Thrive (Addicted, #4)(131)

“No.” I shake my head repeatedly, imagining just how this ends. I have met kids as bored, as cruel and as fucking stupid as ones like that. I have been the subject of harassment all throughout my adolescence, some justified, others without reason. I can taste the fear and the hatred that swallows my youth.

I would never wish that on someone like Daisy.

“She fought them off,” Ryke says, anger swarming his eyes like he wishes he had been there to stop it all himself. “But only after they gave her an ultimatum. She could either put it in or they’d torment her until graduation. She chose the latter.”

No.

I shake my head. No. “She lived in fear for how many fucking months?” Scared to walk the hallways, afraid that something equally terrible would occur at any single moment.

“She had six months left,” he says.

I crash forward this time, my elbows on the counter. I bury my face in my hands. Six months. Post-traumatic stress. “I’m sorry,” I immediately say. That’s why he wanted Daisy to live in the same apartment complex as him. That’s why he spent so many days and hours with her.

That’s how they began to fall in love.

“I’m really sorry,” I say again. “I should’ve known that you were only trying to help her.”

“I could’ve given you something though,” he says. “I was an ass about it, and I could’ve given you one thing to make it seem like my intentions were good. But I didn’t think it mattered.” He meets my eyes. “It’s not all on you, Lo.”

He rises to his feet at this. The truth carries a lighter silence, unburdened. I watch him pace in the kitchen, focusing on the girls through the archway. The pen busts as I draw another circle, staining my palm black.

That’s about the same time Lily passes through the archway, the tracks of her tears visible along her cheeks.

I stand up, and she fits in my arms while I lean my back against the kitchen counter. Her faraway gaze haunts me, the guilt and remorse flooding through. Her addiction is the source of Daisy’s pain. There is no other way around that, and it’s a fault that Lily will bear the rest of her life.

“You okay, love?” I whisper.

Very softly, she says, “I wish that had been me.”

I know. I kiss her temple and draw her even closer, her heart pounding against my chest. I notice each box in the kitchen, the bare counters and the emptiness of each room. We’ve lived here for a long time, and it’s strange shutting another chapter of our lives together. It’s even stranger thinking that chapter may not include each other.

And it just hits me, right here, the decision to our future. I look to Connor about ten feet from me. “Does your offer still stand?”

“Which offer?”

“The one where we move in with you guys,” I say. “I was thinking…” And this just pours through me right now. I let the moment guide me. “…that we could buy a house with a lot of security. More than this place. And Daisy could live with all of us. I think she might feel safer than living alone with Ryke. And when the babies are born, we’ll just…we’ll figure it out then.”

No one affirms aloud—but the look in their eyes say yes, a million times over.





{ 66 }

2 years : 04 months December





LOREN HALE


I sit up on the weight bench and Ryke grabs the bar out of my hands, setting it back. He tosses me my towel, and he takes a seat on the end of the bench. We’ve been at the gym for thirty minutes already, no one here this early in the morning but us. Connor would’ve joined, but Rose had a doctor’s appointment.

I watch Ryke stare at the towel in his hands. He’s barely spoken since we started lifting weights.

“What is it?” I ask sharply, picking up my water bottle off the floor.

He opens his mouth, but he shuts it when the words don’t come to him.

“Is it Daisy?” I wonder, my back straightening. I comb the damp strands of hair out of my face.

“No,” he says quickly. “She’s been better since we moved.”

“How much sleep does she get a night?” I ask.

“Five hours most nights, less on bad ones.” He balls his towel, distant. It takes him a long moment before he blurts it out. “I’m doing it.”

I frown. “Doing what?” I rest my elbows back on the metal bar, my legs on either side of the bench.

“I’m going to make a statement to the press.” He can’t look at me. He just stares up at the fluorescent lights hung across the gym ceiling.

Still, it jolts me back. “About the rumors…” I trail off. I didn’t expect him to make a statement about the molestation rumors, not even after we cleared the air in Utah. I could see that he had made a promise to himself, to never protect our father again, and I didn’t want to force him to break it. “You don’t have to—”

“I do,” he says, nodding. “I should’ve done it months ago.

The hardest things in life are usually the right things. I just hated Dad too much to do the right thing.” He throws the towel on his gym bag. “When I clear his name of the allegations, I want you to know that it’s not for him, okay?”

He turns to me. “I’m doing this for you, and for me.”