I really wish we didn’t have to go through this mail at all. I’d much rather burn it without even opening, but some people actually send money. Sometimes as a joke, other times I think they honestly believe Lily will f**k them for cash. Rose, Lily, and I agreed to collect the money and donate it to a women’s shelter in the city. At least someone profits off this.
So Rose and I spend all morning ripping and tearing and shredding. Lily would join us, but Rose and I specifically try to censor her from Mr. Gordon’s balls and company. One day, Lily accidentally opened a letter with photographs attached, and her eyes grew wide in horror, as though the person was one step away from breaking into our house to rape her. I’ve thought about that possibility too, which is why I installed a better security system.
Lil doesn’t admit it, but Rose and I see that she’s afraid to leave the house. She rarely goes out, and when she does, it’s usually after a great deal of pleading.
Lily has accepted my mail-sifting routine with Rose, also calling it our “bonding time.” I haven’t been Rose’s number one fan, not even after the media-palooza went down. But what was once a frost-bitten relationship has surprisingly begun to thaw.
“Since I have to go to business meetings now,” I tell her, “I’m going to need some everyday kind of suits. You still have those black ones from your menswear line, right?”
She goes still and the shredder stops growling. “You don’t have to help me, Loren. I don’t need your charity.” In one month, Rose almost lost every single investor she had for Calloway Couture. Only one has stayed onboard out of sheer loyalty.
I roll my eyes. “It’s not charity. I need suits. Now that you fired a certain someone, yours are no longer plaid and ugly.” I can’t say Sebastian’s name unless I want to be assaulted with rage.
“He did have horrible taste,” she says, lips pursed. As soon as Rose ripped the guy from her life, he snapped a picture of himself for Rich Kids of Instagram and called her a cunt-bag. If you even utter his name, she looks ready to lunge for the ball-cutting shears.
Rose assesses my current wardrobe. A black V-neck and faded Diesel jeans. “You go to your office looking like that,” she reminds me. “Why would you need suits?”
“I have weekly meetings with my father. If I show up in this I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Running my own company terrifies me. I don’t want to pour my heart and soul into it and then have the entire thing destroyed. What Rose is going through—it f**king sucks. Maybe that’s why I’ve preferred apathy all of these years. You can’t be hurt when you have nothing to lose.
She mulls over my proposition and then begins to stuff the shredder again. It rumbles to life. “Fine, but you have to pay full price.”
I laugh. “No family discounts? I’m going to be your brother-in-law.”
“Unwillingly,” she says with cold eyes. Jesus Christ. I’m never going to live that down.
I blame Connor.
He somehow coerced me into revealing my true feelings about this wedding. I admitted to not wanting to marry Lily, not like this at least. I want to do it on our own terms. And somehow Rose has warped that into I don’t want to marry her at all. If I could, I’d be engaged for five more years. She’d be my fiancée and we’d get hitched when we’re both healthy and in love. But that’s not a future that will come true, so I stop trying to imagine it.
I smother that conversation by slitting open a small package. I made the mistake yesterday of reaching blindly into a box. I never, ever want to touch another man’s cum again. Rose couldn’t stop laughing while I soaked my hands in disinfectant for thirty minutes.
I dump the contents onto the plastic-lined table. A neon hot pink dick stares back at me. Without touching it, I slide the dildo into a trash bag.
The next box has what looks like an expensive vibrator, brand-new, wrapped in its original packaging. I leave it on the table as I read the card.
And then an excited squeal resounds from the staircase. Lily sprints down the stairs, her glee-filled eyes pinned to the vibrator.
I grab her around the waist before she can grab it. She points to the package. “That’s new!”
“I’m aware,” I say. “You still can’t have it.”
She cranes her neck. “It’s a Zell500. That’s a luxury brand. You can’t just toss it in the trash.” Her eyes go big. “That’s sacrilege.”
I’m tempted to read her the card: A beautiful toy for your beautiful p**sy, my lovely Lily. It’s f**king creepy, and I know it will deter her. But I don’t want to scare her either. That’s what we’re trying to avoid with all of this.
“It’s a vibrator, Lily,” Rose snaps, “not the Holy Grail.”
I give Rose a smile. “So you don’t want it then?”
She glares like she’s ready to put me in the shredder.
I stifle a larger grin and turn to Lily. “Sorry, love. It’s going in the trash.”
She surrenders rather easily. I unhook my arms from her and slide the vibrator into the garbage with the others.
The front door opens, and Ryke saunters into the kitchen, carrying two large vases, white lilies poking his face. As soon as Lily spots the flowers, she slips behind my back and clutches onto my shirt—like whoever sent the floral arrangements are about to jump from the vase and grow life-sized.
“These were by the gate,” Ryke says. “I would have left them, but the paparazzi were trying to get photographs of the cards.” I hold open the trash bag, and Rose suddenly has a fit.
“They’ll break!” she yells at me. “And then the glass will tear the bag, slice someone, and blood will be everywhere. I can’t clean blood out of the hardwood.”
I narrow my eyes. “Just so we have this clear, I rank above the floor.”
“It’s Brazilian cherry,” she says like that makes all the difference. She turns to Ryke. “Throw the vases in the recycling bins in the garage.”
He tips the vases upside down, only the flowers and cards falling into my trash bag. Lily still hasn’t disentangled from my shirt. I gather her hands and intertwine her fingers in mine. “Hey, what’s wrong?” I ask.
Her eyes fix dazedly to the trash bag, and I’m not sure where she’s truly gone. But she’s not in a fantasy. She’s somewhere sadder and darker.
Very softly, she says, “I don’t want lilies at the wedding.”
She’s never referred to it as my or our wedding. It’s always the wedding. Marriage is supposed to be this happily ever after, but for her it feels like a means to an end.
“You don’t have to think about that,” Rose tells her. “It’s not for another year. We’re not even going to plan it anytime soon.”
Ryke nods to me. “You ready to go?”
“Yeah, I just need to change out of my jeans.”
“You can change in the car,” he tells me. “I have shorts and stuff in there.” He checks his watch. “I just want to beat a storm that’s supposed to roll in.”
Right because we’re going to be outside. Climbing a mountain. Just don’t kill me, God. That would be so f**king cruel to kill me now.
Before I leave, I kiss Lily lightly. “What are you doing today?” I ask, worried that she’ll spend the afternoon and night bingeing on old cartoons, isolated in the living room. She claims it’s a normal bout of summer laziness, but I know her well.
She can’t be afraid of the world forever.
“I was thinking about going to your office. Maybe get some work done,” she says. My lungs fill with relief. I love that I have chosen a business she can take pleasure in, something that can be both of ours one day. I want her to graduate college first, accomplish what I couldn’t.
“Call Garth,” I tell her.
She crinkles her nose. “He smells like old cheese.”
I grin. I chose the perfect bodyguard. “Don’t leave this house without him.”
“Don’t fall off a giant rock.”
“I’ll return him to you alive,” Ryke tells her.
“You better.” Lily holds a non-threatening finger at him.
He smiles coyly, like he plans on f**king with the ropes or the harness to scare the shit out of me, just to retaliate for the mankini prank in Cancun. I’m a little nervous, but after climbing in the gym with him, the mountain shouldn’t be too difficult, even if he gives me extra slack. I can handle the challenge.
***
We don’t even make it out of New Jersey before my phone buzzes in the middle console. The word DAD flashing in big bold letters.
“Don’t answer that,” Ryke says.
I’m driving. And I disobey his orders, answering the phone and keeping one hand on the wheel. I feel Ryke’s hot glare without taking my eyes off the road.
“Loren.” My father’s voice sounds through the receiver. “I need you to stop by the house sometime today.” His tone is pretty casual, so I figure the topic centers on my new company. It’s barely on its feet, but he loves to add his opinion.
“I’m heading out of town, so I won’t be anywhere near Philly.”
“Then readjust your schedule.”
“It’s not that easy—”
“I’m not asking.”
Ryke shakes his head repeatedly beside me, probably watching my eyes begin to darken the longer I talk to our dad. “You should have rejected the deal for your trust fund,” he says under his breath.
I pull the speaker away from my mouth to talk to Ryke. “I heard you the hundredth time you said it.”
“You’re his bitch,” Ryke rephrases, as if that’ll make me understand.
I grit my teeth, the highway signs zipping overhead. I need to get off the next exit if I want to see my dad.
I press the phone back to my ear. “What is it about?” I ask him.
“The leak.”
I nearly jerk the car into the other lane, a Trailblazer next to us.
“Lo!” Ryke yells, clutching the door. He snaps on his seatbelt.
Shit. “Sorry.” I start switching lanes, properly this time, heading towards the exit.
“Wait, where are you going?” Ryke asks angrily. He knows I’m heading to Philly. He just doesn’t know why.
I put the phone on speaker, realizing that Ryke will throw a tantrum unless he hears the truth from my father. I set the cell on my lap. “You know who the leak is?” I ask aloud, my heart thrumming. After a month without the knowledge, I was resigned with the fact that it just didn’t matter. Mostly because I didn’t have the energy to hunt down Mason or Aaron and care for Lily. I chose the right option, to be there for my best friend. But I want the information that has eluded us for so long. And the resentful, dark and bitter part of me wants this f**ker’s head on a spike.
“Yeah,” he says. “I found the leak.”
“How?”
“The tabloid who first reported the news finally broke and gave us their source. It took five million to loosen their lips and uncover this bullshit.” He doesn’t add you owe me every penny. Even so, I feel like I do.