He winks at me.
I shiver. My sex cravings begin to nosedive, and I gladly focus back on my boyfriend.
“Right,” Lo says to his brother. “Out of all the models here, Daisy is going to choose the oddest looking one.”
“I don’t have anything to go off of,” he growls, practically sulking. “It’s not like I’ve met her old boyfriends.”
I look up at Lo. “Have you met her ex? His name was…Josh, I think.” I hone in on Lo’s pink lips.
He thinks hard, and I watch his forehead wrinkle in contemplation.
Kiss him.
Later. “He had an average build, brown hair,” Lo recalls. He leans into us as he speaks to avoid disrupting the runway show.
Seriously though, everyone is talking.
That description doesn’t ring any bells for me. “Why haven’t we even seen a picture of her new boyfriend?” I ask them. “Shouldn’t he be in the tabloids?” I check them daily still, and nothing. No headlines with: Daisy Has a Hot Model Boyfriend!
“I’m with her when she’s around town,” Ryke explains, “and she refuses to bring him for some reason. It’s fucking weird.”
“Maybe he doesn’t exist,” Lo theorizes.
“I thought about that,” Ryke says, “but she had…” He cringes and gestures to his neck.
Lo groans. “God. Stop…she’s still thirteen to me.”
“What?” I perk up. Hickies. Must be hickies. But I don’t want to be called a pervert in public, even jokingly by Ryke, so I don’t offer my guess.
“Hickies,” he says. Knew it. “You’ll probably see them on next week’s episode.”
Lo groans even more and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Why does she even have a boyfriend?”
“The sex,” I blurt out.
They both stare down at me like what the fuck? Their angered, dark scowls could kill, looking like brothers. I realize that sex was the wrong thing to say.
Now I raise my hands in defense. Daisy has been trying to find the “right one” for a while. But she’s always all over the place: picking up scuba diving, parkour, skateboarding, etc. On occasion when the topic surrounds guys, she always shares the same, unsatisfactory story.
“It’s a logical guess,” I whisper-hiss. “She’s trying to…you know.”
“No, I don’t know.” Ryke stares at me like I’m talking in another language. I know I’m speaking English here.
I whisper really, really softly. “She’s trying to have…an O.”
Lo covers his face with his hand. “This is more than I ever wanted to hear.”
Ryke crosses his arms over his chest. “In Cancun, she said that she had an orgasm during sex, remember?”
How can he say all of that without flinching? I’m in awe. “Rose doesn’t think she did,” I whisper. I see Lo out of my peripheral, and a naughty image flashes in my head: my lips around his cock. It’s like a memory and a prospective future.
“Lily,” Lo says, grabbing my hand.
What’d I do? My heart lurches to my throat. He caught my fingers sneaking to his zipper. Oh my God. Cameras click, click, this time, some of the lenses pointed more towards me than the models.
Lo tries to distract me with more talk and less silence. The quiet lets my mind wander, especially if it’s fueled with upbeat music and fantasy-inducing backdrops (aka Loren Hale).
“Say she really does have a boyfriend,” Lo whispers between us, “how the hell is he going to feel about the reality show?” He pats Ryke’s back. “You’re in every scene with Daisy, you realize that?” I wonder if her boyfriend already feels threatened by Ryke.
“The asshole couldn’t even show up to her seventeenth birthday party,” Ryke retorts. “You really think he cares about Princesses of Philly? At this point, I don’t even think he fucking cares about her.”
Sadly, I think I agree.
The men’s collection ends with the designer walking halfway and bowing. He clasps his hands together in thanks, his polka-dot bowtie preppy and eccentric like the rest of his clothes. Once he leaves, the whole room softens, the music dying down.
Some women and men flip open notebooks and click pens to jot down their thoughts. Most likely press for magazines or department store owners. My importance as “Daisy’s sister” shrinks, and the intensity of this fashion show dawns on me.
The lights dim on either side of the runway, the audience cloaked in blackness while the long, wide lane glows white. Every lamp and flash is directed to the middle of the modest-sized room. Black fabric rises against the glass windows, encasing us, even darker and more intimate.
Rose has never had a fashion show of this caliber for Calloway Couture.
This is the major leagues.
I recognize the song that starts the show: “Sacrilege” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
The first model starts strutting down the runway in black platform heels. How is she not face planting? She wears a thigh-length khaki dress with a salmon-colored belt. Her brunette hair is perfectly straightened and delicately curled at the ends.
Before the model reaches the end, another girl is sent out onto the runway, keeping pace with the tempo of the music. I count one, two, three, four models before my sister emerges.
Daisy. I smile—the kind of smile that I can’t restrain, that hurts my cheeks a little bit. She’s outfitted in a gray dress with expensive, elegant fabric and a yellow belt, more high fashion than commercial. Her long, long blonde hair hangs to her waist, the ends wavy.
At seventeen, she walks like a mature, powerful woman with poise beyond my capabilities. Her hips sway; each towering high heel steps in front of the other.
Her gaze is dead-locked ahead of her, seduction blazing in her red lips and focused eyes. The flashbulbs don’t cause her to blink or to falter. My young sister moves like the world is being created beneath her feet.
The moment just steals my breath away. I’m filled with pride for her.
She possesses the audience, even as she passes the other model and briefly poses at the edge. On her way back, she’s closer to our seats. I take a peek at Ryke beside me, and his tense muscles never loosen, his hard jaw stays put like usual. But his breathing is heavier than it should be.
He watches her head down the runway, the song near its end.
And the corners of Daisy’s lips just subtly rise, as though she can feel him, right there. When she moves along, I elbow Ryke in the side.
He glares at me. “What?” he whispers defensively.
“She has a boyfriend.” My sister deserves romance, the red roses kind with chocolates and epic orgasms. Ryke will give her the best one-night stand of her life and leave her with a broken heart. It’s one thing that Lo and I mutually fear.
We’re around Ryke more than Connor and Rose. We know his habits better, and screwing in the bathroom of the Lincoln Field isn’t that romantic. I’ve done it four times, I should know.
“Lily,” he whispers, “she’s seventeen.”
We shouldn’t be talking, not during this particular show. Everyone pays attention to the clothes the models wear, and I should too. I just nod and let it go.
Only fifteen minutes later, the girls disappear off the runway, gearing up for the final walk. And then the first body emerges.
Daisy leads the models, a coveted position. Her pale pink baby doll dress blows with each sway of her hips, practically gliding in her silver gladiator heels. About twenty women behind Daisy wear the same garment in a different hue.
The audience begins to clap. I happily join in, but even as we do, I start to see this normally-contained sadness eke out of Daisy’s eyes. A numbness that padlocks her bright, erratic personality.
Lo whispers in my ear, “She seems upset.”
Clapping should cheer someone up. It’s basically like shouting I do believe in fairies! but it does the opposite for Daisy, her light flickering out like a withering Tinker Bell.
When she turns, heading back down the runway and looping the models
to create two lanes of bodies, she passes us again.
This time, Ryke speaks.
“Just run, Calloway,” he tells her as she walks past.
She almost falters, nearly stopping dead in her tracks. I swear it was like Ryke chiseled at something deep in her core, something hurting her. I can’t make sense of it, and the fact that he can…everything just becomes more complicated.
Ryke clenches the side of the chair like he’s restraining himself from not standing up and storming the runway. I imagine him walking backwards as he talks to her, desperately trying to convince my sister to do something she loves and not what our mom tells her to.
Modeling has never been her passion.
Even if she’s great at it.
Instead, Daisy keeps her course, staying as professional as she can.
“You can’t force her to quit,” I remind him in a soft whisper. “Her job means something to our mom.”
“She hates it,” Ryke says back to me. “Can’t you fucking see that?”
“We’re supposed to do things we don’t like sometimes,” I say, thinking about the reality show, my impending June wedding.
“What for?” Ryke asks.
“Our family.”
Maybe one day he’ll realize how far we’re all willing to go. For the people we love most.
{ 22 }
0 years : 07 months
March
LOREN HALE
“I’m not asking you to help me.” Snow falls on the back patio of my dad’s mansion. In a wealthy Philadelphia suburb. I brace the cold with him, heaters blazing from silver machines. We both drink coffee. Only difference: his has Irish liqueur.
“You don’t have to ask,” he reminds me, sitting back on an Adirondack chair. “I’m your father—it’s in my job description to help you.” Before I refute with I’m not struggling or where were you when I was drowning in alcohol and needed rehab, he adds, “You’ll understand when you have kids.”
I clench my teeth. No matter how many times I tell him that I won’t ever have children, he just doesn’t hear it. “I guess I won’t ever understand then,” I snap.
He sips his coffee, watching me closely while I stare out at the frozen duck pond. The grass is blanketed in snow, all white. “Ryke says that I shouldn’t go after Scott.”
“Is Scott attacking Ryke?”
“Not really.”
“Then he has no fucking say in it.” He scowls, his face unshaven. He looks more like Ryke right now, but I won’t tell him that. Their relationship is still fractured, maybe even beyond repair.
“Yesterday,” I say, “Scott handed Lily a script that told her to hump a pillow.” It hurts to breathe fully, emotions barreling into me. “Who does that?”
“Men will do anything for money, Loren. He’s just trying to profit off the two of you, and so far, he’s doing well.” Right, the show is a success.
My stomach tightens. “Yeah?” I lean forward, my arms on my legs, cupping the mug between my hands. I’m scared of Scott Van Wright.
I’m terrified of how far he’ll push us.
I try to bottle this fear, smothering it so low that I can’t feel an ounce of it. I didn’t come here to plead for my father’s help. I don’t want him involved. I just needed to hear someone agree with me.
“Hey,” he says forcefully.
I turn my head to meet his hard gaze.
“Don’t let any motherfucker come into your life and destroy what belongs to you. Not your women, not your home, not your money or your career. You protect all of that, you hear me?” He sets a firm hand on my shoulder. He may offer backwards advice for me, but he’s always been there.
That’s more than any mother of mine can say.
“I only have one woman,” I tell him with the raise of my brows.
“Don’t be a smartass.”
I digest all of his words, even if I shouldn’t. “I never wanted to attack someone again.” But I know I’m going to have to. I admit this to him, of all people. Not Connor, not Ryke or Lily.
“If you don’t want to ruin the reality show, like you told me, then you’ve got to do something to him. He’ll bulldoze you, son. And if you won’t stick your fucking neck out, I will. I don’t want him near Lily. She’s like a daughter to me.” He takes a large gulp of his coffee.
It’s like there’s a war inside my body with no signs of surrender. I attack Scott, I feel like shit. I do nothing, I feel like shit. What the fuck is left for me?
“Don’t help me,” I suddenly say to my dad. “I need to do this on my own.”
He nods. “Just make sure you fucking hit him where it hurts most.”
I don’t even know where that is.
The worst part about being the underdog: I never win until the last minute. So I dig and claw and scrape, struggling in hope that in the final act, I’ll rise above.
But what happens if I never do?
{ 23 }
0 years : 07 months
March
LILY CALLOWAY
The middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week has to be the most depressing time. Stuck directly in the center where no one wants it. Lonely. When the house has emptied. People at work. People at lunch. No one here. Not with me at least.
I’m A. L. O. N. E.
Even the cameramen have all but scattered.
Right now would be the moment I’d beat myself up over procrastinating on schoolwork. But I finished my online assignments two hours ago.
Go me.
I thought I’d feel more accomplished, but celebrating by myself isn’t nearly as fun as doing other things by myself. Things I’m no longer allowed to do.
Carefully, I crawl onto the bed with the latest edition of Uncanny X-Men. It’s not my comic, and Lo has a strict “don’t read my comics before me” rule. Something about me creasing the pages or smudging the pictures. But boredom calls for risks, and I’m willing to risk his anger for Cyclops.
Five panels. That’s how long I make it before my mind drifts. I picture Lo. His abs. His dimpled smile and sharp jawline. I have to stop myself before my imagination leads to more nefarious places, ones with nudity and gyrating bodies.
My bedroom door opens just as I look back at the comic. Lo stands in the doorway like an apparition from my mind. Maybe he is.
I pinch myself.
Ouch…
Lo gives me a look. “I’m real, Lil.” He closes the door behind him and sets his leather briefcase on the desk. A gift from his father. It’s hard to pull my eyes from it. A year ago, that briefcase didn’t belong in our picture. Now it has a specific spot it rests.
It doesn’t feel out of place. Not like I once thought it would.
When I return my gaze to Lo, I realize he hasn’t moved. He carefully watches me the way one would a lightning storm. With curiosity, concern, and rapt attention.
“If you’re real,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “Then why aren’t you at work?”
“That’s the funny thing about working for yourself,” he says with a wry smile. “I can set my own hours, take my work home, and spend the afternoon making love to a girl.”
Oh…
Middle of the days and middle of the weeks don’t seem so lonely anymore. He doesn’t move closer and my breathing has already betrayed me. At least my body isn’t doing anything spastic…yet.
“Just a girl?” I ask. “Not a specific one?”
His eyes flit from my head slowly down the length of my body. I become so wet in response. Damn him.
He licks his lip and I have to grip the sheets not to jump off the bed and rush him. I’m so not used to horny Loren Hale coming to seduce me. I’m always the overly aroused, emotionally corrupt one. It’s a nice change, even if my body is screaming to go go go.
“I have a girl in mind,” he tells me. “But here’s the thing…” He begins to unbutton his shirt, and I start a mantra in my head. Focus on his words, Lily, not his abs. Words. Not abs. Words. Not abs. Definitely not his cock
. “Last time I made love to her, she ended up crying when we finished.”
My head whips up. “I didn’t cry,” I defend. “I had salt sweat in my eye. That’s a thing, you know.”
“She cried,” he continues without missing a beat, his lips curving. “She had these big tears in her eyes and she turned into this sappy love monster, blubbering about how much she loved me.”
He starts moving this time, and I try hard not to smile.
“I did not.” I bite my lip and then give up, my grin spreading. “If I remember correctly, I told you that I could feel your soul. It was poetic.”
His knees knock into mine and his shirt slides open, revealing his bare chest. But I don’t have to chant my mantra any longer. His amber eyes and sharpened words have my undivided attention. The humor floats away and his hand glides to my cheek. “It was beautiful,” he breathes.
Thoughts creep into my head, and I can’t stop my mouth. “Did you come home just for a nooner?”
I internally groan. Way to go, Lily. Ruin the moment.
He reads my embarrassment and breaks into a smile. “I’m not being clear enough?”
“Ummm…” My mind has blanked. Flat-lined. I am brain dead.
He stirs me back to life by grabbing my hand and placing it right over his pants. On his erection. “Do we have an understanding now?”
Oh yeah.
We’re fucking.
Or making love.
Both. Maybe both.
I’m dancing and hoola-hooping on the inside. He throws his shirt on the floor and my eyes meet his. I’m not removing my hand. It’s just going to stay right there. “You know what this means?” I ask.
He narrows his eyes and leans forward, causing me to lie back on the bed. His fingers find my jean’s buttons, not waiting any longer. “You’re going to have to help me out with this one, Lil.”
I frown. “They’re normal buttons.”
He smiles again. I could get used to that. “Not the buttons. Help me with your question.”
I flush. Right. “Well, you came to me for sex. You’re the one undressing me. You’re practically begging me to fuck you.”
Thrive Page 16