Kiss the Sky (32 page)

I’ve never wanted a man to toss me around how they want, how
they like, using me to their desires so much before. And in this moment, I
realize it doesn’t matter what I believe outside the bedroom. In life I can be
powerful, but here, I can trust him to fill me with his power, his strength.
That has to be okay. Because beyond all thoughts, all logic, it’s what makes me
feel so fucking good.

His lips rise. “
Ca
vous
a
pris
pas mal de temps.”
It took you long enough.

“How long do we have left?” I ask him softly, his body
beginning to blur.

He strokes my hair. “Pour
toujours
.”
Forever.

I smile as everything fades to black.

[ 27 ]

CONNOR COBALT

I dry my wet hair with a towel and button my
pants, watching Rose sleep peacefully, tucked in a red and brown quilt. Before
I put a shirt on, she stirs with a low groan and squints in the darkness. The
only light comes from a sliver in the bear-printed curtains.

“Good morning, darling.” I sit on the edge of the bed and
grab the water off the nightstand. “Comment
te
sens-tu
?”
How do you
feel?

She slowly rises against the headboard, a hand to her
temple. Her hair sticks up in five different places. I try hard to conceal my
smile, but seeing Rose this disheveled happens—almost never. And I adore this
side of her just as much as any other.

“I have no idea what you just said,” she yawns with a hand
to her mouth. “My hangover has destroyed your French.”

“Impossible,” I tell her. “Your hangover can’t defeat me.”

She’s too tired and hung over to banter. She just yawns
again. “Really…what did you say?”

I pass her the water and she takes a small sip.

“How do you feel?” I repeat.

“Like I spent five weeks prepping for the Academic Bowl
Championships.”

“So not that bad then?” I smile.

Her eyes narrow. “Not all of us were able to study for two
hours and retain every single piece of information.”

“I studied more than two hours for the collegiate
championships.” I reach over and grab the Advil on the nightstand and pop the
cap. “You just weren’t at Penn to see me, which was a shame. We could have
studied together.” I pause before I add, “I’m an excellent tutor. Just ask your
sister.”

She rolls her eyes but there’s a smile behind them. Because
if I didn’t tutor Lily in economics, she believes we wouldn’t be here today.
But I make my own fate. We came together because we both wanted to be here more
than anywhere else. We both had choices, and we both said yes to this, to us.

That’s not fate.

It’s just desire.

And determination. Ambition. Resolve.

We have it all.

“How much do you remember from last night?” I ask, expecting
the answer to be something I hate. I’m almost certain everything with the
strawberries and beyond has been swept from her mind by vodka. I’ve already
come to terms with it, but before I drifted off to sleep, all I wanted was for
those moments to be recorded and ingrained for life. What if they never happen
again?

It’s the
what if
that
clenches my heart in five different ways.

“How much can
you
remember?”
she shoots back, drinking more water. I almost have her hostile nature back
completely.

“All of it.”

“And how is that possible? You drank more than me.”

“You remember that?” I frown.

“Yes, Richard.”

After a long pause, I say, “I have a high tolerance.” It’s
not entirely true. I’ve been on Adderall for a while now. Ever since I returned
to Frederick’s office, I went on a one week silent-streak until he prescribed
me Adderall again. He caved on the seventh day, wanting to discuss my life so
he could analyze all the details.

Mixing Adderall and alcohol is not a good or smart
combination. The pills diluted the effects of the alcohol, so I was coherent
for longer.

She stares off for a second. “I also remember…” She blushes.
“No wonder my ass hurts.”

My chest swells. “What?”

“You spanked me.” She slaps my arm. “…and I liked it.” She
adds, “I’ll be sober next time. I promise.”

I break into a smile that turns into a laugh. She remembers.
I exhale deeply, my world brightening. I can’t contain the joy that fills me. I
kiss her cheek, her lips.
She remembers.
The
words lift me to a new plane of existence. I feel higher now than I did
swallowing Adderall.

“What happened after you said
forever?
” she asks as I kiss her nose.

“You passed out,” I say, “and I tucked you in this bed and
made sure you didn’t vomit on yourself.”

She glares. “How romantic.”

“How
real
,” I
retort. “Just remember our romance isn’t the fake kind.”

“Unless you’re watching
Princesses
of Philly
,” she notes with the raise of her chin. Before I can reply back,
her eyes slowly widen.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Wait…” She grabs my wrist and her mouth falls as she
recalls something.

“Rose?” My heart lurches. She shoots to her feet, and I
follow suit, grabbing her waist.

“My sisters,” she says. “I promised to sleep in their room.
But I’m here. I woke up
here.
Which
means…” She bolts out the door, wearing the same black cotton dress from last
night.

I walk after her with ten times less alarm. As soon as we
pass the kitchen to go upstairs, Ben hurriedly stands from the breakfast table,
deserting his cereal. He grabs his camera and rushes after us. Of the cast, we
must be the first ones awake.

Scrawny Ben fumbles with his Canon, and he tries to bypass
me on the staircase and film Rose, but I keep an arm out so he has to stay
behind. I’m going to be the closest to her in this situation. He can take a
backseat.

She swings open the door to Lily’s room, stampeding inside.
I lean on the door frame, and Ben stays in the hallway, his camera pointed at
me since he can’t film inside the room. He’s nice enough to keep his distance.

Rose comes screeching to a halt at the sight of her sisters.
Daisy is sprawled on the bed, the comforters kicked all around her. Lily is on
the other side, lost within a mound of blankets. Untouched. Unharmed.

Two guys sleep on the floor.
 

Ryke
wakes at Rose’s thunderous
entrance. He lifts his head off the pillow and kicks off a quilt. Lo holds his
knees and rubs his eyes, trying to get oriented to the light from the hallway.

“What the fuck?”
Ryke
whispers,
trying not to wake the girls. He glares at me. “Why didn’t you tell her?”

 
I give him a look.
“And she would have believed me?” Even if I said,
Lo and
Ryke
decided to camp out in Lily’s
room to keep your sisters safe,
there’s a hundred percent chance she would
have barged in here regardless. Plus, I was reveling in the fact that she
remembered last night’s events.

Ryke
glances over his shoulder,
checking on his brother who watches Lily yawn and stretch her arms. When
Ryke
stands and heads over to the door, Lily slides out of
bed, wrapped in a blanket.

She finds Lo on the floor and beams at his appearance. She
bites her lip and then impulsively straddles Lo, his back leaned against the
wall. She kisses his cheek and they talk softly, but she digs into him as she
leans forward. I’m not even sure she realizes she’s doing it, but
Lo’s
neck tenses as he holds in a groan.

And Rose—she’s watching them with pursed lips.

She’s going to cock-block him for about ten minutes. It’s
one of her favorite hobbies. I’d stop her, but her cold, bitchy attitude amuses
me far more than people ever understand.

I nod to
Ryke
. “I’m surprised you
slept on the floor. You’re usually a walking billboard for REI. No hammock in
your suitcase?”

I smile and wait for the perfunctory
fuck you.
But it doesn’t come. He catches me off guard by stopping
in the doorway, his face shadowed with worry and anger. I see it in the hard
cut of his jaw.

“I need to talk to you,” he says under his breath. Daisy
shifts on the bed, waking with all the chatter. He quickly hands me his phone,
a text conversation popped on the screen.

I scroll through it.

I’m going to come
inside of her wet pussy before I hand her off to you. I may even get a few
friends to join.
– 212-555-9877

I try not to jump to conclusions, but my heart begins to
speed, the Adderall not helping slow it down.

Who the fuck is this?
–
Ryke

Julian
–
212-555-9877

The conversation ends there. My eyes flicker up to him. “Did
you punch him last night?” I whisper so only he can hear.

“No.”

“I can’t imagine you reading this…” I check the timestamp.
“…at four in the morning and doing
nothing
.”
I picture
Ryke
slamming doors, darting to Julian’s
bedroom and beating the shit out of him. But I forget that
Ryke
isn’t a testosterone-fueled idiot. He’s intelligent in ways that most aren’t.

“I’m hoping it’s not his number. I was waiting to see if you
had Julian’s so we could match them.”

I grab my phone from my pocket and scroll through my
contacts quickly.
Ryke
looks over his shoulder and
meets Daisy’s gaze while I search.

“Don’t look at her,” I advise. “She’s going to know
something’s wrong.”

“She won’t,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“You’re wearing your emotions.”

Ryke
tries to blanket his face
with contentedness.

I stare at him with raised brows. “Now you look constipated.”

“Fuck you.” There it is. I smile while he goes back to his
brooding self, not masking his concern.

When I read both numbers side by side, the bottom of my
stomach falls.

“Now who’s wearing their emotions?”
Ryke
retorts. “It’s the same fucking number.” He shakes his head. “I should have
beat the fuck out of him last night.”

“Lower your voice,” I whisper. “Ben is right here.”

Ryke
glances out of the door frame
and spots Ben hanging in the hallway. He eases back inside and says, “What are
we going to fucking do?”

“What’s wrong?” Daisy slides between us. She’s about to go
into the hall, but both
Ryke
and I stick out our arms
to stop her here.

Rose, Lily and Lo bicker behind us, deeper inside the room.
I ignore their voices as best I can. But I hear Lo say, “Go vomit in your Gucci
handbag, you’ll feel better. And maybe you’ll expel some of that
bitch
inside of you.”

“Says the guy who’s more sloth than human. Go hug a tree and
eat an ant.”

I tune out the rest.
Ryke
and I
exchange a look before staring back down at Daisy.

She rubs her temple, her long hair tangled at her waist. “I
feel really short when you guys do that whole
towering over
me thing.” She swallows. “I think I need some water.”
She tries to leave again, but we block her. “Okay, really, what’s going on?”

I hand
Ryke’s
phone to Daisy. We
both know that she can handle this information. Lo and Lily don’t need to hear
it, which is why
Ryke
has kept this to himself.

“Wait…” Daisy frowns, her brows scrunching. “…this has to be
a wrong number.”

“It’s not,” I say. “We just checked.”

She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t say this to me. He’s not
that crude.”

“He didn’t say it to you,”
Ryke
tells her. “He sent the text to
me
.
He’s a fucking guy, Dais—he’s going to be cruder to me, not his girlfriend.”

She stares at the ground in thought. “What…what happened
last night? Did I do something…?”

“
Fuck
,”
Ryke
curses and he glares at me. “She can’t remember
anything.”

Well, if it had to be either Rose or Daisy, I’m selfishly
glad it was this one who blacked out. “It’s fine. You didn’t do anything out of
your nature, Daisy.”

Her worry doesn’t dissipate with that fact, which is why I
said it. I want her to break up with Julian. We all do. And somewhere in her
head, she does too. She’s just too frightened to do so.

“Okay…” She hands me
Ryke’s
phone.
And she tries to run her fingers through her hair, but it catches on a giant
knot. She clears her throat. “Okay, I’m going to think about this—”

“What is there to fucking think about?”
Ryke
growls.

She stares up at him, and her eyes expand a little more than
usual. She’s scared. “I have a shoot with him soon, a jeans campaign. I can’t…I
can’t afford for there to be weird tension between us. He may…” She shakes her
head. “…he might complain to the designer about me. And I’ll be the one sacked.
They really like him, and Mom will be…” She struggles to breathe fully.

And then across the hall, the door to Julian’s room slowly
opens.

Daisy’s eyes widen, and she mutters, “I have to…run.” And
she dashes out of the doorway and down the flight of stairs.

“Fuck,”
Ryke
curses before
sprinting after her.

As soon as they’re gone, I shut the door behind me,
concealing Rose, Lily and Lo inside so they don’t see what’s about to happen.

Julian comes out, nodding to me with tired eyes. “Is there
any hot water left?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Hey, man.” I put a hand on his shoulder to
stop him. “I have to ask you something.” He thinks we’re cool. It makes getting
the truth that much easier from him, but my muscles constrict the longer I have
to withstand Julian. I see the text and the threat of gangbanging Rose’s little
sister in my brain—like a warning of who he really is.