Thrive (Addicted, #4)(18)

He looks more like Lo. I don’t like it one bit.

“Hey, guys,” Daisy says with a bright, beaming smile. She playfully twirls her plastic gun and aims it at no one in particular. “Have you seen any aliens that I need to kill?”

“Yeah,” Lo says, “Connor should be around here somewhere with your sister.”

I nudge Lo in the side. “Batman and Catwoman aren’t aliens.”

Lo tilts his head at me. “But Connor Cobalt and Rose Calloway might as well be.”

I cover his lips, but it’s too late. Those names have already drifted in the air and penetrated a few ears. I grimace. Penetrated. Ears. Ew…bad one.

“Fine, only Connor Cobalt then,” he mumbles through my palm.

“Don’t say ‘you know whose’ name.” I drop my hand.

His brows harden. “Voldemort.”

I punch him in the arm. Though I fell into that Harry Potter reference-trap too easily.

He mock winces. “Ow.”

I take a deep breath and glance at my little sister. She now sits on Ryke’s shoulders. He grabs her by the waist and lifts her off his body, dropping her on her feet—a lot less carefully than Lo usually does to me.

She lands perfectly fine, thankfully.

“She’s a girl,” Lo tells Ryke, motioning to Daisy who twirls her gun and searches the area for our older sisters.

“I didn’t notice,” Ryke says with thick sarcasm.

“Just don’t be rough with her,” Lo tells him, less defensively. He’s trying not to jump down his brother’s throat about Daisy.

“If she can’t handle me, then I wouldn’t have let her on my shoulders.”

“I can’t handle you, but you still hang around me. What do you call that?” Lo asks.

“Tough love.”

Lo nods a few times, and that conversation is cut off by loud bickering.

“You can’t just take my whip, Richard,” she says. “It’s part of my costume. You’re breaking the convention’s protocol.”

“And you’re making up rules. Are the fictional costume police going to jail me in their invisible prison?”

“Ugh! You are so…” She growls. They come into view, only about ten feet away. Rose stands with her hands perched on her hips, her black leather pants and leather jacket just as badass as her Catwoman eye-mask and ears. Her hair is sleeked back into a pony. Even in her stiletto boots, Connor stands four inches above her, appearing to have an advantage.

Batman and Catwoman are flirt-fighting.

The fangirl inside of me is singing right now.

“You love me,” Connor tells her, still holding her black whip, the source of their argument.

“The more you say it, the more untrue it becomes.”

“It’s just the opposite.” He takes a step nearer.

Rose raises her chin, not recoiling. She snaps, “So now it’s Opposite Day?”

I’m fairly certain that beneath his Batman mask, a single brow arches. He has that arrogant look in his eyes, the one he wears a lot better than most people. “I didn’t declare an unofficial, kind of pointless, holiday, but if you want to, go ahead. I doubt anyone will listen.”

She smacks his chest. “Don’t insult me, Richard.”

Ryke asks, “Are we going to keep watching them?” He stands right beside me.

Lo and I nod at the same time, fixated on the couple who provide too much entertainment. No one on this planet are like these two. “Maybe you’re right,” I whisper to Lo. “Maybe they are extraterrestrials.”

“It would explain a lot,” Lo agrees.

“Like why Connor never stutters.”

“Why Rose makes babies cry when she walks past them,” Lo adds.

I nod. “And why Connor never has a bad hair day.”

Lo laughs. “That’d be his hundred-dollar hair products.”

“Oh.” I pause. “Maybe his shampoo comes from space.”

Ryke shakes his head at us. “You two are so fucking weird.”

At that fact, Lo squeezes my hand. Today is definitely a good idea. I don’t think I’ve felt like this since Cancun—before the media hoopla.

I don’t want it to end.

I watch Rose point a threatening finger at Connor. “You’re just bitter because I beat you at chess four times in a row last night. Now you’re stealing my things out of spite.”

Connor raises her whip, half of the black leather wrapped around his hand. “I only stole this because you were minutes from snapping it at that guy, which would have sent you to real jail.”

“He smacked that girl’s ass! Just because she was dressed in spandex—it didn’t give him the right to touch her without her permission.”

“I agree, but you can’t whip every person that makes your blood boil.”

They’re only an inch or so apart now. “What if he did that to me?” she asks seriously.

He stares in her yellow-green piercing eyes for a long, long moment, reading her gaze. I still wish I had that superpower—or that smart person ability.

Finally he says, “I would’ve stepped in.” So far, Connor hasn’t really had the opportunity to protect Rose from a rude guy. Usually she does all the yelling and pushing herself before he even arrives.