Hothouse Flower (Calloway Sisters 2)

Connor rotates a fraction to look back at Rose. “You’re five weeks along.” He just states it, not as a question.

She holds her breath. “No.”

He frowns. “Seven?”

She shakes her head once.

He looks fucking pissed. He rubs his lips to hide the emotion, but I see the hurt and anger pulsing in his eyes. “Eight weeks?”

She glares. “Ne me regardez pas comme ça.” Don’t look at me like that.

They glance at me with agitation, realizing I understand them now.

Rose sighs heavily, reaching for her water.

“What’d they say?” Lily asks.

“I’m not getting into it,” I tell her.

Rose says, “You’re mad, Richard, that you were off on your numbers. I’m sorry you weren’t right—”

“No, darling,” Connor tells her with conviction. “I’m upset because it took you this long to talk about it. I thought you would have conceded a month in.”

“How long have you known?” she asks quietly.

“When you had a flat tire, I was almost positive. Your GPS was set to the gynecologist, and you purposefully had a fight with me the next day so I’d sleep on the couch. I figured the doctors confirmed what you already knew, and you were too stubborn and afraid to tell me.”

Lo frowns and looks at Lily. “You knew?” She had been in the car with Rose.

She nods, her shoulders turned into her body. “Moral support.”

Connor glances at Lily cautiously before setting his gaze back on his wife.

Rose sits stiffly, and her chin trembles. “This wasn’t the plan. I’m not thirty-five yet.”

The waitress returns, cutting into possibly the most bizarre way a pregnancy can be announced. At a Mexican restaurant. With a tequila shot standoff. In French.

“Ready to order?” she asks.

“We need like ten minutes,” Daisy tells her.

She nods, her eyes lingering on Daisy’s scar before she disappears. I can’t tell if the waitress recognizes us or not, but Daisy ends up resting her head against my arm. I comb my fingers through her hair.

“You’re not aborting the baby,” Connor tells Rose.

“I know,” she retorts, fire coming back to her eyes. “You want a lineage. Eight kids, I remember.”

“We’re married,” he says. “We have billions of dollars. We may be young, but we can be the best parents. You just have to trust that you’ll be a great mother.”

I’ve seen Rose around kids. She’s about as maternal as a fucking brick wall, her nose curling in disdain when a baby cries or acts out. But I do know one thing—when she loves someone, she invests her whole fucking heart and time into them.

After a long stretch of silence, Rose says softly, “I thought about getting rid of the baby.”

Connor’s face stays unreadable. “I know.”

She swallows hard. “Lily talked me out of it.”

Lo kisses Lily’s temple. I think we’re all glad Rose didn’t choose that option, even if she thought about it.

And I would feel worse for Connor if he didn’t already know everything beforehand.

“I just…” Rose lets out a deep breath. “I figured that I had a couple of months before my body started to really change. Two months to ignore the fact that my world is going to flip upside down and a creature is going to grow inside of me. Give me that.”

He smiles. “I did, darling.”

“So,” Lo says, holding his water, “how exactly do two geniuses accidentally get pregnant?” He sips his drink in amusement.

Rose starts putting her frizzy, wet hair in a sleek pony. “Why don’t you answer this one, Richard? You’re friends with Satan’s spawn.”

Lo laughs. “I think you’ve mistaken me for the ‘creature’ growing inside you.”

Connor raises his hand to quiet them. Rose looks ready to pelt my brother with the contents of her purse. There’s probably a canister of pepper spray in there.

“We have unprotected sex,” Connor announces.

Rose points at me at this. Fuck. “You better be wearing a condom with her.”

My face hardens. I already told her I’d be safe with Daisy. They all need to chill the fuck out. “That’s none of your fucking business, Rose.”

Daisy ends up saying it anyway, just to appease her sister. “I’m on birth control.”

“So was I,” Rose snaps. “And I never missed a day.” She prides herself on this fact.

“Then what the fuck happened?” I ask, extending my arm in confusion.

“Birth control is only ninety-nine percent effective,” Connor says. “We’re, of course, in the one-percent.”

Rose smacks him on the arm for that comment, and he grabs her wrist and kisses her deeply. She melts. I stop fucking watching.

And then I meet eyes with my brother, with Lo. He has his arm wrapped around Lily, and even with the news, he looks more at peace now, in this moment, than he did three days ago.

“So you know French,” he says to me.

“Yeah, I know French.”

Connor holds Rose’s hand on the table, and he nods to me. “Where’d you learn?”

“Tutors as a kid, like you and Rose.”

“I taught myself, actually,” Connor says with a million-dollar grin.

Lo claps slowly. “Congratulations, love.”

Connor only smiles wider, and I share it as well, surprisingly.

Lily perks up. “I’ve learned some French too.” She clears her throat. I think we’re all laughing internally, not at her, just fucking with her. She’s goofy as hell. In a more American accent, she says, “Comment allez-vous?” How are you?

Connor replies with a genuine smile, “Je ne pourrais pas être plus heureux.” I couldn’t be happier.

Rose relaxes into Connor’s body. And Lily looks really fucking confused. He’s already lost her.

Daisy slides her misshapen pumpkin napkin over to me. I squeeze her hand beneath the table. And for a brief second, I think about after California, after my climb. Back in Philly. Her parents… it doesn’t seem like they should be a big roadblock. I’m twenty-five. But your family doesn’t just leave when you become an adult. They’re a part of you forever.

I add to the whole table, “Je serais génial, mais je sais ce qui me fait toujours obstacle.” I would be great, but I know what still stands in my way.

Lo claps again. “Color me impressed,” he tells me. He turns to Lily. “You’re almost fluent, love.”

She punches him in the chest, and he mock winces, acting like it hurt. They’re both smiling.

My eyes flicker up to Connor, who stares at me with understanding and more compassion.

He says, “Tout ira bien, mon ami.” Everything will be fine, my friend.

Connor has said that he doesn’t believe in magic, but his words hold a possession all on their own, filling me with serenity, a temporary calmness, that I am grateful to have before my climb.

Everything will be fine, my friend.

I nod a couple times.

Everything will be fine.

DAISY CALLOWAY

California.

We’ve made it. The national park is beautiful, and I’d revel in the atmosphere of Yosemite on any other day, but it’s hard when we’re in the brush, a giant rock looming one hundred feet in front of us. El Capitan is larger than Devils Tower. More ominous. But it does have a kinder name.

The sun isn’t even out yet. It’s 5 a.m. and Ryke plans to start climbing in the dark with a headlamp. He wants to climb three routes in under twenty-four hours. It’s going to take endurance, strength and a dose of luck. It’s that luck part that I’m worried about. Everything else—I know he’ll ace.

Ryke talks to a park ranger at the base of El Capitan, nodding a few times. He ties his bag of chalk around his waist.

I pluck yellow weedy flowers by my feet in the brush, twisting the stems to make a crown. Every time I

look up at Ryke, my heart thuds. I’ve never been this anxious for someone else before.

Rose slaps her arm and curses out the mosquitos. She sits on a wooden bench behind me.

“I told you not to wear perfume, darling,” Connor says casually, sitting beside her.

Rose gives him a look. “I’m not going to sacrifice smelling good for stupid flies.” She swats another away.

“You smell good without it.”

She narrows her eyes. “It’s Chanel. If I don’t wear it, I feel like half of myself is missing.”

Lo sits on top of a picnic table beside the bench, Lily’s head on his lap as she sleeps. “That’s because you mask your bitch scent,” he says. “And your soul leaves when it realizes it’s inhabited the wrong host.”

“And I’m sure your brain cells fried coming up with that insult,” she refutes.