Thrive (32 page)

{ 54 }

2 years : 01 month

September

LOREN HALE

Outside of the pub, Daisy howls at the stars,
standing on the sidewalk. “We’re in the land of tall people!”

My brother starts talking to her. He’s smiling.

I shift my dead gaze to the night sky. I want to be happy
that Daisy isn’t as sullen as when we first arrived, though she looks frail and
sleepless circles shadow her eyes. But she’s laughing.

That’s good.

Connor keeps a hand on my shoulder. I think if he takes it
off I’m going to fall. He says something, but I barely register his words.

Sports fans in jerseys parade across the street in dead-stop
traffic. The game must’ve ended.

I hate what I’ve done tonight.

It’s rushing back to me tenfold. Not enough liquor to numb
this onslaught. A couple guys start screaming beside the curb, and I rest my
hands on my head.

“Lo,” Connor breathes.

I turn to him, but Ryke suddenly sidles up to us. Connor
takes a step back so I can speak to my brother. And my eyes cloud with tears.
“You shouldn’t have had that whiskey,” I say, the apology stuck in my throat.

Say it.

I can’t. I pinch my eyes.

“One glass isn’t going to make me fucking addicted, Lo.”

I let out a weak laugh. “Lucky you.” I cringe.

“We should go back to the hotel—” He suddenly careens
forward, someone knocking into him from behind. I barely notice two beefy guys
throwing punches.

And then a pair of knuckles decks my temple. I stagger to
the side, almost tripping, my fingers scraping the pavement. The horrific
screams bleed my ears, and in one instant, it’s like a hurricane of people,
arms flying, shoving—bodies slamming into each other.

My panic has shot up to a new level.

The end of an intense rugby match has brought the beginning
of a riot. Ryke reaches out and grabs my arm. We lock eyes for an instant,
exchanging a look like:
don’t leave me.

And then another fist pounds into the side of my face. The
pain welling instantly. I grip his shirt, anything, and sock him in the gut,
just so he’ll get off me.

When I turn around, Ryke is being dragged backwards by his
leather jacket. I try to sprint towards him, but someone clutches my shoulders
and forcefully slams me to the ground.

A boot nails me in the ribcage, and my adrenaline drowns out
the intensity of the pain. I elbow someone’s shins, and I try to stand, but the
boot side-swipes my head.

Fuck.
Black dots
burst in my vision.

“LOREN!” Connor yells.

Blood drips from my nose and to my lips. I taste the bitter
iron. The screaming. Never ends. Glass shatters. Heat from fires blaze, but I
can’t see where they originate.

It’s just pure chaos.

“LOREN!”

Another kick to the stomach, and I fall to my hands again.
Get up. You stupid bastard.
I punch
back, meeting flesh. And I rise to my feet the same time that Connor reaches me
with an unreadable expression, masking his alarm. Barely a bruise on his face.

“Where’s Ryke?” My voice is filled with fear. I look around.
“We have to find—”
Jesus. Christ.
Someone
nailed me with something in the side. I cough roughly, and Connor is basically
guiding me away from everything.

“Stop,” I cough, my feet instinctively following his. I hold
my ribs. “Connor, wait!” I scream.

“We have to go,” Connor says, his eyes wide to tell me
now
.

“Ryke is out there!” I yell. I turn back around.
Daisy.
And I try to tear into the street,
but Connor grabs my waist, two inches taller than me. And stronger. In almost
every way.

He forces me back on the sidewalk, not the street where
everyone has gone mad. Sirens blare in the distance, growing closer and closer.

“We have to leave!” Connor yells at me.

“I can’t…”
I can’t
leave them.
I spin back to face Connor and shove him in the chest. “You
would leave them?!” Tears wet my cheeks. I feel like I just put my brother to
rest. And Daisy is gone with him.

“No,” Connor says, his usually emotionless expression slowly
unraveling. “I would save you.”

Why.

I shake my head.

“He’s strong,” he reminds me. “He’ll find Daisy, and we’ll
meet up with him.”

He’s strong.

It’s hard to say no to someone like Connor. With his hand on
my back, we push through the crowds, away from the fight.

Away from people who matter.

* * *

We walked for ten minutes before slipping into a
drug store. I vaguely pay attention to Connor who disappears down an aisle. The
cashier says something to me in English, about the riot. I think. I open my
mouth to answer, but air catches in my lungs. I can’t breathe.

I try to inhale.

I can’t breathe.
No
bruise or welt amounts to this agony that pounds into me. I push through the
doors, the cold night air blanketing me. And I gasp heavily, my hands on my
thighs.

I puke on the curb.

Cop and ambulance sirens scream.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, blood smearing
from my nose.

“Lo,” Connor says, appearing outside. He rests a hand on my
back. His button-down is ripped by the collar. “Come on.” He guides me along
the sidewalk. It takes us more time to find a taxi, but when we do, we both
climb in the backseat, the traffic horrendous. In French, Connor tells the
driver our destination, and I zone out, patting my pockets.

“My phone.” It must’ve fallen.

“Someone stepped on it back at the pub,” he explains,
digging in a paper bag. I stare at the headrest, slammed with tonight’s events.
With my brother being dragged by the jacket, away from me. I rewind to
screaming at him—saying that I wish he never existed in my life.

I rewind further to forcing him to drink alcohol.

“Connor,” I whisper, hot liquid pools in my eyes. What have
I done? Connor holds the back of my head, but I can’t stop these raging
feelings. I can’t stop the remorse or the fear of what’s happened. He forces my
gaze on his. “Please…” My chest falls heavily. “I can’t…”

I can’t deal with it anymore.

I don’t want any of it.

Tears pour out of me, and I try to breathe—sharp pains stab
my ribs with each one. My head floats from a lack of oxygen, and all I think
is:
kill me.

I am miles away from the one person who can talk me down
from this edge. From the one person who has been with me every step of my life.
Who has shared memories and moments that no one else will ever see. If I give
up, she is gone.

I destroy this bond that transcends love, taking her soul
with me.

It is the only thing that keeps me breathing.

I watch Connor bite a pill in half with his front teeth. His
eyes flicker to mine, full of uncharacteristic concern that he rarely shows
anyone.

“Are you putting me to sleep?” I ask.

“Not in the way you’d like,” he says softly. He passes me
half of the pill. “I can’t take your pain away, no matter how much I want to.”
He pauses. “This is the best I can do for now.”

Every moment of my life has been a mountain that I struggle
to climb.

{ 55 }

2 years : 01 month

September

LILY CALLOWAY

“Lo,” I say the minute Connor hands him the phone.
He told me that Lo took a sleeping pill, so I only have a few minutes with him.
Tears already stream down my cheeks, picturing them swept up in the Paris riot,
footage on almost every news station. Rose and I didn’t know that our sister
and the guys were tangled up in it until we called Connor.

I sit on my bed with the comforter pulled up to my chest.
Rose has left the room to tell Poppy that Daisy’s in the hospital. Connor,
Ryke, and Lo are in the waiting room, unsure of how badly her injuries
are.
 

Rose and I already checked flights and threw clothes into
carry-ons.

“Lily,” he chokes. I hear the torment in his voice. I don’t
have to ask where it’s from. The origins are most likely many, vast places.

My throat tightens, and I collect myself for him as much as
I can. “I love you,” is the next thing I say.

I can practically picture him pinching his eyes to dam the
waterworks, his breathing sharper than usual. “I fucked up,” he says.

“No,” I tell him, as sternly as I can. “You didn’t.”

“You don’t know what I did.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I wish I could hug him. Why do we have
to be so far apart?

And then he says with a broken voice, “I’m never going to
defeat this.”

“Lo,” I breathe, licking my dry lips. “You’re forgetting
something.”

He exhales deeply. “What’s that?”

“We’re in Earth-616. This isn’t an alternate universe.” I
clutch the phone tighter, tears falling. “We’re going to have our happy ending.
It’s just going to take us a little while to get there.”

He told me that once. When I hit a low. Now he just needs to
remember his own words.

He breathes out again, like a weight is slowly lifting off
his chest.

“Do you believe me?” I whisper.

“Every word,” he says. “I want to hold you.”

I smile and wipe the rest of my tears. “You are.”

“Yeah?” he murmurs. “Lily…”

I wait for him to finish his thought, one of my hands
gripping my white comforter.

Very softly, he says, “I wouldn’t be here without you.” It
is bigger than an
I love you.
It is a
declaration that solidifies what I’ve known for so long.

We aren’t connected by our addictions.

But by our childhood. Souls fused together from the very,
very start.

{ 56 }

2 years : 02 months

October

LOREN HALE

Since the hospital four days ago, I haven’t been
able to produce a sentimental apology for my brother. Every time I try,
something worse comes out of my mouth. Staying quiet has better results, but it
also tears my stomach to shreds. I’m beginning to think that I hold back just
to punish myself.

I run my hand through my hair before readjusting my baseball
cap. I glance over my shoulder at the gas pumps, expecting a bombardment of cameras.
It’s quiet, trees rustling in the wind.

“No one is following us,” Ryke reminds me, breaking a layer
of tense silence. His eyebrow is stitched, the most severe of his wounds from
the riot. I have two broken ribs, but I had to say no to pain pills. It’d be
way too easy to rely on them.

Ryke and I stand outside of a gas station in Ohio, a grimy
bathroom door in front of us on the side of the building. The road trip began
in New York and it’ll end with Ryke climbing a few rock formations in Yosemite,
California.

I’ve tried not thinking about that last part. Ryke never
wears a rope or a harness. The probability of falling is greater than reaching
the top. Connor even told me that. Heavy bricks set on my chest every time I
accidentally process that end, the one where I outlive him.

The world is all fucked up if that happens.

“I can’t help it,” I say to Ryke, looking around for cameras
just one more time. “I’m always going to be on edge.” The media didn’t have any
footage of us in the riot, and we managed to leave the hospital without notice
too. We were there for a while because of Daisy—she’s okay. Not that okay. But
she’s walking. Breathing. And she quit modeling. Though…she would’ve had to
regardless.

Ryke bangs on the bathroom door, the handle broken, which is
why we’re standing here, guarding it so no one walks in on her. “You need
something, Dais?”

She’s been changing her bandages. I check my watch. For fifteen
minutes?

“The tape is stuck to one of my stitches.” She sounds near
tears.

Ryke doesn’t even hesitate or ask, he just pushes through
the door. He leaves it ajar so I’ll follow him inside. I do. The space is
cramped, and toilet paper is strewn on the damp tiles.

Ryke cups the side of Daisy’s face and inspects the wound on
her left cheek, half the bandage off. “Hold still,” he tells her, peeling off
the tape that pinches her skin and with it, a series of stitches. Her hands dig
into his waist.

“Wait, wait a second,” she winces.

“Dais,” he says softly, his narrowed eyes on her. “This has
to come off.” Blood has soaked through the gauze and needs replaced.

I lick my lips. “Just think happy thoughts,” I tell her.

She slowly starts to smile, which pulls at her wound. “Ow.”

Wrong advice. “Think horrible thoughts,” I say and then put
a hand on my older brother’s shoulder, “like your knight in shining armor
falling off his pony.”

She ends up laughing and touches her cheek, the pain barely
reaching her green eyes that glimmer with something bright.

Ryke glares at me. “That’s the best you have?”

“I don’t see you offering anything,
bro
.”

“Picture me beating the shit out of my brother,” he says
roughly, never looking away from me.

“Or the inverse,” I snap back, our jaws locked. How’d we
even reach this place? It’s like a river of past history separates us, and I
can’t cross it without him.

Daisy’s laughter has died out. “That’s depressing,” she
tells us flatly.

Our attention returns to her. “That’s the point,” I say.

Her lips are downturned, and Ryke works on peeling back the
tape, stitches still clung to it. Her eyes are already bloodshot at this point,
and the signs of pain appear in the way she clutches my brother’s green shirt.

“Are you sure you don’t want your sisters out here?” I say
to distract her. Rose and Lily are meeting us in a couple weeks, which’ll be a
surprise to Daisy. But they’re adhering to her wishes as much as they can.
Daisy just needs time to cope with what’s happened.

“Lily has college,” she says. “I don’t want to ruin anyone’s
time.”

Ryke rolls his eyes.

I tilt my head at her. “They want to see you.”

“Not like this,” she whispers, referring to her marred cheek.

And then Ryke removes the bandage completely. I scan her
face, seeing the wound before, but not since she was asleep in the hospital.
The large, reddened gash cuts from her temple to her jaw. Sliced but stitched
straight through her cheek. Apparently she was hit with a board, something
sharp on the end. The wound looks gruesome, especially on a girl as pretty as
Daisy. It’ll scar. There’s no question about that.

She studies my reaction while Ryke unpackages a clean piece
of gauze. “I’m happier, you know?” she says, her lips rising weakly. She’s free
from a profession that has been slowly making her sick for the past few years.
And subsequently, she’s free from her mom’s ridicule.

I mask my expression by adjusting my baseball cap again.
“I’m glad,” I say. “But I’m never going to be happy that this happened to you.”
There could have been a thousand other ways for her to reach that point—to quit
modeling. I’d never wish this for her, or any one of the girls.

“That’s okay,” she says softly, her long blonde hair falling
at her waist. I have a feeling she’s going to chop most of it off soon.

Ryke begins to cover her gash with clean bandages, and her
arms slide further around his waist. To where his body is pressed against hers.

He whispers something to her, his lips brushing her ear, not
discreet about it. They’ve never been. And then she smiles brightly, her
fingers falling to the band of his jeans. Their embrace takes me aback, like a
swift kick.

And it’s in this single moment, that I know for certain,
they’re together.

So I ask: “Did I miss something?” I gesture between them, my
jaw sharpening on instinct. I wait for my brother to tell me the whole truth.
For once.

Please.

And then he takes a step back from Daisy with a pissed
expression. Like I ruin everything. He’s not even giving me a chance.

He says, “We’re just friends.”

Right.
I nod a
couple times. “I’ll meet you at the car.” Boiling. It goes beyond them
together. It’s that he can’t be honest with me. He asks me for his complete
trust, but it’s becoming harder and harder when he builds walls between us.

He once said that I stand vulnerable in front of Connor,
someone who wears layers and layers of armor while I bear all of myself to him.

Somewhere along the way, they switched places. I wonder what
it’ll take for him to finally see it.