Hothouse Flower

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RYKE MEADOWS

She looks over her shoulder, startled by my voice, her face illuminated by the moon. She never anticipated on being found. Drawing attention—that’s not her fucking ploy. Every time she runs off, she does it alone, and I’ve always feared the one time where she won’t return, floating dead on the surface of a lake, an ocean, a river.

Not tonight.

Not fucking ever.

I climb off my bike, anger darkening my features and tensing my muscles. Her father has been paranoid since we arrived back in Philly. He put a GPS locator in her bike. One call to him, and I found out she decided to ride to Carnegie Lake.

“Hey,” she says like she’s window shopping at a mall. She smiles and spins around so her back faces the lake, but she dangerously sticks more of her heels off the ledge. “The question is: backflip or frontflip?” She wags her eyebrows.

“Neither,” I snap. “Get the fuck down.” I rarely tell her no, but I remember when I chaperoned her sixteenth birthday. That cliff in Acapulco. I screamed at her, veins popping in my fucking neck, telling her to stop.

There are some things so dangerous that death looks more probable than life. That’s when I’ll grab her. That’s when I’ll try to force her down.

“I’ve jumped from this before,” she says with a shrug. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” I tell her. “The water levels are fucking low.” The only reason I know this is Connor Cobalt—a throwaway comment a few days ago about the Princeton row competition being canceled because of shallow waters.

“The danger,” she says theatrically, her mouth curving upward.

I climb onto the fucking ledge next to her, and she stiffens at my presence, some of the humor exiting her face.

“What?” I snap. “You jump, I jump. That’s how this works, Dais. So you want to break your leg, split open your head, you’re going to do the same to me. Can you fucking handle that?”

Her eyes flicker from the water to me. And her voice turns into a whisper, no more games, no more jokes, she says, “Just let me go.”

My body runs cold. “Do you want to die?” I question. I’ve asked her this once before, after Acapulco. She never answered me, but I knew it anyway. This light inside of her dims if you watch closely enough, and she’s searching and searching for something to ignite her spirit, a power to keep her alive.

She stares into my hard gaze, where I never go easy on her, and tears well in her eyes.

“You know what you fucking are?” I ask, edging closer, my hand dropping to her waist.

She shakes her head, and our boots knock together, but we both maintain balance.

I reach out, and I hold her cheek with the scar. “You’re a hothouse flower,” I tell her. “You can’t grow under natural conditions. You need adventure. And security and love in order to stay alive.”

Her shoulders tense and her collarbones jut out from the thin straps of her tank top, barely breathing. She is suffocating. And she’s looking for a way to relieve that pressure. An adrenaline rush is a temporary fix. She needs something more.

“Explode,” I tell her, still cupping her face.

She frowns at me. “What?”

“Let it out,” I say. “Scream.”

She shakes her head like that’s impossible, like what will that help? “I just want…” She blows out a breath from her lips. I can see that pressure bearing down on her, trapping her. She wants to fucking jump so badly. My hand tightens on her waist.

“I can’t fucking hear you,” I growl.

Anger flickers in her eyes. Good.

“Get fucking angry, Daisy. Be something. YELL!”

She opens her mouth but no sound comes out.

I push her harder by saying, “You can’t talk to your sisters because you’re so fucking afraid of causing a scene, but there’s something inside of you that wants to get out.” I point at her heart. “There’s something in there, and if you don’t burst, it’s going to fucking tear you apart.”

She breathes heavily. “Stop.”

“It fucking hurts, doesn’t it?!” I shout at her.

She cringes, and her eyes start to redden.

“Why are you holding back? No one’s fucking here but you and me!” My hand slides to the small of her back. “Stop pretending to be fine when all you really want to do is fucking scream?!”

Her chest collapses. I almost have her there.

“Do it!” I shout, my blood pumping. I’m in her face, not letting her dodge this, not letting her give up on herself. “Finally, for the first time in your fucking life, let go!”

And then she grabs onto my shoulders, and I feel her body before I hear her voice. How she has to clutch onto me, how she has to brace herself to something fucking sturdy. Her scream pierces my ears, the most powerful fucking thing in the universe. The pain and ache rip through her yell.

She jostles me, shaking me like she’s shaking the entire fucking world. And I support both of us on the ledge, careful and attentive so we don’t fall.

For another full minute, she releases everything she’s buried inside, and then she crumbles into my arms. I hold her upright, brushing the hair off her face. And her green eyes meet mine, drained but light. So fucking light.

I don’t say anything.

I just kiss her, breathing more life into her body. On a ledge. A shallow lake below. She responds by clutching the back of my head, her fingers tightening in my hair. Her body curves towards mine, and I inhale, wrapped in the heat of her skin and the beat of her heart, pounding against my chest.

We’re not there for long before a car rolls to a stop in front of us. A concerned stranger opens his door, but I keep kissing her. And her lips rise into a smile, not breaking apart just yet.

“Hey,” the man yells, “the water is too shallow!” He squints and gets a good look at us. “Are you two crazy?” He shakes his head and climbs back in his car.

Daisy’s lips leave mine, and a gorgeous fucking smile overtakes her face. Her light restored. Powered up and fucking charged.

My hothouse flower that I will always keep alive.

“We are pretty crazy,” she whispers to me.

I mess her hair with a rough hand, the blonde strands tangled wildly, and I remember what Sully said awhile back about her being fun and me being fucking moody. “Yeah? Maybe our kids will be crazy like us.”

She gasps playfully. “You want to make babies with me?”

I answer by kissing her with a strong force, and she runs her hands through my thick hair. I lift her in my arms and bring her off the ledge, to safety. And back home.