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But I do care about Lo a lot. He’s always been another extension of my family in a sense. He started as Lily’s best friend. Then her boyfriend. Now fiancé. And she always brought him on Calloway vacations. He was her plus one. To say he’s like a big brother to me would be accurate.
“What makes you think that you can keep up with me more than Mikey?” I ask. He leans close again. “Because,” he says, “I’m the one who taught you how to ride a motorcycle.” I smile. Yes he did.
“Lily said Rose didn’t want you there.” I nod to Connor. “And since you get on Rose’s last fucking nerve…” I nod to Lo. “She doesn’t want you there either.” I stand and open my wallet, throwing a hundred dollar bill down. “I’ll drive.” There’s no way I wouldn’t bring Connor and Lo with me. That’s his wife and his fiancée. I’m just the manual fucking labor.
I park the car behind her Escalade. The back road is quiet, no houses around, just one lane towards a hill, trees and grass. Lo climbs out first, heading towards Lily who unsurprisingly bites her nails and flips through an instruction manual, a canister of pepper spray in her back pocket. The minute she sees him, her whole body lifts, and my brother—he wears a smile that’s rare in anyone else’s presence but hers. I’ve never really seen love until I saw them together, truly.
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.
Ryke Meadows has invigorated my body and soul. He is more than just my pillow. My wolf. My bodyguard. He’s my everything.
“Why stop?” I frown. “Is it because we’re in a stairwell?” His hard gaze soaks in all of me. “Calloway, I’d fuck you in every corner of every hallway and then do it over again for good measure.” My jaw unhinges. “And I’d be more likely to fuck you in a stairwell than on a bed.” “Why?” He combs his fingers through my hair and holds the back of my head. “It’s more fucking fun.”
“I kissed you tonight because I want your lips to only touch mine. From now until forever. That’s the fucking truth.”
“This almost never happens to me,” she says under her breath. “Stop imagining me fucking you,” I breathe, “and maybe it won’t.” I brush a flyaway hair out of her face.
Connor adds, “Ryke can share the bed with you. Problem solved.” He types with speed, his eyes not leaving his computer screen. “What talents I have.”
“Didn’t you hear? It was my second wish when I fell upon a magical lamp. Be smarter than Connor Cobalt. He doesn’t know it yet.”
what am I doing here? Why the fuck am I in this world? Living shouldn’t be this painful.
“Well, here’s one for you, Cobalt. It doesn’t matter if I grab her around the waist, if I kiss her chastely or if I kiss her roughly. No matter what I fucking do, her father isn’t going to like me. Her mom is going to hate me. Fuck you for thinking I need their approval to have a real relationship. What I feel is fucking real, and I don’t need her mom to verify that for me.”
“Ryke…” He shakes his head and rubs his lips. He drops his hand. “You ran with her in your arms for over three miles. Your brother’s existence caused your parent’s divorce, and yet, you gave up most of your time and energy to help him through his sobriety. How can you possibly think you’re a pain in their life? What you’ve done for them, it’s nothing short of heroic, and if you can’t see that, then you’re blind, my friend.”
She’s the sun. I’m the dark.
If she’s gone, I can kiss that fucking light away. Without her, I know I’ll never see it again.
I think I could live underneath Ryke Meadows, under his weight and protection, and be satisfied for life.
I breathe heavily. “What’s worth the risk then?” “What we fucking have,” he says. “I love you beyond physical attraction.” He cups my smooth cheek, looking deep into my eyes. “I love you, Dais, because you’re the wildest fucking girl with the biggest fucking heart. And without you in my life”—he shakes his head like it’s an inconceivable picture—“I’d be the unhappiest fucking guy.”
I’ll take each day as they come. Live in the moment with Ryke Meadows. If I ever die, I want that across my headstone.
To me, he’s worth every loud moment, every peaceful silence, the crazy and the sad, the restless and the quiet. I would trade it all to be with him,
“You be safe,” Lily emphasizes. “You’re the one climbing. I’m packing a first-aid kit, just in case you fall, so you know.” “Your fucking Band-Aid isn’t going to save me.” “Wolverine is printed on the front. He can save anyone.”
Freedom doesn’t come with age. It doesn’t magically appear when you’re a legal adult. It comes when you stand up for what you believe in.
“Oooh,” Loren mock cringes. “I didn’t know you could move that fast with your she-devil hooves.”
“Want to know a secret?” she whispers. “Sure,” I say, my arm stretching across the back of her chair again. She smiles and says, “You’re my favorite four-letter word.” Her bold green eyes flit up to me.
Maybe she thinks I won’t be into her if she dyes her hair. But I don’t fucking care about shit like that. Hair color. Skin color. Big. Small. I like her. Not the body she comes in.
Here they are. “I fell in fucking love with her. It hurt to be away from Daisy. It hurt to watch her with other guys. Everything fucking hurt, and I didn’t want to live with that pain anymore. I fucking couldn’t.” I inhale deeply. “I can’t tell you when it became unbearable, but it did.” Somewhere between Daisy eating a pomegranate in her kitchen and now.
“How much did it hurt?” he suddenly asks. “Did what hurt?” “Watching her with other guys.” I choke at the flood of memories. “It felt like someone was drowning me in fucking salt water and lighting me on fire.” His lips almost rise in a fraction of a fucking smile. “Same.” He takes a few deep breaths before he adds, “I need some time. But I’m not going to hit you again. So revel in that.”
Connor has said that he doesn’t believe in magic, but his words hold a possession all on their own, filling me with serenity, a temporary calmness, that I am grateful to have before my climb.
And then surprisingly Lo rises off the table and hops down. He hugs Ryke and pats his back. “Don’t die on me, okay?” “I don’t plan on it,” Ryke says. That one fight in Utah—with the red rock and dirt swirling—has cleared the air between them. Whatever bad blood they had between each other was left in that state, and I hope it won’t ever return. They split apart, and Ryke faces Lily now. She jumps off the picnic table quickly and flings her arms around him. Then she pulls away and presses a sticker on his shirt. “It’s Spider-Man. For good luck.” “Thanks, Lily.”
And then all of a sudden, a body stirs underneath a mass of pillows and blankets. Lo turns his head and pats what I guess are feet.
Lily sits up like she rose from the dead, rubbing her eyes and stretching. The way Lo is watching her—it’s like he’s witnessing daylight for the first time. It makes me smile because their love is so transparent, and it immediately slices through any awkward tension that clung to the air.
And I’m Ryke Meadows. I’m a free-solo climber. I’m a celebrity. I’m a fucking sober coach. I have an identity that’s mine. No one took it from me.
She looks over her shoulder, startled by my voice, her face illuminated by the moon. She never anticipated on being found. Drawing attention—that’s not her fucking ploy. Every time she runs off, she does it alone, and I’ve always feared the one time where she won’t return, floating dead on the surface of a lake, an ocean, a river. Not tonight. Not fucking ever.
“What?” I snap. “You jump, I jump. That’s how this works, Dais. So you want to break your leg, split open your head, you’re going to do the same to me. Can you fucking handle that?”
“You’re a hothouse flower,” I tell her. “You can’t grow under natural conditions. You need adventure. And security and love in order to stay alive.”
Daisy’s lips leave mine, and a gorgeous fucking smile overtakes her face. Her light restored. Powered up and fucking charged. My hothouse flower that I will always keep alive.
she was pretty much the undesirable daughter, I’ve come to realize over the years. She was the one Samantha let run off to the Hale residence, the ugly fucking duckling, even though she is beautiful, just too shy for Samantha to understand.
“Our kid is going to have to compete with theirs. It’s already fucked and it’s not even born yet.”
Beginnings are the hardest because they’re the parts that pull people in, that make them want the ends. And endings are the most painful, the parts that can leave you bleeding out.
I stare at Lily’s hand in mine. Her nails unpainted and bitten to the beds, but she has a beautifully strong grip, one that makes me feel okay and safe.
My breathing steadies and my head feels light. When I look beside me, for the first time, I don’t see that weight on my brother’s chest. I don’t see anything tugging him backwards. He’s fucking smiling. The sun streams through the trees, our distance shortening with each step. Pride, for him, consumes me. And it’s at four miles in—when he leaves my side and takes five lengthy strides ahead—that I know. He’s going to outrun me.
“Didn’t you hear?” I ask, watching him watch me. “I’m taken.” “I heard,” Ryke says, scooping me in his arms and wrapping the jacket around my shoulders. His eyes meet mine. “I also heard that he’s the only one who can keep up with you.”
Then he kisses me, his tongue effortlessly sliding against mine, heating every inch of my skin. I’m in his arms. No longer just the sister of his brother’s girlfriend. Or the sister of a friend. Not even just a friend. I am his.
He reaches me and holds the back of my head, his lips brushing my ear, “No restraints. One-hundred-and-fifty miles per hour. You and me, sweetheart.”
There are so many things left that I want to do before I settle down and have a family. And I want to do all of them with Daisy. Every time I imagine myself in another country after a climb, traveling, living—she’s by my side. I know we’ll make it a reality. I know that wherever she goes, I’ll go. Wherever I go, she’ll go.
The ink on her skin forms a dream catcher, with three feathers. But along the frame is a small design of a wolf, protecting all of her restless and wild fucking dreams from the bad.
Her smile overtakes her face. And I stare right into her green eyes, ones that I will look into for so many more fucking years.
