Kiss the Sky (39 page)

“Everyone is staring,”
Lily whispers.

“You’re a sex addict
and I’m an alcoholic,” he reminds her, “and the whole world fucking knows it.
We have to get used to people staring, love.”

There’s a long moment
of silence before Lily asks, “Can I give you a blow job?”

I glance up at Rose who still holds the camera. Her
yellow-green eyes pierce me with an internal rage. I wrap an arm around her
shoulder, so rigid she might as well be a marble statue.

 
Lo doesn’t exactly answer Lily. But noises emanate from the bathroom.
Sucking. Slurping. Groaning comes soon after.

Rose turns off the camera. “That lasts for thirty minutes,”
she says coldly. “
Thirty minutes
,
Richard. He knows better.”

“And your sister is innocent in all of this, of course,”
Ryke
snaps. “She shouldn’t have asked him to have sex in
the first place!”

Rose squares off with him like they’ve been tapped-in to
battle for their respective siblings. “Lily has been doing really well—”

Ryke
lets out a dry laugh. “That’s
doing well?” He points to the camera. “She might as well have jumped on his—”

 
“She’s under a lot
of anxiety,” Rose cuts him off. “Her entire sex life and addiction has been put
up for public mocking. Let’s see how you handle thousands of people calling
your dick a disease infested wasteland.”

“She’s clean,”
Ryke
refutes. “She
knows it.
We
all know it.” He motions
around the room. “What other people say shouldn’t fucking matter.”

“She’s trying to be stronger!” Rose screams at him, her nose
flaring. I walk forward and touch her waist to calm her, but she only moves out
of my hands. “Your brother, however—”

I cover her mouth with my palm. She grips my wrist to try to
pry it off, but my force keeps her head in my possession. She’s not going
anywhere or saying anything that will turn this situation from bad to
unmanageably shitty.

“Enough,” I say calmly. Both of them fall into silence.
Well, Rose is being forced into it, but her shoulders thankfully begin to
relax, less on the defensive. “When you two compete over who has the better
sibling, we accomplish nothing. They’re both fucked up. Leave it at that.”

“They shouldn’t be together,”
Ryke
declares. It’s a statement he throws out almost every time the three of us have
these little talks about Lily and Lo.

Rose politely slaps my arm this time instead of just tearing
at it. So I release her.

“You break them up and see what happens,” Rose threatens, peeling
a piece of hair off her lips. We could do it. We’re the oldest of our so-called
group, and it wouldn’t be hard to force Lily and Lo to separate for a couple
years. I think we all consider it for about five minutes before we realize what
that means.

They love one another deeply. And the only reason they’re
still trying to be healthy is for each other. Take that support away and they
might as well be slaves to their addictions again.

Instead we sit for hours discussing alternative plans. Like
taking both of them to a comic book convention. We did that months ago, trying
to get them out of the house and out of their heads. Little things matter.

They have no clue we talk about them in detail. They’d
probably feel guilty that we all care enough to obsess over their welfare.

“We don’t even know if he drank the alcohol,” I tell them.
“It could have been Lily or…” I shake my head at the thought. “Production.”

“They wouldn’t,”
Ryke
says, his
eyes dark. “If they fuck with their addictions, I’m done. I’m fucking off this
show and they can fucking kiss my ass.”

I swear I become stupider when I hear curse words strung
together.

“The only way we’ll know is if we ask Lily and Loren,” I
tell him.

“They’ll lie. You think they want the three of us shoving
our disapproval and disappointment down their throats?”

“So let’s not even ask,” I say with a casual shrug. “Let’s
just act like they’re two dishonest, despicable addicts who don’t deserve to
explain their side of the story.”

Ryke
narrows his eyes at me. “You
know what, I’m fucking glad that production has been editing you into a giant
fucking prick. Because this…” He waves his hand.
Ryke
becomes
overly
animated with his body
gesticulations whenever he’s angry. A huge part of me wants to tie him up just
so he stops. “…is the most annoying shit I have to deal with in my fucking
day.”

I have so many rebuttals to that, but provoking
Ryke
takes time. Which I don’t have right now.

“So we agree to talk to Lily and Lo?”

Ryke
glowers.

“I’ll get them,” Rose cuts in and slides between us to leave
out the door.

[ 34 ]

ROSE CALLOWAY

Lily and Loren take a seat on my bed, and Lily
keeps shaking her head the longer Connor and I explain the situation. She
finally cracks when Connor mentions the empty tequila bottle. “He would have
thrown up if he drank! He’s on
Antabuse
.”

The drug is for recovering alcoholics, causing them to be
ill if they ingest liquor. It doesn’t curb your cravings; it’s merely an
incentive not to drink.

Loren stares at the ground, his eyebrows bunched in
confusion.

“Are you still taking it?”
Ryke
asks roughly.

Lo glares. “Shouldn’t you know that? You count my pills.”
He’s acting abnormally sketchy, deflecting instead of outright answering his
brother. I almost charge forward on the offensive, but Connor holds me by the
waist, two firm hands on my hips.

Ryke
rubs the back of his neck. “I
stopped because I was trying to trust you.”

“I don’t know why you even ask me,” Lo says angrily. “You
already think I drank.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to fucking think.”

Connor speaks before Lo can blow up. “We can squash this
really easily. We haven’t seen you sick these past couple weeks. All you have
to do is show us your pills so we know that you’re taking them.”

“It’s not your fucking body, Connor,” Loren sneers. “This
doesn’t affect
anyone
in the room but
me and maybe Lil. I don’t have to tell you shit.” He stands like he’s ready to
leave, and Lily’s face falls in confusion.

I am boiling. I am on fire. I want to punch him for being so
clueless! I tear through Connor’s hold on me, and I sidestep to block Loren’s
body from the door, outstretching my hands to either frame. “Your addiction
affects
everyone
in this room. If you
can’t see that—”

“I see just fine,” he interrupts, his voice carrying an edge
that sharpens with each word. His cheekbones are so severe, his features
beautiful and terrifying all at once.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

Lo lets out a short, bitter laugh. “That’s so fucking easy
for you, isn’t it?” he says with malice. “Being
smart.
Miss Perfect. What do you have to worry about? Does my hair
look good today? Do my shoes match my dress?”

“Lo,” Connor warns.

But this doesn’t stop him.

Loren watches my breathing deepen in pure rage. All I see is
my sister. He said he was going to protect her, and he’s enabling her again.
Why the fuck would he do that? Why is the most significant person in her life
her savior and her demon?

I want to hurt him so badly. He makes it way too easy to do
so. That’s the problem.

Lo saunters over to my neatly arranged bookshelf. “Let’s
see, Rose…” He grabs a hardback and carelessly flips through it before shaking
the book by the spine. My chest caves. “How does this feel?”

Horrible.

And then he opens my manila design folders and rattles them
until all the papers flutter to the floor. “Stop it!” I shout, trying to
collect them, every misplaced item like a knife in my side. My anxiety pitches.

“This doesn’t bother you, right?” he says. “Nothing’s
fucking wrong with Rose Calloway?
I’m
the idiot. I’m the fucking moron in your world who’s so stupid and selfish that
he would
drink
again and again.”

“No…” I say, but my head spins so much as I rearrange the
papers. My hands tremble as I reach for my sketches in charcoal, some in color.

More than a couple I drew when I was only a teenager.

He spilt part of my childhood on the floor and scrambled the
years.

[ 35 ]

CONNOR COBALT

Rose is close to manic.

Her eyes dance wildly over the papers in distress. The last
time I’ve seen her like this, she was pacing her room, crying, shouting things
that made no goddamn sense. It was after her best friend betrayed her—helping
Lily cheat in Princeton behind her back and blaming it on me.

But this is so fucking different.

Because it’s Loren Hale. No matter if he curses us both to
hell, I can practically taste his pain that throttles his body. He says cruel
things in hopes that we’ll say them back and hit him.

It’s that simple.

And neither
Ryke
nor Rose has to
consult with me to learn this. We all understand him by now.

So no matter how much I want to throw Lo against the fucking
wall for putting Rose in a state of distress, I can’t
touch him.
I can’t curse him to hell. I can’t punch him in the
fucking face. It’s like abusing a kid that’s been shit on his whole life. I’m
not going to add to those bruises.

I just need to concentrate on my girlfriend who breathes
sporadically, tiny sharp gasps leaving her lips. I bend down behind her and
whisper a line of French in her ear to gauge her response. She hardly pays
attention, shuffling hurriedly through papers, accidentally smudging the
charcoal on one. And her blackened fingerprints stain another.

She pauses in a horrific daze, and for a split second, my
whole world tilts.

I make an impulse decision. I grab her around the waist from
behind and lift her from the papers, most fluttering from her hands.

“No!” she screams, kicking out to try to reach them.

“Stop,” I force in her ear.

She screams again, a high-pitched wail that rips out my
heart.

I only want to calm her. I grip her wrists in front of her
body, about to whisper to her again, but Lo interjects.

 
“It took you
twenty-three goddamn years to finally lose your virginity.” He pulls at another
loose thread, this time, hitting me full force. “And you lost it to a guy
that’s just fucking you for your last name.”

“LOREN!” I shout. My face pumps with an unbridled,
irritated, hell-bent rage. I don’t think Lo has ever seen me this upset. I want
to kick him as badly as he wants to be kicked. I would
never
go after Lily the way he’s going after Rose. She may be
strong, but she has her moments of fucking fragility. And he’s purposefully
breaking her.

His face immediately falls, blanketing with an intense
guilt. His mouth opens, and I worry that an apology won’t be on the other end.
I can’t have him tearing at my girlfriend anymore today. She can’t handle it.

I cut in, “
Don’t.
”
The word is controlled and powerful enough to quiet the room. “Give me a
minute.” I pick up Rose around the waist while she breathes heavily, no longer
fighting me.

I glance back at Lo. He stares at the ceiling, his legs a
little loose like they’re going to give out on him.
Ryke
tries to talk to his brother, but Lo just shakes his head and stares out the
window. I look for Lily, but she stays seated on the edge of the bed, rooted
there with a faraway gaze.

I set Rose by a vanity in our room, placing her on the
bench.

“Darling,” I say, wiping her hot, stray tears. I hold her
face between my hands while I bend in front of her, eye level.

She raises a shaking hand to my face, as though to say,
give
me
a minute.

I take her hand and tenderly kiss each one of her fingers.
Her eyes finally focus on me, and they soften considerably before she grips the
sleeve of my shirt. I slide on the bench next to her, and she tries to hide behind
my body so no one sees her splotchy face.

“It’s already past,” I tell her in a breathless whisper, my
thumb skimming the black mascara beneath her eyes.

She once told me that as a child, she would lock herself in
her closet after she fought with her mother. The arguments revolved around many
things. Like her schedule for the day, being forced on a date with a boy she
found repulsive, being made into a person she didn’t want to be.

She’d grab an old fur coat and scream, muffling the noises
in the clothes. She made sure to have her mental breakdowns in private. Even in
her madness, there’s still a level of control.

She takes a deep, trained breath, blowing out of her lips
like she’s meditating. And then she grazes my features and says, “Thank you.”

My heart beats rapidly and I fight the urge to pull her away
from everyone, this situation and the worries. To lock ourselves alone and find
solace in silence. She frightened me tonight. I realize how easily this could
have escalated. How it could have gone another way. What if it had? What if she
writhed in my arms until her screams punctured the sky? What if I lost her to
emotions so deep they’d swallow her whole?

I want to protect her. From everything, even herself.

Her breathing steadies, and I place a hand on her cheek and
my lips linger on hers. She responds by shifting her body towards me, and my
tongue encourages her lips to part. I grip the back of her head, pulling her
closer.

We kiss desperately, and I draw her so near that she sits
halfway on my lap.