“I’m not a leech,” Connor replies with ease.
Rose tosses the stick into the fire and cleans her hands with a wet wipe. Then she reaches into a grocery bag by her side. “So I bought these on the way here.” She pulls out a tall stack of tabloid magazines. “I wanted all of us to burn them together and purge the bad energy.”
Connor says, “As long as we don’t have to chant afterwards, I’ll participate.”
Rose stands, trying to hide a smile that’s clear to me. She fucking loves him, arguments and all. “I’d rather you not. Your pessimism is already clouding the process.”
“Realism and pessimism are two very different things, but I’d be happy to explain it to you.”
She covers his mouth with her hand. “Thank you for defining arrogance. You can keep your other definitions to yourself.” She spins around, dropping her hand. “Now where were we?” She starts passing out the magazine, and Connor’s eyes fall to her ass. Even though he acts like he’s better than every horny bastard, he’s still a fucking guy. Case in point.
Lily holds her marshmallows over the fire, and a flame engulfs it almost immediately. She shrieks and waves it around, as though that’ll snuff it out.
I shake my head at her. “You’re going to fling it in the woods, chill the fuck out.” Last thing we need is to start a forest fire.
“It won’t extinguish!” she defends. “Extinguish, you mallow! Extinguish!” She flaps it around some more and tries blowing, but she more or less just spits on the thing. And then from behind her, Lo easily blows out the flame himself, leaving her with a burnt marshmallow.
Daisy smiles wickedly. “Wow, who would have thought—Lo blows better than Lily.”
I rub my lips to keep from smiling. Everyone else looks fairly uncomfortable by that statement—only because it came from Daisy. If I said it, it would’ve been fine. If Lily said it—everyone would have fucking laughed.
Lo glares at me.
I extend my arms. “I didn’t do a fucking thing.”
“You’re a shitty influence.”
Daisy acts nonchalant, but her gaze flits all over the forest. Every time she tries to be one step closer to us, someone in our group has a way of pushing her back out. It’s unintentional, I think. But it happens, regardless.
“It was a fucking joke,” I tell Lo. He’s about to open his mouth, ready to chew me up and spit me back out. I mentally start putting on my armor to withstand him.
But then Rose snaps her fingers, cutting off Lo and regaining everyone’s attention. Her eyes meet mine briefly. I know she did that for my benefit. I’m grateful, but I don’t show it. “We’re supposed to be purging bad energy not creating it.” She drops a magazine on my lap. “Here, you can burn this one.”
I read the headline: Ryke Meadows Continues to Play Games. The front page picture shows Daisy hanging over my shoulder outside of the pub in Paris, my hand on her ass. But I can’t get over the smile on her face. The camera caught her mid-laugh.
She’s gorgeous. And she’s mine.
I don’t want to burn this picture. I want to frame that happiness and revisit it every morning and every night for the rest of my life.
But the headline definitely taints it.
They think we’re flirting. We are. But they also think I’m fucking Lily. So I’m a player. I’m fooling around with both Calloway girls. It’s just so fucking absurd.
My jaw locks, and I don’t waste another moment. I fling it into the fire.
“You have to wait!” Rose yells at me. “We’re doing this as a group.” She slaps my arm with another rolled up magazine and then tosses it at me.
“For fuck’s sake you’re high-strung tonight.”
“Talk to me when you’ve had a worm suck your blood off your ass,” she retorts, walking past me to Lily and Lo. I read the headline of my new tabloid: Sara Hale at War with Her Family.
Fucking fantastic.
Daisy rolls up her magazine, hiding the headline from view.
“Everyone,” Rose says, sitting back in her chair and crossing her ankles. Connor is the only one without a tabloid. Rose is sticking to her earlier claim, refusing to give him one. “Take your magazine and read something you find particularly offensive before tossing it into the fire.”
“And what is this supposed to fucking do?” I ask.
“Ward off evil spirits,” Lo says, sipping his Fizz Life while hooking his arm around Lily’s waist. She leans against his chest again. “Too bad it won’t cure your obsessive compulsive personality, Rose.”