Kiss the Sky (Calloway Sisters #1)(96)

Before I can even begin to question them, Rose marches down the stairs and grabs my wrist with a lot of force, fire blazing in her eyes. I should be more concerned about the shit storm she’s going to unleash, but my cock has its own agenda, painfully begging for her to redirect that pressure. She tries to lead me to the second level, but I pry her fingers off my wrist.

“I think I know where the bedroom is,” I say.

Her lips tighten in a line, and she blushes. “We’re not having sex right now.”

I tilt my head, my brows pinching. “All I meant was that I can lead myself upstairs. I said nothing about sex.” I pass her on the stairs and walk in front of her.

She huffs. “We don’t have time to accommodate your ego.” She’s pissed that I took precious time away from the dire situation.

She tries to pass me on the stairs, and I hold out my arm and give her a look.

“Move faster!” she commands.

“Is the townhouse on fire? Did someone steal your shoe collection?” I ask with a growing smile.

Her neck is so stiff. She barely even inhales. “I’m going to slap you.”

I actually think she may.

I’m too curious about the Lily and Lo drama to start that fight, but it’s really tempting. I can already see her hand scorching my cheek. And then I’d shove her against the wall, bite her lip, and fuck the anger out of her, replacing it with content, vulnerable submission.

She finally exhales as she watches me, so deep that I know she must see the longing in my eyes. But we can’t have sex in the hallway. It’s rigged with cameras.

I break her gaze and go to the bedroom without another word. She shuts the door behind us, and I notice Ryke already here, pacing in front of the bed with clenched fists. I recognize Savannah’s Canon Rebel on the mattress. Before I can ask what the camera is doing here, Rose explains.

“The tequila and wine are gone,” she tells me, her hands planted firmly on her hips. She says she searched the house, and then Ryke found the bottles in Lo’s closet—empty and hidden beneath a pile of dirty clothes.

I blink a few times, trying to ignore emotions that want to pummel me backwards. I’m not used to feeling so much from something that has no direct effect on me, no cost that’ll weigh down my benefit.

“There wasn’t much in the tequila bottle. We spilt most of it on our bed,” I remind Rose with an even voice, but a lump scratches my throat. I have to cough into my fist to clear it.

“It doesn’t matter.” She points a finger at the door. “He’s been sober for sixteen months.”

“I know.” Breaking his sobriety—it’s a big deal.

I turn on Ryke who fumes, trekking forwards and backwards with hostility.

“And you haven’t stormed downstairs to confront your brother?” I ask in disbelief.

He stops in the middle of the room and points at the door just like my girlfriend did. “I’m so fucking close,” he growls. “But that’s exactly what those dickfuckers want.”

I cringe. “Can you not use that curse word? It’s ridiculous.”

Both of them glare at me.

“I’ll take cocksucker for one-hundred,” I banter, hoping to ease Ryke’s flexed muscles and Rose’s hot-tempered eyes. But I realize it’s more for me. I’m dodging. I never dodge. I just don’t want it to be true. I don’t want Lo to drink again and go down that dark path. I can’t save that kid from his demons, and watching him drown is not a show I want a front row seat to.

Ryke chooses to ignore me, finishing his rant, “They want me to scream at Lo, and then the whole world will think he’s relapsing like an irresponsible rich prick. And maybe he is…” Ryke rests his hands on his head, breathing heavily.

“You don’t believe that,” I say.

His features break, and his eyes glass as he shakes his head. “Every day I think, that could be me. I spent twenty-two fucking years with my head up my ass,” he says. “I didn’t give a shit about my fucking half-brother who I knew was living with our father—our father…” He can’t say the rest out loud.

Rose stares at Ryke with the most empathy I’ve seen her convey, her face pained like his. My stomach is in knots, and I don’t know how to untighten it.

Production never airs these intimate, painful details—the parts that shape us into the people we are. I think we all hide them too often. Sometimes from each other.

Lo has been verbally abused by their father all his life, and Ryke escaped it.

That’s the truth.

It’s what we all know.

If production truly wanted to show all of Ryke Meadows, they’d tell the viewers that he spent his last year in college helping his half-brother get sober. That he stopped hanging out with college buddies, going to parties for athletes, just to make sure that Loren didn’t turn out like their alcoholic father, to guide him towards a better road.

I admire Ryke for many reasons. But I think this is the greatest one: Loren Hale is the bastard child that destroyed Ryke’s family. Their father got another woman pregnant, conceiving Lo. And Ryke subsequently lived with his single mother after the divorce. Yet, Ryke stands here today, wanting only to protect a guy who was the catalyst for his broken life.

But Ryke doesn’t even understand the impact he’s had on Lo’s life. He really can’t see all the good he’s done. Because he’s not finished blaming himself for being so selfish those first twenty-two years, for ignoring Lo because he was attached to their father by blood and proximity.