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“Cute.”
“Cute because it’s accurate.” She wagged her brows again.
“Cute because it’s fucking inaccurate.” My hand slid to the back of her head, and I felt her body react in a way that surprised her. I drew back only a fraction, my lips close to her ear. I whispered, “I’m not fucking scared of you.” If she wanted to dive headfirst, I was going to dive right behind her.
She knew that was true.
She inhaled deeply, her chest rising against mine.
When the employees finished tethering us together, they instructed, “Hold onto each other. The tighter, the better, so your limbs won’t smack into hers.”
I wrapped my arms firmly around her shoulders, not hesitant about it. Hers slipped around my waist, not cautious either. Her heartbeat thudded against my chest. Racing with each passing second.
With Cancun as our landscape, we hugged each other in the sky. She rose and dropped on her tiptoes in crazed anticipation. I watched her focus descend, contemplating the distance between her feet and the ground.
So I pointed at the sun ascending in the horizon. Just as the darkened sky began to lighten. “Keep your eyes there.”
Her green ones flickered to me before following my finger. Her pulse picked up speed. “And what happens when it disappears?”
I would’ve loved to tell her that it never would. That no matter where we were the sun would always be present. But it wouldn’t have been true.
The only thing we could count on was that the sun would rise again.
“Wait for it to return,” I told her.
She gave me the saddest smile I’d ever fucking seen. “That’s an awfully long time.”
For some people, I knew a minute could seem like infinity. So maybe one night seemed like forever for Daisy.
“Hey, Calloway,” I said softly, tucking a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear, one that escaped her pony.
“Hey,” she whispered back.
“You ready to feel your fucking heart burst out of your chest?”
Her features illuminated tenfold. And she said quietly, “Yes.”
I barely heard the instructor tell us to jump before we both charged off the platform together. Our bodies pressed close, my chest against hers, hers against mine. We sliced through air, and she hollered fucking happily. Like she was in the front seat of a rollercoaster.
She laughed.
I smiled. Fuck—I was really smiling.
I never bungee jumped with another person, and doing it with Daisy had suddenly beat every fucking time I did it alone. As we slowed—hanging upside-down, spinning some—we met each other’s gaze.
She wore this honest smile that I hated to see leave. “Thank you,” she panted, out of breath from excitement and adrenaline.
“For what?”
“For doing this with me,” she said, “so I didn’t have to be alone.”
It was then. That I fucking knew how much I really understood her. How much I related to the loneliness in her eyes. I felt closer to her in a way that I couldn’t articulate. It wasn’t physical. Or mental. It was spiritual, something I couldn’t shake.
I nodded a couple times, and she practically radiated. As though she felt the air shift, brighter and lighter.
I felt it too.
And I fucking thought, thank God.
Thank God the sun will rise again.
FOUR YEARS LATER
RYKE MEADOWS
I’ve scaled mountains with my bare hands, no harness or rope. I’ve sped down freeways at over a hundred miles per hour. I once dove off a forty-foot cliff, swam with sharks, jumped out of a fucking plane, whitewater rafted class five rapids, ran an ultra-marathon in a remote Chilean desert, and some months ago, I underwent transplant surgery.
All of those moments combined are easy compared to what’s happening now. I rock on the balls of my feet—for fuck’s sake, I can’t remember the last time I rocked on my feet.
I stop and run my hand through my hair for the millionth time. I scan the backyard as the sun falls behind spruce trees. The pool is empty, only water wings floating on the surface. Water wings—I’m used to seeing these things everywhere.
It happens when I’m living with my brother, his wife, and their one-year-old baby. Though lately, seeing high chairs, diapers, stuffed toys, and rattles sends my mind into a fucking tailspin. I exhale and wipe my forehead with the end of my gray T-shirt, restraining the urge to jump in the pool and cool down from the August heat.
The glass door opens, and I look over my shoulder. My little brother and Connor stroll through with these really fucking annoying smiles. My blood pumps harder in my veins.
“Shut the fuck up,” I tell them.
Connor’s grin pulls wider, stretched so far that I think it should tear his face apart. It doesn’t. He’s still good looking. Fuck him. And he says, “Shutting up would require talking.”
“You are now.” I have my hands on my head. I’m really close to pacing, and I don’t pace either. Rose paces. Loren paces. Lily sometimes even fucking paces.
I don’t pace…do I?
I’m losing my mind.
Lo places a hand on Connor’s shoulder, cutting in before he responds. “Let’s not make this into a lecture. He already looks like shit.”
Fucking A.
“Should I shave?” I ask, running a hand down my jaw. I usually trim more, especially in the summer, but I’ve kept the scruffy, I’ve-been-outdoors look since March.
“You could start with that,” Connor says, his shit-eating grin blinding me. He stuffs his fists in his khaki shorts. “The hair needs some work too.” His blue eyes flit to my unkempt brown hair, the thick strands just doing their natural fucking thing.
When I don’t argue with Connor but instead rake another hand through my hair—attempting to flatten the strands—his composure shifts.
He arches a brow. “You look like yourself. Just leave it alone.”
“So you’re saying I always look like shit?” I flatten the longer pieces over my forehead. I don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing.
“Yes,” he says easily. “And stop touching it.”
Lo scrunches his face at the bangs I just created. “Who are you? And where have you taken my brother?”
I don’t have a fucking answer.
Connor approaches me, confidence in every deliberate step. When he’s inches away, eye-level with me, I piece together his plan.
He’s still grinning as he says, “Don’t bite me.”
“Don’t give me a fucking reason to.”
Without hesitating, he starts fixing my hair. I cross my arms over my chest. The last time I was this close to Connor Cobalt, I punched him in the face. It was as complicated back then as this is now. I don’t hate the guy, but never in a million fucked-up years did I think I’d let him play with my hair.
“Jesus,” Lo says, laughing. “Please let me record this.”
“If you want a fist to your face,” I mutter.
Connor is practically gloating. I’m seconds from shoving his chest, but he wouldn’t purposefully make me look worse—not today. Not for this. We may not always seem like friends, but we are. We’re probably better friends than most.
And why do I even care this much about hair?
Loren cocks his head at me, his arrowhead necklace against his black V-neck shirt. “I’m your brother,” he says dryly. “You wouldn’t hit me.” He flashes a sardonic smile. His lightheartedness lives somewhere beneath all of that edge.
And yeah, I have hit him. In the dead heat. In the Utah desert. Until red dust covered us both in exhaustion and fury. All that’s in the past, along with any bad blood between us.
He just says shit to say shit.
Connor touches the longer hair by my forehead, and I push him off now. He barely sways. Instead, he purposefully takes a single step back.
“Just leave it,” I tell him. Then I comb my hand through my hair without realiz
ing. Fucking fantastic.
Connor arches another brow at me. “You’re a lost cause. I don’t know why I even try.”
I flip him off and just do my natural hair thing. Messy. Disheveled. No system or order. I know I look more like myself, but this day has me disoriented, more than I’ve ever fucking been.
