I smile with sincerity. “I am very, very attracted to you.”
The corner of his lips rise. “Funny, I’m also attracted to you. What are we going to do about that?”
“Make love and make babies.”
His brows shoot up. “You already want to make babies with me, Calloway?”
“I want to do lots of things with you.” I use a very diplomatic response, walking on a thin rope with this subject. I have no idea where his head lies. His thoughts could match his brother’s. Lo doesn’t want children because alcoholism is hereditary. Lily told me his stance on the matter. Well, really she told Rose and I was in the same room, and I kind of, sort of, inserted myself into the conversation. I realize that sounds annoying, but I just want to be close to them before they move away and start families.
He kisses my lips, his tongue easily slipping into my mouth and sliding against mine, and then he breaks apart and says, “Me too.” He stands, setting me on my feet. And he grabs his underwear and jeans, beginning to dress. I gather my clothes and watch him with curiosity. I didn’t think I would care this much about his feelings on children, but I am dying to find out.
“You know I was joking about the babies,” I say, slipping my panties on. He hands me my shirt, and the tension of this conversation constricts my lungs. He doesn’t let much through his dark gaze, which makes this hard. “But I’m curious…”
“You’re always curious,” he says, messing my hair with a rough hand.
“I’m really, really curious.” I smile. “Are you hoping to get married and have kids one day?”
He pulls his T-shirt over his head and grabs his bike jacket off the ground, shaking the dirt off it. And then he runs a hand through his hair, a giveaway that my question makes him a tad bit anxious. “I’m not like my little brother, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he says, putting his jacket on. “I do think alcohol may be an issue for whatever f**king kid I have, but this disease isn’t going to take anything away from me. I won’t let it.”
The answer almost makes me smile. I wish Lo felt the same way, but I think it’s different for him. He’s been battling his addiction for much longer and he had a much bumpier road than Ryke.
He fixes his hair, trying to comb through the disheveled strands with his fingers. “Look,” he suddenly says, his thoughts collected to form a whole response. “I can’t do to my kids what my parents did to me. The separation, the divorce, the f**king fighting. I want to be in a serious, committed relationship before I have a child.”
“You mean marriage,” I say.
“When you’re married, you can still get divorced. I don’t take that much stock in the word. I just need the emotional f**king commitment.” He motions with his head towards the path we came from. “Let’s start walking.”
I follow him, keeping up with his lengthy stride.
His eyes flicker to me a couple times while I stay silent and digest this information. “What do you want?”
I smile. “Look who’s curious now.”
He brushes a cornstalk out of my way. “Yeah, well when you joke around I have to read between the lines, and I don’t always read you right. It’s easier asking you.”
I’m glad he asked. It definitely means he cares. “I want to be fully committed to someone, to be married, probably earlier rather than later. And I do want babies. Maybe like three. I also want to travel and visit the great seven wonders and scuba dive and stand beneath a waterfall in Costa Rica, kissing you.”
He reaches out and holds my hand.
My heart swells.
“Not in that order,” he tells me.
My lips pull high because he didn’t discount a single one of my wants. In fact—I can see it in his eyes.
He wants all of it too.
45
RYKE MEADOWS
“Just take your time,” Connor tells me over the phone. “We stopped in Roswell because Lily and Lo wanted to see the aliens. They spent four hours in the museum—excuse me, I mean the propaganda shit hole.”
I hear Lo in the background. “And you made us spend three hours at a graveyard. Between us, who’s the super freaky one, love?”
“It was a war cemetery,” Connor tells me. “And Rose and I were searching for our ancestors.”
“I won,” Rose speaks up. “I have three more dead relatives than Connor.”
I shake my head. “You all are f**ked up.”
I can hear his smile in his voice. “So we’ll meet in Utah in about four days. We’ve lost most of the paparazzi, but there’s a couple who always catch up to us.”
“We haven’t seen any paparazzi since we split up.”
“Good. By the way, Greg has been trying to reach Daisy to make sure she’s safe. Has she checked her phone?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “But we’ve been getting shitty signal. I’ll make sure she calls him today.”
“Perfect.” We say our goodbyes and hang up. I return to a parking lot where Daisy sits on the curb. Our motorcycle is parked by our campsite, which isn’t hidden in thick woods like the Smoky Mountains. We made a detour to Wyoming, mostly grassy terrain, but a massive rock juts up behind us, trees surrounding it. Devils Tower. It’s shaped like a thimble, the peak flat.
I debated taking her to Yellowstone since she’s never been, but when I told her that I free-soloed Devils Tower—almost breaking the record for the fastest climb—she insisted we stop so she could see it. Now we’re going to hike around the base…and apparently color her f**king hair at the same time.
Boxes of dye lie open around her on the cement, and she has aluminum foil wrapped in different sections of her hair. Why I assumed she’d do it the normal way—with a mirror and a sink—I have no idea. She does things her crazy f**king way.
She rises to her feet, wrapping a yellow scarf around her foiled head and slipping on her plastic sunglasses. She wears a shirt that says wanderlust. I’ve never seen her smile so much than this past week.
I lower my dark green baseball cap and slide my backpack on. “Have you called your dad recently?” I ask her. “He’s been trying to get ahold of you.”
She tosses the plastic bag with hair dye into a trashcan on our way to the trail. “Yeah, I texted him back. It must not have sent. He likes when I check in.”
I adjust the strap on my backpack, that one statement putting pressure on my chest. Connor has told me numerous f**king times that Greg is protective of his youngest daughter, and it’s starting to get real for me. I’m with her, and some day, I may need his approval. I’m just not sure what I need to do in order to get it. But I’m realizing that for Daisy, I have to make a bigger f**king effort. She’s close to her parents. She loves them.
I would never f**king ask her to choose them over me. Severing a relationship with someone who undeniably cares for you—it untethers something in your soul. I think about my mom, and it’s a loss that I can’t quantify or calculate in words or f**king numbers. It’s just there, eating at me. I hate and love myself for it. But I hate and love her.
I don’t know how to go back to a woman who bulldozed all of my friends, my brother and me. How do I even begin to forgive her?
Daisy gasps. “Are those climbers?” She hops onto a gray boulder and peers up at the rock. From here, the harnessed climbers look like specs, barely visible. But they’re all over Devils Tower, ascending in pairs.