I see his dark, disheveled hair, his thick eyebrows, golden tan, and the way his body is cut and ripped and lean—and I see me. Or at least what I look like without the constant light-brown hair dye.
I inherited my sharp cheekbones from my dad, but that’s it. At the end of the day, I look more like Ryke Meadows than I do Loren Hale.
“He hates that one,” Uncle Connor says.
I rotate.
My intelligent, polished uncle watches me from behind his desk. Jane’s dad has blue eyes, wavy brown hair, and he wears a tailored suit with as much confidence as he’s worth. Billions. Like my dad and Uncle Ryke, he’s in his forties, and they’re all still lauded for their good looks.
Connor Cobalt has beenPeople’sSexiest Man Alive three times in the past decade alone.
We’re waiting for Ryke and my dad to show. I typically meet them at public restaurants. But since the media frenzy about my fight and the Camp-Away, they all three decreed “office lunch” before I could protest.
And Connor was the one who reinstated the cancelled lunch. This morning he called Dalton Academy and smooth-talked the administration. No parent-teacher meeting, so here I am.
Trying not to remember about last night in my Audi.
With Farrow. I’ll start smiling like an idiot, and he’d totally call me out if he were here. The high-rise has secure entrances.So Farrow is allowed to leave and eat at the food court below, drive my Audi around—pretty much whatever he wants.
I have no clue what he chose to do, and we don’t really text. We’re both too smart to get caught by a phone or email hack.
I study the magazine again.Uncle Ryke hates this one?“Why does he hate it?” It’s a great cover. Better than most of the tabloids that slap my mom and dad on the front.
“The headline.”
I reread. “It says he’s the best in the world.”
“And he vehemently disagrees. Ryke’s humility is another limb. I’ve tried my best to amputate it in the past, but it’s never leaving.”
Humility.
I blink a couple times, my eyes growing. I’m highly aware that I’ve been called humble multiple times. My gaze starts to narrow.
Jesus.
Christ.
How many traits do I share with him?
I just leave the magazine and sit on a leather couch. Which faces a few leather chairs in his office’s lounge section. My uncle trades his desk for the chair across from me.
I pop a couple knuckles, a bad habit, but I keep eye contact with Connor. He’s all about self-confidence. Eye contact. Never cowering to any adversary, and where he has employees running into cubicles or staring slack-jawed, I’ve never been intimidated by his godly presence.
“You know my mom was on the front page ofCelebrity Crushthis morning?” My shoulders are locked. “The headline:Lily Calloway Goes Back to Her Old Wild Ways!They had a photograph of her sticking her hand down my dad’s pants. And Uncle Ryke is upset over a cover where he’s scaling a mountain during a damn sunrise.”
A bad, acidic taste drips down my throat, but I don’t look away.
I meet everything head-on.
Connor barely blinks, none of this fazing him. “Ryke was ten times more upset about the tabloid yesterday than thatNational Geographichanging in my office. That, I can assure you.”
I used to look up to Ryke as a little kid.
I used to dress like him: leather jackets, fuck-if-I-care style. I used to want tobehim. I constantly asked him to take me camping. I begged him to let me ride his motorcycle.
Then I learned about the rumors. That my mom and my dad’s half-brother slept together. That I’m actually the son of Ryke Meadows.
Idon’tbelieve those rumors. My mom has been adamant that she’s always stayed faithful to my dad. And she looks proud whenever she says, “I’ve never cheated on Lo.” A sex addict who never cheated—it’s a big deal.
