That really f**king bugs me, and the irritation passes through my features.
“I shouldn’t have brought up other guys I was with. I know it’s like a relationship faux pas.” She slides off my lap and steals back her hairband from my wrist.
“I’m not upset because you were talking about your past hook ups,” I tell her. I glance at the front of the car. My brother is fast asleep while Connor switches lanes, acting disinterested in everything. I don’t think he can hear us, and if he can, he’ll probably keep everything to himself. I look back at Daisy who ties her hair in a low pony.
“You looked pissed,” she says.
“I f**king am,” I whisper. “You deserve better.”
“What’s better?” she asks.
“Someone who pays attention to you,” I tell her. “Someone who can tell what you like and dislike without asking.” And then I lean forward and whisper in her ear, “Someone who makes you so wet that you scream when you come.”
Her face flushes a little and she ties her hair off and whispers back, “Where were you three years ago?”
She was fifteen. I was twenty-two.
“Three years ago,” I whisper, “I met you at a New Year’s Eve party where you got roofied and I carried you to my car.”
She shakes her head. “You met me before then at my house. You waved at me.”
I remember that. “I didn’t know you were Lily’s sister. Honestly, I thought you were twenty-two and one of Rose’s friends.”
When Lily pointed at the tall blonde eating a pomegranate in the kitchen, I thought she was f**king gorgeous. So I waved. Her face lit up and she gave me a quick once-over, her lips curving in a cute smile.
I immediately wanted to f**k her, to start something, wondering if she was the kind of girl who did long term, short term, or one-night stands. I planned to do any of the three, just based on the way she was smiling, her carefree nature where she radiated with energy, and her beautiful f**king features.
I was going to walk over and see if I could ask her on a date, but then Lily said something that burst my f**king plans.
She said, “Oh, that’s my youngest sister.”
My face hardened. “She looks older than you.”
“I know, but she’s only fifteen.”
Fifteen. A weird feeling washed over me, like I did something really f**king wrong even though I hadn’t done it yet. I closed off to Daisy instantly, burning every thought and image I had constructed on a f**king impulse.
“You really thought I was Rose’s friend?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. A big f**king mistake.
She lets this sink in with a faraway gaze.
My phone buzzes on the seat. I sigh with more frustration as I check the message.
My interview with 60 Minutes airs tonight. I hope you can watch it. I love you. – Mom
I delete the text before I let the words affect me.
“How’s this length?” Daisy asks. The hairband lies right above her chest. It’s a length between Rose’s long hair and Lily’s short shoulder-length.
“If you want to go shorter, I won’t care,” I tell her roughly, just making sure it’s not staying this long because of me.
“No, this is what feels right.” She hands the knife back to me, and she sits on her knees. “I want you to cut it.” She inhales strongly, as though preparing herself for the moment.
“How many times have you envisioned cutting your hair?” I ask her seriously.
“A million.”
And she’s asking me to do it. Out of all the things we’ve done together—ridden motorcycles, swam with sharks, snorkeled, skydived, rock climbed—this is the most intimate. Not because we’re dating but because this means so much to her.
She’s waited for it to happen for years.
My hand wraps around the hilt of the knife, and I hold her pony in my hand. She watches, her palm sliding on my thigh.
I cut right above the hairband, and her smile grows as I slice through her blonde strands quickly. In a matter of seconds, the ponytail is in my hand, and her hair is chopped raggedly near her collarbones.
She grins as she touches it, like it was cut by a professional and not hacked by someone with coarse hands. I slip the blade back in my boot, sheathing it on my ankle strap.
She kisses my cheek and rushes to the window, flicking the button. “Connor, can you unlock it? I just want to see how my hair feels in the wind.”
Connor looks at her through the rearview mirror. “That depends, are you going to howl again?”
She shakes her head quickly. “No. No howling, I promise.” She flicks at the button repeatedly with the widest grin, knowing she’s going to get what she wants this time.
“We’re on backcountry roads,” I tell Connor. “There aren’t that many cops around.” We’re heading towards the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, and trees border either side of the one-lane street.
Connor gives in and unlocks the windows. As soon as Daisy hears the click, she bounces on the seat. The window is already rolling down, and she hoists half her f**king body out of the SUV. She sits on the windowsill.
“I don’t know who’s a worse influence,” Connor says, “her with you or you with her.”
I almost smile. I grip her ankle, letting her do her thing. “If she falls, I’ll pull her back in,” I tell him. I have confidence in my strength. If I didn’t spend almost all of my life building it by rock climbing and running, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with her.
She raises her hands in the air and laughs, the wind whipping her shorter blonde hair. She shuts her eyes and inhales deeply.
Freedom doesn’t come with age. It doesn’t magically appear when you’re a legal adult.
It comes when you stand up for what you believe in. Right now, I see a semblance of that peace for Daisy.
But she called her mom three days ago, and when Daisy told her that she quit modeling, Samantha hung up. She just shut her out. She didn’t listen to Daisy explain why. And then her mom called Rose, and she bitched about the whole situation to her other daughter. My name was slung through the f**king mud by her mom.
It’s my fault Daisy isn’t modeling.
I forced her here.
If Samantha thinks my friendship with Daisy caused her to quit her career, then I wonder what she’s going to believe when she sees Daisy’s face.
I have no doubt that’ll be my fault too.
32
DAISY CALLOWAY
“Don’t eat anything heavy,” Ryke tells me. I sit cross-legged in a booth, moose and antelope heads chopped and mounted on the walls of John’s Backwoods Smokehouse. We stopped in the Kentucky Mountains for dinner, and now that I’m without stitches and no longer modeling, I can eat real freakin’ food.
“I don’t like that suggestion.” My eyes glaze ravenously over the pictures on the giant menu. Juicy steaks. Baby back ribs. Barbeque sandwiches. Greasy burgers.
My grumbling belly wants it all.
“You’re going to be f**king sick. You can’t go from eating fruits and vegetables for months to eating red meat.”
I stare at him over the menu. “I have this theory.” I pause for dramatic effect. “That my stomach is made of steel.”
Ryke crumples his straw paper and throws it at my face. It sticks in my hair. I smile, but he can’t see it behind the menu.
Lo doesn’t notice our exchange, even if he sits next to me. He’s busy scanning the other full tables and booths, wondering if anyone notices us. So far we’ve stayed anonymous.