Long Way Down (Calloway Sisters, #4)

by Krista Ritchie

“We’re going to have a baby,” I whisper, tears dripping down mine. He nods and smiles, wider than almost anytime ever before, and he says, “Yeah, Calloway. We’re going to have a fucking baby.”

I’ve been scared of the dark, of strangers and things that go bump in the night. I never want to be scared of an unknown future, of risks. It’s the one fear that I choose to never have.

This is the start of our next chapter. Our next adventure.

Even now, just being near this guy—six-foot-three, brooding, masculine, protective and so soulfully caring—double-thumps my pulse.

“Maybe thirteen-year-olds shouldn’t be wearing heels,” Lo retorts. “Maybe twenty-six-year-olds named Loren Hale should shut up,”

I hone in on the differences between his hand and mine: much larger and his palm more calloused and rough to my soft. He’s staring down at me, this man who’d drop to his knees if I asked him to. Who’d take care of me. Never abuse me. Never pressure me or take advantage of me. He’s treated me with more respect than I can quantify.

If I fall, he’ll come with me. The intensity, the caring in his features pounds my heart more than the drumbeats, his gaze cloaking me in adoration and affection. I can’t turn off the light that beams through me, and slowly and carefully, he lowers my back onto the floor. Hovering above me, his arm braced beside my cheek. My wolf. My everything.

Do you want to know what love feels like for me? It’s breathing and suffocating. Sobbing and smiling. Yearning and fading. To ache that much harder. To live that much larger. It’s every moment. Every single, tiny one. I’ve felt it all with Ryke. And it’s not solely the wild, crazed events that keep my heart pumping. It’s these small, most inconceivable seconds of time spent together. Our smiles. Our tears. Our limbs shifting or standing still. The instant our lonely souls are filled. I’ve never lived or loved wilder and freer than with him.

I run my fingers through his hair again. “I’m so happy I could scream.” His lips curve upward. “Then scream, Calloway.” I howl instead. When he joins in, when he howls with me, my world is absolutely, totally and entirely complete.

Lily, the maid of honor, brings the rear with a nervous smile. Her flower crown is slightly off-kilter. My little brother makes the Spock symbol thing at her, and her cheeks redden but her smile stretches. She’s beautiful and has more self-confidence than I ever remember her possessing. I’m proud of you, Lil.

I exhale. In the audience, everyone begins to stand. 6:12 a.m. The sun is rising in Peru. I had no preconceived notions of what I’d feel today. I didn’t think that fucking far ahead, but waiting for the bride to step out, my bride, shortens my breath. More than anyone else, I just want to see her. And then she rounds the hedge. I’m almost knocked back. I take an audible inhale, my gaze fixed on her unparalleled smile and her golden blonde hair. Daisy stands strongly, fucking vibrantly, at the end of the aisle. My eyes burn because I’ve never seen her this beautiful or this alive. Meeting her radiance head on is a collision with ten-thousand degrees of heat. The longer I watch, my gaze blazes, water welling like I may not fucking survive. And guess what. I’m not shutting my eyes. I’d rather die inside this moment than miss a single part.

My gaze grows glassier the more I watch her, the more she watches me. Slowly nearing. The glimmer in her green eyes, the lightness in her gait, the overwhelming smile stretching her scar—this is the look of someone who’s free. Somewhere along the way, she found her voice. Somewhere along the way, she found her stride. I’m just the grateful fucking guy who was given the chance to stand by her side. Through it all.

I zone in on her blonde hair again. She must have dyed it last night with her sisters’ help, the secret “thing” Rose and Lily teased. Something about her choice to return to the shade she had when we met—it sends my whole fucking soul on an ascent. The nostalgia of first love—for both of us—flies to the forefront. Times where we raced faster and farther. Times where we slowed down with one another. And I see us in the sky. I see us in the sun and clouds. In the grass and trees. I see us in everything.

She starts, “During Christmas, I asked you when you knew that I’m the one, that this is the ‘can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, World Series kind of stuff’—do you remember that?”

“The simple answer,” she says, “would be the moment you dove in after me, but back then I hadn’t discovered the depth of your compassion, how much you truly love living life, and how we seem to fit, even when we shouldn’t.”

“I knew. I knew at the Alps when I ran so fast outside in deep snow. Barefoot. Barely clothed. You’d done so much for me before then.”

I stayed by her side after she was drugged at a New Year’s Eve party. I taught her how to ride a motorcycle. I’d watch movies with her until she fell asleep every night. Too frightened to be alone.

“You always cared about me. You were always there for me, but this time felt different. You wrapped your coat around me, picked me up in your arms, and said, ‘When life gets fucking hard, you can always turn to me. You need to run? I’ll run with you, Calloway. Just put on some fucking shoes first.’” She smiles, tears streaming down her cheeks, and I feel another one roll down mine. “I realized then that I’d never want to be vulnerable with any other man but you. Someone who understands me. Respects me. Loves me—so wildly. You were the only one. You are the only one.”

What I have to say is only for her, even if everyone else can hear. I hold her hips, my forehead nearly against hers as I say, “I have you fucking beat, sweetheart.” Confusion and curiosity light her big green eyes. “I knew,” I say slowly to her, “that you were the only girl that I’d ever fall in love with—could ever fall in love with—in Cancún, Mexico, on the boardwalk of a bungee jump.” She begins to sob, shaking her head. I cup her face between my hands. “I knew back then, Daisy Petunia Calloway, because you were the only girl I’d ever met that was as deeply caring and as fucking lonely as me. If anyone was going to fill my heart, it was you. Only you.”

“I never thought I’d be with you.” I feel hot trails scald my face. “I was fucking content with the idea of being alone for the rest of my life.” I said as much to my brother at one point. “You want to know what I am now?”

“I’m more than fucking happy, Dais.”

Her infectious smile rises against my lips. Mine grows, in step with my wife. And I vow, “Wherever you go, I’ll go.” As long as I’m alive, this will never fucking change.

“Hi, it’s Daisy. Not Duck and not Duke. Definitely not Buchanan. I’m a Meadows. If you haven’t misdialed then leave your name after the beep, and I’ll call back when I return from the moon⁠—”

He has me. He has me in his arms. In his soul. And he’s not going to let go. He never has.

She’s my wife. My sun. The person I thought about. In the end. “I’m not fucking leaving you.” I cup her face and before she asks, I say it again. “I’m not fucking leaving you, Calloway. You’re stuck with me.”

Connor Cobalt used to put himself above every person in this world. Self-centered, conceited, arrogant as fuck—he’s still these things, but somehow he learned to be a little less selfish. He wants the opposite for me. The selfish man is telling me to be a little less selfless.

“Do you remember what I wrote in your journal?” he asks. “The part in Italian.” A Christmas or two ago, he wrote inside a journal I’d given him, all in different foreign languages, and he wrapped it and gifted it back to me. The parts I understand, I’ve read maybe a dozen times. I lick my lips and say, “Ti rispetto e ti ammiro così tanto, amico mio. Mi hai aiutato ad essere altruista.” I respect and admire so much about you, my friend. You helped me be selfless. I always come back to those words because they surprise me—that Connor Cobalt could admire a part of me. That he saw something else besides my blunt, rough exterior.

He didn’t care what we wrote, so I suggested our Favorite Sayings from Ryke Meadows. My favorite: I fucking love you. Willow’s: I don’t fucking understand Tumblr. Lo’s: Fuck you, you fucking fuck. Lily’s: Fucking fantastic. Rose’s: No means no. Better yet, fuck no. Connor’s: Connor Cobalt is a fucking narcissist.

“Craisins!” Lo yells and knocks on the wall. We reluctantly part. Loren Hale stands on the fourth stair, Connor by his side. Ryke sends a dark glower their way. “What?” Lo says. “You’re both Crazy and you’re both Raisins.”

“You’re not easy either,” Connor reminds Lo. “But that never stopped your brother when it came to you.” Lo glances at the bottom of the stairs, but Ryke is out of sight now. Then he nods to himself like I get it. “He has seven weeks of this moping around shit. After that, I’m kicking his ass.” I hear the unspoken endnote: Just like he kicked mine.

And I test the waters and say, “I just wish that people would see the person that I feel that I am instead of the one they think they know? Maybe then they’d see how much I love him, and how much I can’t let him go.” I start crying, and Lily hugs me tightly, her round cheeks splotchy with tears too. And she whispers in my ear, “They don’t know us, Daisy, but I know you. I watched you grow up. You made me smile when Lo was in rehab, and I saw you fall in love. We have all these moments together, and I don’t want the media to take anything else away from us. Because…we deserve better. We deserve happiness. As sisters. And as friends.”

Dark tides rush far away from us. Years and years of passing hurt and guilt and blame, taking ownership of scars that other people branded within us. I feel it leave. It’s all vanquished. It’s all gone. And I think, Lily Calloway is very, very magical.

Lo cocks his head at me. “So you’re saying that you’re willing to put in effort to stand up and fuck your wife, but you can’t go out with me and hobble around more often?”

He never gives up on me, even when I disappear at night. Even when I wane like the setting sun. His love is unyielding and exists to cloak me through heartache, through misery, through laughter and pain. I love him in every moment. In every smile. In every frown. And I will love him after every long way down. He can mourn. He can grieve. He can be upset for the rest of his life. And still. I will never give up on Ryke Meadows. Like he never once gave up on me.

She blows out a breath, eyes bloodshot. “It’s okay.” Calloway girls say that a lot, but they forget how much we fucking love them, how much we know them. How much we want to take care of them.

“Will it always be like this?” she asks so fucking softly. The public is against us. Her old friends aren’t listening to her protests or the law. The best she can do is ignore all of it and focus on staying healthy. “No, Calloway,” I tell her fucking strongly. Her eyes meet mine. “It’s going to be better than this, but you’re tough enough to walk through shit and cheer on the other side. I know you are.” Her smile briefly toys with her lips. “Will you walk through shit with me?” “Every fucking day of my life.”

As though expecting my response, he lifts a bottle of Maker’s Mark, swishing the liquid in my face. My temperature escalates, burning my fucking brain. I reach out to steal the alcohol from him, all I see is the worst thing in my brother’s hand. Something that could kill him. He hoists it behind his head, out of my reach, and I wobble on my cane. How…? “How’d you fucking get that?” I growl. The house is empty of alcohol. None of us drink here. With daggered amber eyes, he tells me, “I walked into a liquor store and grabbed one of my favorite whiskeys. I paid for it, brought it home, and here we are.” Not many people can possibly understand how hard it would be for Lo to just casually stroll into a liquor store. I do. I spent years helping him stay sober, talking him down, hearing his stories of almost going inside, of the raging pain. Like just staying away from alcohol felt like guzzling rock salt. Why the fuck would he do this? Why the fuck would he do this? “Why the fuck would you do this?!” I yell at him, fisting his fucking T-shirt. My lungs blazing. “Why do you think?” he sneers, gesturing at me with the bottle. “If you don’t care about your stupid life, then I figured you would care about our stupid lives.” He licks his lips. “Am I right?” My eyes burn. “You can either follow me or I can take a swig of whiskey.” He opens the bottle between us like a fucking grenade. I breathe hot air through my nose. Once upon a fucking time, I broke my sobriety in a similar way. Lo...

“You would slow down for me when we were on a track, see how I was doing, push me to run just a little faster. You’d do that every time. You could’ve stopped on day one. I yelled at you, called you the worst fucking names, and you just kept running beside me, ahead of me. Waiting for me to catch up to you. And guess what, I did.” His eyes redden. “You were patient with me. So this, right here”—he gestures between me and him—“is me being patient with you.”

“You have a tattoo that basically says, don’t drag yourself down. What are you doing now?” “I’m fighting⁠—” “You’re dying!” he screams at me. “You’re dying right in front of me.” His furious eyes pool with tears, his vulnerability shining through. Making him seem younger. Fragile. My little brother. I sit up. “Hey, I’m doing all right. I’m right here. I haven’t died.” I reach out and squeeze his shoulder. He blinks and his tears fall. “I never understood. Not when Daisy explained it, not when you did. I didn’t get it, but now I do.” My frown darkens. “What do you mean?” “Climbing is a part of you. That’s what you told me. And I look at you now without it…you’re different. You’re fucking lifeless compared to the person you were. The person I know, we all know.” His chin quakes. “I miss my brother, and if you won’t fight for the thing that makes you happy, then I’m going to fight for you.”

I cry because I don’t fucking know if I’ll ever be the same. He scoots closer. “One step at a time. I know it’s hell. I know you want to give up. I know it fucking hurts. Just one step, one more time, Ryke. We’re doing this together. You and me.”

In the quiet, there are questions in my brother’s eyes. Things like, Will you wake up early tomorrow? Will you follow me, big brother? Will you ever climb again? Yes. As soon as the light hits. Yes. I’ll chase after you, little brother.

If someone told me on the yacht—when she just turned sixteen—that we’d end up here, I’d think they were fucking insane. I’d never think about getting Daisy Calloway pregnant. Never even picture either of us married. Time changes people.

My hand back on her hip. I lean forward and kiss the corner of her mouth. “You’re my favorite fucking wild thing.”

“‘Dear One-Half Crazy Raisin.’” She sways from side to side, naked, in front of me. “‘I thought about making you a nun, but you can thank your sister, the adorable one, for telling me not to be such a dick.’ Thank you, Lily.” Daisy curtseys. I pull out her costume, something navy blue, silver, red, and a winged helmet. She continues reading. “‘Lil said you should be something cool since you’re the coolest girl she’s ever met or whatever. I thought you should be something flighty because you’re all over the goddamn place. We decided on Thor—the girl Thor, which is a real thing in Marvel.’” She bounces on her toes, fucking excited. It makes me happy seeing her this upbeat. “‘P.S.,’” she reads, “‘don’t abuse the hammer.’”

I read his letter. “‘To the brother who’s not the bastard.’—Fucking hilarious, Lo,” I mutter and shake my head. “‘I thought about making you Luke Skywalker since you have such daddy issues…’” I roll my eyes. “‘…but I can’t imagine you in a white robe. Anyway, you have a scar on your eyebrow, which makes you look more like Anakin. Just know, I could’ve made you a bottle of mustard or a banana, so be happy about it.’” Daisy takes out my costume, a blackish-brown robe, tunic, and pants from Star Wars with a plastic lightsaber. It’ll be the nerdiest fucking costume I’ve ever worn, but I’d wear it for Lo. I’d actually wear just about anything for him. I glance down at the letter and silently read the last line. P.S. I don’t think you’re the villain, even if Anakin is.

I remember that Lily told me out of all the Superheroes & Scones employees, Garrison won the “make your own superhero” contest for the Fourth Degree comics. The artist and creators of the comic universe chose his concept: an anti-hero named Sorin X with teleportation powers linked to the proximity of the girl he loves. He can’t teleport more than four miles away from her. And he’s a recovering alcoholic. Sounded a lot like Lo made an impact on Garrison. In some way. Some form. Enough to create a fucking superhero out of him.

I nod, agreeing. She’s dressed as an angel in a knee-length white dress and matching wings, a circular gold wreath on her head. Garrison stands opposite in red slacks, a red T-shirt, and a red-horned headband on his dark brown hair. I still can’t believe my brother gave them couples costumes. “Devil!” Lo shouts at our sister’s boyfriend. Garrison pries his eyes from the computer, and Willow pushes her glasses up. “You know what happens when an angel and a devil create a bodily union?” Okay, now I fucking get it. “The apocalypse. Do the right thing and don’t end the world tonight.”

“Apocalypse,” Lo says, “also know as the end of your godforsaken, puny little life by the powers that be.” “Also known as me,” I chime in. “And me,” Lo finishes with a half-smile. “Welcome to hell.”

“Let’s make a pact. If anyone hassles our sisters tonight, we confront them and handle it with necessary means, according to how antagonistic they are towards us.” She lifts up her dress. “Whoa whoa,” Lo says. “Jesus, Rose, no one wants to—oh.” She has a knife strapped to her thigh. “What, you plan on fucking shanking someone tonight?” I’m suddenly worried. Uneasy. Concerned. All of the fucking above. She’s clearly scared about a public outing. We all haven’t taken one together in a long time, not like this. We’re headed to the Hamptons where some famous singer invited us to her Halloween party, and our bodyguards have to stay outside her mansion. Price included. After our wedding and helping Daisy reach the hospital in Lima, I’ve trusted him a lot more. I still don’t know why Greg would hire someone that young, but I don’t think Price is going to fuck us over. “I plan on being resourceful and cautious.” She raises her chin. “I also have a taser.” “Where?” Lo cringes. “Actually, I don’t want to know.” “You’re telling me that you don’t have a knife?” Rose rebuts. She has a point. I lift up my blackish-brown pants that are tucked into my boot. My brother and Rose can see the hilt of my knife. I usually always carry it around, especially after the crazed fucking media. “Jesus Christ,” Lo curses. “Am I the only one not armed?” I don’t say it out loud, but his words are basically a weapon.

Lily suddenly butts into our circle of three, climbing out of the limo and squeezing in the middle of us. “I think it’s important to tell all of you something before we begin this journey.” She has glitter all over her face and her wing keeps jabbing me in the fucking ribs. “The hot-tempered triad cannot come out to play.” We all groan.