Addicted
Page 25
“I haven’t had sex since I was with you. I’m trying to make it till the New Year.”
I nodded in encouragement. “That’s great. I just don’t know what you could want from me, then.” In retrospect, it was a horribly insecure thing to say, but I couldn’t see past our sexual history to what else might become of us.
“Here’s what I want, Mischa. Tonight, I want to kiss you good night. And then next week, I want to take you on a proper date. And then I want to keep doing that. And we can get to know each other that way, with our clothes on. And then, hopefully, you’ll see who I really am and hopefully it won’t scare you. And as hard as it might be, we won’t have sex for a while. What do you think about that?” Liam flashed the most brilliant smile I had ever seen, and I matched it.
“Umm…” My mind was all over the place. I could hardly think straight enough to answer. “I would like that,” I finally said. “I just… I’m in a really good place right now, and I don’t want to mess it up.”
“I don’t want to mess it up either.” He pulled me toward him and gave my forehead a sweet little peck.
“No, but seriously,” I insisted, trying to keep my wits about me as his magnetic pull worked its magic.
“I know, I know,” he said. “Same with me. Listen, if it’s not good, we cut bait. It’s as easy as that.”
I nodded. “Right. It feels good to be realistic about things every once in a while.”
“Doesn’t it?” He laughed, then pointed behind me, up at the sky. “Look! Do you see that? I swear that was a shooting star.”
I turned to look but saw nothing. “Huh, no.”
“Or a comet. Or a meteor shower. I don’t know, but it was definitely something. We should make a wish,” he said.
“Hey! We were just talking about being realistic!” I poked his chest playfully.
“Oh, c’mon.” Liam closed his eyes and moved his lips as he made a silent wish.
“Fine.” I closed my own eyes and searched my brain, only to realize that I had nothing to wish for in that moment. As I reopened my eyes and saw Liam standing before me, I felt woozy with affection. I figured his sudden reemergence into my life wasn’t going to fully sink in for quite some time, but I wanted to revel in the newness of this moment for as long as I could. I drifted a little closer to him, and he leaned in to kiss me. As our lips met, the thrill of a thousand kisses flooded the synapses in my brain. Liam’s hands found my waist as I reached up for his shoulders, and he leaned me backward as if he were about to dip me. I felt like the movie star version of myself. When our lips finally parted and our tongues met, everything was soft and sweet and perfect.
If someone were to hit a pause button on my life at that very moment, asking me to describe how I felt, I would have said something terribly melodramatic and clichéd, but it would have been true. I would have told them I felt like I was “walking on air” or like I had been “set free.” I would have explained all the future plans that were running through my head, the things I wanted to do and see with Liam and all the late-night conversations I envisioned us having as we got to know each other with our clothes on. I would have said that for the first time since I was eight years old, everything in my life felt perfect and whole in a completely unexpected way that I couldn’t have seen coming in a million years. I would have admitted that Mimi Lamar, Sasha’s trusty psychic, had somehow diagnosed me correctly when she had said I was in love but that I didn’t know it at the time, and maybe that meant Isabella was going to get her pool boy after all.
I could also describe my state in that very moment by saying how I didn’t feel anymore—which was afraid. After twenty-two years, I had finally learned how to stand beside myself, to support myself and take comfort in my little army of one. In fact, for the first time that I could remember, I didn’t feel like somebody or something else had this crazy power over me that I couldn’t control. Whether or not things worked out with Liam, I knew it wouldn’t be the end of the world because there was no more fear of abandonment in the deepest depths of my heart. At the end of the day, I wasn’t hungry, or fragile, or wounded, or panicked. I wasn’t anxious. I wasn’t tragic. And best of all, I wasn’t lonely… not because I had Liam, but because I had me.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the beautiful and brilliant Rebecca Friedman for your guidance and friendship and to the lovely Michele Bidelspach for taking a chance on me and helping shape this book.
Thanks to my friends and family for your endless support and comic relief. And to anyone who’s ever struggled with addiction or loved someone who has, thank you for making the world a better place by sharing your stories.
About the Author
Amelia Betts was born in the South, where she grew up on soap operas, sugar cereal, and Judy Blume. She learned the thrill of the secret crush when her older sisters started bringing boys home, and has been a hopeless romantic ever since. She now resides, and dreams up happily ever afters, in Los Angeles, California.
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Contents
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
; Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Amelia Betts
Cover design by Rebecca Lown
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-1-4555-9297-5 (ebook edition)
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