Becca Ritchie - Hothouse Flower

Lo rotates and notices the bare cushion to his left. “Shit,” he curses and stands up, his eyes wide with worry.

“Twenty minutes. Maybe fifteen,” Connor says, following my movement as I rise to my feet.

Lo doesn’t even hesitate.

He just runs.

RYKE MEADOWS

“Kitchen bathroom!” Rose calls out before Lo sprints up the staircase.

I’m right behind him, my hand on his back as he rushes through the house. Connor follows close behind, and I just think…please fucking God be okay. Please let everyone be overreacting. It wouldn’t be the first time someone barged in on Lily taking an extra-long piss, reading her magazines. She lost Lo’s trust a long time ago. I think when he realized her recovery is a lot fucking bumpier than smooth.

The shower pipes groan through the walls.

Fuck.

Lo picks up his speed, and when he reaches the door, he slams his fist against the wood, trying the locked knob.

“LILY!” he screams, his voice full of unadulterated fear. He told me yesterday that he tried to kiss her, and she turned away. For Lily, rejecting a kiss isn’t a small thing. Her reasoning was that she didn’t feel good, and he let her go back to sleep.

She’s been doing that a lot too—sleeping.

Lo keeps jiggling the knob. “LILY!”

“Move,” I tell him.

He does, and I slam my shoulder into the wood. It takes two hard rams before it swings open. I run ahead of Lo, and I whip the shower curtain aside.

Lily is fully clothed, sitting in the tub as shower water sprays down on her. She shivers, her arms clinging around her legs, and her knees pressed to her chest. Her black long-sleeve shirt is wet and suctions to her thin body.

As I shut off the faucet, the shower pours on my arm, the water freezing cold. It almost jolts me backwards.

What is Lily’s fucking obsession with having meltdowns in tubs?

Lo jumps in, soaking his pants, and he holds Lily’s colorless cheeks steadily. “Lil, talk to me.” His voice is choked, pained beyond belief. Before the shower cuts off, it douses him, his light brown hair wet, and beads of water rolling down his razor-sharp cheeks.

She looks fragile in his clutch, but my brother seems just as broken, just as dark and pained. My heart pounds as I watch her hurt exchange between them. Without the water gushing, her sobs echo in the high-ceilinged bathroom. Heavy sobs that morph into cries.

“Lil, shhh,” Lo says. “You’re okay.”

I step into the bathtub behind her and feel around with my foot, the ice cold soaking through my jeans. Then I squat and use my hands, searching for anything: razors, sex toys, all of the fucking above. I find the closed drain and lift it up so water begins pouring out.

“I’m…sorrrry…” Her teeth chatter and she buries her face into his shoulder.

“Sorry for what, Lil?” he whispers, rubbing her back to warm her body.

Rose is pacing by the sink, her phone at the ready, one minute from speed dialing either an ambulance or a psychiatrist.

I climb out of the tub, and Connor nods to me. “Anything?” he asks.

I shake my head and stand beside him on Lily’s purple bath rug.

“I meant to tell you…” Lily says under her breath, her tears still dripping, but they’re silent, accompanied by deep fucking sorrow. “Yesterday, I was going to… I got scared…” Her entire body quakes from being soaked with ice cold water, most likely done to combat her cravings. I’ve seen her do it before, but not like this. She usually jokes about it, making an ice bath, jumping in for two seconds before shrieking and running away. “Sexual urges be gone!” she’d say with a smile.

This is fucking different. This is way more intense.

Connor hands Lo a towel, and he wraps the soft purple cotton around her trembling frame.

“Lily…you can tell me anything,” Lo says.

“Not this.” She shakes her head, tears pooling down her cheeks. “Not this.”

She fucking cheated on him? I set my hands on my head at that gut prediction. She fucking cheated on him.

But then Lo takes her hand in his, lacing their fingers slowly, as if each one is more important than the next. His eyes stay focused on their hands, as if he can’t bear to look anywhere else. And I wonder if he thinks the same thing as me.

“You have to tell me, Lil,” he murmurs. “I can’t guess.” His voice turns into a choked whisper. “Please don’t make me guess.”

She nods repeatedly as if working herself up to it. No one speaks, too frightened that she might crumble into nothing at someone else’s interjection. She opens her mouth and then something must click because her expression flips from realization to complete devastation. “Do you think…you think I cheated?”

Lo looks heartbroken. “I don’t know, Lil,” he whispers. “You’ve been acting distant, and you didn’t come with me to Paris, so you had all that time alone… I just, I don’t…I don’t know.”

“I didn’t cheat,” she says with so much fucking conviction. “You have to believe me.” She searches his eyes for it.

I let out a breath. My brother exhales a fucking bigger one than me.

“I do, Lil.” He touches her cheek. “But you have to fucking tell me what’s going on.”

“I was upset…overwhelmed. And I wanted to do things and I just thought…this would help.” Her eyes flicker to the showerhead and back to her kneecaps, closing up again.

“Just spit it out,” Lo urges. “Whatever it is. Just get it off your chest right now, love.”

It’s her turn to stare at their hands. “I didn’t know how to tell you…I thought while you were in Paris, I’d figure out a good way to say it, but I don’t…I don’t think there’s a good way. And I just kept putting it off, thinking tomorrow will be the day.” She wipes her eyes quickly and with a deep breath, she says, “I’m eight weeks pregnant.” She barely looks at him.

My hands drop off my head. What? I wrack my brain for signs, but I can’t think of much other than Lily being anxious—like she normally is. Maybe her boobs were bigger? She’s so unassuming and comes across shy and introverted unless you really, really talk to her that it’s hard to notice these things.

Now I realize how she kept a sex addiction secret for so long.

Lo is stunned to silence. We all are…except. I look at Rose and Connor, and they carry a content expression. They’ve known. Fuck them.

“You can’t be…” Lo finally says. He lifts up her sopping shirt, and I zoom in on her belly. I think we all thought she was just gaining a healthier amount of weight, but now with this answer, I can tell the fucking pudge isn’t from eating more.

This is very fucking real.

Lo turns his head and finds Rose. “You’re pregnant.”

“We both are,” Rose says softly.

“That’s not possible.”

“The probability is slim but it’s not impossible,” Connor answers, his hands in his slacks. “Their cycles had synced up after living together. I don’t use protection with Rose, and I’m sure you didn’t with Lily.”

“I forgot to take my birth control a few days,” Lily breathes. “I didn’t realize it…” She trails off and keeps staring at her fucking hands. I can understand why she’s kept this information to herself. My brother has been getting better since the road trip, but he was at a horrible place. And he’s been so adamant about not having kids.

I don’t want to believe it, but I think this knowledge could have sent him over—caused him to jump off the fucking deep end. No one could know for sure, but it’s clearly not a gamble Lily was willing to take. I’m not sure I would have either.

“You could have told me sooner,” Lo says quietly, but his brows furrow, trying to think back to that time. Probably realizing the same thing as me.

“I know you don’t want kids, and I didn’t want to stress you out with this…I’m sorry.” She sniffs louder, trying hard not to cry.

“Shhh.” Lo holds her tighter. “It’s okay, Lil.”

“It’s not,” Lily says, wiping her tears even faster, an attempt to control them. She pushes him back a little so she can stare up into his amber eyes. “You don’t want a baby.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore.” He lets out a long breath and touches his chest. “We’re addicts. You and me.” He motions between them like they share the same favorite color. “Maybe we shouldn’t have kids, but we have the means to raise him or her well.”

“And you have us,” Rose says. She glances at me.

And I nod at my brother. “You have us, Lo. We’re here for both of you.” Rose, Connor and I have this kind of confidence that Lo severely lacks, and we’ll support him one-hundred fucking percent. I won’t let my brother fall.

Both Lo and Lily look overwhelmed. My brother nods back at me like thanks. And then he whispers to Lily, “We did this together. It’s not your fault, love. We’ll figure it out.”

“I’ve fucked up,” she says.

“I think I’ve beat you these past few months,” he murmurs. “You’ve been there for me, and I’ve been fucking stupid.”

“No,” she says with tear-filled eyes. “You’ve been really strong.” And then they hug at the same time. Both magnetically drawn to each other, arms wrapped in such soul-deep comfort that I can’t fucking watch.

We give them privacy, but Rose purposefully leaves the door open, so maybe not that much privacy. And my head whirls as we go into the kitchen. “How did she not get pregnant when she was screwing different guys every day?” I ask in disbelief.

“She said she was much more careful. It was her only worry back then,” Rose tells me.

Now that we know Lily didn’t slit her wrists or anything, Rose leans against the kitchen counter like it’s Sunday afternoon.

“So you knew about her pregnancy the whole fucking time,” I assume. “You didn’t think to tell Lo?”

“It wasn’t my place, Ryke,” Rose says.

 I look at Connor. “And you? You’ve never been known to butt out of other people’s business.”

“I think you’re confusing me with you,” he says casually, “and if you want my honest answer, no, I didn’t want to tell Lo. I didn’t think he could handle it. Be glad you didn’t have to make that decision because it was a fucking hard one.”

I’m known to lie to my brother’s face if I don’t think he can handle certain things. Like my own fucking identity when I first met him.

I don’t envy the knowledge they had. I wouldn’t have wanted it.

I scan the kitchen, the granite counters, expecting an easily excitable girl to be sitting there, swinging her legs against the cabinet. She’s not around, so I walk through the archway to the nearly empty living room, searching for Daisy, but she’s not here either.

I stop in place, realizing something…she was going to tell her sisters about what happened months ago. She was going to finally spill these harrowing details that have fucked her over for weeks.

And of course, Lily’s issues came out today, pushing Daisy to the side. I can imagine how she feels—like her problems aren’t significant, like they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. She’s going to shut down again, to crawl back into her hole where she hides her feelings and covers it with jokes and sarcasm.

My heart lodges in my fucking throat. “Daisy!” I call out, my nerves escalating. Why the fuck was I helping Lily? I don’t ever, ever want to choose Lily over Daisy. Just because Lily cries harder. Just because Lily screams louder. It doesn’t mean that Daisy’s pain isn’t more.

I run back through the kitchen, and Connor and Rose ask me what’s wrong. I shake my head and check the guest bathroom.

I have the worst kind of feeling in my gut.

I sprint to the garage while I take out my phone and call the security at the front of the gate. I grab my bike keys out of my pocket. “Did Daisy leave?” I ask, but I find my answer. My black Ducati sits lonely—without its red match.

“Fifteen minutes ago,” he says.

Fuck. I hang up.

“RYKE!” Rose screams at the top of her lungs to get my attention. “What’s going on?” She stomps into the garage that’s already halfway open, the doors groaning as they rise.

“I’m taking care of it,” I tell her, fitting my helmet over my head. I start the fucking bike, changing gears, and then I ride the hell out of there before she can say another word.

I’m so fucking angry at myself.

But most of all, I just hope she’s okay.

I hope I find her before she does something completely fucking insane.