She had eight weeks, maybe less, to tell me the truth. And all of them, I wasn’t strong enough to handle it. I can sit here soaked in freezing water, clutching her in my arms, and admit that.
“I know you don’t want kids,” she sniffs, restraining the tears as much as possible. “And I didn’t want to stress you out with this…I’m sorry.”
The guilt slams into me. “Shhh.” I press her harder to my chest, her legs clenching back around my waist. “It’s okay, Lil.” I never meant for her to bear a burden this heavy alone. Not one we should’ve carried together.
“It’s not,” she says, wiping her cheeks and then staring up into my eyes. Her big round green ones are glassy and reddened. “You don’t want a baby.”
No. I have never wanted a baby. But met with this reality, I only want to do right by Lily. I just want to fix every wrong that I have ever made. I am ready, so fucking ready, to defeat this.
To never face these demons again.
I am done feeling sorry for myself.
My fingers tangle in her damp hair. “That doesn’t matter anymore.” I put my hand to my chest. “We’re addicts. You and me.” I motion between us. That fact won’t change, no matter how much we wish it into oblivion. “Maybe we shouldn’t have kids, but we have the means to raise him or her well.”
“And you have us,” Rose proclaims.
Lily and I look back at the three people who’ve been the foundation of our healthy lives. Rose raises her chin with a determined expression like you both can do this.
And then Connor. He stands poised, with more confidence than either of us has ever acquired. I can almost feel it radiate off his body and flow through mine. His lips begin to rise, knowing the effect he has on me, and most people.
My brother. Ryke has his arms crossed over his chest. I think he knows, as well as I do, that I am nowhere near ready to have a kid. But the negativity has been swept from his hard, dark features. He has that same sturdy, unbending will in his eyes as the rest of them.
The perseverance to do anything, to be anything. To thrive.
Someday, that word will belong to us too. After years of coming up short, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.
{ 64 }
2 years : 03 months
November
LILY CALLOWAY
The steaming shower fogs the glass door. We’re in our bathroom upstairs, where privacy exists, and Loren Hale towers above me, the water blanketing us in hot sheets. We thaw ourselves after the icy bath, his intense gaze never shifting off mine.
Out of all the reactions I imagined he’d have, this was the one I least expected. But the one that I love the most. It’s the one where he is indisputably committed to us, as a team. I wouldn’t ask anything more from him.
My hands crawl up his toned back, and his palm falls to my bottom, the other cupping my face. His amber eyes fill me whole. He leans so close, his mouth pausing an inch from my neck. A cry escapes before he even presses his lips against me.
But when they close over the tender skin, I buck into him, my leg rising around his hip. The thick fog makes it hard to breathe, my body heating with the water and his touch, sensual and slow.
His lips meet mine, his tongue parting them, sliding in a hypnotic movement. I dizzy in his hold, and he raises my other thigh over his waist, lifting me off the tiles. My heat pulses like blood pumping in my veins.
He kicks open the shower door while we kiss deeply, my hands snug around his neck. He carries me back into the room, not caring that water drips off our wet bodies and onto the floor. All of a sudden, he sets me flat on my back, our soft, warm comforter beneath me. We barely part long enough to stop kissing. Every nerve melts, my heart oozing with this pace.
My legs are already split open around him, and he breathes heavily the longer he draws out the inevitable. And his hand disappears between our pelvises, my lips swelling against his. I can feel how wet I am before his fingers do.
I moan, my head tilting back. He kisses my jaw, and then he slowly, slowly slides his erection deep, deep inside of me. As his other hand returns, I grip both of his forearms, his palms on either side of my head. He rocks against mine in a melodic rhythm, and a groan breaches his lips. He rests his forehead against mine, his hot breath entering my lungs.
“Lily,” he chokes as he thrusts forward. Again and again.
My eyes roll back the longer we continue, the higher we go. It feels like eternity, like hours upon hours and years upon years. An embrace that lasts lifetimes.
When we slow down, when I arch against him and our lips part in a bright, overwhelming climax, we lie on the bed, our legs tangled together. My head rests on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
“I love you,” he whispers, combing my damp hair off my forehead.
I lift my chin to look at him, about to say I love you too but it sounds too practiced, not encompassing even half of my sentiments.
He sees it in my eyes. “I know,” he says, lifting me higher on his body so he doesn’t have to stare down. We’re eye-level, our heads on the same pillow, turned towards each other. My ankle rubs against his leg, and his hand strokes my arm.
“Lil…” he says softly, but it’s my turn to read the answers behind his gaze.
“I’m scared too,” I admit. “We’ve never even been able to keep a goldfish alive. Do you remember BJ?” I ask. He begins to smile at the memory. I add, “He didn’t even last a week before he floated to the top of the tank. I think I overfed him.”
“He probably died in realization that you named him Blow Job,” he says, his eyes light. “Though you definitely overfed him.”
“We don’t have the best track record,” I conclude, “but this time can be different.” We couldn’t keep a goldfish healthy because we were too consumed with our addictions. We’ve done a one-eighty, so what’s to say that this won’t fall into place?
He stares deeply into me and says, “I just don’t want our kid to be damaged like us.”
My breath catches and it takes me a minute to collect the right words. “We can’t live in fear of that. It’ll cripple us.”
He pulls me closer, and he kisses me so strongly that the air is vacuumed from my lungs. A head rush of epic proportions.
When we break apart, his forehead on mine, he whispers, “You and me.”
I smile against his lips. “Lily and Lo.”
“And someone else,” he says.
And someone else.
I have many more months before I meet that someone, but we’re beginning to accept this new world, a new reality where we’re no longer allowed to be selfish. It’s our greatest test yet.
{ 65 }
2 years : 03 months
November
LOREN HALE
I draw circles on a paper napkin at the kitchen bar, Ryke on the stool next to me. The girls are huddled in the living room, tension stretching the air. But it has nothing to do with me. Or Lily. Daisy has finally let her sisters focus on her for once.
Something happened. Months ago. A year, maybe with Daisy. It’s bad. I can see it written all over my brother’s face. Connor watches us from across the counter, drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup.
The mugs are packed in cardboard boxes, all the cupboards bare. Everyone is moving back to Philly when Lily graduates, but we have no idea if we’ll be splitting apart from Connor and Rose.
Ryke rests a hand on my shoulder. “How are you holding up?”
“Ask me again when it fucking sinks in,” I say.
“That you’re going to have a kid?”
“Yeah,” I nod. “And I already feel fucking awful for the thing.”
Ryke pauses. “He may not have addiction problems, Lo.”
“No, it’s not that.” I stop drawing and point my pen at Connor. “Our kid is going to have to compete with theirs. It’s already fucked and it’s not even born yet.” I selfishly wish they weren’t having a baby. Then I’d know, for certain, that we’d have their und
ivided attention, their help with every misstep we make. It’s going to be a bigger challenge without that. It’s going to force Lily and me to take full responsibility. Maybe it’s better this way, even if it’s harder.
Instead of being sympathetic, Connor grins into the rim of his cup and Ryke is smiling. My brother says, “Connor’s kid is also going to be a snot, so you can rest assured that yours won’t be totally fucked.”
I begin to smile too.
Connor is about to reply, but a painful sob emanates from the living room. We all stiffen, our shoulders pulled back in alarm.
“Should we go in there?” I ask, picturing Lily and her sisters in tears. But I remember how Lily hugged Daisy in Utah when her little sister was bawling, how she’s been the shoulder to cry on. My muscles loosen.
“Five more minutes,” Connor says.
Maybe that’ll give my brother enough time to share the cliff notes version of what happened. I resume drawing boxes around my squares, the pen bleeding through the napkin. “It has to do with her sleep issues, right?” I ask, remembering in Paris how Daisy had a night terror. She slapped Ryke in the face without realizing it. I didn’t even deduce that she might be having them every time she slept.
“Yeah,” Ryke says softly. He shifts on the stool so we’re angled towards each other. “It hasn’t been just one major event that triggered her problems. Most nights, she can’t even fall asleep at all.”
I frown. “Has she seen—”
“Yeah, she’s seen doctors for her sleep disorder, and she’s been going to therapy for post-traumatic stress.”
I go rigid. “Post-traumatic stress?” I’m beginning to realize that we only see fragments of people, and the pieces that I’ve been given create one of the most incomplete pictures of my brother, of Daisy and their relationship.
In the background, we can hear the faint sounds of Daisy crying as she talks. Ryke looks so torn up that he has trouble concentrating on our conversation and not the girls.
“Ryke,” I whisper. I have to know what happened.
He takes a deep breath. “I guess it started after Lily’s sex addiction became public.” My brows pull together, recognizing how long ago that actually was. “Daisy was teased a lot by stupid fucking teenagers from her prep school. On New Year’s Eve, she said some fucking guy kept throwing condoms at her.”
I glare. “What?”
Ryke’s eyes narrow. “They kept making fucking remarks about Lily…”
“Because she’s a sex addict?” My voice shakes.
“Yeah,” Ryke says. “Everyone wanted to believe that Daisy was one, would become one, whatever would fucking create a good story.” Veins ripple in his forearms, his muscles tense. “And then during the reality show, a camera guy, not part of production, broke into the townhouse one night, and he went into her room and started taking pictures.”
I pale. “Where was I?”
“Asleep,” Ryke says.
I glower. “Why did no one tell me about any of this? It’s been over a year.”
Connor interjects, “It all started because of Lily’s addiction.” Guilt. They were afraid of saddling Lily with more and more guilt.
I recall all the articles that speculated how Daisy would turn into a little Lily, a future sex addict, but I never saw how it affected her. She hid it too well from us. “She seemed happy.” I cringe. Not happy exactly. Daisy has always been sad, in a way. Depressed. I’ve known it like everyone else.
“She was miserable,” Ryke confirms. “She had trouble sleeping almost every night after the fucking guy broke into her room.”
“What about after the show?” I ask, staring off, dazed by the reality of how much our addictions have truly affected those around us. It’s a double-edged sword. We need their support, but in being closer to them, we’ve only made their lives harder.
They probably thought we’d rationalize Daisy’s issues as a reason to step away from them, to distance ourselves from the people that have lifted us every time we’ve fallen. Maybe we would have.
“Daisy had to move back home after the show, remember?” Ryke says, shaking his head at the thought. “I hated it because I saw how bad she was during Princesses of Philly, and I couldn’t go into that house when her mom was home. So she was largely dealing with the ridicule by herself.” He pauses. “And then something worse happened before she graduated.”
Connor sets down his cup, and the confusion on his face takes me aback. “You don’t know either?” I wonder.
“No,” Connor says, his eyes like pinpoints on Ryke. “You never told me.”
“It wasn’t my story to tell,” Ryke retorts. He’s been waiting for Daisy to rehash everything to her sisters. He looks physically ill. “I hate even thinking about it.”
Connor pours more coffee into his cup, listening intently with me. I have no clue what more could’ve happened to her. It already feels like too much.
“She had a couple prep school friends named Harper and Cleo,” Ryke says. I try to prepare for the worst. “On their way back from shopping with Daisy, the girls stopped the elevator.” He hesitates for a second. “Some guys had told Harper and Cleo that they wondered how many inches could fit inside Daisy.”
I flinch back. “What?” I snap angrily.
Connor keeps his expression blank on purpose, which just irritates me more.
“They had bought a couple dildos,” Ryke continues.
“No.” I shake my head repeatedly, imagining just how this ends. I have met kids as bored, as cruel and as fucking stupid as ones like that. I have been the subject of harassment all throughout my adolescence, some justified, others without reason. I can taste the fear and the hatred that swallows my youth.
I would never wish that on someone like Daisy.
“She fought them off,” Ryke says, anger swarming his eyes like he wishes he had been there to stop it all himself. “But only after they gave her an ultimatum. She could either put it in or they’d torment her until graduation. She chose the latter.”
No.
I shake my head. No. “She lived in fear for how many fucking months?” Scared to walk the hallways, afraid that something equally terrible would occur at any single moment.
“She had six months left,” he says.
I crash forward this time, my elbows on the counter. I bury my face in my hands. Six months. Post-traumatic stress. “I’m sorry,” I immediately say. That’s why he wanted Daisy to live in the same apartment complex as him. That’s why he spent so many days and hours with her.
That’s how they began to fall in love.
“I’m really sorry,” I say again. “I should’ve known that you were only trying to help her.”
“I could’ve given you something though,” he says. “I was an ass about it, and I could’ve given you one thing to make it seem like my intentions were good. But I didn’t think it mattered.” He meets my eyes. “It’s not all on you, Lo.”
He rises to his feet at this. The truth carries a lighter silence, unburdened. I watch him pace in the kitchen, focusing on the girls through the archway. The pen busts as I draw another circle, staining my palm black.
That’s about the same time Lily passes through the archway, the tracks of her tears visible along her cheeks.
I stand up, and she fits in my arms while I lean my back against the kitchen counter. Her faraway gaze haunts me, the guilt and remorse flooding through. Her addiction is the source of Daisy’s pain. There is no other way around that, and it’s a fault that Lily will bear the rest of her life.
“You okay, love?” I whisper.
Very softly, she says, “I wish that had been me.”
I know. I kiss her temple and draw her even closer, her heart pounding against my chest. I notice each box in the kitchen, the bare counters and the emptiness of each room. We’ve lived here for a long time, and it’s strange shutting another chapter of our lives together. It’s even stranger thinking that chapter may not include each other.
&
nbsp; And it just hits me, right here, the decision to our future. I look to Connor about ten feet from me. “Does your offer still stand?”
“Which offer?”
“The one where we move in with you guys,” I say. “I was thinking…” And this just pours through me right now. I let the moment guide me. “…that we could buy a house with a lot of security. More than this place. And Daisy could live with all of us. I think she might feel safer than living alone with Ryke. And when the babies are born, we’ll just…we’ll figure it out then.”
No one affirms aloud—but the look in their eyes say yes, a million times over.
{ 66 }
2 years : 04 months
December
LOREN HALE
I sit up on the weight bench and Ryke grabs the bar out of my hands, setting it back. He tosses me my towel, and he takes a seat on the end of the bench. We’ve been at the gym for thirty minutes already, no one here this early in the morning but us. Connor would’ve joined, but Rose had a doctor’s appointment.
I watch Ryke stare at the towel in his hands. He’s barely spoken since we started lifting weights.
“What is it?” I ask sharply, picking up my water bottle off the floor.
He opens his mouth, but he shuts it when the words don’t come to him.
“Is it Daisy?” I wonder, my back straightening. I comb the damp strands of hair out of my face.
“No,” he says quickly. “She’s been better since we moved.”
“How much sleep does she get a night?” I ask.
“Five hours most nights, less on bad ones.” He balls his towel, distant. It takes him a long moment before he blurts it out. “I’m doing it.”
I frown. “Doing what?” I rest my elbows back on the metal bar, my legs on either side of the bench.
“I’m going to make a statement to the press.” He can’t look at me. He just stares up at the fluorescent lights hung across the gym ceiling.
Still, it jolts me back. “About the rumors…” I trail off. I didn’t expect him to make a statement about the molestation rumors, not even after we cleared the air in Utah. I could see that he had made a promise to himself, to never protect our father again, and I didn’t want to force him to break it. “You don’t have to—”
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