Addicted for Now (Addicted #2)(89)

“Guys! Say f*ck yeah!”

“FUCK YEAH!”

He continues a portion of his song, the beat pumping and my view officially gone with the amount of girls on shoulders.

“Now ladies!” He goes back to his talking. “It’s Spring Break! Let’s see those titties!”

Wait. What?

I go still while the girls around me respond by flinging off their bikini tops, as though the rapper said a magic word.

All I heard was titties, which has the opposite effect on my willingness to free-boob. Everyone hollers in drunken excitement, eyes wide at the sight of nipples and springy parts.

Boobs of all sizes jiggle and bounce around me. I’m slapping Lo’s face, his nose, his cheek—get me down. Down. I need down. Now.

Beside me, Melissa has already pulled the string to her top. Which is cool. She has pretty boobs. She drops her top on Ryke’s head. He grabs it and looks up, exactly what she wanted.

I have nothing much to show off, and I am easily embarrassed. Clearly.

I do see a few other girls lowering from the air, not wanting to take part in this either.

“Daisy!” Rose screams from the ground.

Just as Lo sets me on my feet, I crane my neck and spot Daisy fingering the clasp on her back.

“Daisy!” I shout with wide eyes, equally as mortified as Rose. I do not want anyone to see my sixteen-year-old sister’s boobs. If she wants to tear off her bikini top in two years then so be it—but not now.

Lo plants his hands on my shoulders. “Jesus Christ,” he curses, trying to divert his eyes.

Daisy just looks at me, grinning from ear to ear.

Rose is about to swallow her anxiety and push through all of these bodies to reach Daisy and wring her neck. But then Daisy drops her hand with a laugh.

“Scare you?” she asks, waggling her brows.

Yes. She scared me, but at least she had no intention of doing it. That has to count for something.

Her eyes flicker beside me. Not to Lo, but to Ryke. His normally hard features are darkened slightly. And I think he’s trying really, really hard not to call Daisy a tease, just to piss her off and start something.

It’s what he does.

The longer she stares at Ryke, the more her smile fades. She turns her back to us, hunches forward and says something to the bandana guy. He lowers her to the ground, safely on Earth, and before she returns to our group, she continues talking with him, even with the loud music.

She nods a lot. He smiles even more. I don’t like it. Because he looks in his late twenties and she’s just a teenager.

And then his hand rests on her hip and starts traveling to her ass.

“I’m thirty seconds,” Lo says under his breath, his eyes flickering to Ryke.

“I’m fifteen.”

I frown. For what? To intervene?

Connor looks between them. “You both can’t be serious.”

Ryke glances at his watch. “Five…”

“She’s a smart girl,” Connor reminds them.

“She’s sixteen,” Lo says.

“Three…”

And then the guy slaps her ass, and Ryke is about to drop Melissa on the ground. But Daisy just smiles and waves goodbye to the guy and comes over to us. When she meets our faces, her smile contorts into a frown, confused like I was. Now I’m pretty positive there’s too much testosterone pumping in this area.

“What’s up with all of you?” Daisy asks. “Lo, you look like you’re going to pop a blood vessel.” He does. But she tries to shrug it off. “That guy told me a good place to swim with sharks. Anyone up for it?”

Everyone stays quiet.

And she deflates again. “What? What did I do?”

“That guy practically stuck his hand down your bathing suit,” Ryke tells her, “and you didn’t care.”

Melissa has her arms crossed over her chest. Her mood is slowly tanking.

Rose shoots me a harsh look and mouths girl time. Yes. Definitely.

I take Daisy’s hand, wanting air too but mostly wanting Daisy out of their judgmental gazes for a second.

“Wait, I didn’t do anything wrong,” she says. “He was just being nice.”

“Are you really that na?ve?” Lo questions. “Because if you are, we should consider sending you home before something terrible f*cking happens.”

“I’m not na?ve,” she says. “He was happy.”

Ryke cringes. “You let him slap your ass because it made him happy?” Yeah, that doesn’t sound right.

“Okay,” I interject. “We’re leaving. Right Rose?”

“Yes.” She sets a glare on each of the guys.

Connor raises his hands. “I didn’t say a word.”

Her eyes soften at him. “You’re exempt.”

“Daisy,” Ryke says with so much emotion to the name that shivers run down my arm. And it’s freakin’ hot out here. I think he wants to say a lot of things to her—give her some sort of pep talk about how she doesn’t have to please other people to make herself feel better—that doing so will hurt her in the end. But Melissa leans her head down and starts whispering in his ear, deterring him from speaking his mind.

So Daisy says, “I’ll see you around.” And she actually drags me off towards a tiki bar that sits on the beach. Rose races behind us, wanting out of the mobs of people too.