Hothouse Flower (Addicted #4)(127)

“So tell him like a normal human being!” I scream. “Stop saying things like he shit his life away.”

“This isn’t about Loren. This is about you and me,” he refutes, cutting off that topic. As if there’s no room to even discuss it.

Fuck him. “If you love him, like you say you do, you’d support his sobriety and you’d stop tearing him down every chance you get.”

He glares. “If I didn’t motivate him, he wouldn’t be where he is. That’s love. You’ll understand when you have your own children.”

No f*cking way will I ever raise my kids like him. Fuck that.

I stare at my father for a long moment. He will never change. He is so f*cking rooted in his beliefs. It’s either I accept him like this or do what I’ve been doing—try to forget he even exists.

He opens the door further for me. “Are you ready to put this bullshit behind us, or do you still want to hold onto the f*cking past?”

I’m frozen again. Stuck to the middle of the floor. There’s no nasty retort on my tongue. It’s those words that get to me the most.

Do you still want to hold onto the f*cking past?

I’m living back there. Where my dad leaves my mom. Where I’m lying for years and years about who I am. Where I feel lost of an identity to call my own.

But I have all of that now. Fuck, I have more than I ever dreamed of.

I have a girl I love.

I have a brother.

I have a mom who loves me, even if she f*cks up.

I have a dad who wants to be there for me…I look up at him. Who is here for me.

And I’m Ryke Meadows. I’m a free-solo climber. I’m a celebrity. I’m a f*cking sober coach. I have an identity that’s mine. No one took it from me.

I glance over at my dad again, and I want to see the villain, but I think, maybe, all this time the villain was me. For not moving past this, for not realizing that he’s free to make mistakes too. I don’t know if I’m willing to forgive him right now, but he’s not asking for that.

He’s letting me take all the f*cking time I need.

I inhale strongly, and I say, “I may never see eye to eye with you.”

He nods. “I’d rather fight with you at every Sunday dinner than never talk to you again.” He shrugs. “That’s the goddamn truth.”

“You love me that much?”

There are f*cking tears in his eyes. “More than you can possibly understand, son.”

A pressure bears down on me, and I ask him something that I’ve never f*cking asked him in my entire life. I just always thought I knew the answer. Now I’m not so sure. “Would you be willing to stop drinking for Lo and for me?”

After a heavy silence, a single tear rolls down his cheek. I see now that he’s fighting an internal battle probably just as powerful and just as rebellious as the one Lo has, as the one I have.

What he does will change everything.





< 60 >

RYKE MEADOWS



“I still can’t believe it,” my brother says while I drive to our father’s house with Lily and Daisy in the backseat, my Infinity speeding along the roads until I get stopped by another red light. The girls are quiet, both looking out their windows.

“Me either,” I say. “Seems f*cking surreal.”

“He threw out thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of booze.” Lo shakes his head. “He had a rare two-hundred-year-old scotch he was planning on giving me as a wedding present, you know that?”

My eyes flicker to him. “He wanted to give you booze when you’re sober?” Lo has visited our dad almost every day since he started this long journey. It’s been one week since his proclamation in the jail cell, and he hasn’t backed out.

In my father’s words, He’s no f*cking *.

“No, he told me that he was planning to drink it at my wedding himself. He’d have an extra glass for me.” Lo stares off for a second and then he smiles. “We ended up watering the plants with the scotch.” He laughs and says, “You know that son of a bitch has three sober coaches to keep him in line?”

I hear the happiness in my brother’s voice, and it lifts me to a new place. I’m proud of my father, for finally going to this length for us. It’s not an easy decision. It’s not an easy road. It’s one that Lo knows better than me, and he can say, firsthand, how much pain there is in giving up a crutch rather than relying on it.

But we’re both going to be here for him.

“I expected a f*cking army,” I tell Lo. “If he’s not going to rehab, he’ll bring rehab to him.” I glance in the rearview at Daisy, who is abnormally still on her seat. Her faraway gaze clenches my stomach. She’s been ignoring her mom after I got arrested. It’s not something I ever wanted for Daisy.

I drive through a gated community right in the suburbs of Philly, and I park in my father’s driveway. I snap off my seatbelt, and both Lily and Daisy climb out of the car and shut the doors before Lo and I get out. I turn to my brother, a gnawing question surfacing while we’re here.

“I meant to ask you something,” I say under my breath.

He removes his gaze off Lily who nervously bites her nails. She’s been more anxious than usual, and I haven’t really talked to my brother about it. But her health is not really my main concern right now. “Yeah?” he asks.