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slightly aware, blinking. But maybe it’s just my fear—of her knowing. My pulse seems to speed. Still, I continue, like I need to tell this to someone else. “And then years passed, and somehow he landed a job at Hale Co., the assistant to the marketing director. Somehow, our brief time together at Faust reached Jonathan Hale’s ears. And my life became a fucking mess with rumors and truths that Loren’s father could hang over me.”
    I’m not worried about Jonathan, not really. He’s like a barking dog that threatens but knows better than to bite. He won’t enact any kind of plot against me. His relationship with his son would be at stake, and that’s something Jonathan can’t afford to lose.
    The coffee pot beeps and Daisy drifts backwards, silent and unblinking. I stay still as though she’ll respond soon with harsh words that I’ll need to defend. She blinks once, sluggish and unaware.
    “Thanks for not judging,” I tell her. “I always knew you were one of the good ones.” When I return to the pot, I hear bare feet rush up the basement stairs. I tense and begin to pour coffee into a mug.
    “Fuck,” Ryke curses. Daisy’s twenty-six-year-old boyfriend bounds into the kitchen, wearing nothing but gray boxer-briefs, which means he jumped out of bed.
    It’s only six in the morning, so I’m not surprised that he was still sleeping and woke to find Daisy missing.
    His narrowed eyes momentarily flit to me. “You’re just fucking standing there?” He manages to quietly growl the words.
    “I’m not in the business of waking sleepwalkers,” I reply calmly. Daisy already has a history of panic attacks, and forcing her out of this type of sleep increases the likelihood of one. I assume Ryke understands this. He’s smart enough.
    Ryke ignores me and gently rests his hands on her shoulders, steering her away from the bar counter that she repeatedly knocks into. She guides him more than he’s able to guide her, and she wanders further into the kitchen, near the open space where I stand.
    She plops down on the hardwood. Ryke crouches just as she keels over into a deeper sleep. He catches her and gently rests her head on the floor before standing.
    “You could have done that ,” he tells me.
    “I preferred watching you do it. Now I’m completely positive this is a common occurrence.”
    With festering agitation, he runs his hand through his disheveled brown hair. “You could have just fucking asked like a normal person.” He’s still speaking in hushed tones while I choose to talk normally. It’s not that I don’t care about Daisy. It’s just that I don’t think changing the volume of my voice will do anymore harm than good.
    I pour coffee in the second mug. “Where’s the fun in that?”
    “This is fucking serious.”
    “Je le sais, mon ami.” I know, my friend.
    He exhales a heavy breath.
    It’s been hard to build any kind of relationship with Ryke that doesn’t include his brother or Rose’s sister at the center. Our personalities clash. He’s aggressive. I’m calm. He’s in your face. I’m out of it. He loves with all of his heart. I love sparingly, moderately or not at all.
    I can’t understand all of him the way that he can’t understand all of me. We rarely open ourselves up past conversations about Lo and Daisy, and so I have no clue how many languages he speaks, if he still talks to his mother, if he’s planning on a career outside of rock climbing.
    Of all the people in my life, I know the least about him.
    It’s mildly annoying.
    It makes me want to poke at him until he gives me something more, but I’m not entirely in the mood to rouse an agitated beast.
    “She needs to see a new therapist,” I tell him.
    His shoulders lock, but he’s not defensive. “She likes her therapist.”
    “Liking one isn’t the same as having an effective one,” I reply. “She’s not getting any better, and she has too many problems to be complacent.” Rose and I hear the same thing