Kiss the Sky (Calloway Sisters #1)(36)

Connor is right. He talks of monetary values. Of benefits. Opportunity cost. There is a price that you pay growing up in luxury. You feel so undeserving of everything around you. So you find a way to be deserving of it—by being smart, by being talented and successful.

By building your own company.

With Calloway Couture, I could make my father proud—to show him that I could follow his entrepreneurial footsteps. The failure of my company feels not only like a failure of my dream, but a failure of my place in the family. Of my right to have these beautiful things.

But I have to remember what else my company means to me. What it has been. How it’s saved me. It was an outlet where I could be creative despite my mother’s constant nagging. I used to come home, rub my abused toes from pointe shoes, and sketch on my bed, in private. I was twelve. I was thirteen. Fourteen. I found solace in fashion. I found peace and happiness.

It was something for me. My mother couldn’t take my designs. She couldn’t make them hers. I created each dress, each blouse and skirt. They were the clay that I could mold, even if she continued to try and mold me.

And then I left for Princeton when I turned eighteen. My mother lost me, the daughter who she fought the most with, but only because I was the daughter she turned to, the one she talked to, the one who spent nights listening to her prattle, who heard her advice, even if I chose not to take it. I love that she loves me. I just wish she let me breathe for a moment in my life.

My mother still had Lily after I left. But she brushed over her, believing she was set for life with Loren Hale, the heir of a multi-billion dollar company almost as lucrative as Fizzle.

So that left Daisy.

I knew exactly what would happen to her the moment I went to college. I knew she’d take my place as consummate daughter, ready to say yes to my mother the moment I shut the door. But as a teenager, I fought my mom each step of the way. I was bitchy and obstinate.

My sister is none of those things.

I cried when I finished unpacking my dorm room. I was smart enough to see what would happen. And I couldn’t do anything about it. Daisy would bend to my mother’s desires, to her selfish ways. She would sign Daisy up for so many classes to where she couldn’t see straight. She would make her date whoever she chose. She would dress her in fancy ball gowns with too much frill and lace. And she’d parade her around like a toy doll with no voice and no brain. No matter how much I called Daisy to check in, to listen to her words crack before she layered on the false optimism, I couldn’t change the course of things.

I thought for sure Daisy would turn to drugs.

I thought for sure she’d party too hard to try to reach the air that my mother always sucked dry.

I coped by scribbling in a sketch book at that house. I couldn’t see that as a path for Daisy. I only saw blackness. And I’ll never forgive myself for what happened, how blind I was.

I was focusing on the wrong sister.

Lily was heading down that dark road, feeding an addiction that not many people understand.

Daisy wasn’t even close to that yet.

But I fear making the same mistake—not helping Daisy like I was too late for Lily. I don’t want my mom to exploit Daisy with her modeling career just so she can brag to her tennis club friends. I want my sister to watch late night movie marathons, have slumber parties and eat too much ice cream. But her childhood already consists of stumbling home with tired eyes from a midnight photo shoot, from going on go-see after go-see where people pinch her waist and call her fat.

This is my price I pay for my wealth.

I’m sure of it.

No matter how much I want to save my sisters and just keep them close, I feel as if I’m destined to watch them fall.





CHAPTER 13





CONNOR COBALT





I check my watch. 4 a.m. The stationary cameras in the kitchen rafters film me, but there’s no possibility anyone would want to watch me, alone, right now. I just take pleasure in the idea that Scott will have to sift through hours of footage of me doing monotonous tasks, like studying. I find time to give the cameras the finger too, even if it’s childish.

Ryke would definitely do it.

And if I can tell Scott to fuck off at four in the morning, then I’ll gladly take the opportunity. The benefit is just too fucking good.

I pour black coffee into a larger mug and fit the pot back. As soon as I turn around, I flinch and almost spill the hot liquid on my button-down and slacks. “Dammit, Rose.”

She wears her black silk robe, but I focus on her hands that fix firmly on her hips. “You never came to bed.”

I take a sip of my coffee and pass her easily, heading to the kitchen table, papers spread around my open laptop. “I have business reports due tomorrow. I don’t have time to sleep.” She follows me, and just as I near my chair, she kicks the legs, and it overturns and clatters to the floor.

My brows jump as I look from Rose, her arms crossed, and the chair on the floor. “Are you trying to start something?” I would smile if my eyes didn’t feel like lead. My temples pound as though someone repeatedly swung a bat at my face. She has more leverage on me when I’m this exhausted.

“Let me help you with the report,” she says.

“No.” I set my mug down on the table so I don’t burn her or me. Her vexed stance and piercing yellow-green eyes tell me what she may do next. And it’s not going to be delicate.