like I’m
another Julian. “You were the one who brought up Lily’s tits. I didn’t say one
fucking word about them until you did.”

Connor wraps aluminum foil over the plate of leftover
burgers. “You just used a kindergarten argument,” Connor says. “The
he did it first
isn’t a good rebuttal.”

I swear they love to fucking gang up on me—probably because
they know I can take it. “Thanks for the opinion, Cobalt.”

“Always,” he says. Then he checks his watch, glancing at the
woods where the girls disappeared off to. It’s been a fucking long time. I
start to worry about Daisy. I don’t know where she was taking Lily and Rose,
but she could have easily climbed a tree and fallen off a branch. My heart
plummets to my stomach.

And then Lo shoots off of the chair, tossing his water bottle
on his seat. “I’m going to go find Lily.” He spoke the fucking unspoken words,
and just like that we’re all standing, following
Lo’s
trail. We can leave the fire for a few minutes without putting it out.

Walking in the general direction of where the girls went, we
hear the rush of water and figure Daisy would’ve been attracted to it. Voices
echo the closer we near the stream or waterfall.

“It’s leeching all my nutrients!” Lily shouts. And Lo takes
off, his walk turning into a sprint.

“Hold still,” Daisy says calmly.

Rose winces loudly. “I’m going to murder every one of these
disgusting things!” Connor matches
Lo’s
pace, and I
stay behind them, thinking Daisy’s fine.

When we come into the clearing, Lily looks like a deer
caught in the headlights.

A naked fucking deer.

I try not to look, but black leeches are stuck to her abdomen
and arms while Daisy tries to pry them off…who’s also naked.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen her completely
undressed. Last year. New Year’s Eve at Rose’s house in Princeton, Daisy had a
scheming look on her face with this really playful smile. The countdown to
midnight happened, and while her date, some fucking Abercrombie model, was
about to kiss her, she avoided his mouth by starting to strip, backing up towards
the kitchen with each discarded article of clothing. She said that the new year
couldn’t start off right without someone streaking.

Her eyes were on mine.

Mine were on hers.

And then the model she was with—he cut in and helped take
off her bra.

I grabbed him by the shoulder, instinctively, a gut reaction
out of irritation and anger. I didn’t want her with this
fratty
fucking guy, a grade A douchebag. She finished undressing, and I caught a
glimpse of her body before she sprinted outside, laughing in the cold. And then
her date went off on me, yelling in my fucking face, and my date—she shot
daggers at me from across the room, holding a champagne glass in a tight hand.

I can’t even express how many months we both tried with
someone else. But even seeing her now naked another time, it’s different. My
concern is at a fucking peak, heightened, revved to the max.

My brother has blinders on. He just goes straight to Lily
without looking at anyone else.

Connor is already beside Rose while she stubbornly tries to
pull a leech off her shoulder blade, refusing his help at first, and so Daisy
is instantly pushed to the side.

Or rather, pushed towards me.

I grab her wrist and tug her to the tree line, away from the
rocks, creek and waterfall. I spin her around so I’m blocking her from my
brother and Connor’s view. If there’s any girl comfortable in her skin, it’s
Daisy Calloway. The only time I’ve heard her freak out about being naked was
during the fashion show, when she was stripped in front of complete strangers.

That fucking violent act would’ve affected anyone.

I’m not even sure how much it’s left a mark on her. Maybe
she doesn’t either.

“Don’t they just suck the blood and then fall off when
they’re bloated?” Daisy asks, eyeing the two leeches on her arms and the one
that sucks her neck. Blood drips from underneath the leech’s belly. I glance at
the other girls, and they don’t seem nearly as fucking bloody right now.

Connor answers Daisy, “You girls have too many on you.”

“I told you!” Lily shouts. “It’s taking our nutrients.”

“It’s not, actually,” Connor says.

Lo focuses on Lily’s back which has five fucking leeches
attached. “How many diseases do these carry?”

I fucking swear Lily yelps in fear, like a wounded animal.

Rose squirms more fiercely now. “Get it off, Richard!”

He holds her shoulder firmly now that she’s conceded, and he
pries the leech off with the pinch of his fingers. “Leeches can be used for
medicinal purposes. Think, Rose,” he tells her. “You know this.”

She breathes through her nose.

To reassure everyone, Connor adds, “The girls are fine.”

“Should we burn them off?” Lo asks.

“No, their stomach contents will explode on the wound.”

“Gross,” Daisy says, poking at one on her abdomen. She
slowly starts peeling it off and then stops as her skin pulls with it, the
leech not detaching easily.

I scan her body quickly, my eyes falling to her back. Two on
her shoulder blades, one on her lower back, none on her ass, but one on her
calf. My stomach twists because I can tell she’s in pain—that these actually
hurt to remove.

“I’m going to rip them off like a fucking Band-Aid, okay?”

She nods a couple times, not complaining. I start with the
one on her calf, squatting, and she clenches my hair while I grip the leech and
tear it off in one motion. The spot bleeds profusely. Fucking Christ. I wish I
brought my water bottle to wash the wound.
 

I rip two more off from her stomach and her arms.

Tears brim her eyes. “Sorry,” she apologizes, wiping the
corners.

I fucking hate when she says she’s sorry for her
feelings—for stupid fucking things that don’t ever need apologies. I stand up
and kiss her temple, knowing my brother is consumed with his girlfriend’s
wellbeing. And I hold the back of her head and whisper in her ear. “You can cry
if it hurts, sweetheart. It doesn’t make you a little girl.”

She lets out a deep breath. And her arms tighten around me.
She places her forehead on my chest, and I reach over her shoulder to take off
the last three on her back. She flinches, and only one of them bleeds after
removal this time. I rub her head before pulling off my long-sleeve gray shirt.
Cold washes over my bare chest, and I realize that she must be freezing. I fit
it over her head, and it falls to her thighs, the fabric soaking some of the
blood.

I rub her arm, creating friction to warm her body. “We’ll clean
and bandage those at the campsite,” I tell her.

She nods, and then glances over at Lo, checking to see if
he’s watching her.

Fuck it.

I lift her in my arms, cradling her. She smiles, despite her
tears drying in the corners of her eyes. “We’ll meet you guys at camp,” I tell
them.

Lo glances at me once, clearly noticing Daisy in my arms.
This isn’t the first time I’ve cradled her. Nor will it ever be the last. I
stare at him with a hard, unflinching gaze.

I did nothing wrong.

I just helped someone who I love—the same fucking way Lo is
taking care of Lily and Connor is taking care of Rose. I’m tired of being shit
on for doing the right thing with the wrong girl. The biggest kindergarten
response pops up in my head.

It’s. Not.
Fucking.
Fair.

And then Lo does something surprising. He nods at me, almost
like an approval, not quite, but almost. He gestures with his head towards the
campsite. “Go.”

I do.

I leave with Daisy in my arms.

As I’ve done so many times before.

Maybe that’s why it’s not so fucking hard for him to accept
this moment. When everyone pairs off, I become the only option for her. There’s
no one else but me.

That’s how this all started.

But I think about Julian. I think about all the other
fucking guys she’s been with. All the other women I’ve dated.

And I’m certain that’s not how this ends.

There’s no way I’m with her out of circumstance.

We chose this because nothing else felt right.

Nothing else felt as good.

Our greatest happiness has always been with each other.

< 39 >

RYKE MEADOWS

We helped the girls clean off their wounds with
soap, and we bandaged them. Now they’re in sweatshirts and baggy pants, grouped
around the campfire. Lily sits on
Lo’s
lap, her head
to his chest. She keeps dozing off, but faraway howls from the woods and
rustles in the trees startle her awake.

“What was that?” she asks with wide eyes, glancing over her
shoulder.

“A big bad wolf,” Daisy jokes, her legs kicked up on my lap.
Before we were together, she’d playfully do this, but I wouldn’t touch her. So
I can’t put my hands on her ankles or pull her closer to me. I just have my
hand on the back of her camping chair, watching her pick at a hot marshmallow
on a stick. “Oh wait,” Daisy gasps, “he’s right here.” She tilts her head at
me.

I raise my brows at her. I can feel my brother watching, and
I’m not fucking sure what’s going on in his head. His expression has been
unreadable for most of the night.

She leans forward and licks gooey marshmallow off her
finger. My arousal heightens as she quickly grabs my attention. Her eyes lock
on me, and she whispers, “Big bad wolf, are you going to eat me?”

You’re a dirty girl,
Calloway.
My gaze drops to her mouth. “Until you fucking scream.”

Her lips curve upward.

“It’s dead, Rose,” Connor says. His voice pulls our gaze
towards him. Rose is curled on a chair beside Connor, his hand on her thigh,
her fingers intertwined with his. In her other hand, she fries a leech on the
tip of a stick, her yellow-green eyes murderous.

“Not nearly enough,” she retorts. “This little bitch took my
blood.”

“And here, I thought you were roasting it for dessert,” Lo
banters.

Rose holds up a hand at him, as though to say
silence.
She squishes the blackened
leech against a log, stabbing it over and over.

Lo looks around at us like
what the fuck?
He nods to Connor who sips a Fizz Life, a grin at
the corners of his lips. He finds his wife fucking amusing—even if she’s
half-crazy. “How are you not scared to bite her in bed?” Lo asks. “If you draw
blood does she grab a fire poker?”

“I’m not a leech,” Connor replies with ease.

Rose tosses the stick into the fire and cleans her hands
with a wet wipe. Then she reaches into a grocery bag by her side. “So I bought
these on the way here.” She pulls out a tall stack of tabloid magazines. “I
wanted all of us to burn them together and purge the bad energy.”

Connor says, “As long as we don’t have to chant afterwards,
I’ll participate.”

Rose stands, trying to hide a smile that’s clear to me. She
fucking loves him, arguments and all. “I’d rather you not. Your pessimism is
already clouding the process.”

“Realism and pessimism are two very different things, but
I’d be happy to explain it to you.”

She covers his mouth with her hand. “Thank you for defining
arrogance. You can keep your other definitions to yourself.” She spins around,
dropping her hand. “Now where were we?” She starts passing out the magazine,
and Connor’s eyes fall to her ass. Even though he acts like he’s better than
every horny bastard, he’s still a fucking guy. Case in point.

Lily holds her marshmallows over the fire, and a flame
engulfs it almost immediately. She shrieks and waves it around, as though
that’ll snuff it out.

I shake my head at her. “You’re going to fling it in the
woods, chill the fuck out.” Last thing we need is to start a forest fire.

“It won’t extinguish!” she defends. “Extinguish, you mallow!
Extinguish!” She flaps it around some more and tries blowing, but she more or
less just spits on the thing. And then from behind her, Lo easily blows out the
flame himself, leaving her with a burnt marshmallow.

Daisy smiles wickedly. “Wow, who would have thought—Lo blows
better than Lily.”

I rub my lips to keep from smiling. Everyone else looks
fairly uncomfortable by that statement—only because it came from Daisy. If I
said it, it would’ve been fine. If Lily said it—everyone would have fucking
laughed.

Lo glares at me.

I extend my arms. “I didn’t do a fucking thing.”

“You’re a shitty influence.”

Daisy acts nonchalant, but her gaze flits all over the
forest. Every time she tries to be one step closer to us, someone in our group
has a way of pushing her back out. It’s unintentional, I think. But it happens,
regardless.

“It was a fucking joke,” I tell Lo. He’s about to open his
mouth, ready to chew me up and spit me back out. I mentally start putting on my
armor to withstand him.

But then Rose snaps her fingers, cutting off Lo and
regaining everyone’s attention. Her eyes meet mine briefly. I know she did that
for my benefit. I’m grateful, but I don’t show it. “We’re supposed to be
purging bad energy not creating it.” She drops a magazine on my lap. “Here, you
can burn this one.”

I read the headline:
Ryke
Meadows Continues
to Play Games.
The front page picture shows Daisy hanging over my shoulder
outside of the pub in Paris, my hand on her ass. But I can’t get over the smile
on her face. The camera caught her mid-laugh.

She’s gorgeous. And she’s mine.

I don’t want to burn this picture. I want to frame that
happiness and revisit it every morning and every night for the rest of my life.

But the headline definitely taints it.

They think we’re flirting. We are. But they also think I’m
fucking Lily. So I’m a player. I’m fooling around with both Calloway girls.
It’s just so fucking absurd.

My jaw locks, and I don’t waste another moment. I fling it
into the fire.

“You have to wait!” Rose yells at me. “We’re doing this as a
group.” She slaps my arm with another rolled up magazine and then tosses it at
me.

“For fuck’s sake you’re high-strung tonight.”

“Talk to me when you’ve had a worm suck your blood off your
ass,” she retorts, walking past me to Lily and Lo. I read the headline of my
new tabloid:
Sara Hale at War with Her
Family.

Fucking fantastic.

Daisy rolls up her magazine, hiding the headline from view.

“Everyone,” Rose says, sitting back in her chair and
crossing her ankles. Connor is the only one without a tabloid. Rose is sticking
to her earlier claim, refusing to give him one. “Take your magazine and read
something you find particularly offensive before tossing it into the fire.”

“And what is this supposed to fucking do?” I ask.

“Ward off evil spirits,” Lo says, sipping his Fizz Life
while hooking his arm around Lily’s waist. She leans against his chest again.
“Too bad it won’t cure your obsessive compulsive personality, Rose.”

She shoots him a scathing look, the flames reflecting in her
eyes. “Too bad it won’t cure your alcoholism, Loren.”

He raises his soda can. “Look, it’s already working. You’re
practically a licensed witch....shit, I meant bitch.” He snaps his fingers. He
might as well have said
aw, shucks
.

She opens her mouth to argue and Connor cuts her off. “This
is all very fun, but the more we talk about witches and spirits, I find myself
becoming stupider and stupider. So please, for the sake of all humanity, shut up.”

I shake my head while Lo grins, finding this hilarious.

Rose combats her husband almost immediately, “You really
think your intelligence benefits
all
of humanity? You own a diamond business.”

“And I give a large percentage of my money to charities and
research, darling.”

They start to bicker, and Daisy leans closer to me. She
folds a napkin into an origami swan, glancing from it to me every so often. “Want
to know a secret?” she whispers.

“Sure,” I say, my arm stretching across the back of her
chair again.
 

She smiles and says, “You’re my favorite four-letter word.” Her
bold green eyes flit up to me.

She makes the corniest pickup lines sound like the sexiest
things I’ve ever heard.

“The word
fuck
didn’t do anything for you?” I ask, my muscles tensing.

“You’ve desensitized me to it. It might as well be as
powerful as the word
foot.
”

I lean into her ear and lower my voice. “You won’t be saying
that when I actually fuck you.”

A blinding smile fills her face, and it stirs my need even
more. I want her in my fucking arms. I want to kiss her so deeply that air has
trouble reaching both of our lungs, gasping with wild, arresting pleasure.

One day, it’ll happen.

Just not this moment.

“I’ll go,” Lily announces, cutting in Connor and Rose’s
bickering. She stands up with her magazine in hand. “Um…so there’s this picture
of me in this one that really bugs me.” She flips a couple of pages and then
nods. “Yeah, so I’m buying condoms and they captioned it with
Lily’s spiraling out of control again
.”
 

Rose claps, excited to have a willing participant. “Okay,
now throw it in.”

Lily tosses the magazine into the flames. It falls against
the logs and burns quickly.

Connor stands next, snatching a magazine off the towering
stack beside Rose.

“Oh so now you believe in it?” Rose asks.

“I believe in you,” Connor refutes. “Not your superstition.”
He flips open the magazine. “
Connor
Cobalt’s seventh sex tape has grossed over twenty million dollars. Making Scott
Van Wright, the owner of the tapes, one of the world’s richest pornography
distributers.”
Scott Van Wright is the reason Connor and Rose have sex
tapes leaked every few months. He screwed them over. After Connor dropped the
lawsuits and used the publicity to grow both Rose’s fashion business and his
own, I offered to personally beat the shit out of Scott. But Connor said that
he didn’t want to see me in jail—even if the offer was appealing.

I hope someday that son of a bitch gets what he deserves.

Connor throws the magazine into the fire, hate actually
passing through his blue eyes.

Rose is next. “
Rose
Cobalt is a bitch.
” She nods and tosses hers in.

“That’s it?” Lo asks when she sits down. “That’s all you
could come up with?”

“Those are hurtful words,” Rose replies.

“I call you a bitch five times a day and you don’t bat an
eye,” Lo reminds her. Then he remembers her outburst tonight and corrects
himself, “Well, not usually.”

“They’re not hurtful from you,” she refutes. “That was
Vogue
.” She touches her chest. “I cried
for two days straight when I read that.”

“
Vogue
is her
Bible,” Lily says.

“Does that mean I’m like your saint?” Daisy asks with a
smile. She was in
Vogue
a few months
ago. On the front of the fucking magazine.

“You’d be more saint-like if you participated,” Rose says.

Daisy brightens and then stands on the seat of her canvas
chair. “
Daisy Calloway ‘the baby
Calloway’
,” she reads and adds air quotes, “
has been spotted with another male model at a Gucci fashion shoot.
Close sources have confirmed that she’s been seeing him. This is the third guy
this month for Daisy. Could this be a clear sign that she’s following in Lily’s
footsteps? Only time will tell.
” She flings the magazine and it spins to
the fire like a Frisbee.

Hearing that—it hardens my face. The Gucci shoot was months
ago, and even though I know she couldn’t be with those guys—we slept in the
same bed every night—the accusations piss me off. Rose wants to expel bad
energy, but I don’t read these tabloids for a reason.

“You go,” Daisy tells me. She tries to kick my chair over
with her foot, but she doesn’t have enough strength when she’s standing up
high. I don’t rise. I just look down at the magazine in my hands after finding
the center article. “
Ryke
Meadows in another fight with a photog.
And they show a picture of me yelling at some cameraman.” I lazily toss the
magazine in and lean back in my chair.

“Do you feel any different?” Daisy asks as she hops off her
chair.

“Nope.”

Daisy gasps and looks to Rose. “It didn’t work on him. Can
we cast a spell to protect him from evil?”

Rose rolls her eyes now and then she looks at my brother.
“Loren, please go.”

He reluctantly rises, but only because Lily climbs off his
lap and physically pulls him from the chair. When his eyes fall to the magazine
I see how they change. They sharpen and turn cold. “
Another source confirms molestation rumors. Jonathan Hale and Loren
Hale continue to deny them. Jonathan’s first son has yet to comment
.”

No one speaks. An uncomfortable tension blankets our
campsite. I wait for Lo to throw the magazine into the fire or curse me out or
both. But his eyes remain on the tabloid and his brows furrow as he continues
to read silently. He starts shaking his head.

“What is it?” Connor asks.

“
A psychiatrist
specializing in sex addiction was interviewed,”
Loren reads, “
and confirms that most sex addicts
experience sexual trauma. We have confirmation that…
” He rubs his lips to
hide emotion, his eyes reddening. He shakes his head. “
We have confirmation that Lily Calloway spent much of her time with the
Hales. It’s suspected that Jonathan Hale might have
bene
an influence in her addiction.
”

They’re implying that Jonathan abused her too.

I can’t see that happening. I shake my head as much as Lo.
My dad may be a bad fucking guy, but he wouldn’t do that to Lily, to his best
friend’s daughter. It’s something unthinkable.

And if Lo saw that happen, he wouldn’t roll over and stay
quiet. He would go absolutely crazy. He would have, without a fucking doubt,
killed our father.