Hothouse Flower (30 page)

The answer almost makes me smile. I wish Lo felt the same
way, but I think it’s different for him. He’s been battling his addiction for
much longer and he had a much bumpier road than
Ryke
.

He fixes his hair, trying to comb through the disheveled
strands with his fingers. “Look,” he suddenly says, his thoughts collected to
form a whole response. “I can’t do to my kids what my parents did to me. The
separation, the divorce, the fucking fighting. I want to be in a serious,
committed relationship before I have a child.”

“You mean marriage,” I say.

“When you’re married, you can still get divorced. I don’t
take that much stock in the word. I just need the emotional fucking
commitment.” He motions with his head towards the path we came from. “Let’s
start walking.”

I follow him, keeping up with his lengthy stride.

His eyes flicker to me a couple times while I stay silent
and digest this information. “What do you want?”

I smile. “Look who’s curious now.”

He brushes a cornstalk out of my way. “Yeah, well when you
joke around I have to read between the lines, and I don’t always read you
right. It’s easier asking you.”

I’m glad he asked. It definitely means he cares. “I want to
be fully committed to someone, to be married, probably earlier rather than
later. And I do want babies. Maybe like three. I also want to travel and visit
the great seven wonders and scuba dive and stand beneath a waterfall in Costa
Rica, kissing you.”

He reaches out and holds my hand.

My heart swells.

“Not in that order,” he tells me.

My lips pull high because he didn’t discount a single one of
my wants. In fact—I can see it in his eyes.

He wants all of it too.

< 45 >

RYKE MEADOWS

“Just take your time,” Connor tells me over the
phone. “We stopped in Roswell because Lily and Lo wanted to see the aliens. They
spent four hours in the museum—excuse me, I mean the propaganda shit hole.”

I hear Lo in the background. “And you made us spend three
hours at a graveyard. Between us, who’s the super freaky one, love?”

“It was a war cemetery,” Connor tells me. “And Rose and I
were searching for our ancestors.”

“I won,” Rose speaks up. “I have three more dead relatives
than Connor.”

I shake my head. “You all are fucked up.”

I can hear his smile in his voice. “So we’ll meet in Utah in
about four days. We’ve lost most of the paparazzi, but there’s a couple who
always catch up to us.”

“We haven’t seen any paparazzi since we split up.”

“Good. By the way, Greg has been trying to reach Daisy to
make sure she’s safe. Has she checked her phone?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “But we’ve been getting
shitty signal. I’ll make sure she calls him today.”

“Perfect.” We say our goodbyes and hang up. I return to a
parking lot where Daisy sits on the curb. Our motorcycle is parked by our
campsite, which isn’t hidden in thick woods like the Smoky Mountains. We made a
detour to Wyoming, mostly grassy terrain, but a massive rock juts up behind us,
trees surrounding it. Devils Tower. It’s shaped like a thimble, the peak flat.

I debated taking her to Yellowstone since she’s never been,
but when I told her that I free-soloed Devils Tower—almost breaking the record
for the fastest climb—she insisted we stop so she could see it. Now we’re going
to hike around the base…and apparently color her fucking hair at the same time.

Boxes of dye lie open around her on the cement, and she has
aluminum foil wrapped in different sections of her hair. Why I assumed she’d do
it the normal way—with a mirror and a sink—I have no idea. She does things her
crazy fucking way.

She rises to her feet, wrapping a yellow scarf around her
foiled head and slipping on her plastic sunglasses. She wears a shirt that says
wanderlust.
I’ve never seen her smile
so much than this past week.

I lower my dark green baseball cap and slide my backpack on.
“Have you called your dad recently?” I ask her. “He’s been trying to get ahold
of you.”

She tosses the plastic bag with hair dye into a trashcan on
our way to the trail. “Yeah, I texted him back. It must not have sent. He likes
when I check in.”

I adjust the strap on my backpack, that one statement
putting pressure on my chest. Connor has told me numerous fucking times that
Greg is protective of his youngest daughter, and it’s starting to get real for
me. I’m with her, and some day, I may need his approval. I’m just not sure what
I need to do in order to get it. But I’m realizing that for Daisy, I have to
make a bigger fucking effort. She’s close to her parents. She loves them.

I would
never
fucking
ask her to choose them over me. Severing a relationship with someone who
undeniably cares for you—it untethers something in your soul. I think about my
mom, and it’s a loss that I can’t quantify or calculate in words or fucking
numbers. It’s just there, eating at me. I hate and love myself for it. But I
hate and love her.

I don’t know how to go back to a woman who bulldozed all of
my friends, my brother and
me.
How do
I even begin to forgive her?

Daisy gasps. “Are those climbers?” She hops onto a gray
boulder and peers up at the rock. From here, the harnessed climbers look like
specs, barely visible. But they’re all over Devils Tower, ascending in pairs.

“It’s a popular climb,” I tell her. “If the weather’s good,
there’ll always be people here.”

“How long did it take you to reach the top?” she asks,
hopping down and joining me back on the path.

“Twenty fucking minutes.”
Almost 900 feet of ascension.
Two minutes shy of the record. I debated
on trying it again, but I’d rather focus on the rocks at Yosemite.
 

“You say it so blasé,” she tells me. “Aren’t you proud?”

“Shouting about it won’t change anything.” I’m not Connor
Cobalt. After I left for college, every achievement has been an internal one,
where I remember the road I took to get there. The labor, the time, the
practice. My records don’t tell that story. They’re just numbers.

We walk past a couple of intense hikers in their Adidas
running shoes, capris and reflecting sunglasses. I only now realize how fast my
pace is, and Daisy hasn’t complained. But I can tell she’s struggling to keep
up, her breathing heavier than when we started. A streak of purple dye starts
to run down her forehead.

“Well if you’re not going to boast, then I’ll do it for
you,” she says, reminding me of Sully. She darts to another large boulder, the
hike littered with them, and she climbs on it, using her knees to hoist her
body on top. Then she throws up her arms. “I have an announcement to make!
Birds, people, trees, please listen up!”

I cross my arms. The more I watch, the more my lips rise.

Some people glance over, but most just keep on walking. The
birds actually seem more interested in Daisy, squawking and flying above us as
she speaks.

I just shake my head but I can’t ignore the fucking feeling
in my chest. It’s pride. But not for climbing Devils Tower. I’m so fucking
proud that I have
her
in my life.

“My boyfriend right there.” She points at me. “He climbed
that mountain.” She jabs her finger behind her. “And hey, he did it in twenty
fucking minutes. Not just twenty minutes. Twenty
fucking
minutes! Rejoice!” She throws up both her arms, and I catch
a couple park rangers walking up the path.

I motion for her. “K, celebration fucking over.”

She jumps off the boulder and places her hands on her hips,
panting for a second. “How’d I do?”

“The birds enjoyed it.” I wipe the trail of hair dye off her
forehead, staining my finger and smearing purple onto her skin. “You’re about
to turn into a fucking purple dinosaur.”

“
Aww
,” she says with a smile.
“Barney. And
Littlefoot
! Is
Littlefoot
purple?”

I shake my head at her. “I have no fucking clue what you’re
talking about.”

She gasps. “You don’t know who Barney is? How did you cope
as a child?”

I roll my eyes. “I fucking know who Barney is. Not the other
one, Calloway.”

She smiles. “
The Land
Before Time
.”
 
 

We walk towards a secluded part of the woods, off the path
and behind large rocks and trees. She unpacks her water bottles from her backpack
and sets them along a boulder.

“Lean over,” I tell her after she removes the foils from her
hair. I uncap the water bottle, put a hand over her eyes, and then douse her
head. I try to run my fingers through the strands, but they’re knotted from
being twisted in the foil. “You pack a brush, Dais?”

“Nope.” She smiles deviously, turning her face towards me.
“It’s okay. I’ll just finger it.”

I force her head back down. “You finger yourself a lot?” I
ask, pouring a second bottle onto her hair.

“Not as much as you finger me.”

Fuck. My cock stirs. That turned very literal. My fucking
fault. I don’t feel as guilty as I would have before we were together. I just
draw her ass back towards me while I finish washing her hair. She tries to look
at me again, a full-blown smile lighting up her face.

“Stay fucking still,” I say. “Or dye is going to get in your
eyes.” She complies, and when I finish, I take off my shirt and she dries her
hair, splotching the white fabric with purple, green and pink. Then she runs
her hands through it and watches my reaction since she doesn’t have a mirror.

She has bigger pink highlights, a couple green ones, and a
few purple scattered around her head. Still mostly blonde, but the color
reflects her erratic personality. I know she’ll love it when she sees it, which
is why I begin to smile.

“That ugly, huh?” she jokes.

“So fucking ugly,” I say, wrapping my arm around her
shoulder.

We finish the rest of the hike, and her silence starts to
concern me. This is about the time she’d be bubbling with happiness. She just
dyed her hair, something she’s wanted to do for a while.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“When we get to Utah, is this going to end? You and me,
together out in the open. For the first time, I feel like a real couple, like
we’re moving forward somewhere, and I don’t want that feeling to just fly away,
you know?”

Yeah, I fucking do.
I
don’t want to hide any part of my life. I did that for so long, and starting it
all over again feels like a regression. “So we tell them in Utah,” I say,
holding the strap of my backpack. “Big fucking deal.” I want to be able to
handle the backlash. And the closer we are to each other, the more I believe
our relationship can withstand the criticism. But I wonder if I’m just fucking
fooling myself. Maybe that’s just fear talking though. The fear of losing her…
and my brother.

“You sure?” she frowns. “Because Lo—”

“He’ll get over it.” I have to believe this or else I’ll
never take the fucking leap.
I stop
in the middle of the path and hold her face, my fingers stained different colors
already. “I want to be with you, Dais. No more hiding.”

I lean down and kiss her, cementing my decision.

< 46 >

DAISY CALLOWAY

The woods have been replaced by desert. Red rock
and endless roads with no one around. Much different than the congested streets
in Wyoming, where cars slow at the sight of a deer, snapping pictures as though
it’s the most fascinating creature in the wild.

That would be the buffalo.

Or the black bears.

Ooh, and the wolves. I saw two gray ones, out grazing or
maybe playing by the antelopes, but
Ryke
didn’t
believe me.

The closer to Utah, the closer we are to California, a
destination that I haven’t forgotten.
Ryke
will
ascend El Capitan and two other rock faces in Yosemite, the summit much higher
than Devils Tower. I love that I have the opportunity to watch him at his best,
but I’ve
Googled
the statistics before.

A good majority of people who free-solo die while climbing.

I mean, there is a
tab
at the top of Rock Climbing Nation Information’s website with the word
DEATHS. They catalogue all of the climbers who fall and meet their end. I’ve
always tried not to think about the risk, even when I tagged along with him to
Yosemite while he practiced with a harness and rope.

I saw the rock.

I saw his climb.

I just didn’t let myself believe that he could fall. With no
harness, no support, no gears, just himself—it’s a huge possibility.

But I would never tell him not to do something he loves.

I’m just going to pray that no freak accidents happen, no
bad weather rolls in—that he goes up and comes back down without problem.

I wrap my arms tighter around his back, loving the feeling
of the wind whipping around us on the motorcycle. I try to shelve my concern
for
Ryke
. He doesn’t need my worry while he’s halfway
up El Capitan. He just needs his strength and confidence.
 

All of this talk has clenched my stomach, and I make an
impulsive, rash decision. Albeit one that’s not even remotely safe. One that’s
probably dangerous like free-soloing, but definitely not
as
dangerous. One of my feet already lifts and rests on the seat
cushion. I hold onto
Ryke’s
back as I lift the other,
crouching while he hunches over the bike, speeding down a flat road.

I can’t see his expression behind his black helmet. He sits
up, causing my hands to rise to his shoulders, and I stand up fully.
Oh…wow.
I am standing on the back of the
motorcycle. Behind him. He taps my leg three times, which is our signal to “sit
the fuck down.”

I tap his shoulder twice, which doesn’t mean anything. But
we’ve never come up with a gesture for:
I
want to fly.

He squeezes my leg.
Hold
on
, he’s telling me.

I’m not going to let go of him.

He puts his hand on the brake, and the motorcycle begins to
slow. I tap his arm once.
Faster
.

He looks back at me a few times, hesitating. I drape one arm
over his shoulder, on his chest to show him that I’m not going anywhere. And he
holds onto that hand while he switches gears, pumping his foot, and then we’re
off. Returning to a high speed.

The force almost propels me back, but he clutches so tightly
that I stay upright. And my legs have solidified to stone, not going anywhere.
I laugh, the noise only in my helmet, but it exists.

I am flying.

Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning.

It lasts for a glorious five minutes. And then the bike
decelerates again, and it rumbles to the emergency lane. I sit back on the seat
as
Ryke
goes off-roading towards a looming red rock
with more rocks stacked on top. Rocks on top of rocks. It’s really cool even if
it sounds lame. We’ve seen rams—like with giant horns—along with mountain lions
on our way here, so I wonder if he’s spotted an animal.

That doesn’t sound right though.

Ryke
wouldn’t drive towards wild
animals on the side of the road.

That’s too crazy for him.

That’s something I’d do.

The moment the bike stops, I take off my helmet. “Are you
mad?” I ask. Maybe I misread his signals. I mean, he definitely said “sit the
fuck down.” But “hold on” could have been something else entirely.

He turns off the engine and kicks out the stand. The
sportbike
has a slight lean, but not bad. I don’t climb off
yet, even as he does.

“Turn around,” he demands after removing his helmet. He runs
his hand through his hair, his eyes narrowed at me. But he’s not angry exactly.

“What do you mean?” I barely register what he said, too busy
trying to make sense of his emotions.

“
Turn around
.” He
motions to the front of the bike. He…he wants me to… I smile. He wants me to
ride backwards like I tried
to
practice in the garage.

I excitedly switch legs over the seat, my back facing the
handlebars as I lean against the gas can. I remember the first day he taught me
how to ride a motorcycle. After heading to a grocery store parking lot, I
killed the engine and rolled to a stop with a big smile. Only, I was dragging
my boots the whole way, messing around.

He told me, “Pick up your fucking feet, Calloway, unless you
want to lose them.” He wanted to teach me the right way first, and then months
later, the next time I killed the engine and dragged my feet, he just shook his
head. He trusted me enough not to scold me. He didn’t think the bike would fall
on me or I’d run over my foot by that time.

But I haven’t really earned any trust to ride backwards yet.
So I doubt those are his true intentions. The mystery intrigues me more and
more, and I study his features to solve it. He straddles the bike, facing me,
tossing his helmet aside.

Don’t need those.
Okay.
I toss mine too, my heart beating wildly before my mind catches up with me. My
body knows what’s about to happen. I swallow hard, and when his eyes meet mine,
my heart thuds a few times. He wears a carnal look. Like he’s ready to devour
me whole.

Oh God.

My lips part, desperate for air like I’m crawling up a
mountain.

We’re on a motorcycle.

Together.

And.

And.

I can’t think it. I just feel it.

I can’t believe this
is about to happen.