Ryke begins to cover her gash with clean bandages, and her arms slide further around his waist. To where his body is pressed against hers.
He whispers something to her, his lips brushing her ear, not discreet about it. They’ve never been. And then she smiles brightly, her fingers falling to the band of his jeans. Their embrace takes me aback, like a swift kick.
And it’s in this single moment, that I know for certain, they’re together.
So I ask: “Did I miss something?” I gesture between them, my jaw sharpening on instinct. I wait for my brother to tell me the whole truth.
For once.
Please.
And then he takes a step back from Daisy with a pissed expression. Like I ruin everything. He’s not even giving me a chance.
He says, “We’re just friends.”
Right. I nod a couple times. “I’ll meet you at the car.” Boiling. It goes beyond them together. It’s that he can’t be honest with me. He asks me for his complete trust, but it’s becoming harder and harder when he builds walls between us.
He once said that I stand vulnerable in front of Connor, someone who wears layers and layers of armor while I bear all of myself to him.
Somewhere along the way, they switched places. I wonder what it’ll take for him to finally see it.
{ 57 }
2 years : 02 months
October
LILY CALLOWAY
“I have been informed by higher officers at the Pentagon that there still exists a top secret UFO project. That’s where your Roswell file is.” – Brigadier General Richard Mitchell （Ret.）
I squint at one of the many quotes on the museum wall, each one about the Roswell aliens. I relax against Lo’s hard chest, his arms draped over my shoulders. We reunited in the Smoky Mountains, and all seemed okay.
Better than the phone call in the hospital. Even Daisy radiated with more life than usual, despite what’s happened to her cheek.
She made it really hard to be upset for her—she’s talented at that. But sometimes, I just want to hug her for an extended minute or two and put more attention on her, the good kind that she deserves.
“Did Wampa die from Tennessee to New Mexico?” Lo asks with a grimace. “It smells, Lil.” Lo places a
hand on my head—or rather on my Wampa cap.
“Shhh,” I whisper.
And then he tries to snatch my white fuzzy Star Wars hat off my head. I hold the flaps of my Wampa protectively over my ears. “He does not,” I refute and sniff just to make sure. Oh. It reeks of wood smoke from the campfire back at the Smoky Mountains. The moment my hands fall, Lo steals the hat from me, my hair poofing up from the static.
I pat it down, and he combs his finger through the messy strands. The Smoky Mountains didn’t end on the best note, even if all the “before” parts were lighthearted enough. Though Rose did have a meltdown, brought on by hormones, and it got a little ugly.
I think Connor is onto her secret.
Not mine though.
Which means I must be smarter than her in this instance. I internally gloat at the idea.
The low moment in the mountains occurred right in the early morning. When we crawled out of our tent, the paparazzi sprung up out of the bushes. Literally.
In order to shake them off, we split up. Daisy and Ryke rode off together, and Lo, Connor, Rose and I drove our rental car the other direction. We’re going to meet up sooner or later, but for now, we’re separated from Lo’s brother and my little sister.
“Do you think they’re getting it on?” I blurt out. I should keep my thoughts to myself. “Nevermind,” I slur together and grab his hand, quickly tugging him over to a glass casing of a spaceship model with dirt, labeled: Corona Impact Point.
“Whoa, slow down,” he says, nearly running straight into me as I come to a halt.
“Look at this.” I try to distract him from my statement by pressing my finger to the glass. “What if the dirt is real? Like from the actual crash?”
He gives me one of those cold Loren Hale looks that usually cripples people. I’m too used to them, really. They’re more like pinches. Love pinches. “Who’s getting it on?” he asks, his brows furrowing. He smashes Wampa in a ball, anger tensing his biceps.
“I was just thinking about how we all split up,” I mutter under my breath. “Let’s go listen to the radio recording.” I try to tug him in another direction, but his feet stay glued to the floor.
And it clicks for him. “You mean your eighteen-year-old little sister and my twenty-five-year-old older brother?”