Long Way Down (Calloway Sisters 4)

“My name is Daisy.” My eyes land on Ryke as I strongly say, “and I have this theory.” My smile stretches wide as soon as his rises.

I am the biographer of my own life.

And no one can take that away from me.

RYKE MEADOWS

I run eight miles around the gated neighborhood. The end of May has brought sweltering heat, even at six in the fucking morning, so I’m shirtless, in track shorts. So is my brother.

Our breaths are controlled, in sync as we keep a steady pace. Nutty leaps next to us without a leash. I’m a couple strides behind Lo, and every time I try to fucking match him, he ups his speed. Just like I used to do to him.

I’m twenty-eight.

I met my brother six years ago.

I can never regain the time that we fucking lost together, but what we’ve made up has been some of the best parts of my life.

Lo turns onto Whisper Ridge Road and he bolts off into a sprint.

So we’re going to play that fucking game, little brother. My lips rise as he takes off ahead of me. I push myself harder and faster, my body burning. Sweat building. My lungs contracting. Muscles stretching. We pass acres of land. The darkened sky just beginning to lighten in the early morning.

With a rigorous fucking pace, Lo glances over his shoulder at me. He’s smiling and shouts, “You going to keep staring at my ass?!”

I flip him off and then grit down as I race towards him. It’s not effortless like it used to be. I’m not even reaching the speed that I once fucking had.

I’m not giving up.

Not one fucking day will I stop.

My right leg throbs dully, then more noticeably but I push through. Sharpness scrapes along my tendons, my bones. My heart pounds and I breathe deeply through my nose.

Run.

Faster.

My muscles shriek. I can distinguish the titanium inside my limb, still foreign to my body. The pain may never leave me, and I’m not fucking bitter or furious.

I’m the lucky one.

Alive. Here today. Chasing after my brother until I can catch up to him again.

I can practically feel his fucking smile in front of me. Mine grows tenfold, seeing who will win as we near the last stretch.

I’m four long strides behind him. Both of us are going our absolute fucking hardest. As soon as he passes his mailbox, he slows like he broke through an invisible finish line.

I come to a stop beside him, Nutty following suit, her collar jingling.

He pats my shoulder and says, “Maybe one day you’ll be able to outrun me.”

I remember all the fucking times I’ve told him that. “I’d rather just run beside you.”

His daggered amber eyes almost soften.

We’ve had a rocky start together. We’ve struggled with the balance of our fucking relationship, but after hitting the lowest points in my own life, I looked to Lo. He was there. I don’t think I ever imagined, at the beginning of it all, he’d be stable enough to help me.

I leaned on my brother. I was never scared to, and that’s how I know we’re both doing okay.

“You will,” he says like he can’t see any other life for me than the one that I desire. And the one that I want. Because he thinks I deserve it all.

But this guy deserves just as much for putting up with our abusive father. For battling an addiction. For never letting go of his wife.

We’re both in a mindset where we’re willing to do anything to facilitate the other’s happiness, and that’s fucking insane that we’re finally, finally here. At this peace in our lives.

And I say, “We will.” I nod to him. “I’ll see you fucking later.”

“Yeah, what time is the swim lesson?” Lo asks.

“Noon.” We’ve been taking Sullivan to swim classes since she was four-weeks. Lily and Lo brought Moffy along to one last month. He talked about the pool non-fucking-stop, to the point where I couldn’t understand what the fuck he was saying besides water. Now we all bring the two kids together.

Lo nods and turns around towards his house.

Instead of following, I run again down the street and whistle to Nutty. She skips ahead of me. Knowing where to go. Past his mailbox. Past the several houses along this road. My knee cramps some, but movement is fucking good for rehabilitation. It sometimes even lessens the pain.

I fly by Connor and Rose’s house, pink tulip trees in bloom along their driveway. We all wonder how many kids they’ll end up with, but whatever the fucking number, there’s no doubt they’ll be anything but great parents. Even if Connor is a narcissistic prick, they both have a way of instilling confidence in others. It’s fucking invaluable.

I jog until the very end of Whisper Ridge Road, the cul-de-sac mostly green land with maple trees. Only one home straight ahead. I run towards it and then stop by the edge of the driveway.

I open the mailbox, grabbing what looks like junk mail and bills. I pat Nutty on the torso. “Good run, girl.” She pants fucking happily.

I flip through the mail, heading up the driveway to what Greg Calloway called “a cottage modeled after eighteenth century architecture.” Gray stone, white door—half of which is window, chimney, and a dark-slated roof resembling brick.

The four-bedroom cottage has more yard and grounds than Connor and Lo’s houses combined. Greg and Jonathan apparently had this wild idea to gift Daisy and me a house for our wedding present, and they spent over a year trying to convince the owner to fucking sell this exact home.

Something tells me that they knew for a variety of reasons that we’d want this one. First, it was being used as a holiday house. The owner would return maybe once every two years. We wouldn’t have felt right about making an offer—out of the blue—if a family lived here full-time.

It’s not that Greg and Jonathan paid for the home. I fucking paid for it with money that I’ve made and will continue to make climbing.

They did the heavy lifting by persuading the owner to sell. Lo knew all along what was happening, and he said the owner was “trolling” Jonathan and Greg half the time. Pulling their legs. So they left after our wedding, earlier than planned, just to meet with him—thinking it was a done deal.

It wasn’t.

I couldn’t have spent the fucking time dealing with this guy, so I’m grateful and thankful they did this part for us.

It could’ve been another five years before anything in this neighborhood became available, and now we have our own space. Our own land. Our own home. Our own lives.

I step off the driveway. Stone is laid into the grass, leading to the front door. I dig into my pockets for the keys and enter. Boxes are stacked everywhere, no living room furniture. We haven’t gone shopping yet.

It’s fucking possible it’ll take us three months to unpack. I head towards the kitchen and throw down the mail on the granite counter. Nutty races off to her water bowl, slurping loudly. Then I open the fridge, which we do fucking have.

I twist off the cap to the orange juice and chug from the carton.

I expect to hear Daisy somewhere, but so far, it’s pretty fucking quiet besides our husky. I put the cap back on, my eyes flitting to the hardwood floor.

The first day we moved in, I fucked her right there. I can’t stop replaying it or hearing her high-pitched cries. My body heats again, blood pooling.

While on top, I spread her legs apart; she’d already come t

hree times.

She raked her fingers through my hair, and this happy, tired smile played at her lips. “Animals do it on the floor,” she said. “Therefore we must be—”

I pushed deep inside of her, and her chin tilted up in a shallow breath.

“We must be…?” I whispered lowly in her ear, pumping into her, my ass tightening as I drove inside. My body was on another fucking dimension, between her legs. Having Daisy in my arms.

“Fuck,” she cried.

I combed her hair back as I thrust in and out. It’s not like her sex drive did a one-eighty. She doesn’t crave sex every day; sometimes she could do without it for weeks. But that doesn’t even fucking matter. The fact that she can be aroused at all, that she can reach that point—that matters to me. Because I know she’d want it.

I kissed her deeply until she was so fucking gone that she couldn’t press her lips against mine anymore. As she began to hit a peak, I touched between her legs and rocked hard. She shuddered and cried, and I was so close to losing it, a noise caught in my own fucking throat. Cursing.

I kept going, and I leaned down to her ear again. And I said, “We must be fucking animals.”

She laughed in the middle of her climax.

That did it for me, and I released harder than I ever fucking have.

I set the orange juice back into the fridge, my dick fucking throbbing. I jack off in front of Daisy more often, but hopefully I won’t need to masturbate until I take a fucking shower.

The kitchen and the living room are one big open space, and I return to a box by the fireplace, deciding to stretch and unpack something at the same time. In the background, I hear Nutty crunching on her dog food.

As I take a seat on the hardwood and rip off the tape, I read the side of the box: fragile but amazing. Be careful with these. I don’t want to lose them.

The movers—Connor and Loren—had no fucking clue where to put half the boxes because of Daisy’s labels. I didn’t care. I dropped most of them around this space, and I kept finding myself reading them. Lo grimaced at me and said “you have love on your face” and he gestured to my mouth.

I was smiling. I didn’t even fucking know I was.

I tuck my left foot and then reach towards my elongated right leg. Stretching a second. Then I open the flaps of the box and peek inside.