I process each heavy word. I wish that he felt like I could handle all of him. I wish that I didn’t idolize him so much from the beginning. “And what about you, Rose?” I ask, turning to her. “Is that enough for you?”
Lily sidles next to Rose and holds her hand. The fact that Lily can even comfort someone after what’s happened to her tonight—it builds something pure inside of me.
Rose nods, her neck straightened and shoulders pulled back. But I catch her squeezing Lily’s hand. “I’m going to the bathroom. You guys can meet us at the car.” Lily braces Rose around the waist, and they weave between the scattering crowds.
I watch how Connor keeps his blue eyes locked on Rose. With more and more concern.
He is in love with her.
For once, in his life, Connor is blind.
When he meets my gaze, I say, “I just want you to know that I lost some respect for you tonight. And you’re not going to get it back so fucking easily.” I don’t want to play his games. I’m not an investor he needs to slip in his back pocket. I’m his friend. I just want him to be real with me.
“Sure,” he says softly. “I understand.”
His gaze drifts to the carpet in deep thought. A faraway look that I don’t often see from him. My stomach is in knots. I already want to forgive him, to say don’t worry about it. He has that power over people. It’s insane, and I realize how much I love the guy.
That’s the funny thing right:
He’ll probably never love me.
{ 21 }
0 years : 07 months
March
LILY CALLOWAY
“LILY! LOREN!”
The paparazzi swarm us like ants crawling out of a hill. Only now they’re willfully rushing between cars in the street, just to film us on the sidewalk as we try to push our way into a New York City building.
A camera lens accidentally knocks into my head. Ouch. I shut my eyes as the pain swells.
“Back up!” Lo yells at the paparazzi. He guides me forward and protects my head by tugging me closer to his chest.
Ryke physically restrains cameramen with the length of his strong arms, using them as barriers. He’s like my replacement Garth since I had to sadly put him on hiatus. The production team wouldn’t let Daisy and me keep our bodyguards, something about “getting in the way.”
I miss Garth’s brutal, intimidating stares that shrank any pedestrians who gave me stink eyes.
And I miss the way he smells like bagels in the morning. No matter if he’s a man of few words. He was brawn that I severely lacked.
I try to hold out my leopard-print canister of pepper spray for self-protection, but I practically have a T-Rex claw hand, not able to outstretch my arm very far.
“Who’s better in bed, Lily?!” a cameraman shouts. “Loren or Ryke?!”
Fire burns my belly. I wish I was a T-Rex. I’d eat him.
In a non-sexual way. Just to be clear.
My neck heats.
“Lily,” Lo says, his lips right beside my ear. “Breathe.”
I realize that I’m taking slow, shallow breaths. My forehead sweats, and my upper lip is probably perspiring. How sexy. “Lo,” I whisper over the shouting paparazzi and Ryke who hollers to move back! “Are we going to make it?”
I meant to the building. We’re here to support Daisy, who’s in a runway show for a popular designer. But my words seem to encompass more than this time and place. Princesses of Philly was the most viewed reality show on GBA ever. We didn’t have this amount of fame before. It’s a whole new level of crazy.
Lo answers by lifting me up in his arms, front piggy-back style which is intimate and safe. I wrap my arms around his neck, pressing my forehead to his shoulder. I block out the noise. It’s just Lo and me. Like old times.
He says, “We can make it.”
I believe him.
My legs tighten around his waist, and a bad part of me starts to ache…for something harder. Sex is on the brain today.
Just go into the building. Everything will be quiet.
It’s a wishful thought.
As soon as Ryke pushes through the doors ahead of us, Lo enters with a string of five or six cameramen trailing him. Only two belong to the reality show.
More flashes and clicking.
There is no escape.
*
We sit on plastic white chairs that line the runway. I lean closer to Lo, gripping his bicep while his hand remains on my knee. “Can you put your hand higher,” I whisper, my heart racing in my chest. I need something.
Wait. My eyes bug.
I take in the setting. Front row seats to a runway show. Press snap photos of the audience before the models begin to walk. I’m wedged between Lo and Ryke. For some reason, production separated us from Rose, Connor and Scott, who sit across the white runway.