Addicted for Now (23 page)

{ 24 }

LILY CALLOWAY

The door opens and I don’t move, don’t breathe,
don’t speak. I want to disappear from this chair, this country, this planet.

Lo walks in front of my view of the balcony ledge, where I
had literally considered testing my ability to fly. He’s shirtless, but not
even the curve of his abs could entice me right now. He remains a few feet away
from me, not closing the distance that draws tension like a black hole.

I finally look up to meet his gaze, my body numbing.

His eyes have become glassy, and he grips the railing behind
him for support. On a normal occasion, before rehab and before recovery, he’d
be sweeping me up into his arms. I’d wrap my legs around his waist and wish for
sex to take away my humiliation, to remind myself that I’m good at something.
I’m not worthless or alone. With every thrust and every climax, I’d be gone.

But now, the thought of doing that drives a hammer into my
heart. I know with certainty that it’s wrong. I wonder if he’s keeping
distance, afraid of that path that I might choose for us.

I don’t want it.

So I say, “I don’t want sex.” Tears gather in my eyes. “I
just want you to hold me.”

They are magic words.

In one quick motion, he is in front of me and then I’m in
his arms and on his lap. He blankets me with his body, wrapping his arms around
my small frame. I bury my head into his chest, the tears pooling out as he rubs
the back of my head. I feel safe here.

We sit like that for a good while, until his heart steadies
and my breathing evens. What happened feels like a failure on my part. I
screwed up and let my addiction win.

“I’m sorry,” I say softly, breaking the peaceful silence.

“You don’t need to apologize to me, Lil.”

“I feel like I let you down…let us down,” I admit. “We’re
supposed to be getting better.”

“And there will be roadblocks and setbacks,” he tells me,
“just because you hit one doesn’t mean you let me down. If anything, I’m proud
of you for handling it like this.”

“Because the alternative is me attacking your body.”

He smiles. “Something like that, yeah.” He tucks an escaped
piece of hair behind my ear. “What did your therapist say?”

Connor must have told him more than I thought. I’m glad. It
saves me from reiterating the most embarrassing moment of my life.

“She said that I need to start coming up with ways to stop
myself from fantasizing. Like focusing on homework or American presidents.”

“Basically what every teenage boy does to avoid a hard-on.”

I frown. I didn’t think about it like that. “I guess…” Then
I shake my head. “But it doesn’t sound that simple. I understand how to stop
myself from looking at porn and from self-love, but how do I stop myself from
thinking. How does someone control that?”

“Practice,” Lo says. “I’m trying too. Believe me.”

I nod, knowing it can’t be much easier for him. At least
thinking about booze doesn’t lead to an involuntary orgasm. I flush at the
memory and groan into my hands.

“Maybe I’ll just remember the look on Connor and Rose’s
face. I think that will keep me from fantasizing about anything for the next
solid two-hundred years.”

He pulls me closer, rubbing my back soothingly, and then he
kisses my lips in one quick second, testing it out.

We’re worse together when things are out of control, and
during these moments we have to be careful. It’d be so easy to enable each
other just to make us feel better again, but being a couple also means being
intimate. Comforting someone normally involves touch—a hug, a kiss, a hand on a
leg—things that send me off the deep end. We just have to find a balance.

“How was that?” he asks.

It felt simple and right. “Good.”

“I have a question, and I want you to know that I won’t be
offended if the answer isn’t what I want it to be. I just…I’d like the truth.”

“Okay.”

He takes a small breath and then his eyes drop to my lips
again. He plants another soft kiss, longer this time. I don’t move or force it
into something else. I let him take the lead, and I don’t wish for anything more
either. What he gives me is enough.

He draws back and looks from my body to my lips to my eyes,
taking in every detail. “You okay?”

I nod again. “Just waiting for your question.”

“Right.” He takes another trained breath. “Your fantasies—who
was in them?”

“Me,” I say. “And you.”

“You answered so quickly,” he says in worry.

“That doesn’t mean I lied. I haven’t fantasized about anyone
but you since you left for rehab. You’re like…the best I’ve ever had.”

His face seems to glow at the last line, taking it as truth
and fact. As it is. His hand glides to my neck, caressing me gently. For the
first time, I feel in a different state of mind when he touches me. In part, it
has to do with my talk with Dr. Banning. I asked her what I should expect when
I see Lo, and she told me that he’d want to touch me, to comfort me. And that’s
what I have to accept it as. Not all touching leads to pleasure.

A hug is just a hug, not the pathway to sex.

This type, it’s new to me because I’ve never allowed myself
to be touched this way, at least not without the desire of it progressing to
other things.

I think I like it.

His lips press against the tender skin below my ear, and I
can feel the hesitation in his body when he pulls away. “How was that?”

“Good.”

“You don’t want anything more?”

“No,” I say sincerely, “not unless you do.”

He kisses my lips again, but this time parts them a little
with his. I don’t deepen it. I wait, and he deepens it himself, his tongue
gently slipping in. His thumb strokes the back of my neck. When he breaks the
kiss, he slowly rubs my wet bottom lip with his finger. I don’t even shudder.

I’m letting him comfort me without having sex, without the
fear of enabling me. We’re trying to be a better couple, and I think this is
what progress feels like.

His eyes glimmer with possibilities. “Is this your new
superpower, Lily Calloway?” he asks me sweetly. “I can touch you now without
feeling guilty?”

“It may not last forever.”

“Then I’ll enjoy it for now.”

For now
.

I like that too.

{ 25 }

LILY CALLOWAY

We remain on the patio to watch the sun set. The
only time someone disturbs us is when Rose comes out to ask if we want anything
from room service for dinner. I fear that they’re only eating-in because
they’re nervous to leave us alone, but I don’t question her about it. Instead,
I tell her to order us a couple burgers, and then she slips back inside.

Lo still has his arms wrapped around me as I sit on his lap.
The sun fades into different shades of oranges and yellows. The opulence must
spark my memory. “I forgot to ask how your run went,” I say.

“Oh…that.” His tone is dry and edged, not at all what I was
expecting.

I swivel a little so I can see his face. He’s glaring at the
sky. The pretty sky. This can’t be good. “What happened?”

He grimaces. “I feel like if I say it out loud it will come
true. Can you try to inherit some telepathy in the next five minutes?”

“I can try to guess.”

“That doesn’t sound like a fun game either.”

I narrow my eyes at him and try to put the pieces together. He
was on a run, a perfectly normal run, with Ryke, Melissa, and…oh shit.

“Daisy. What did she do?” My little sister has a habit of
seeking danger. I know I land on the right answer because tiny stress-wrinkles
crease his forehead. It takes him a quick minute to tell me about the bartering
on the beach, but when he finishes, he doesn’t look relieved.

“There’s something else, isn’t there?”

“Yeah, and it’s the part that makes me want to jump off this
balcony.” He stops before spoiling the news, which only makes me curious and
nervous.

“Are you going to tell me?”

He lets out a long sigh and rubs his eyes in slight
distress. “I don’t even know what to call it, Lil. There’s so many words for
it, but none of them really describe the situation. Inappropriate and fucked up
are my favorite ones though.”

I frown. “Are we still talking about Daisy?”

“And Ryke.”

His eyes flicker to mine, taking in my reaction as he lets
this sink in.

“Wait, what?” It can’t be what I think. That was all in my
mind, wasn’t it?

“Daisy had cash in her bikini top,” Lo says. “Ryke made some
offhanded comment about it and it led to…other comments.” His jaw tightens at
the memory and then his eyes land back on me. “Why the fuck are you smiling? I
just told you that my half-brother was flirting with your little sister.”

I press my lips together, to try and hide it, but I soon
surrender to the fact that I’m happy. “Do you know how long I’ve thought it was
all in my head?”

This doesn’t amuse him. In fact, he straightens up like he’s
ready to go assault his brother. “
How
long?”

I put my hand on his chest to calm him. “January…but I
didn’t want to worry you if it wasn’t true.”

He lets out an angry breath.

“Do you know how many times Ryke has called me a pervert?” I
continue. “I thought this was just another illusion from my dirty mind, like I
was interpreting something out of nothing and making it all up.”

“You’re not. Now move past that achievement and bring
yourself down to my level.” He turns his body a little more, so that we’re
looking straight on at each other. “My twenty-two-year-old brother is flirting,
apparently not deliberately—I’m not even sure how that fucking happens—with
your sixteen-year-old sister.” He waits for it to sink in.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, shit. So what are we going to do? I’m worried that
your sister is going to like him in a bad way. I mean, most girls are like
babbling fools around Ryke. The fact that she’s not…I can’t even.” He runs a
hand through his hair. “All I’m saying is that Ryke is smart enough
not
to make a move on her, but Daisy
probably doesn’t know any better.”

 
“I’ve already talked
to her.” On numerous occasions, but she keeps saying the same thing to me. “She
knows that she can’t do anything with him. And…” I snap my fingers at the
realization. “Ryke brought Melissa here, so he is clearly putting off the right
signals.” Showing up on vacation with a girl screams “taken” and should let
Daisy know not to act on her feelings, if she does have any that extend beyond
a friendship.

I kind of hope we’re blowing this all out of proportion and
no chemistry really exists there. Because they have to know that nothing can
ever happen.

Our mother would be more than just furious if she learned
that Daisy even had a crush on Ryke Meadows. For one, his age. And two, he’s the
spawn of Sara Hale. After the separation between Jonathan and Sara, my parents
chose a side—Team Jonathan all the way. And with our mother’s incredibly high
standards, I can see her wanting something more for Daisy. Something better.

Someone as affluent as Connor Cobalt or Loren Hale. Someone
that has more to offer than a trust fund inherited out of a quiet divorce and
hurt feelings.

Lo tilts my chin so that I meet his eyes and come back to
the present, pulled straight from my thoughts. “Then Ryke needs to stop
ditching Melissa for Daisy,” Lo tells me. “I’ll have another conversation with
him…when I’m not picturing tearing his head off his shoulders.” His jaw locks
at another thought. “He’s older. He has to be the one to take responsibility.”

“Can you blame him though?” The words tumble out of my mouth
before I can catch them. I’m so not used to defending Ryke Meadows, but being
in his company for three months maybe opened me up to his ways.

My eyes widen, and Lo looks equally shocked by the words. “Explain,”
he says.

“Well, it’s just…” I stumble. “Daisy is a high fashion
model. She’s always around older people, and she doesn’t look sixteen. She has
a career. She makes money and travels the world. Sometimes she acts her age,
sure, but most of the time she’s basically twenty.” There are moments where I
even feel younger than her. I’m less worldly, less cultured, and less
experienced (not sexually but for everything else, sure). “I can understand how
that might be confusing for someone who’s attracted to her.”

Lo presses his hands to his face, more distressed than I’ve
seen him in a long while, at least in moments that don’t involve craving booze.
“That word, don’t say that word.”

“What?”

“
Attracted
.”

Oh. “I think my fear is that the more we keep telling them
to stop, the more they’ll just do it to spite us.” And what if nothing’s there
but friendship and we involuntarily push them together. “…like two rebellious
teenagers or something.”

He groans. “She is a
teenager
.” He drops his hands and lets out another breath. “This is so
fucked up.”

I smile at this and nudge his side. “Doesn’t it feel good to
not be the only ones?”

He meets my gaze with a tilt of his head, and his lips try
hard not to rise. “No, I like being alone on the
fucked up
island with you.” He nuzzles his nose into the crook of
my neck. I laugh, a sound that I didn’t think possible an hour ago, and he responds
with two light kisses on my collarbone.

“So what do we do?” he asks me, intertwining his fingers
with mine. I appraise our hands for a moment, trying to come up with a plan.

“Maybe…maybe we just keep them separated for the rest of the
vacation. Or try to.”

“But what about when we go home? What do we do about them
then?”

“How many times are they really around each other?” Daisy
has school, and modeling occupies most of her time. Without her knowing about
my sex addiction, she’s invited to less and less outings with our group.
Sometimes I imagine telling her, but I don’t think it will improve our
relationship. And that’s what I’m trying to repair.

“Then we have a plan.”

He extends his palm like we’re closing a business deal. As I
go in for the shake, he drops his hand and plants a surprise kiss on my lips.
It takes me aback, but it sends little happy flutters in my stomach. The kiss
lasts longer than the others as he cups the back of my head and gently opens my
mouth with his. I feel the brush of his tongue and more flapping fills my
belly.

He edges back after a moment and I curl up in his arms. One
thing is certain.

Surprise kisses are the best.