Hothouse Flower (Addicted #4)(6)

I’m usually not this cynical, but I popped up Facebook this morning, my laptop resting on my bent legs. I should have deleted my account a couple years ago, around the same time my family was thrust into the public eye—when my older sister’s sex addiction went public.

But alas, I had a different theory about friends back then.

Butterflies, rainbows, hearts holding hands—it was literally a PBS special in my brain whenever I thought about my friendships.

And now Cleo Marks posted this on her wall: During Daisy Calloway’s sweet sixteen party, she couldn’t shut up about sex. It’s all she cared about. You know she’s a closeted sex addict like her sister. All the Calloway girls are skanks.

Those are the beautiful words of my former best friend. And it doesn’t even matter that she brought up an incident from two and a half years ago. Resurfacing it is enough to elicit 457 comments, mostly all in agreement.

Four months have passed since I graduated prep school and I’m still being haunted by my former friends. Like the Ghosts of Hell’s Past.

A hand reaches out and smacks my computer closed. “Stop wasting your f*cking emotions on them.”

A tall six-foot-three guy is in my bed. Beside me. In only a pair of drawstring pants. And I’m sitting against the headboard, wearing white cotton shorts and a cropped red and blue top that says: Wild America.

On the outside, we probably look like a couple, gently rising from the morning sunlight that peeks through my curtains.

On the inside, there’s no touching. No kissing. Nothing beyond friendship status.

Reality is a whole lot more complicated.

“When did you wake up?” I wonder, avoiding any discussions that center on my old friends.

He doesn’t sit yet. He stays beneath my green comforter and sheet, running his hands through his disheveled dark brown hair. Attractive doesn’t even begin to describe his “I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-it” hair. It never looks neater during the day, but he knows that.

“The better f*cking question is when did you go to sleep?” He stares at me with narrowed, accusatory eyes.

Never. But he knows this too. “Good news, I finished packing in the wee hours of the night.”

He rises and nears me a little. I tense at his closeness, reminded that he’s a man, his body easily dwarfing mine. It’s not a bad tense. More like the kind of tense that stops my breath for a second. That makes my head float and my heart do a weird little dance. I like it.

The danger of it all.

“Bad news, I don’t give a f*ck about your packing,” he says roughly. “I just give a f*ck about you.” He reaches across my chest to grab a pill bottle off my nightstand. His muscles constrict as he accidentally brushes against my boobs. Neither of us announces the brief touch, but the tension has turned a corner, down onto Don’t Go There Lane.

To relieve this new tension, I stand up on the bed and kick a decorative pillow off. “You do care about my packing. You thought I’d never get it done.”

“Because you’re f*cking ADD and a lot of other things.” He watches me from below, his eyes traveling up the length of my long bare legs. “Sit down for a second, Calloway.” Instead of acting like he’s into me and all that, he just reads the back of the pill bottle, his brows tightening in concern.

You know that theory I have about friends not being forever...or even for a while?

Well, every theory has an exception.

Ryke is mine.

As I watched each friend call me a sex-addict-in-training and a media whore, stabbing me routinely in the heart, Ryke was the one who pulled out the blades. He even shielded me from them. He’s like my wolf—dangerous, alluring and protective—but I can never get close enough or else he’ll bite me.

He’s my last real friend. But I know that’s not entirely true. He’s the only real one I’ve ever had.

“What other things am I?” I ask with a smile, standing by his ankles at the foot of the bed.

“Hyperactive, fearless, crazy, and probably the happiest unhappy girl I’ve ever met.”

I bounce a little, about to jostle the mattress, but he side-swipes my calves quickly. I fall on my back, smiling big as I turn on my side towards him. It fades the moment he tosses the pill bottle at my face. It hits me square in the forehead and thuds to the comforter.

He’s also an *.

“You lowered your dosage,” he says.

“The doctor did it. He was worried how fast I was going through Ambien.”

“Did you tell him that you can’t f*cking sleep without it?”

“No,” I admit. “I was too busy explaining how I don’t want to be addicted to anything like my sister or your brother. And he said it was a good idea to start lowering the dosage.” I tuck a strand of my dyed blonde hair behind my ear. It’s waist-length and has a habit of being everywhere all the time. Like right now. I am pretty much swaddled in it.

I empathize greatly with Rapunzel. She had it rough.

Ryke glares. “Not sleeping isn’t the f*cking solution, Daisy.”

“What’s a better one?” I ask seriously. I am tired, and I realize today, like most days, will be fueled by energy drinks and endorphin boosts in the form of diet pills. Yippee.

He lets out a deep breath. “I don’t know. Right now, I’m really disturbed by the fact that I knew you didn’t sleep because you didn’t scream or kick me. If you don’t wake me in the middle of the night, it means you were up the whole f*cking time.” He shakes his head as he continues to think. “When you’re in Paris, are you sharing a room with another model?