I almost smile. I grip her ankle, letting her do her thing. “If she falls, I’ll pull her back in,” I tell him. I have confidence in my strength. If I didn’t spend almost all of my life building it by rock climbing and running, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with her.
She raises her hands in the air and laughs, the wind whipping her shorter blonde hair. She shuts her eyes and inhales deeply.
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. Right now, I see a semblance of that peace for Daisy.
But she called her mom three days ago, and when Daisy told her that she quit modeling, Samantha hung up. She just shut her out. She didn’t listen to Daisy explain why. And then her mom called Rose, and she bitched about the whole situation to her other daughter. My name was slung through the fucking mud by her mom.
It’s my fault Daisy isn’t modeling.
I forced her here.
If Samantha thinks my friendship with Daisy caused her to quit her career, then I wonder what she’s going to believe when she sees Daisy’s face.
I have no doubt that’ll be my fault too.
< 32 >
DAISY CALLOWAY
“Don’t eat anything heavy,” Ryke tells me. I sit cross-legged in a booth, moose and antelope heads chopped and mounted on the walls of John’s Backwoods Smokehouse. We stopped in the Kentucky Mountains for dinner, and now that I’m without stitches and no longer modeling, I can eat real freakin’ food.
“I don’t like that suggestion.” My eyes glaze ravenously over the pictures on the giant menu. Juicy steaks. Baby back ribs. Barbeque sandwiches. Greasy burgers.
My grumbling belly wants it all.
“You’re going to be fucking sick. You can’t go from eating fruits and vegetables for months to eating red meat.”
I stare at him over the menu. “I have this theory.” I pause for dramatic effect. “That my stomach is made of steel.”
Ryke crumples his straw paper and throws it at my face. It sticks in my hair. I smile, but he can’t see it behind the menu.
Lo doesn’t notice our exchange, even if he sits next to me. He’s busy scanning the other full tables and booths, wondering if anyone notices us. So far we’ve stayed anonymous.
He tips my baseball cap lower on my eyes to hide me from sight. My scar is facing the wall, so on the off chance that someone photographs us, they won’t catch the cut. And it’s not really my hat. Ryke gave me his.
Connor sips his water across from Lo. “If you act like you’re hiding something, generally people are going to think you are,” Connor tells him.
Lo glares. “I just don’t want to be hounded the whole trip.” He squeezes a lemon in his water, glaring at that too like it affronted him in some way. I guess it has by not being whiskey.
“No one’s picked up where we are,” Ryke says. “We’re good.”
Lo nods, trying to believe this.
I keep looking at Ryke above the menu, only my eyes visible to him. He had his stitches removed too. A cut slices through the corner of his eyebrow, small but noticeable. It’ll turn into a scar after it heals fully.
He catches me skimming his features, but I don’t shy from him. We play a dangerous game of who’s gonna look away first. Not me. I eye him like I want to crawl into his lap and lick his face. He stares at me with an intense hardness—rugged and alpha and a tad bit assholish. That’s Ryke Meadows. The singular look forces my heel into the spot between my legs. The pressure is nice against the throbbing place.
I fear that I’m going to break first. So I say, “My scar is bigger than your scar.” I smile behind the menu again.
His dark expression never falters. “And my cock is bigger than your cock.”
Ohhh. Burn. I laugh, and Lo cringes. He’s past scolding Ryke for feeding into my inappropriate talk. He just shakes his head and flags down the waitress to come take our orders.
I give Ryke another look like I want to fuck him, my eyes softening but still narrowing. I can speak through my gaze pretty well after practicing different expressions for modeling.
Even with the fuck me hard, come hither stare, he stays fixed on me, unwavering. It’s a game between us, but his penetrating gaze is seriously heating my body past its normal temperature. I think it’s different now that it can go further than just flirting. It can progress to kissing and fondling and fucking since we’re together. Just not in front of his brother and Connor.