Hothouse Flower (Calloway Sisters 2)

I can’t even look for my brother. I just think hospital. She needs a fucking hospital.

I take a trained breath, cradling her in my arms. Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I spin around on him, about to go on the offensive, but I realize he’s older, grayed hair with glasses.

He has a phone to his ear, his features grave. He points to Daisy and then to the street. “L’ambulance est coincée dans les embouteillages.” The ambulance is stuck in traffic.

“À quelle distance se trouve l’hôpital le plus proche?” I ask. How far is the nearest hospital?

He points in the direction. “Hôpital de l’Hotel-Dieu, environ 5 kilomètres.” About 5 kilometers.

3 miles.

With Daisy in my arms, I can fucking run that in fifteen minutes or less. I mumble thank you, and I just fucking take off.

Her head bounces against my chest only a couple of times before I adjust her.

I have carried this girl so many times in my life.

But this time—this is the absolute worst.

I run.

One hundred and fifty miles per hour.

I don’t fucking stop.

Not for anything.

I just keep going. It’s what your good at Ryke. It may be the only thing.

RYKE MEADOWS

The moment I step through the emergency room doors, a gurney is brought out, and doctors and nurses pry her from my arms, setting her on the white sheets. The fluorescent lights burn my eyes, and sweat drips down my forehead. I try to follow the gurney back through these double blue doors, but a couple nurses block me, holding up their hands.

“I can’t leave her,” I say. I can’t fucking leave her.

It takes me a moment to realize the nurses’ lips are moving—that they’ve been talking in French. They switch to English, thinking I can’t understand them. My mind is all over the fucking place.

“Sir, you need to sit down. We’ll get you cleaned up and looked at.”

“Come here,” the other says.

She leads me to a chair in the hallway, out of the waiting room and next to a large white scale and counter.

“I can’t leave her,” I say again. “I have to go back there.”

“She’s being admitted,” the forty-something nurse tells me. Her tawny hair chopped at her shoulders. She wears pink scrubs, and I glance at her nametag. Janet. “They’re taking care of her right now. She’s in good hands.”

The other nurse, in teal scrubs, is a little younger and brunette. She dabs a piece of wet gauze on my eyebrow. I didn’t even realize it was fucking bleeding.

I stare at the floor, holding back a scream that so badly wants to rip through my body. Why? I want to know why her. Why did this have to fucking happen? This is a nightmare. I’m going to wake up. Any fucking second now.

But I don’t wake up. I’m here, in a foreign city, at a hospital, covered in blood. “Arms up,” Janet orders. I mechanically do as she says, and she pulls off my shirt. I glance down at my hands once, finally registering how red they are, my palms stained with Daisy’s blood. My stomach overturns.

“Margery, a bucket,” Janet says quickly.

The brunette nurse puts a cream tub underneath my chin, and I vomit.

“What’s your name, honey?” Janet asks, rubbing my back.

I wipe my mouth with my forearm. “Ryke.”

She shares a look with Margery, as though recognizing me now, from television and the news. Thankfully they don’t make a big scene. My hands shake as I take out my phone and dial a number. I press it to my ear, and the line doesn’t even fucking ring. My brother’s cell just shuts off.

Not him too. I can’t lose these two people today. I can handle a lot of fucking shit, but not this. I don’t know how to handle this. I shoot up from the chair, and I dial the number again, my hand on my head. Both nurses watch me with even more concern.

“I have to find my brother,” I say aloud, my heart pounding.

“Let me show you to the bathroom,” Margery says. “You can wash your hands—”

“I have to find my little brother,” I say with the shake of my head. I dial again. Nothing.

“You’re in shock,” Janet says slowly so I understand. “Please, you need to calm down.”

I think I’m being pretty fucking calm right now considering. Hot tears well in my eyes, and I ignore their requests. I call Connor next.

He answers on the second ring. “Where are you?” he asks, his voice spiking with fear. Fear—from a guy who’s composed at every fucking moment.

“The hospital. Where’s Lo?”

“He’s fine. He’s with me.”

I try to breathe normally. I try to accept this, but it barely lifts the weight off my chest. “Why wasn’t he fucking answering?”

“Someone stepped on his phone. It’s trashed. We’re coming to you. Is Daisy with you at the hospital?”

“Yeah.” My voice chokes at the word, and I pinch the bridge of my nose to stop from breaking down and crying. I rarely ever fucking cry. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve shed a fucking tear.

There’s a long pause before Connor asks, “Is she alive?”

The question sends me to my fucking knees. I breathe heavily, no amount of training preparing me for this agony. I shake my head and I say, “I don’t…I don’t know.”

I could have been carrying a girl without a pulse for three miles. I didn’t check.

I just ran.

RYKE MEADOWS

It’s been five hours. Connor has argued with the doctors for four of those, trying to persuade them to let us see Daisy, but it’s been “family only” visiting hours, so we have to wait until the morning before friends can enter her room. They won’t say if she’s brain dead. All we know is that she’s in a room and she’s breathing.

For once, Connor Cobalt can’t talk his way through a bad situation. I really fucking wish that wasn’t the case tonight. When I tried speaking to the doctor, I started yelling, and they called security out, so I’ve sat my ass on a maroon leather chair in the carpeted waiting room. Watching the clock barely move. A television is on a news channel, playing footage of the riot that continu

es to destroy Paris and local stores.

I can barely watch it without feeling sick.

My brother is passed out beside me, a purpled shiner on his right eye. He didn’t say much when he arrived, but he wore a similar haunted look that I had. Janet gave me a clean white T-shirt, so at least he didn’t see the blood on me.

Now I’m in a new stage of grief, my body numb, my mind starting to slow down. And I know partly it’s from being stabbed in the fucking ass with a sedative. I have to thank Janet for that too.

My phone buzzes for the seventh time. I read the caller ID: DAD. I contemplated changing the name to “Jonathan” a few times, but he’s still my father. No matter how much I wish that wasn’t the case.

He hasn’t texted at all, so I figure he’s goading me to answer with each irritating ring. It works. I’m too emotionally exhausted to reject him this time. I put the phone to my ear. “What do you want?”

He exhales in relief. “You’re successfully trying to give me a fucking heart attack, Ryke.” He mutters a few more curses under his breath before asking, “Is Loren okay? His phone just cuts off every time I call.”

“He’s fine.” I glance at my brother again, his chest falling in a heavy sleep, induced by alcohol.

This may be the worst night of my life. I failed the two people that matter most to me.

“The news has pictures of you near the riot before it started. I thought you might have gotten caught in it.” I hear the clink of a glass hitting the lip of another, as if he’s pouring a drink.

“I have to go,” I say.

“Wait for a goddamn second,” he says. “I want to know how you are.”

How am I? Numb, but my emotions try so hard to surface and pour through me. I could scream until my voice leaves me. I could run until my legs buckle beneath me. I could hit the wall until exhaustion defeats me. And my fucking father is asking me this. I swallow a rock in my throat. “You’re the last person I want to talk to right now.”

“We do need to talk, Ryke.”

“Why? Are you going to fucking accuse me of taking Lo away from you again?” When Lo went to rehab for the first time, our dad acted like I brainwashed him. Like rehab was the bad fucking choice. Like Lo wasn’t even an alcoholic.