The usual shame was absolved by the booze and the reminder that we hadn’t broken any rules. I convinced myself that he’s probably heard me come in the next room thousands of times. Seeing the act couldn’t have been much different. And I had never done something like this with any other guy before.

It felt special.

I turned to ask him if we could do it again. Once was never enough.

He saw the desperation before I uttered a word.

“If you do it in front of me again, I’ll have to f**k you,” he said.

“Have to or want to?” I asked in confusion.

He smiled easily, but never gave me a clear answer. “I may not get hard when you tell me you’re horny, but I’m still a guy. And you still have rules. Ones that I won’t take advantage of when you’re drunk.”

“So when I’m sober?”

His smile turned mischievous. “I’m going to take a shower.”

He gripped the neck of the Macallan. I must have looked disappointed still because he went to my closet instead of the bathroom. He pulled out a pink Victoria’s Secret shoebox from the bottom and set it gently on the bed beside me. He knew it was filled with all my toys. The gesture was kind.

He tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear and kissed me on the forehead. “Merry Christmas, Lil,” he said and left for the bathroom.

He never came back. I spent the next four hours in a self-love coma until I passed out. In the morning, I found him asleep on the tiled bathroom floor hugging an empty bottle. We never spoke about it again. I buried the memory with my fantasies, and I’ve always believed he lost the memory in his booze.

{ 38 }

LOREN HALE

“I can’t believe you’re f**king engaged,” Ryke tells me.

We stretch by the small koi pond at the edge of our property, trying our best to run without nearing the wrought iron gates. Paparazzi camp on the street, peering through the gate that does little in terms of privacy. Rose already called a landscaper to plant tall hedges, but they won’t be finished for a whole month.

“In a scandal management perspective, marriage is the clear solution,” Connor says. He stretches his quads on the ground.

“Yes because now people will think Lily’s an adulterer and not just cheating on her college boyfriend,” Ryke retorts.

Connor stares him down. “Society believes marriage shows commitment, a stronger bond.” He stands to his feet. “Not to mention gossip mongers eat up a good love story. And what’s better than love uniting a sex addict and an alcoholic?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in New York right now?” Ryke snaps back, surrendering the fight. Everyone has an opinion about the engagement, but the only one that matters to me is Lily’s. “I thought Rose was running around with her f**king head off her shoulders.”

All of our family’s companies have been hit financially from the scandal, but unlike Fizzle and Hale Co., Calloway Couture is a young business already on shaky ground. The blow toppled it over. The menswear line that she’s been slaving over for months—the one I briefly modeled for—is being reviewed for Fashion Week. Even Connor said that the likelihood of the line surviving is slim to none. So she’s going to be pulled from the show, two department stores just dropped her, and she had to let go her assistants, including Lily. Rose won’t tap into her trust fund to pay her employees, and she’s losing money too quickly to keep them.

“She called and told me not to come,” Connor admits. “She doesn’t want me to be in the way.”

“Is Sebastian there?” I ask. I can see that scheming motherfucker trying to whisper his awful opinions about Connor into Rose’s ear. With the slow annihilation of her company weighing on her, she must be vulnerable.

“He’s been helping her with the line. I’m sure he’s there. Why do you ask?”

I should tell Connor that Sebastian is not fond of him, but he probably already picked up those signals. I should definitely mention how Sebastian is most likely plotting a way to cut him out of Rose’s life. But Lily still needs those tests. “No reason,” I say with a shrug.

He stares at me for a long moment, disbelieving, but he doesn’t prod further. We start walking back towards the house, our shoes crunching the stones on the path.

“Speaking of Calloway girls,” Connor says, “I read that Daisy is doing a spread in Vogue. Is that true?” After Lily and I talked with the lawyers, Daisy went to stay at her parent’s house again. Her modeling career catapulted because of the scandal. Magazines and photographers are lining up to book her for five-page spreads, labeling her as a “sex symbol” in ads that transform the sixteen-year-old into a man’s wet fantasy. They call her a young Brooke Shields, but comparing her to another teen icon doesn’t settle my stomach. And my blood is on boil, angry that anyone is willing to exploit that girl.

What’s worse, her own mother booked her the jobs. But it’s not my place to stick up for Daisy. I often wonder whose it is. Poppy has taken sanctuary at her small house in Philly, trying to protect her three-year-old daughter from the paparazzi. Rose is frazzled enough with her fashion line, and Lily and I are just trying to keep our heads on straight.

So who’s protecting Daisy?

Her parents sure as hell aren’t.

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

“She’s doing it,” Ryke says. “She says it’s tasteful or whatever.” He shakes his head, disgruntled by the situation. “She was a high fashion model and overnight she became a f**king supermodel, and instead of sheltering her from the media, her f**king mother is pushing her into it. I think I hate that woman.”

“You and me both,” I say, “and since when are you talking to Daisy?”

He gives me a glare. “Don’t f**king get onto me about that shit,” he snaps. “She needs a friend.”

“You know, I heard about that recession of sixteen-year-old girls,” Connor says. “It must be difficult for her to find a friend her own age.”

I smile and Ryke glowers. “Fuck off, Connor,” he snaps. “You know what all her prep school friends are doing? They keep asking her if she’s a sex addict too. As if it’s genetic. She needs someone who knows Lily, who f**king understands what’s going on.”

“So she needs you,” I say like he’s an idiot.

Ryke throws up his hands and stops walking. “For fuck’s sake,” he exclaims. “I’m giving her rock climbing lessons, not taking her on a date. We’re friends. The perverts who stare at her in magazines may forget she’s sixteen, but I won’t.” He starts uncapping his water bottle. “I also thought we talked about badgering me. We made a f**king deal in Cancun, remember?”

I won’t admit it, but there’s a piece of me that’s lashing out in guilt. I should be the one talking to Daisy and being a friend to her, yet I’m swamped in my own bullshit. If I was a better person, I’d probably actually thank Ryke. She does need someone to talk to, even if that someone has to be my hot-headed half-brother.

When we start walking again, Ryke ignites a conversation I thought we dropped at the beginning of our run. “Maybe you should start a company about pissing people off. You can call it Bastards-R-Us.”

I knew I shouldn’t have told him about accepting my trust fund or being obligated to build a company from scratch, like I’m a little kid playing with Legos. Ryke is vehemently against anything that puts me in contact with my father. He even went so far as offering me half his inheritance.

I turn around and he walks right into my chest. He takes a step back and glares. “What? You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”

“I’m not taking your goddamn money,” I sneer. “Stop bringing it up.”

“Children,” Connor says, breaking our feud. “As entertaining as this is, doesn’t Lily have a Stats exam in a half hour?”

I glance down at my watch and curse. We’re supposed to be escorting her to her class, since she refused to accept the bodyguard her father wanted to hire for her. It was a generous offer that Poppy and Daisy accepted. Rose was too f**king stubborn, and Lily didn’t want to be “shadowed by a big beefy guy,” which I took to mean she doesn’t want to be tempted by someone that isn’t me.

We jog back to the house quickly, but Lily isn’t in the kitchen where I left her. She’s become sedentary since the leak, moving at a snail’s pace. So I can’t imagine she wandered too far. I’m about to check the living room when I hear the pipes groan through the walls.

“Do you hear that?” I ask, turning to Connor and Ryke for clarification.

“Sounds like someone’s taking a Jacuzzi bath,” Connor tells me. That doesn’t make any sense. Lily took a shower this morning. Why would she need to bathe again?

Holy fuck.

My first thought: She’s masturbating. My second: She slit her wrists. The second thought propels me into hyper-drive. I am running up the f**king staircase before I can think anything else. I must look scared out of my mind because Ryke and Connor are right behind me. Maybe they fear it too.

I’d like to believe Lily couldn’t reach a low like that, but I’d be fooling myself. I’ve been there. I know she has too. It’s what happens when you hit a bottom that you can’t crawl out from.

I push through the door, envisioning her cold lifeless body. She jumps, and I don’t have time to breathe in relief. Because if she’s not dead, it means she’s masturbating.

I can’t believe this is how my world works.

Bubbles cover her nak*d body but don’t hide her cheeks that burn bright red. Connor and Ryke stumble in behind me and then Connor swivels right back around. “Sorry.”

Ryke blocks the door so Connor can’t leave.

“Get out!” Lily yells at them.

I haven’t moved closer, but she is bathing in guilt. You don’t just shower and then fifteen minutes later hop into a bubble bath.

“No, stay,” I tell them.

I’ve chastised her about porn.

I’ve pleaded with her to be honest with me.

Obviously, I need to find different f**king methods to make her stop doing this shit. I don’t want to embarrass her, but how else is she going to stop?

Ryke spreads his arms in the doorway, sufficiently blocking Connor’s exit.

“Really?” Connor raises his brows.

Ryke shrugs, and Connor shields his eyes with his hand as he backs into the counter.

I keep my gaze on Lily.

She avoids me and the two guys. “Make them leave,” she says, looking anywhere but here. “I have to get changed. What time is it?” She acts like nothing’s wrong. Like she’s innocent in all of this.

“Why are you taking a bubble bath?” I ask, sitting on the porcelain ledge.

She shrinks back and begins descending, her chin disappearing beneath the suds. “I dropped my ring into the trash. And then after I fished it out, I smelled like our leftover sausage, which is not a pleasant stench. So I decided to take a bath, but I dozed off. Baths do that, you know. They’re like nap-whisperers or summoners or whatever.”