“I never said we should. The press would pick up the story, and it’d put more attention on everyone.” He pauses. “You both realize that they could’ve accidentally shot you in the eye?”
“Fucking worth it,” Ryke says, crossing his arms over his chest.
I add, “If you saw the girls, you would’ve wanted us to run after them, paintball guns or not.”
Connor trains his gaze back on the road. “I did see the girls.”
I frown as I scan his features. He’s closed up again, which makes me nervous. “Is Lily okay?” I clench my teeth in fear of the possibility that she may not be. My back stiff and my muscles tense. “Connor—”
“She’s fine.” He suddenly locks the car doors, and his eyes flicker to the rearview mirror, at my older brother in the backseat, who grows more distressed. If Lily’s okay then that means— “Please don’t jump out of the car,” Connor tells him. “I’ve never injured anyone while driving, and I’d like to keep my record clean.”
His nose flares. “What’s wrong with Daisy?”
“She had a small panic attack.”
Christ. I grimace, like knives slicing through my core, and it’s mostly from sensing my brother behind me. I rotate to look back at Ryke. He pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes tightened shut. I can tell he’s swallowing a scream and restraining himself from punching the back of the seat.
“At least she’s not pregnant,” I throw out there. A silver lining.
Ryke drops his hand and cringes. His brown eyes rise to mine. “I fucking hate when people torment her.”
I know that now. “But if we move to another neighborhood it’s just going to be the same thing in a different setting.” We bring attention to ourselves wherever we are and that won’t change, not after Lily’s sex addiction was publicized, not after Princesses of Philly, and definitely not after the molestation rumors with my father.
The reality is this: Lily is pregnant. Rose is pregnant. Daisy is hanging onto her sanity. And the media is as caustic as ever—spreading rumors, trying to snap photos of Lily and Rose’s bodies, and harassing Daisy about her relationship with Ryke and his relationship with my girlfriend.
I’m not the smartest one of us. Or the strongest. But I fucking know everyone has a breaking point. And sometimes I wonder if our limits are going to be tested now that Ryke is with Daisy, now that I’m about to be a father, and Connor will have a child with Rose. These things stretch us further than before.
A misstep will feel fatal. Because it’s not just myself that I’m hurting. It’s Lil. It’s our kid. There’s literally no room for mistakes anymore.
I wish I could be full of conceited optimism, but to be honest, everything just scares the shit out of me.
{ 2 }
LILY CALLOWAY
I kneel on the cold tile of Ryke and Daisy’s messy bathroom, rubbing my little sister’s back as she pukes in the toilet. “We should TP their front yard,” I say with a nod. They deserve it, for all the stupid shit they’ve done to our house this past week and then jumping out of nowhere and frightening us with paintball guns.
“Or we should rip out their ball sacs. Slowly,” Rose says in a cold, threatening voice. She paces the bathroom with a Japanese paper fan, wafting cool air on herself half the time and Daisy for the other. She stops every so often to fold a crumpled towel on the floor or readjust the green bath mat. She’s already reorganized the shampoo bottles and put away Daisy’s tampons and hairbrush.
It’s very weird, but I think I’m the most composed of the three of us right now. Sex isn’t even on the brain yet. I internally smile. I make sure to file the rare accomplishment with a few others.
“I’m not touching their…stuff,” I tell Rose, and just like that my face heats.
“Balls,” Rose emphasizes the word, shooting me a death glare on an epic scale. I blame her hormones on the intensity of those yellow-green eyes. They’re a lot scarier now. “Or testicles if that makes them any better for you.”
I shake my head over and over, my face flushing. I’ve already been dizzy all night, a pregnancy symptom, and the red rash is not helping my spinning head any. “That’s worse. And I don’t have a problem with them. I like balls.” I cringe. That sounds so bad. “I mean, I like them.” An image of Lo’s cock, hard and very erect, pops in my head, and my skin heats. No. No. No. I press my thighs tighter together.