Kiss the Sky (Addicted #3)(26)

“At least I’m getting laid,” Lo refutes, pure malice edged in his voice. “How long have you been f*cking your hand?”

He clenches his jaw after he says the words, holding back a grimace. Lo has a way of cutting people up with words, and he’s improved from the first time I met him. He was a drunk *. Plain and simple. Now he’s a sober * who regrets when his filter doesn’t work properly.

Lucky for him, I’m difficult to piss off.

“My hand and I go way back,” I say nonchalantly and even produce a smile.

He seems to relax when he knows he hasn’t pushed me away.

“I’m not your brother.” I motion towards the crawl space where Ryke has effectively disappeared. “I’m not going to curse you out for doing something stupid. But I am dating your girlfriend’s older sister, so my own balls are on the line here.”

He nods like he understands. “The repercussions of getting into bed with a she-devil.”

“And I f*cking like her,” I refute, “so make my life easier and use a condom.”

I don’t tell him that he’s not ready to be a father, that the idea (for anyone) of Lily becoming pregnant is frightening. I don’t tell him that alcoholism is hereditary or that he’s too busy to raise a kid right now. He knows all of this. He’s heard it a thousand times from Rose and his own brother.

What Rose and Ryke don’t understand is that if you say something over and over again, you can become desensitized to it. Andy Warhol used the theory in his painting of the electric chair. He repeated the image until you could no longer see it as something heinous.

It lost its meaning.

I don’t repeat what’s already been said. I want my words to mean something.

So I gave him my selfish reason.

I’m the asshat who only cares about himself.

I am what he needs me to be.

He stares at the ground for a long moment, processing. “I’ll be better about it,” he mutters under his breath.

Noise from the crawl space ends our conversation. Ryke must knock into three pipes at once. He coughs and says, “There’s so much f*cking mold down here. No one should be f*cking living on this floor until we hire someone to clean it.”

Lo bends down to the door again. “If this is your way of getting Daisy to room with you, you can forget it. I’m just barely tolerating your friendship.”

“Are you f*cking kidding me?” Ryke retorts. “There were rats in her room, she’s living near mold, and your first assumption is that I want to f*ck her?”

Loren’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t say anything about f*cking her.”

Ryke groans.

Daisy is a sore subject between them, clearly. Since Ryke and Loren have a new relationship—just meeting a year and a half ago—there’s tension involving the Calloway girls. Loren grew up with them. Ryke did not. Naturally, Lo would be protective of Daisy, but the problem I have is that he’s constantly consumed by Lily, always taking care of her, that he has no room to do so for another girl, not even one he sees as a little sister.

So while Lo believes he’s protecting Daisy from his half-brother, he’s really creating a barrier between Daisy and the only person here who’ll look out for her first rather than last.

And yet, I can’t say a word about it. I have to let these things play naturally. My interference won’t do any good. My words wouldn’t resonate with Lo the way I’d want them to. So I stay silent on the matter.

“I’ll f*cking room with Scott,” Ryke says, speaking loudly so we can hear him from the hallway. “Daisy can take my room. Or I’ll stay down here and switch with her. I don’t give a shit. None of the girls should be around this.”

“And what if she hears Lily and me f*cking through the walls? There’s a reason she’s on the lowest level.”

Ryke says nothing, but I can practically feel him fume from far away. Lo looks over his shoulder at me, asking with hard eyes whether he’s right or wrong.

“You can’t censor a girl who’s nearly seventeen, especially not a high fashion model,” I tell him, my words not harsh like his or rough like his brother’s. I’m one-hundred percent even-tempered, calm. At ease. It gets him off the defensive. “She’s heard and seen everything you have, if not more. I’ll call someone to look at the crawl space, but until it happens, Rose would want her sister somewhere clean.”

After a minute digesting my words, Lo sighs and lets go of the argument. “Ryke, you’ll room with Scott?”

“I said I would.”

“Fine. More eyes on that prick, the better, right?”

Ryke says something in affirmation, but I can’t quite hear. He thumps around too much. “Fucking A,” he curses, his voice much louder. He tries to pull his body out of the tiny space.

Lo grabs Ryke underneath his arm as he squeezes through the door.

When he’s on his feet, he holds up the trap with the dead rat, the tail mangled like it dragged the weight from its backend.

“Have we found you a new profession?” I ask, my lips rising.

“At least I can get my hands dirty, princess.” He waves the trap (and dangling rat) at my face.

I don’t even flinch.

Ryke rolls his eyes and goes to toss it into the garbage bag.