Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters 3)

I beeline for the bathroom.

“Rose,” Lily calls, struggling to keep up with my vigorous pace. “I need you to take me to the doctor’s. I’m not feeling well.”

“Nice try, Lily,” I say. I am on the hunt.

“I told you this would never fucking work! Rose can sniff out a predator a mile away!” Loren shouts from the hallway, which means someone else is in my bathroom…or my closet. I veer towards my closet instead.

“I’m not a predator,” Lily tells him, drawing away from me and towards her husband.

“Of course not, love.” His voice softens for my sister.

I swing open the closet door. Ryke, of all people, is crouched beside my extensive rack of heels, searching behind them. I clear my throat, and he stands, not even trying to hide the fact that he has been digging through my belongings.

“What are you doing?” I place my hands on my hips.

He scratches his unshaven jaw. “I was looking for something.”

My brain circumnavigates to the sex tapes, to the diamond collar. “My sex toys?”

“Fuck no.” He grimaces, eyeing the exit behind me like he plans to leave without offering me a single answer.

I lock the door, imprisoning us both, and I even stand guard. “Spill.”

He saunters forward, only a foot from me, and he tries to reach behind me for the knob. “Move, Rose.”

“You’re the one who’s been snooping in my personal things.”

“Is someone going to help me here?!” he calls to his allies on the other side.

Lily jimmies the knob. “It’s locked!”

Ryke looks down at me again. He won’t physically push me aside. I’ve never seen him manhandle a woman unless it’s playfully or flirtatiously. This falls in neither category.

“You give me the truth,” I say, “and I open the door. It’s not so hard, is it?”

“I was looking for your husband’s cocaine stash,” he says bluntly. “Is that what you wanted to fucking hear?”

No.

Shock, from being caught, washes over me before I can shroud a trace of it. The other Celebrity Crush article this week centered on Connor dropping a little baggie of white powder, photographed picking it up. It was powdered sugar, but Walter took a wide shot, the substance up for interpretation.

Ryke reads my uneasy features. “For fuck’s sake, Rose, are you doing it with him too?”

“No. And he only did it once,” I lie, spinning on my heels and trying to unlock the door quickly. I fumble with even turning the knob, Ryke putting pressure on me as he hovers close, his stance carrying too much doubt.

“Are you sure it was just once?” he asks.

“Yes, I saw him.”

“What if he has a fucking problem, Rose?”

I finally free myself from the closet with Ryke. “You’ve all tried it before. He doesn’t need your concern. He’s twenty-six.”

“I don’t care if he’s fifty-five,” Ryke retorts. “We’re fucking worried. You both are acting unusual—”

“We are not.” I begin to clean my disorderly room, fixing the pillows so they’re not turned sideways, shutting the crooked nightstand drawer. Lily and Lo linger in the doorway, his hand slipping down her pajama pants.

I’m not even joking.

Rooms. There are rooms for these things (and not my room), but when it comes to teasing Lily, Loren rarely cares about the location.

“You dyed your hair orange for a day,” Ryke says. “That’s not fucking strange to you?”

“Blonde,” I say. “It was supposed to be blonde.”

That Celebrity Crush article about my hair was horrendous. They said that I was trying to be like Daisy, grasping at my youth since I’ve had a child. Some people cited it as a mental break. I change my hair color once, and I’m losing my mind. Daisy can change her hair color every other week and she’s expressing herself.

It’s unjust.

“Connor went down on you in a fucking parking lot.”

I stop midway to my curtains that are creased incorrectly. I rotate to face him and our chests collide. I refuse to step back first, and unfortunately, he stands his ground too, his features darkening like what the fuck is going on?

“And you go down on my littlest, most precious sister on our roof.” I point a finger at his chest, hoping he’ll take one step back. He does not. “I could’ve castrated you for even waving your dick around her, you know. You’re my age.” I bring up old news to thwart the current event.

His jaw hardens. “Thank you for not castrating me.” I wait for him to say I like fucking your sister just to piss me off, but I forget that he’s not Loren. “And you’re right—it shouldn’t be strange that you’re doing things that the rest of us do or have tried once. I guess none of us thought you two would be so…” His brows pinch, unable to find the word.

“Wild,” I answer for him.

“Yeah.”

I return my course to the curtains. I think I did really well, even without Connor’s assistance. “I thought you don’t read tabloid articles.” I wonder how he read this headline. “And you rarely believe anything inside of them. Unless you really have been in a three-way relationship with Lily and your brother?”

“Fuck no.” He follows me to the curtains. “Daisy saw the article first, and she asked me if I knew that Connor did cocaine. I asked Loren, who asked Lily, and we were all just confused. Look, I didn’t want to fucking believe it, but some photographs can’t be taken out of context. I couldn’t spin this any other way.”

“He was picking up drugs for a friend. How about that one, Ryke?” I stop by the window, straightening the chic, light-blue fabric that matches my bedspread.

“Is that true?”

“No,” I say, “but you could’ve just asked us.”

“Addicts lie,” Lily chimes in from the doorway, her face flushed from Loren’s groping. He’s just holding her around the waist now and whispering in her ear.

I smooth a crease in the curtain. “The only thing Connor is addicted to is his own monstrous ego.” I glance at the window for a brief second, movement outside causing me to do a double take. Is that…? I edge closer until my legs touch the wall.

“Guys!” Daisy calls, bounding into my bedroom with wet hair. Ryke rotates abruptly, his body tensing, but Daisy is fast approaching, unharmed. She squeezes past Lily and Lo. “After I finished taking a shower,” she exclaims quickly, “I looked out the window and I saw—”

“What is he doing?” My eyes sear holes through the window. In freshly plowed snow, Connor treks along the street, wearing a black winter coat, a blue-wrapped present in hand.

Loren knocks into my shoulder, trying to peer down below. “Did he say something to you?” No. Lily worms her way between us, her nose nearly touching the glass. There’s not room for all five of us, not until Ryke lifts Daisy onto his shoulders, his body squished on my right.

Connor veers towards the gorgeous stone house with manicured hedges and circular driveway. Scott’s house. “He better be gifting Scott rat poison,” I announce. Why wouldn’t he ask me to join him? I recall last time—where I couldn’t bottle my emotions. Where all of us went off the hinges. All of us but him.

“I bet it’s road kill,” Lo guesses. “Maybe a dead armadillo.” That’s something that Lo would’ve done to frighten Scott.

I can’t picture Connor mimicking Loren’s actions. I draw another blank. He’s hiking up the driveway to Scott’s front door.

> Daisy has both palms to the glass. “I bet it’s a fuck you cupcake.”

Ryke holds her legs affectionately and stares up at her. “Cute, Calloway.”

Their exchange pulls my mind to that night again, when Scott planted vicious seeds of misery in our heads. “Daisy,” I begin, “did you ever sleep with someone named Trent?” I question how much bullshit Scott was spewing our way.

Daisy opens her mouth and closes it, uneasy since she’s sitting on Ryke’s shoulders.

Ryke glowers at me. Their relationship is ultimately the most private of everyone’s in the house. I don’t know how much they tell each other or what they share. “You can’t ask her that, Rose.”

“She’s my sister,” I refute.

“And she’s my fucking girlfriend,” he retorts. “You don’t need to know who she’s slept with.” He knows the truth. He knows the truth before me. That’s so backwards.

Where is the sisterly loyalty? I try to swat away the reality: that we’re all just a little bit closer to our men than we are each other. This was always going to happen, Rose. I know, but I thought we had more time still.

“It was a really long time ago, and I don’t remember a lot,” Daisy finally answers. “So hey, I figure it barely counts, right?”

“What do you mean—you don’t remember?” I’m ready to shed my protective armor and fling it on my sister. Loren and Lily have pried their gazes off the window and onto Daisy too. Ryke is the only one who seems caught up.

“I drank a lot of champagne. It was after a modeling thing. It really doesn’t matter.” She shrugs this off, her gaze drifting back to outside. “Hey, he’s at the house!”

Her distraction works. Across the street, Connor rings the bell. Seconds pass before Scott opens the door. I can’t discern small details, but I catch Scott’s trademark smile, smug and pompous. After a quick exchange, I expect Connor to shove the present in his chest and leave.

Instead, Scott swings the door wider, welcoming Connor inside. He nods and disappears within the confines of that house, the door shutting closed.

“What the hell,” Lo says, stunned.

“Connor is probably threatening him,” Lily nods a couple times.