“This is killing me,” Ryke says under his breath.
“You can’t play hero to her,” I remind him. “If she was in trouble, I’d go down there. You can’t.”
He runs his hands through his hair and sits forward with his hands on his legs, watching carefully.
Daisy thrusts the guy back again, and then she gestures to a group of girls in bandage dresses about ten feet away. She breaks from Rose and Lily’s side to bring him over to the girls who bounce up and down. He’s too obliterated to protest, and it’s not long before he’s mesmerized by four more sets of tits.
He forgets about Daisy, and she leaves him to return to her sisters easily.
Lily hugs Daisy in thanks and whispers something in her ear. Both girls smile wide before they laugh.
“Do you trust her?” Connor asks me. I’m sure I look ready to spring down there and glare at any guy who so much as hits on Lily. But I don’t want to be that guy, the one who is so insanely overprotective that he suffocates a woman. There’s a happy medium somewhere. And it does come with trusting her.
“She’s a sex addict,” I remind him.
“Does correlation warrant causation in this instance?” Connor asks.
“English.”
“Does being a sex addict automatically make her untrustworthy?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “but I’ve spent more time seeing her with other guys than being with her, so I guess I can understand how it might be natural—for her—to just fall back into that.”
“To cheat,” Ryke clarifies.
I give him a glare. “Yeah,” I snap, “but if it happens, it happens, right?” Even the thought, though, devastates me.
“I don’t think it will,” Ryke says.
I jerk back in shock. He’s never been an advocate for Lily. “And why is that?”
“Because I think she loves you more than she loves sex. And you love her more than you love alcohol, but you two just haven’t let yourselves believe it yet.”
Maybe he’s right, but allowing myself to process that is harder than it seems.
Female servers start carrying out blue glowing bottles on the dance floor, flashlights held underneath the bottom to add the luminosity effect. They offer willing guys and girls straight shots. One of the servers stands in front of Rose and Daisy.
“They aren’t…” I say with furrowed brows. Do they know what they’re about to drink? I thought they wanted to get crazy-fun wasted, not “holy shit, what’s that” wasted. But they have to know what they’re drinking. Rose probably has the highest IQ in the club—not counting Connor. If I recognize the alcohol, she would too.
I watch Daisy nod excitedly, and my stomach tosses as she leans back against the bar. We’re going to have our work cut out for us tonight…
The server pours the liquid into her mouth, and Daisy spills not a drop. She licks her lips and motions to Rose. She goes next, without much prodding from Daisy. Maybe all the lights and music have warped her mind.
She finishes off the first shot, and surprisingly, she leans back for another.
One of my short-term goals is coming true. Rose Calloway is definitely going to be drunk tonight.
I’m not as happy about it as I thought I’d be.
“What kind of liquor is that?” Connor asks. My whole face falls. Wait, if Connor can’t tell…
“Look who doesn’t know something,” Ryke pipes in, capitalizing on Connor’s question.
“Types of liquor aren’t high on my priority list. But that’s sweet of you, Ryke, to think I know everything in the world.”
“Absinthe,” I tell Connor. “It’s blue absinthe.” How could he not know? If he doesn’t, then what’s the probability that Rose does?
As soon as the words leave my mouth, Connor is on his feet, and he can’t hide the concern on his face this time.
“You worried, Cobalt?” Ryke calls, but I can tell Connor’s sudden ruffled composure is making Ryke equally alarmed. Because Daisy is the other girl downing the liquor—and she doesn’t have a boyfriend here to look out for her. But she does have me.
Even so, my eyes latch onto Lily more, hoping she doesn’t join her sisters if she doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into.
“Absinthe contains thujone,” Connor tells him.
“So you don’t know what it looks like, but you know what chemicals are in it,” Ryke says.
“It’s usually green, and it’s also banned in the United States because thujone has hallucinogenic properties.”