Hothouse Flower (Addicted #4)(41)

I hold the phone to my ear and say, “I’ll call you back.”

“What’s going on?” Daisy asks.

“Is that her?” Emilia’s eyes brighten at the phone.

I don’t like that look on her f*cking face.

“Hey, Daisy,” Emilia calls loudly so she can hear, “thanks for the shampoo. It smells like teen spirit.”

“She’s fun,” Daisy says to me, a humored smile to her words. She usually doesn’t take digs at her age to heart.

“No she’s not,” I say blankly, staring hard at Emilia. She’s quick. In a swift second, she steals the birth control out of my pocket.

“Oh my God,” she laughs and waves the packet. “Male shampoo and she stopped taking the pill.” She glances at the phone. “Hey Daisy, you need to tell your f*ck-buddies to wrap it, honey, or you’re going to be sixteen and pregnant.”

“I’m eighteen,” Daisy says flatly, but only I can still hear her.

I glare hard at Emilia. “You need to f*cking go.”

Her smile fades. “I’m just joking around, Ryke.” She tosses the pills back to me. I catch it with one hand. “Daisy knows that.”

“I’m not f*cking joking.”

I hear Daisy’s voice go hysterical in my f*cking ear. “Stop, Ryke, you can’t kick her out. She may sell that info to the press.”

She probably will anyway. I roll my eyes and shake my head. “I’ll drive you home. Just don’t make a big deal about this.” I raise the pills between two fingers to show her what I’m referring to.

“Yeah, sorry.” Her eyes drift to the counter. “Is that her brush?”

Fucking A. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom.” I don’t care what she does anymore, as long as she’s on her way out in five minutes or less. I sit on the mattress while Emilia combs her hair. “You there, Dais?” I ask her for what feels like the millionth time.

“Yeah, about the pills…I don’t like taking them around Fashion Week. My mom says I gain too much weight when I’m on them. So…don’t be mad.”

If I didn’t tell her to date other f*cking guys, I wouldn’t be so concerned right now. My nose flares, and it takes me a moment to answer. “It’s your body. Just be f*cking careful.”

“I will,” she says. Silence stretches over the line. “Hey, Ryke?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t f*ck her in my bed.”

I grimace. “I would never do that.”

“Just making sure.”

I let out a deep breath. “I miss you.” Fuck me. Why do I say shit like that to her?

Because it’s the truth.

She says, “It’s only been four days.”

“Feels longer than that.”

“Yeah, it does,” she says softly. “So what was your climbing time?”

I almost smile. She remembered that I said I beat my last record. “Two minutes, seventy-three seconds, eighty feet of ascension.”

“I’m proud of you,” she says. “Did you scream, ‘I am a Golden God’ when you reached the top?”

“Only you do that, sweetheart.”

There’s a long pause again, and I can’t keep my smile from filling my whole face.

When she collects herself, she laughs and says, “I did it once, and it wasn’t even a real mountain.”

It was a gym rock wall. And it took her a week to complete the hardest course. By the end, she pumped her fists in the air in triumph and shouted that quote from Almost Famous. The entire gym clapped.

It was really f*cking cute.

“Do you feel better?” I ask her. She doesn’t seem as paranoid or f*cking antsy.

“When I talk to you, yeah, I do.”

“Then call me. I told you I wouldn’t f*cking mind if you did.”

“I didn’t want to bother you…the time difference…”

“I’ll answer your call if it’s at four in the morning or midnight, Dais. It’s just f*cking hard for me to call you because I don’t know when you’re on the runway.”

There’s a long drawn out pause, and I can tell she’s trying to find the right words. She settles on these: “Thanks, Ryke.” She says my name with this genuine, heartfelt affection. “I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

“I have to start heading over for hair and makeup. Call you later?”

“I’ll answer.”

For you, I always f*cking will.





< 17 >

DAISY CALLOWAY



Stylists and publicists with walky-talkies and headsets dart around the backstage area with crazed eyeballs. Mine aren’t bugged. I rub them, dry from the lack of sleep.

Models swarm the congested backstage, hurrying into their clothes. I sit in another makeup chair while a stylist twists my long blonde locks into an intricate shape of a humongous ribbon. The more hairspray she uses and bobby pins she pokes, the more weight gathers on my head.

When she finishes, I wander over to the racks of clothes and find my garment. It’s nothing more than black hefty fabric, draped to form an indistinguishable bow. Yes, the dress is a giant bow. I am a bow, really, and my hair is also a bow with a ribbon.