Hothouse Flower (Calloway Sisters 2)

“Daisy, look at me,” Ryke says, his hand sliding on my thigh, holding me tightly.

I meet his concerned gaze just as the last memory hits me. I picked myself off the concrete. “I saw you,” I whisper. “You were right there.” I remember meeting his eyes. And they were full of anger, full of desperation, full of gut-wrenching pain.

He screamed my name. I heard it only once before something hard met my face.

My face.

For the first time, I raise my hand to touch my cheek. All I feel is tape, gauze, maybe. But whatever lies underneath it—that’s what hurts each time I begin to smile.

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!

“Take deep fucking breaths,” he tells me, rubbing my arm.

Someone knocks twice, and then the hospital doors open. A nurse in pink scrubs sticks her head in. “Daisy, you’re awake.” She smiles, and then she turns slightly to whisper to someone else. “Can you go let her friends know?” She shuts the door behind her and pads closer to me. “My name is Janet. How are you feeling?”

She pours a cup of water and passes it to me. I take a sip and hand it immediately to Ryke. “Can I have a mirror?” I ask her.

Beepbeepbeepbeep.

I can’t articulate my feelings beyond panic. I just need to see my face first to understand these emotions that blow through me.

“Do you want me to call the hospital psychologist first?”

What? “Ryke.” I turn to him with widened eyes.

“Can you just give her a mirror?” he asks Janet with a hard gaze.

She nods. “Okay.” Janet tentatively picks up a handheld mirror from a drawer, and I take it from her.

I raise it up to my face. BeepbeeepBEEPBEEP.

Bandages cover my left cheek down to my jaw. But my lip is swollen, and dark purpled bruises sit beneath both eyes. I look…so much worse than Ryke, no wonder he stared at me like stop fucking talking about my injuries.

I start picking at the tape, to uncover the bandage, and Janet swats my hand away. “Don’t touch.”

“I need to see it.” I don’t even know what it is.

And then another nurse in blue scrubs waltzes in with Connor and Lo.

“Hey,” Lo says with a weak smile. “How are you doing?” He touches my feet above the blanket. I want to return the smile, but it hurts too much to do so.

“Okay,” I say.

Connor just nods. “Has anyone told you what’s happened?”

“Sort of,” I murmur. “I want to see what’s wrong with my face.”

“She doesn’t know?” Lo frowns and glares at Ryke like it’s his fault.

“We’re fucking getting there.”

“Let me help,” the other nurse says, sidling to the bed. “We have to put new dressings on the wound anyway.”

Ryke stands up while both the nurses hover over me. He joins Lo and Connor at the foot of the bed, and my heart rate stays at the same beepbeepbeepbeep pace.

Janet slowly removes the tape, peeling back the bandage that clings to a few stitches…no wait, a lot of stitches.

“It was a deep gash,” Janet explains in the kindest way possible. “You’ve had an MRI. Everything came back normal. The doctors said you may have a slight concussion, but otherwise, you’ll be fine in about two weeks, no more stitches. Just a—”

“Scar,” I finish for her. They free my face of gauze and tape, and there it is: a reddened gash that runs from my temple, across my cheek, to my jaw. I move my tongue in my mouth, along my gum, feeling the backs of the stitches, as though my cheek was cut open at one point.

“How…” BEEPBEEPBEEP. I look up at Ryke, my eyes like saucers.

“You were hit with a fucking two-by-four. The doctors think there was something sharp on the board that sliced you.”

“You were given a tetanus shot,” the blue-scrub nurse assures me.

Janet says, “We can get the psychologist in here.”

Because I’ll have this scar forever. Because I’ll never be the pretty Daisy Calloway in magazine spreads or down runways. I am no longer a model.

I am no longer the person my mom aspired me to be.

But I am more me now than I was before.

I shut my eyes and lean my head back. And my heart rate—it slows. I take a deep breath. What feels like my very first one ever, and silent tears fall. A pressure so heavy begins to rise off my chest.

“It’s okay to be upset,” Janet tells me.

I open my eyes and shake my head, a weak laugh escaping. “I’m not upset.” My chin quivers. I wipe the tears and I say, “I’m relieved.” My gaze meets Ryke’s. “How sick is that?” And then I burst into tears because I know I shouldn’t feel this way.

He’s by my side in seconds, and I wrap my arms around his chest.

I didn’t realize how trapped I was until this very moment. Until something so horrifying could actually feel good.

And I know I’m partly to blame. If this doesn’t tell me that I need to stand up for myself, then I don’t think anything could.

DAISY CALLOWAY

Pain medication conks me out. It’s been a new type of sleep. Not exactly better. I always feel lethargic, drowsy, and I still ache for that perfect sleep that I used to have before the media. Luckily Ryke supplies me with an energy drink on my last day in the hospital.

I sip the Lightning Bolt! while I dig through my suitcase that he brought. The guys have already checked out of the hotel for me and gathered our stuff.

“Did you call your agency?” Ryke asks.

“Yeah, I quit last night.” The final day of Fashion Week, I called Revolution Modeling Inc. and said, “I don’t want to model anymore. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else for the runway tonight. And I won’t be working for the next three weeks or in the future.” My voice wasn’t as confident or ballsy as maybe Rose’s would have been. But I look at it as a trial run for the phone call to my mom.

They asked why.

I said the biggest truth of all: “I don’t love modeling.”

No cop outs. I’ve had two days in the hospital—of quiet nights left with my endless thoughts—to come to this conclusion. My career has ended because of my face, but it should have ended so much sooner because of my health, my emotions, my happiness. It has taken a near-death experience and the end-all of modeling for me to realize this. Blaming it on the scar—it seems like the easy way to deal. I know I won’t feel better unless I do it the way I was always meant to.

I find a pair of jean shorts and a shirt that says: I’m a fucking mermaid. “How’s this?” I ask Ryke, flashing the V-neck at him.

He almost smiles, which sells it for me.

I zip up my bag. “Can you close the curtains while I change?” I give him a single look like you don’t have to leave.

His features are hard to gauge. I can’t read much behind his brooding eyes. I’ve tried not to question if he’s going to break up with me over my face. He did say, We’re going to get through this. I just wonder if he’ll be helping me as a friend or as something more.

These thoughts tear holes inside my stomach.

I guess I’m about to find out where his head is at. Connor and Lo are waiting in the rental car for us. So we’re alone for the first time since I initially woke up. I don’t think Lo is worried about leaving us together. I can tell he’s trying to trust his brother, especially after screwing up and drinking.

I also talked to Rose and Lily, stopping them before they flew out to Paris. I don’t want Lily to miss college or Rose to cancel meetings for her fashion business just to see me. It took some convincing and a two-hour argument, but I won out this time. Although, Rose made me Skype her, but I refused to show the wound beneath my bandage. I told her that she’d have a good look at it every time she saw me for the rest of my life. So she can wait a few more weeks.

I watch Ryke whip the curtain around the ceiling track, enclosing us in the room for extra privacy. I set my jeans and shirt on the

end of the bed, the hospital gown hanging on my body like a thin sack. The silence speeds my heart. Luckily I’m no longer hooked to any machines, but my shallow breath replaces the beep beep beep.