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This reminds me of a similar conversation that I had with Ryke once upon a time. He was trying to convince me to eat cake. “Your hips also don’t have to be measured in the morning,” I told him. “They can be,” Ryke said. “Will you eat the fucking cake if I measure my hips?” “And your ass.” “You want to know the size of my ass?” His brows rose. “Yep.” “Eat the cake.” I smile more out of remembrance from that moment than out of attraction towards Ian.
aw, she misses him too
pit sinks to my stomach. We’re flirting. I don’t want to taint that memory I had with Ryke by continuing this banter with Ian. It’s starting to make me a little nauseous. Maybe that’s the fruit or the one bite of tree bark. But this could be a good thing. He could be my number seven. This is what Ryke wanted, right? Stop hanging onto what could be, Daisy. Let Ryke and the past go.
Maybe commenting on his ass was a bigger signal than I thought. Ryke never acted on the flirty nature of our conversations. Sometimes I forget that not everyone is like him. Most guys will prod further, not stop at a point. They want the sex. All of it. Not just the dirty talk. Maybe this is a good thing. It doesn’t feel that way.
The Caller Username: RYKE_MEADOWS Not very creative, but it’s still very Ryke. Mine is flowerchild20, which seems almost obnoxiously colorful compared to his. I wonder if that’s how we are together—mismatched, uneven. Or maybe he’s the mustard to my ketchup. Lame but maybe perfect for us.
So I click, and before the screen pops up, the guilt replaces with this nervous excitement. He called me. That means he’s thinking about me, right? I try to hide my smile that begins to hurt my cheeks. Stop smiling. Be cool.
I wish they looked odd together, like an ill-fit match, but they go together better than I do with him.
omg, what is happening???
I met Emilia a few months ago at the gym, and I called her to go to an afternoon Philadelphia Eagles game. That was my first fucking mistake. I’ve only either taken my brother or Daisy to go watch football with me. At the game, I turned towards Emilia in the stands, caught off guard by the brown hair, the big tits, everything that I haven’t had in months. I thought I’d want it. I thought my body would respond in complete fucking joy. It didn’t. Not even a little. A couple guys with cameras snapped photos of us during the game. So Daisy’s going to fucking see Emilia hanging onto my arm, the
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OMG
I unconsciously imagine those lips as pale pink, that hair as blonde, that smile as bright, and that laugh as energetic and full of fucking life as Daisy’s. I harden. Fuck me.
OH
Fucking answer me. The reply comes almost immediately. I’ll call you on the phone. – Daisy No. I need to see your face. She rejects my third Skype session, so I’m forced to fucking call her by cell. She answers. “I’m sorry,” she immediately says. “You called me on Skype like three minutes ago. I thought you wanted to talk. I didn’t see much at all, I promise. Just…go back to doing what you were doing—” “I can’t. We need to fucking talk about this.” “There’s nothing to talk about,” she says quickly. I rub my eyes. “Daisy…” What do I say? I’m sorry for going down on another girl? Daisy isn’t my
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HE REALLY LIKES HER
“Hey,” I snap. “Have you taken Ambien tonight?” She clears her throat to calm down. “I will after I get off the phone.” “Fucking promise me.” “I fucking promise you,” she says. I hear the smile in her voice.
I don’t look at her bare ass. Mostly because it feels like I’m cheating on Daisy. The guilt just keeps on coming.
OMG
Two years ago, when the Calloway girls, my brother and Connor were swept up into this publicity mess, I realized we had to band together to survive. From that moment, I knew it was going to be hard trusting anyone beyond the six of us.
“You still there?” I ask Daisy. “Yeah.” She pauses. “I don’t want to ruin your time with your…date. We’ll talk later.” “Fuck that,” I tell her. I haven’t been able to get Daisy on the phone in days. She won’t even let me look at her face. I have no idea the amount of sleep she’s been actually getting. I just want to make sure she’s okay.
AW
And I have a hard time imagining her seeing anyone’s dick but mine. Nausea barrels through me.
OMG
“I had a guy over tonight.” The temperature drops ten degrees. My head is fucking submerged beneath an ocean again, that gritty salt water sliding down my throat. I see an older guy fucking the hell out of her, and I almost kick the coffee table. I calm down with a deep breath.
In the last four months, I’ve spent almost no time in my apartment. Maybe to grab some clean clothes and my climbing gear. Other than that, I’ve been at Daisy’s place. I’ve been sleeping in the same bed as her. I’ve been taking care of her. She’s mine. She feels like she belongs to me. I don’t want to share her with any other fucking guy. And I don’t want to be with any other fucking girl. Anything else feels like a sickening betrayal. How the fuck did we get to this place?
OMG
I remember a time when she claimed that she orgasmed before. We were in Cancun for Spring Break, and she said she skipped foreplay, just went straight to sex and experienced something more. I should have been happy for her, but I felt more fucking joy when she admitted that she got it wrong. That she thought she climaxed, but after talking to her sisters, it didn’t seem euphoric enough to be that heightened peak. “You can orgasm,” I tell her. “I’ve fucking heard you, sweetheart.” There’s no answer. I called her sweetheart—I do it unconsciously, and I know every time I say it, her lips rise.
SWEETHEART?
“Sorry,” she says. “No, it’s not you,” I tell her. After scraping all of the oatmeal out, I toss the bowl too hard in the sink and it cracks. What the fuck is wrong with me tonight? I shake my head. “I fucking hate talking to you on the phone.” “Me too.”
I had a one-night stand steal a pair of my fucking boxer-briefs a year and a half ago. She sold them for three grand on eBay.
i would buy them tbh
“We didn’t have sex,” she says. I shut my eyes and take a deep breath. Thank fucking God. “Was he a part of your weird fucking night?” “Oh yeah,” she says. “I just don’t understand why I meet people and they seem so perfect for me, and then I get them in bed, and they’re just…wrong.” She pauses. “I think it’s me.” “I already hate this fucking guy.” That’s a real understatement. “You would hate him more if you saw him. He thought I was a virgin, and he was happy to deflower me upon a first-time meeting.” I glare. I want to rewind time and take everything back. I want to tell her to not date a
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“It’s almost four in the morning where you are. Take a fucking Ambien and go to sleep, okay? Call me when you have time.” She hesitates. “I have time to talk more now.” “You need to sleep before you go to work.”
i love that he still looks after her wellbeing even while she's in a different country
“Daisy—” “I’ll go.” “No,” I suddenly say. I don’t want to stop talking to her, not if she’s just going to spend the next hour paranoid. I can distract her from her fears. Even thousands of miles away, that’s still fucking possible. “Are you sure?” she asks. Emilia comes out and gives me a smile. “Yeah,” I tell her.
AW
But Daisy, a lonely, frightened girl in Paris, is going to trump Emilia. Every fucking time. Especially when it involves the past and the multiple events that have fucked her over psychologically.
EVERY TIME AHH
And as she tried to stop him from wrecking her bike, he turned around and assaulted her in broad fucking daylight. I wish I had been there. I would have fucking killed him. I ended up taking her to the hospital because she wouldn’t tell anyone else about it. She didn’t want to worry her family. They found out anyway, but they never learned about her broken rib. Or the fact that the trauma of the event has stayed with her past that single moment. They think it was no more than a few bruises. I don’t fucking blame her sisters or my brother for not noticing the change in Daisy from that point on.
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i feel so bad for daisy
I lead her across the living room, bypassing the small kitchen where dishes are stacked in the sink. I should wash those for Daisy. I’m pretty sure half of them are mine.
I don’t want her fucking dawdling in Daisy’s room. But she does anyway. Her eyes float to Daisy’s bed, the green comforter tucked in with half-assed effort. On a chair next to her, she lifts a white bra by the strap and twirls it around her finger. I grab it out of her hand with a glare. “Don’t touch her shit.” I toss the bra on her bed.
“She’s eighteen,” I retort. I rest my elbow on the fucking chair. “Look, she’s my friend. She’s nice enough that she won’t fucking care if you use her soap or touch her things. But I fucking care if we spend more than a few minutes here.”
I end up smiling at that. She’d probably grin so fucking hard if she saw my lips lift this much too.
HE FINALLY SMILED
“Hey Daisy, you need to tell your fuck-buddies to wrap it, honey, or you’re going to be sixteen and pregnant.” “I’m eighteen,” Daisy says flatly, but only I can still hear her. I glare hard at Emilia. “You need to fucking go.” Her smile fades. “I’m just joking around, Ryke.” She tosses the pills back to me. I catch it with one hand. “Daisy knows that.” “I’m not fucking joking.”
my defensive king
“Hey, Ryke?” “Yeah?” “Don’t fuck her in my bed.” I grimace. “I would never do that.” “Just making sure.” I let out a deep breath. “I miss you.” Fuck me. Why do I say shit like that to her? Because it’s the truth. She says, “It’s only been four days.” “Feels longer than that.” “Yeah, it does,” she says softly.
“So what was your climbing time?” I almost smile. She remembered that I said I beat my last record. “Two minutes, fifty-three seconds, eighty feet of ascension.” “I’m proud of you,” she says. “Did you scream, ‘I am a Golden God’ when you reached the top?” “Only you do that, sweetheart.” There’s a long pause again, and I can’t keep my smile from filling my whole face. When she collects herself, she laughs and says, “I did it once, and it wasn’t even a real mountain.” It was a gym rock wall. And it took her a week to complete the hardest course. By the end, she pumped her fists in the air in
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I LOVE HOW MUCH HE'S SMILING OMG
“Do you feel better?” I ask her. She doesn’t seem as paranoid or fucking antsy. “When I talk to you, yeah, I do.” “Then call me. I told you I wouldn’t fucking mind if you did.” “I didn’t want to bother you…the time difference…” “I’ll answer your call if it’s at four in the morning or midnight, Dais. It’s just fucking hard for me to call you because I don’t know when you’re on the runway.” There’s a long drawn out pause, and I can tell she’s trying to find the right words. She settles on these: “Thanks, Ryke.” She says my name with this genuine, heartfelt affection. “I mean it.” “I know you
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AWWW
It’s nothing more than black hefty fabric, draped to form an indistinguishable bow. Yes, the dress is a giant bow. I am a bow, really, and my hair is also a bow with a ribbon.
the coquette girls would love this
If they’re snapping photos because of me, I don’t want her to be caught in the background. I block her from the men that have breached what I always thought was a “sanctuary”—a line between the onlookers and the models. I guess there is no line. Everyone sees all of me.
i feel so bad for her omg
I am worth less than the clothes I wear. I have always known this. A dress is treated with more humanity and kindness than I ever am. One of my shoots, I was told to stand in a swimming pool for four hours without a break. It was thirty degrees outside. The pool wasn’t heated. And I was fourteen. The gown, though, that was the first priority.
omg, this sounds like hell
It’s in this moment—eighteen, being photographed bare and nude without consent—that I feel violated by my own career. I could be fifteen right now, okay with this, told that this is what’s supposed to happen. I could be fourteen. But what difference does it make now that I’m eighteen? I’m just more aware. I see the wrongness, and the blow strikes harder and hurts greater.
i really hope she quits modelling
“It’s what you do later that matters. Making mistakes and correcting them, that’s life.”
He gives me another look, this time with a growing smile. “What?” I snap. He shrugs. “You two have a little thing. Not as cute as what Heidi and I have, but you know, you’ll get there.” “We don’t have a thing,” I tell him. He ignores me. “Don’t forget to invite me to the wedding, okay? I don’t have to be a groomsman or anything, but I do expect to be in the wedding pictures. I’m not against photo-bombing either.”
THEY DEFO HAVE A THING
“Call me back or text me that you’re okay,” I say tersely before I hang up. I’m about to return to Sully, but my phone rings again. She’s being fucking weird. “Hey, what’s going on?” She sniffs and tries to speak, but her voice falters. She’s been crying. My chest tightens. “Fuck. Daisy, what’s wrong?” She lets out a breath that shakes the sound from her lips, and then she inhales sharply and chokes like she’s unable to exhale. Fuck. Fuck. I rest my hand on my head. “Dais…” “I…I can’t…” She cannot have a fucking panic attack while I’m here and she’s there. “Shh, shh,” I tell her in the
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she's defo making him become softer
I almost kick the fucking cake off the edge. I almost lose my shit. I bend down to a crouch to stop myself from screaming. I fucking hate people. I hate that the ones I care about most are the ones that get shit on.
THE ONES HE CARES ABOUT MOST OMG
Truth is, I think she’s always been hurting. It’s just different when I’m not there to take care of her. “I need to get her back on the fucking phone.”
I take a breath to relieve the pressure that bears down on my chest. As I stare at the 200 foot drop, everything fucking clicks. I am so emotionally involved with that girl. If someone told me she was crying two years ago, I would have called Lily or Rose to deal with it. But I want to be the one to protect Daisy. I want to be the one to hold her in my arms. I want to comfort her until she reanimates in pure fucking happiness. I don’t want to miss a day with her. I don’t want to be here while she’s there. And I can’t take back these feelings. I can’t go in reverse. I just drive forward at a
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OMG I'M EMOTIONAL
One day after Ryke talked to me—calming me down by recounting his time at the quarry. It almost felt like he was here. But he’s not.
i hope he flies to paris
“Daisy!” I freeze. I go cold. It can’t be… I turn around and my mouth falls. I’m losing my mind. “You can’t be real.” I pause. “You’re in Philadelphia.”
OMG I KNEW IT
“I flew in after you called me. I just fucking got here.” He scrutinizes me from head to toe, a long once-over with stone-hard eyes that heats my body, snuffing out the cold. He looks real. “When I got off the elevator on your floor, I saw you going into the stairwell. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Relief tries to surface. He’s here. For me? “I’m not scared,” I tell him. “You look petrified,” he says flatly. I watch his eyes dance over my features again, his chest falling and rising in a deep rhythm. He bridges the gap between us, descending the four stairs. He still has height on me, staring
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I LOVE HOW SAFE SHE FEELS WITH HIM
“Were you going to meet up with that weird fucking guy?” His eyes darken. I sense a hint of jealousy. Or maybe he’s just trying to protect me from Ian. Not jealous at all. “Didn’t you hear? He was a very uncomfortable pillow.” “I thought I was your fucking pillow.” I stiffen. “You didn’t want to be my pillow, remember? In fact, you told me to find a replacement.” “How’s that going for you?” he asks roughly. I can feel him tapping into his asshole side pretty fast. “Amazing,” I say. “Sleep has never been better.” “Must be why you have dark circles under your eyes.” “You caught me,” I say with a
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HE GETS SO JEALOUS OMG
And then his lips meet mine, kissing me with abrupt, forceful passion that explodes my chest. A breathless moan leaves me before I can catch it. Our bodies connect like they’ve been dying for this affection for years. He hikes both of my legs around his waist, pinning me to the wall, to this place, to him. His tongue effortlessly slides into my mouth, wrestling with mine in the most natural way possible. My fingers slide into his thick, soft hair, gripping and exploring in ways I’ve only dreamed of. He breaks away once, his hand above my head as his whole body weight melds against me. He says
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OMG FINALLY
I have never been so wrapped up in a single person, in a single moment. Ryke Meadows has invigorated my body and soul. He is more than just my pillow. My wolf. My bodyguard. He’s my everything.
OMG
“Every theory you’ve ever fucking had about men, I’m going to prove wrong,” he tells me. My chest collapses. I may pass out from this moment. I truly thought it would never come. “I had a theory that not kissing is sexier than kissing.” I was so stupid. I could do this forever with Ryke. “I know,” he says. “And now?” His eyes fall to my lips. I smile bright. “Just fucking kiss me.” And he does, a grin lifting his lips.
i love how he only smiles around and because of her
He’s heated every ice cold crevice. Nothing about being with him is uncomfortable. It feels right.
AW
