Addicted for Now (14 page)

My mouth opens in surprise. I didn’t ever think she was
worried about that. I didn’t even believe it could be an option. I love her
beyond the great sex. “Lil—”

She interjects quickly, throwing up her hands. “What if I
can’t ever give you a blow job?” she asks, a little hysterical now. “I mean,
what if that’s on the blacklist? That’s not right, Lo! You have needs too!”

I’m grinning and trying so hard not to laugh. It’s probably
shitty that my smile has spread to new proportions, but I can’t help it. Not
when she’s freaking out over
this.

“This isn’t funny!” she shouts, but her lips start to rise,
mimicking mine. “
Stop
. I’m being
serious.”

“I’m sorry.” I can’t even pretend to sound apologetic, nor
can I stop smiling. “It’s just cute.” She blushes, and it only makes me want to
gather her in my arms and cage her against the couch. To take her right there.
She would love that.

“Okay, well…I’m giving you a blow job after this then,” she
demands.

That
almost
gets
me hard. I have to think about something else. Like the fact that Allison is
sitting right here. “How about I let you know when I want one,” I rephrase. I’ve
read the blacklist, and while it doesn’t exclude blow jobs, it does have
certain stipulations. In fact, I think Lily would be genuinely surprised by
what it actually says.

Lil narrows her eyes. “You’re just going to keep telling me
later
until later becomes a year.”

“Within the week,” I say, my eyes lighting up. Only with my
girlfriend do I have to basically negotiate her out of giving me head.

Her forehead wrinkles, like it does when she’s thinking
hard. After a moment, she looks to me and nods. “Deal.”

Allison pipes in. “That’s good, really good. You two are
communicating very well with each other and letting your voices be heard. What
I want you both to work on is getting your sex lives to a point where they
don’t interfere with relationships, school, jobs, or even daily activities. I
know in the past you two had a very active sexual routine.”

Active
doesn’t
describe what we were doing. When we both were in the lowest of the low, we
rarely even left the bedroom. It was an all-consuming affair. Waking up.
Drinking. Fucking. Sleeping. Occasionally eating. It was both the best and
worst time of my life.

“I think you’re each ready to make a change,” Allison
continues. “And that begins now.”

{ 13 }

LILY CALLOWAY

After my Stats exam, I get another inflammatory
text. This time Unknown has become a little more creative and called me a tramp
and
a cocksucker. It’s a little
ironic that I just begged Lo in therapy to let me give him head. But other than
that, these texts are starting to unravel me. Whoever said that sticks and stones
will break bones but words never hurt have obviously never been teased or insulted.

We’re meeting Connor today to talk about the private
investigator’s discoveries. I planned to bring up the new messages with Lo and
Connor, but after the Mason incident in the parking deck, I don’t think
revealing my texts will do anything other than enrage Lo. And I don’t want him
to Hulk Smash anything or drive him to drink. Hopefully Connor has a better
lead on the guy and we can figure out what he wants.
 

I throw my backpack onto my bed and rush to the bathroom,
needing to at least fix my hair before we leave. When I swing the door open, I
find Lo by the sink, twisting the cap onto a pill bottle. It must be Antabuse.
He told me he was taking meds that will make him sick if he drinks alcohol. I’m
more proud of him than he knows.

“You ready?” I ask, trying not to make the pills a big deal.
I look into the mirror and nearly die at my hair. I pulled an all-nighter to
memorize those old exam questions. Taking a shower dropped on my priority list.
My hair is greasy and flat and looks kind of gross.

“Just about.” Lo opens the medicine cabinet and grabs a
stick of deodorant. I make a bold decision and turn on the sink faucet. Then I
lean over the marble edge, trying my best to stick my head in the basin and
underneath the surge of water.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lo asks as he simultaneously
rolls the stick under his armpits. He’s shirtless, and I really can’t stare too
long.

“Washing my hair,” I tell him. I pull some wet strands
through my fingers, and I’m about to squirt some hand soap into my palm.

“That’s not shampoo,” Lo says quickly.

“What are you, the soap police? It’ll work.” I reach for the
bottle again.

“Wait,” he says. I lift my head up a bit and move some sopping
strands out of my face. He fumbles around in the shower and then closes the
glass door on his way out, a bottle of Herbal Essence in his clutch. I hold out
my hand while twisting my neck to avoid dripping all over the counter.

“You’re going to create a tsunami in here,” he says, pushing
me back to the sink. My stomach hits the edge of the counter, and I bend again,
losing sight to my wall of hair. Then I feel his hands on my head, rubbing the
shampoo into my scalp. Oh.

This feels nice.

His fingers knead in and out, running up and down, and even
pressing against the back of my neck. I never thought that a head massage could
feel so damn good.

I stifle a moan, but the pleasured noise escapes as soon as he
closes the space between us. His body melds right up against my ass. We haven’t
done anything except missionary since he returned from rehab, and I’m starting
to become paranoid that anal is on that blacklist. I want it. Right now, I
think. I’m probably in the minority of girls who enjoy that position. But I
like the tightness. It’s a different kind of climax, and I can’t deny how much
I want it to happen.

“Lo.” My voice comes out hoarse and wanting.

He scoots back from me, air replacing his body. The
rejection hurts, but I try to remember what we talked about in therapy. I have
to get a grip.

“How was your exam?” Lo asks, probably trying to distract
me.

“Not bad.” I have yet to come clean about Sebastian
supplying me with old exams. I don’t think Lo would care that I’m
semi-cheating, but I don’t think he’d approve that Sebastian is embedding me in
his scheming ways either. It’s better to avoid that conversation.

“So Sebastian is actually helping?” he asks in disbelief. He
returns his body right behind me again, and the pressure on my ass ignites wild
thoughts.

“Yeah,” I mumble. I can’t ask him for sex. He’ll say no. I
have to try and relax so he doesn’t move away, so I can revel in the fact that
this—him behind me—feels too good for words. I have to believe that this is
enough…that I don’t need more.

“So you think you passed?”

“Ummm…”
Focus.
“I
think I made an A.”

He stops massaging my head, but he doesn’t move his body off
mine. “Did you cheat?”

“What?” I squeak. I’m about to lift my head, but he puts a
hand on my back and pushes me down so I don’t drip water all over the floor.

“You did. You cheated.” His shock outweighs all other
sentiments.

“I did not!” I defend.

“Hold on.” Lo grabs a cup and fills it with water. “Close
your eyes.”

I shut them tight as he starts washing away the shampoo
suds, thick tension filling between us. It doesn’t help that his frontal area
is now grinding up against my ass.

“So what did he want in exchange for helping you cheat?” Lo
asks.

I barely process this question. I’m a terrible multi-tasker,
and right now I juggle my nefarious thoughts with rubbing soap from my eyes.
There is no room to answer him properly. “Hmm?” I spread my legs apart, not
enough that he’ll notice.

At least, I didn’t think he would.

He hooks my ankle with his foot and pins my legs back
together like it’s nothing, like this is our new routine. “Sebastian would want
something in return,” Lo says, his voice roughening as he pictures a not-so innocent
bargain.

“He’s not helping me cheat,” I say again. He pours more
water over my head, and I spit out a mouthful of soap.

“Sorry, love.” His sweetness lasts only a second when I open
my legs again and he pushes them together. “If he didn’t help you cheat, what
did he do?” Lo pauses as he wrings out my hair. “You do realize that having
someone else take the exam for you constitutes as cheating.”

“I know,” I snap. He grabs a towel and starts massaging my
scalp again. I close my eyes to bask in how it feels. Ugh, I can’t even hate
him while he does this.

He takes off the towel, and I finally stand up straight, my
hair messy and wet around my face. But at least it’s clean. Lo is still pressed
up against me, and his hands even rest along my hips. Our eyes meet through the
mirror, and I see the strength in them. “We can’t,” he says. “I’d love to fuck
you right now, but we have to leave soon for the meeting.”

I nod. It’s not a healthy time, at least not for me.

I spin around to face him fully, and he backs away from me.
Enough that my eyes drop to his pants. “How are you not hard right now?” I ask
accusingly.

“I was just washing your hair,” he says like I’m being
silly, like that simple task wasn’t sexual at all. I frown. Wasn’t it? Or was
the entire thing all in my perverted mind?

He tilts my chin with his finger, and I look back up into
his eyes. “I spent three years as your fake boyfriend,” he says. “I’ve had
practice resisting you.”

Ohhhhh. I like that answer better. I think he knows it too.
Lo leans down and kisses me deeply, filling my lungs with his breath. I grab
onto the back of his neck and reciprocate fully. We stay like that for at least
a minute, but he retracts before we can go any further.

My eyes are glued to his pink, wet lips. My brain is only
computing one thing:
Kiss. Kiss. Kiss
.

“How did you make an A? Or
think
you made an A?” he asks, popping my happy thoughts.

“Huh?” Can I play dumb? It should be easier for me,
considering I’m relatively average on the smart scale. Lo doesn’t buy it. He
gives me a look and I crumble under his penetrating stare. “You can’t tell
Rose.”

“So you
are
cheating.” He realizes that Rose wouldn’t care how I aced the exam unless I
ventured to the dark side of academia.

“Not technically…”

His brows jump. “So what…you half-cheated? What does that
even mean? You cheated on the first page but not the last?”

I hold up my hands. “Whoa, can I explain?”

“Please.”

“Sebastian gave me old exams, and I just memorized all the
answers. I didn’t bring the tests to class or copy the answers on my hand. I’m
just beating the system. There’s no harm in that.”

Lo takes a moment to process this, and just when I think
he’s going to yell at me, he asks, “What did you make on the other exams before
you did this?”

“44 and 29.” Two
horrible
grades that I didn’t think humanly possible. Actually, that’s a lie, I’ve made
a 7 on a test before—and I think the Penn professor was just being nice about
that too. I reread my exam and it sounded like a planetary alien took the test
and wrote in a different language. Honestly, the professor asked me if I was
dyslexic. I couldn’t really tell him the truth.
I’m so exhausted from all the crazy sex I’m having that I can barely
process words let alone sentences. You’re lucky I even showed up to this class,
Mister.
 

Lo is still thinking, so I add, “I’ve been getting C’s in my
other classes. Statistics is the hardest for me.”

“You’re right. It’s not really cheating,” he says. I can’t
help my smile, my face filling with glee. “But…”
 
I don’t like
buts
…scratch that, I remember that I do like
butts
with double T’s. Like my butt. His cock.

Lo waves a hand in front of my face. “Did you hear me?”

“I lost you on
but
.”

“Jesus, you really want anal sex,” he says with a grin. I
open my mouth to ask him for it, and he quickly says, “No, love. Not right
now.” Boo.

Lo continues without missing a beat, “So Sebastian gave you
old exams. What did you give him?”

“Nothing,” I say with a shrug. “He said he was doing it
because I’m Rose’s sister and…” I taper off, knowing this is where Lo will get
pissed.

“
And
…” Lo prods.

“And he told me that he doesn’t like Connor and Rose
together, and I think he may try to break up their relationship. Anyway…” I
clear my throat. “I can’t warn her about Sebastian, or else—”

“He’ll keep the exams,” Lo finishes and then nods.

Red hot shame fills me, and this doesn’t even have anything
to do with sex.

Lo says nothing more. He takes a long time to process
everything internally.

My nerves gather at his silence. “I need those exams, Lo. You
know I need them. What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” Lo mutters. He rubs the back of his neck.

I shift uneasily. “Connor is the first real friend that
we’ve ever had, and I’m standing over on Team Sebastian…unwillingly.”

“We’re going to have to think about it.” He stares hard at
the floor, plotting. “For right now, let’s just keep this between us.”

“Are you sure?”

Lo meets my gaze, recognizing the flash of guilt in my eyes.
He pulls me closer to his chest and runs a hand down the back of my head in
comfort. “Your priority is to pass this class. Try not to think about anything
else.”

“Connor—”

“He’ll be fine for now. He’s the most confident,
self-assured guy in the world. He can handle Sebastian without either of us.”

I think he’s right, but we both also know it’s not the moral
path—the one that good friends take. Being sober isn’t our only challenge.
Becoming human, functioning people in this big vast world means making
friendships and sustaining the very few that we already have.

There is no college course to “be a better friend” or “be a
less shitty human being.” Or else I would be signed up for both.

We’re selfish, in every sense of the word.

I just don’t want to fracture our friendships because of it.