Becca Ritchie - Hothouse Flower

“They’re going to book me soon.”

He nods. “They’re backed up in there. I’m sure they’ll want to fingerprint you in a half hour.” I do the math easily. He’s saying I’ll be out of here before they can even fucking charge me. He smiles at me, knowing I understand.

“I resisted arrest—”

“I talked to the officer. They’re dropping it.”

I breathe through my nose, my heart beating quickly. I don’t know why all of a sudden I feel so fucking overwhelmed. I realize that I’m thankful that he’s here. And the sad thing—I don’t want to feel that way. I’d rather stay angry. Why do I have to hate all the good parts of a person? My mom—I think she fucking taught me that. Every time I thought about my brother in a good light, she’d crush that vision, she’d focus on the bad, and so I did too.

I can’t do it anymore.

I rub the back of my neck. “What about Lo?” I ask my father, not willing to dodge this topic.

“What about him?”

“You’re fucking terrible to him,” I say in a deep breath. “What you say to him—it makes me sick. You beat him down, and then he returns to you like a wounded dog. I can’t be around you when you treat him like that.” I’d rather Lo not be around him either, but we’ve tried that way, and look where we are now. Lo loves our father, and he’s going to keep going back, even if it kills him.

My dad absentmindedly unclips and clips his Rolex watch on his wrist. “He’s not you, Ryke. He dropped out of college. He can’t even fill a resume. He shit his life away, and if that means I’m a little tougher on him, fine. But I’m not going to fucking watch him continue to throw his potential down the drain.”

“So tell him like a normal human being!” I scream. “Stop saying things like he shit his life away.”

“This isn’t about Loren. This is about you and me,” he refutes, cutting off that topic. As if there’s no room to even discuss it.

Fuck him. “If you love him, like you say you do, you’d support his sobriety and you’d stop tearing him down every chance you get.”

He glares. “If I didn’t motivate him, he wouldn’t be where he is. That’s love. You’ll understand when you have your own children.”

No fucking way will I ever raise my kids like him. Fuck that.

I stare at my father for a long moment. He will never change. He is so fucking rooted in his beliefs. It’s either I accept him like this or do what I’ve been doing—try to forget he even exists.

He opens the door further for me. “Are you ready to put this bullshit behind us, or do you still want to hold onto the fucking past?”

I’m frozen again. Stuck to the middle of the floor. There’s no nasty retort on my tongue. It’s those words that get to me the most.

Do you still want to hold onto the fucking past?

I’m living back there. Where my dad leaves my mom. Where I’m lying for years and years about who I am. Where I feel lost of an identity to call my own.

But I have all of that now. Fuck, I have more than I ever dreamed of.

I have a girl I love.

I have a brother.

I have a mom who loves me, even if she fucks up.

I have a dad who wants to be there for me…I look up at him. Who is here for me.

And I’m Ryke Meadows. I’m a free-solo climber. I’m a celebrity. I’m a fucking sober coach. I have an identity that’s mine. No one took it from me.

I glance over at my dad again, and I want to see the villain, but I think, maybe, all this time the villain was me. For not moving past this, for not realizing that he’s free to make mistakes too. I don’t know if I’m willing to forgive him right now, but he’s not asking for that.

He’s letting me take all the fucking time I need.

I inhale strongly, and I say, “I may never see eye to eye with you.”

He nods. “I’d rather fight with you at every Sunday dinner than never talk to you again.” He shrugs. “That’s the goddamn truth.”

“You love me that much?”

There are fucking tears in his eyes. “More than you can possibly understand, son.”

A pressure bears down on me, and I ask him something that I’ve never fucking asked him in my entire life. I just always thought I knew the answer. Now I’m not so sure. “Would you be willing to stop drinking for Lo and for me?”

After a heavy silence, a single tear rolls down his cheek. I see now that he’s fighting an internal battle probably just as powerful and just as rebellious as the one Lo has, as the one I have.

What he does will change everything.

RYKE MEADOWS

“I still can’t believe it,” my brother says while I drive to our father’s house with Lily and Daisy in the backseat, my Infinity speeding along the roads until I get stopped by another red light. The girls are quiet, both looking out their windows.

“Me either,” I say. “Seems fucking surreal.”

“He threw out thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of booze.” Lo shakes his head. “He had a rare two-hundred-year-old scotch he was planning on giving me as a wedding present, you know that?”

My eyes flicker to him. “He wanted to give you booze when you’re sober?” Lo has visited our dad almost every day since he started this long journey. It’s been one week since his proclamation in the jail cell, and he hasn’t backed out.

In my father’s words, He’s no fucking pussy.

“No, he told me that he was planning to drink it at my wedding himself. He’d have an extra glass for me.” Lo stares off for a second and then he smiles. “We ended up watering the plants with the scotch.” He laughs and says, “You know that son of a bitch has three sober coaches to keep him in line?”

I hear the happiness in my brother’s voice, and it lifts me to a new place. I’m proud of my father, for finally going to this length for us. It’s not an easy decision. It’s not an easy road. It’s one that Lo knows better than me, and he can say, firsthand, how much pain there is in giving up a crutch rather than relying on it.

But we’re both going to be here for him.

“I expected a fucking army,” I tell Lo. “If he’s not going to rehab, he’ll bring rehab to him.” I glance in the rearview at Daisy, who is abnormally still on her seat. Her faraway gaze clenches my stomach. She’s been ignoring her mom after I got arrested. It’s not something I ever wanted for Daisy.

I drive through a gated community right in the suburbs of Philly, and I park in my father’s driveway. I snap off my seatbelt, and both Lily and Daisy climb out of the car and shut the doors before Lo and I get out. I turn to my brother, a gnawing question surfacing while we’re here.

“I meant to ask you something,” I say under my breath.

He removes his gaze off Lily who nervously bites her nails. She’s been more anxious than usual, and I haven’t really talked to my brother about it. But her health is not really my main concern right now. “Yeah?” he asks.

“Does Lily have many conversations alone with Jonathan?”

I’ve asked her this once. When I first met her. She told me that she tries to avoid the Hale household—which I took to mean Jonathan, seeing as she was always over the actual house.

“Is this about the rumors?” Lo wonders with a frown.

The molestation rumors. They’re still there, growing…festering. Lily’s name is being thrown around, but she’s publicly denied the allegations that Jonathan had any influence on her addiction.

Add in my “almost” charge for statutory rape, plus our father’s sudden moment to seek addiction counseling, and our family seems like a perfect soap opera.

“It’s about Daisy,” I say. “I want to make sure I know how much shit she’s going to endure now that she’s dating me. He’s still an asshole, even sober.”

Lo lets out a short laugh. “Yeah, he told one of his sober coaches to lose twenty pounds and then come back to him.”

“In those words?”

“No way. I think he made a forty-year-old man cry.” Lo nods to me. “Don’t worry about Daisy. He won’t talk to her unless it’s about you.” I just don’t want her to be torn down by his harsh comments. He absentmindedly checks his phone, as if something’s been on his mind too. “So I have a list of ten comic manuscripts that I have to narrow down to three. I’m having some trouble deciding. I thought maybe you could help me.”

I don’t hide my surprise. “Lily and Connor weren’t available?” I know I’m his third fucking choice. I always am.

“I didn’t ask.” He pauses, an insecurity bubbling up suddenly. “But if you don’t have time or don’t want to, I can have Lily read them. It’s not a big deal.” He goes to check his phone again, but I’m pretty sure there’s no new text.

“No,” I say quickly. “I want to help.”

It’s his turn to look surprised. “You sure?”

Something swells in me. I actually feel like his brother—not just a fucking sober coach he pushes away. “Yeah,” I say with nod. “But I can’t promise that you won’t hate my fucking opinions.”

“I can definitely promise that.” Lo smiles, not a half-one, not dry or filled with resentment for not being here sooner. It’s a real fucking smile. “But that’s the point. I need someone to look at them a lot differently than me.”

And I’ve always seen everything different than Lo. Life. Love. Family. It’s like our lives are reflected in a mirror, upside down and flipped. It’s nice to finally meet in the middle, somewhere that makes sense for both of us.

DAISY CALLOWAY

I lie on my stomach beneath Ryke’s sheet, naked. In his apartment. I have my head buried underneath the pillow and my hand shielding the blue glow of my phone, trying not to wake him.

3:14 a.m. blinks on the top of my cell, reminding me that not even a night of wild sex—from his kitchen counter to the floor to the bed—puts me to sleep for long. I average a solid four hours, which sucks.

I open a series of missed texts from my older sister.

I need out of this house. We’re considering moving to an apartment, but Lily says I would hate it. What do you think? – Rose

We’ve been on the East coast for a whole week, which has given our publicists enough time to make a press release: Rose Cobalt is expecting a baby! Gossip sites are going crazy speculating the baby’s name and the gender. Lily said the paparazzi tried to climb the hedges the other day, wanting a photo of Rose’s belly. She’s not even showing yet. I heard Connor strengthened the security around their Princeton house, but Rose must have called it quits.

I send back: You’d absolutely hate it. Not enough closet space.

And then I open another missed text.

We’re looking for places in Philly or around the area. – Rose

I smile. I’m in Philly. Ryke is in Philly. But there are other reasons they’d choose this location too. Calloway Couture and Cobalt Inc. are located here. Nothing is tying them to Princeton, New Jersey. Their commute already sucks, and Lily finishes her final college class in December. She’ll be an official graduate, free to move wherever she likes.

If they decide to keep living together, that is.

No one has talked about the separation of Lily and Lo / Connor and Rose yet. They’ve been rooming in the same house for so long that it’d be kinda weird for them to split up. But Rose is pregnant now. Maybe everyone’s just going to move on with their own lives.

My smile fades. If that’s the case, then I barely got any time with my sisters before they started their own families.

Being the youngest blows.

I click into another text.

I’d really love to talk to you. Please, Daisy. – Mom

I delete it almost immediately. I don’t even want to think about what she did. I don’t want to let those emotions in, so I push them away like I’ve seen Ryke do so many times before.

Last unread message:

Ugh. I need a fucking drink. Pregnancy is making me empathize with Loren. I already hate it. – Rose

And then my pillow is flung off my head. I’m caught red-handed. Ryke edges closer to me, fully naked, and his leg brushes against mine as he grabs my phone. He checks the time, and his eyes harden. “You slept for a fucking hour, Calloway.”

“I know. I feel badly about that,” I say. “You can go back to sleep. I won’t disturb you anymore.” I’m about to slide off the bed, but he spreads his strong arm across my back, keeping me on my stomach, right here on his mattress.