“I’ll clean the porch,” I offer, just praying that they really did use dog shit.
“I got it,” Ryke says, taking off his running shoe and disappearing inside for cleaning supplies.
I crane my neck and try to spot any sprinting teenager, but the long road is deserted this morning. Quiet and slick with a layer of snow and ice. I see my breath plume in the chilly air.
No one has brought up Hale Co.’s future since my dad was here. I try to mentally put it on the backburner so this trip won’t be brutal. I should do the same with the teenagers down the street, but doubt enters me.
“What if they don’t stop?” I ask Connor. What if it gets worse than this?
He’s silent, and I turn my head to catch his features. He’s staring through me, into me, seeing my fears because I spot them in his deep blue eyes, reflecting back at me.
“Then they don’t stop,” he says easily. Like it’s nothing.
It is something though. “We’re going to have children in this house soon.”
“They’re bored teenagers,” he reminds me. “The more attention we give them, the more likely they’ll return. We just have to be patient. I know it’s hard for you…but you have to ignore the impulse that says confront them.”
I nod, staring fixedly at the ground. He’s right.
It’s a waiting game.
14
LILY CALLOWAY
The swell of the ocean sways the yacht unstably, and I clamp onto the dresser in our cabin, steadying myself. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico has been nice to me up until now. No sunburns on day one, no seasickness, and very little judgment from my parents.
Though I took a tiny peek at the tabloids.
They weren’t kind.
The last poll was a blow to my confidence. Is Lily Calloway fit to be a mother? The gossip site accompanied this headline with a picture of me bending down on the yacht deck. I dropped my sunglasses earlier, and a stealthy cameraman on a tugboat caught me at the worst angle. Ryke was behind me. Lo was in front of me.
It looked bad. And the poll results aren’t much better:
Yes: 36%
No: 64%
It’s hard to stay positive when the world doesn’t even have faith in you.
Good things have an expiration date.
Now the ocean has decided to rebel against gravity. The boat teeters and I throw my gangly arms around the dresser, hugging an inanimate object for dear life.
I. Will. Not. Fall.
I shut my eyes tightly. What if we’re sinking? I forgot to read about emergency exits and life jackets and things that Rose would’ve most definitely prepared for.
Maybe I do deserve that sixty-four percent skepticism.
I already suck at being a mom, and the baby isn’t even out of my body yet.
A hand brushes my back. “Lil, the boat isn’t rocking that badly,” Lo coaxes.
My eyes snap open. Oh. We’re seemingly level. “It’s an illusion,” I tell him. “A trick. Next thing you know a boggart will come out of these drawers.” Boggarts are kind of cool in the Harry Potter world. It’s definitely an excuse to use a Patronus spell.
Lo is trying hard not to smile, but his cheeks dimple. “There’s a problem, Lil. Neither of us are wizards.”
I frown in distress. “But we have some sort of superpower,” I say. “They just haven’t kicked in yet.” He opens his mouth, but I really can’t handle any cynics right now. I want to believe we’re magical. “Shhh, it’s going to happen this weekend. I can feel it.” And then the boat wobbles, and I cling harder to the dresser. “I forgot to read about emergency exits,” I tell him. “If the boat sinks—”
“I have you, love.” He slices through my panic, swooping his arm around my h*ps in the coziest Loren Hale embrace. He leans my back against the hardness of his chest, and my pulse begins to slow, my head whirling.
My fingers slip off the dresser in a single breath, and then he spins me around, confidence in his hypnotic amber eyes. His gaze relaxes any alarm, and my bones melt to a content stasis. He cups my face, and my body responds by curving into him.
I skim his features with meticulousness, etching the sharp lines of his jaw, those cheekbones. And the way his chest falls in a heavy, languid rhythm. My soul swells at the look behind his eyes, at the resolute, unbending expression he carries.
Loren Hale is ice.
Resilient isn’t a word attached to him. Beneath fire, he loses. Ryke is the one who outlasts him. He’s stone.
But there is something within Lo, right now, that defies this. I reach out, my fingertips grazing his smooth skin along his cheek, brushing his parted lips.
A feeling swirls inside of me—one where you know someone all your life, but in a singular moment they look strangely different. Like you’re unearthing a fragment of them that has never surfaced or been touched before.
I see it—a piece of him uncloaked and unburied that has been hiding all this time. Strength that he never realized he had. My hand is magnetically drawn to his features, drifting to his neck.
He smiles through his eyes. “You don’t look unsteady anymore.”
Softly, I say, “You’re a man.”
His lips rise. “You’re just now realizing this, Lily?” He licks his bottom one. It blazes my skin.
“It’s just…you seem older,” I breathe. Stronger. Able to withstand things that the world throws at him.
“Time will do that,” he murmurs, his mouth so very close to mine. Kiss me.
“No,” I whisper. “It’s not time. It’s something else.” I inhale like our bodies have bound together, melded to him with no plan to separate.
His eyes glow with realization, sensing what I mean. He’s not frightened of me or my addiction or his own. He has rebuilt every ounce of self-worth that his father took from him.
He leans close. Kiss me. But his lips breeze past my cheek and stop at the hollow of my ear. “You remember how it all began?” His hands descend to my hips, diving towards my thighs. My fingers scrape along his toned shoulders, a sound tickling my throat.
I gather my breath to ask, “Me and you?” How we began. He guides me somewhere, my feet dazedly following his lead. And the backs of my legs hit the edge of the bed. A nautical comforter with tiny anchors printed across.
“You and me,” he confirms.
I wrack my brain for the time, place and date, my brows scrunching. “We were five…or six, right?” I should know the moment, but there are just so many that belong to Loren Hale. Picking out the first one would take decades.
“No, not as friends, Lil.” He lifts underneath my arms and sets me perfectly on the bed. He leans my back against the soft mattress, and he hovers over me, his legs tangling with mine. Those amber eyes puncture straight through my skin. And into my heart. “You remember how we began? Us.”
Us…
The memory strikes me powerfully, and tears suddenly begin to brim. We were on my parent’s yacht. This yacht. This room. Almost four years ago. We were both twenty and broken and struggling to find a semblance of peace. And then he uttered the words that changed everything.
Let me try to be enough for you.
“You remember,” Lo breathes, his thumb brushing a stray tear.
“It was here.” My voice is a whisper.
He nods. “It was here.” His hypnotic expression pulls me into him, my pelvis bucking against his. He never breaks his soul-bearing gaze from mine. “Back then,” he says, “I was so addicted to you.” He truly smiles, a very, very rare one. “I still am.”