Becca Ritchie - Hothouse Flower

It takes us about five minutes trekking across the red dirt to find them underneath the large rock that juts to the sky. As the hot sun begins to rise, larger shadows disappear, increasing the temperature.

“Hey guys!” Daisy waves to them, and they all spin around, but none come to meet us halfway. They all just stare.

And it’s at this moment that I know something is very fucking wrong.

My gut knots with every step, and I can’t tear my eyes off my brother’s. His cheekbones are sharpened, his eyes cold and pissed. He can’t still be angry at me for the paparazzi? I thought Connor would have talked him down from that. But Lo likes to harbor a lot of fucking resentment towards me. Yeah, I fucked up. The paparazzi found our campsite in Tennessee and destroyed my promises to him. His fury though, it looks like it’s on another level.

Deeper.

Rawer.

From years and years of pain.

“Love the hair, Dais,” Lily says as we get closer, but her voice breaks, like she knows something bad is about to happen.

And my brother—he breathes heavily, pure malice coating his amber eyes. His nose flares, and then he starts walking towards me.

I stop in my place. “Daisy,” I tell her. “Go to your sisters.”

“Ryke—”

“Fucking go,” I growl.

She backs away from me, not joining her sisters. But she gives me enough space as my brother approaches with a frosty glare.

I don’t know what this is about.

Maybe our father.

Maybe Daisy.

Maybe something else.

Maybe all of the above.

I have a laundry list of bad fucking deeds with good intentions.

“Lo.” I hold out my hands in defense, surrender, mercy. I’m raising a white flag. I don’t want to hit him. I can’t hit him. “What’s wrong? Let’s talk about this.” He’s only ten feet away now.

“You wanna talk about it?” His voice is full of pain. “I gave you a million fucking chances to talk about it,” he sneers. “I’m so done talking to you.” His fist flies and hits my jaw hard. I go down when his knee drives into my stomach.

I cough roughly.

“Lo, stop!” Daisy screams.

I turn my head, and my heart pitches to my throat. She’s running towards us, but Connor is faster and stronger. He picks her up while she thrashes in his arms.

My eyes soften in thanks. I barely produce that look of gratitude before Lo punches my face again. I turn my head and spit blood onto the dirt.

I hear Lily in the background, trying to tell Lo to calm down. I hear Connor, telling all of the girls to let us work this out.

He knows this fight was going to happen sooner or later.

It’s finally arrived, and the agony tears at my chest. Not physical pain. Even as his third swing connects with my jaw—I can take those hits.

It’s the torment in my little brother’s eyes. It’s the way he’s looking at me—like I betrayed him. Like I ruined his life. Like I ripped up his fucking soul. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t mean to cause him more misery. You should have left him alone.

But he would have been drunk! He would still be fucking drinking if I didn’t walk into his life. I shook him as hard as I could back then. I brought him to rehab. I talked to him nearly every night during his ninety day recovery, and afterwards, I looked after him.

Yeah? Look at him now.

Fuck! I want to punch something—I’m silently screaming for this internal battle to finally end.

“Hit me,” he sneers.

I shake my head, my fingers digging into the red dirt, trying to form fists. Stop, Ryke. I could so easily stand up and beat the hell out of him. And he’ll let me. It’s what he wants. He’s asking for that pain. It’s like at that Halloween party when I first saw him three years ago.

He’s begging to feel something more than these emotions, suffocating with this torment. He’s asking for me to replace this fucking torture. And right now, I can’t feed into that illness. I can’t.

“Come on,” he sneers, his eyes reddening with rage and sorrow. Tears welling. “I’ve seen you beat the shit out of guys twice the size of me. I know you want to punch me.” He steps towards me. “Fight back!”

I pick myself off the ground, staggering unsteadily. “I won’t.”

He shoves me in the chest.

I raise my hands. “Lo—”

He punches me again. I stumble backwards but keep my balance this time.

Daisy wails in the background. “STOP IT!” She’s crying.

Lily is crying.

I even think Rose may be crying. But she dusts off her tears quickly and sniffs.

Lo points at me. “You’re a goddamn coward.”

Now he’s starting to sound like our father. I just keep my mouth shut.

Through gritted teeth he says, “You’re so fucking scared to talk to our dad. You’re so scared to talk to your own mom.” He takes a few steps forward. I take a few steps back. I’m the prey, the thing he’s about to skin alive.

“What do you want me to say?” I growl. “I’m fucking scared?” I point at my chest. “I’m fucking scared, Lo!” My eyes burn with this horrible fucking pain. Fucking hell. “I’m so fucking scared they’re going to manipulate me into loving them when all I want to do is forget!”

“What’d they fucking do to you?!” Lo screams. “I lived with our dad. You sat in your pearly white fucking mansion with a mom who loved you!”

I shake my head. This isn’t going to solve anything. My chest rises and falls.

“Tell me!” Lo yells. “Tell me how you had it so fucking bad, Ryke. What’d he do to you? Did he smack the back of your head when you got a C on a math test? Did he scream in your face when you were benched for a little league game?” He nears me, his eyes narrowed, his cheeks wet. “What’d he fucking do?”

I shake my head again. I’m not the victim like Lo. There’ll be no good in explaining myself. It’ll just be more shit on top of shit.

Lo pushes me in the chest again and this time something snaps and I respond, pushing back. He stumbles, but the force doesn’t knock him to the dirt.

“I’m not fucking fighting you!” I scream. But he doesn’t listen. He charges again, and when he tries to push me over, I shove him down to the ground.

I’m stronger than him.

I’m older than him.

I’m the best and worst thing that ever came into his life. I know this.

I pin him down on his back, my hands on his wrists and my knee digging into his ribs. “I don’t want to fight you, Lo,” I choke.

His eyes redden further. “You spend so much of your fucking time trying to save me,” he says, “and you don’t even realize you’re killing me.” A tear slides down his cheek. He takes shallow breaths and then he lets it out. “The news isn’t just in Philly, you know. It’s everywhere we fucking go. All the way to a gas station in Utah.” His eyes are flooded with sadness. “They think he molested me. The whole goddamn nation. People think my own father touched me, and you won’t do a thing about it.” His broken gaze stabs me repeatedly. “Why do you believe them and not me?”

“I believe you,” I whisper, no hesitation this time. I believe him. I think I may always have. Something more stops me from defending Jonathan Hale, something so raw that it hurts to touch. I’m forced to confront these emotions again because I returned to this life. I could have left it all behind like I planned to. If I had done nothing three years ago, if I had left Lo at that Halloween party, I would have never revisited this hate. I’d never meet these feelings that I had shelved away.

Lo must read the look I wear because he asks, “What the fuck did he do to make you hate him so much?”

He’s asked me this once before, and I gave him a half-assed answer. The whole truth is going to seem vane and selfish. So fucking stupid compared to my brother who’s had twenty-three years with him. But I owe Lo the truth. I’ve lied to him enough.

“He chose you,” I say. “He chose his bastard kid over me and my mom, and I fucking lied for him my entire life. I hid my identity for him. I had no mom in public because I was Meadows and she was Sara Hale. I had no fucking dad to show for. I saved his reputation, and he buried me six feet in the fucking ground every single day he chose you over me, every day he paraded you around and shoved me aside. I couldn’t breathe I was so fucking angry.”

His nose flares again, holding back more emotion. “I thought you knew about me when you were fifteen.”

“I told you that I met him at a country club every week. I knew his name. I knew he was my father. He was a fucking socialite, so I was smart enough to figure out that his son was my brother. They just didn’t tell me until I was fifteen.” I shake with this rage that throttles my bones. It’s not at Lo. It’s at the past, at everything that happened.

I wish I could reverse time and just wipe it all away. But it’s here, and it fucking sucks. I lift my body off of his, but I can’t stand. Too emotionally exhausted, I sink to my knees, drained and weak. My face throbs, positive that he’s given me more than a couple of bruises.

He doesn’t even sit up, his eyes burning into the sky.

“I hold grudges,” I confess. “But I think you do too, Lo.” I look at him and his jaw clenches tightly. He’s never let me off the hook, never forgiven me for hating our dad and not seeking him out sooner.

“I just wish you could love me more than you hate him,” Lo tells me. It’s the most honest thing he’s ever said. He turns his head and looks at me, eyes filled with tears. “Is that even fucking possible?”

My whole body aches. I’ve spent so many years regretting every evil thought I had towards Lo, every curse I fucking wished upon him, every piece of hate that darkened my soul. I know where he comes from now. A house where a mother never loved him. Where a father pushed him too hard. No support to pick him up after he fucking fell.

By not coming forward about the molestation rumors, I’m choosing to hate Jonathan over defending my brother. I never thought that was the case. I always thought that keeping quiet meant that I finally, finally stopped protecting a monster, stopped helping him cover his tracks.

I’m just like my mother.

I’m turning into her, trying to hurt Jonathan every way I can, and in the end, the people I care about are hit in the crossfire.

All this fucking time…Samantha Calloway had been right. She accused me of the same thing, back in Daisy’s room. And I refused to hear her out. To believe her. I’m becoming someone I don’t want to be, and I thought I was running far away from that person.

I exhale, my chest tight. “I love you, you know that,” I tell him, patting his leg.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know, Lo,” I say. “I want to. I want to so fucking badly, but it’s not as easy as wishing for that kind of peace. I hate him for things he did to me, for the things he does to you.”

Lo shakes his head and sits up. He wipes his face with his shirt and his eyes turn cold again. “Jesus Christ,” he laughs a bitter fucking laugh. “You don’t get it. I deserved every word he said to me. You didn’t know me in prep school, Ryke. I was a fucking shit. I was terrible.”

I glower. “Don’t ever fucking tell me that you deserved it. No one deserves to be beat down every fucking day.”

He takes deep breaths, his muscles starting to relax. He looks up at me and says, “He’s never touched me.”

He knows that’s not what this is about. I don’t want to do this with him. We argue about this all the time. But I have to get it through his thick fucking skull. I lean forward and grab his face between both my hands. “Stop defending him. Not to me, okay?”

There are some things we will never agree on. No matter how hard he fucking tries to convince me. No matter how many times we end up on the ground.

He pulls away and I pull back, tension breaking between us. Silence thickens for a moment, and I think maybe he’s waiting for me to apologize or maybe trying to work himself up to it.  But then he points to my face.

“That bruise right there, that’s for fucking my girlfriend’s little sister by the way.”

My stomach churns. What?

RYKE MEADOWS

Lo’s face sharpens again, but he flashes a half-smile. “Tabloids caught you making out just outside of Devils Tower.” He grabs his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through it. Then he chucks the cell at me. “The photograph is on every gossip site.” I avoid the tabloids, so I’m not surprised that I missed it. Just that it exists at all.