“To be honest, I don’t even know my password,” Ryke tells her. “And who plans their birthday six months in advance?” Solid points. I look to Lo, wondering if he sees how cordial this conversation is—how unsexy we all are.
My heart just keeps sinking the longer I stare at his back.
Rose drums her fingers on the bar counter. “I’m not ashamed. It’s the one day of the year dedicated to me, so if three-hundred-and-sixty-four days fail to live up to my standards, I still have this one.”
“You sound like Connor,” I point out with a small smile.
She glares. “If Connor appreciated the narcissism in his own birthday that’d make sense, but he refuses to believe they’re anything more than meaningless.”
I wait for Connor to pipe in about how he won’t celebrate his birthday, but like Lo, he’s not paying attention to our discussion.
I find myself scratching my arm, and I immediately freeze in slight panic. I haven’t done that in a while. Ryke’s face hardens in that masculine concern—something I do not want to see right now. In fact, I need to stop making eye contact with him altogether. I have a new tactic: Avoid Ryke Meadows.
Rose is still drawn to the birthday topic, thankfully not noticing my strangeness. “Buy her diamond earrings,” she says.
“She’d fucking hate that.”
I stare at the bar counter while I mutter, “She’ll like anything you get her.” Daisy is pretty much the easiest person to please.
“Is there something interesting about the counter that we don’t fucking know about?” Ryke suddenly asks me.
I squint at the granite, speckles of gray, white and black. “I think if you close one eye like this…you can see a bunny rabbit.”
“Everyone is so fucking weird.”
Rose dismisses that comment with the swat of her hand. “Just wait until you have your first fight with Daisy.” She says it like she’s expecting the moment to happen. Why is she putting that thought into his head?
I lightly elbow Rose. “Don’t say that. They don’t fight.” I can’t see Daisy being that upset over a present.
“Everyone fights.”
I point my finger at Ryke, and it accidentally pokes him in the eye. Oh my God! When did he get that close to me?
“Fuck, Lily,” he curses, his hand flying to his face.
I wince. “Sorry… I was going to tell you not to fight with her.”
“I fucking got that.” He sighs with a heavy growl. “I didn’t mean to say it like that.” He drops his hand, his eye a little reddened from my attack. He glances at the basement door and then back to me. “You okay?”
“Yeah?” Do I not look okay? My heart is racing with anxiety.
If I shift a little, I can feel how soaked my panties are, and I hate, hate, hate that he was the cause. I’m not even attracted to him right now.
He suddenly walks around the bar counter, his nearness alarming me, especially as I notice Lo watching us and my reaction. Ryke clasps my wrist, prying my hand from my arm, half-moon nail indentions by my elbow. I was scratching again?
I can feel his body heat, and I instinctively hop off the stool and push him away with two firm palms, a little more aggressively than I intended.
“What the fuck?” Ryke swears.
“Just stay back,” I say, breathing heavily. I shuffle into the kitchen.
“Lily—”
“Shh. It’s better if you don’t talk of this,” I tell him. Let’s just forget my weirdness ever happened and pretend that everything is okay. Nothing is happening between Ryke and me. Nothing.
Ryke glowers. “Are you reading the fucking tabloids again?”
“Yes.” I nod. “It’s important that I’m up to date on all the rumors.” The three-ways, the I’m having Ryke’s baby ones are out of control. Lo says it doesn’t bother him, but at the hospital, I could tell that comment from the doctor dug underneath his skin. It hurt me just as much.
“That’s the stupidest fucking excuse,” he tells me. “We’re friends, Lily. That’s it. You know it. I know it. So what if the fucking world doesn’t believe us?”
“I care!” I shout. I can’t turn it off like he can. After a while, the ridicule hurts.
“You’re fucking stronger than that!” he yells back. I don’t feel it. Not today. I think Ryke just wishes I was at his level. If all of us didn’t give a shit, then he’d never have to watch us crumble.
I feel tears crest my eyes. I wish, so badly, that I could be more like him. Doesn’t he understand how much we’d all replace parts of ourselves just to have a little of what he possesses?
“Hey,” Lo cuts in, his tone not as sharp. “Leave her alone, man.”
My heart skips, and even though Lo sticks up for me, I still can’t read him. It frightens me. We’re out of sync, and I can’t remember the last time where this happened. Maybe in college, when we went without talking for a whole week and our addictions overtook our lives.
Ryke breathes heavily. “I don’t want the fucking tabloids ruining my friendship with her.”
Rose pipes in, “That’s what they’re hoping, for all of us to break apart. Little assholes…” she stares off like she’s plotting someone’s demise.
“We’re still friends,” I tell Ryke.
“Then why can’t you fucking look at me?”
I’m scared of you. It’s an awful truth. Really, I’m scared of me, but the weight on my chest lessens when I place the guilt somewhere else.
I raise my head, but I only meet Loren Hale’s gaze. He stares straight through me, like he is reaching right into my soul and piecing apart all of my intricate fears. What frightens me most: not knowing what my best friend feels.
I’m about to approach him in the middle of the kitchen and collide with his hard, rigid body. But I don’t have to lift a foot.
He walks to me. And he pulls my small frame to him, embracing me with two strong arms, a warm cocoon where my heart begins to slow. I rest my cheek on his chest, his body pressed along mine, and I shut my eyes.
His hand lowers to the small of my back, and he dips his head. His lips to my ear, he whispers, “I’m not going anywhere.” He pauses, an extended one that stops my pulse. “Lil…how aroused are you?” He would’ve checked without asking if we were alone.
I flush and tilt my chin up. I whisper quickly, “I’m only aroused by you.”
His face sharpens and he says, “Shhh.”
Why is he shushing me? “It’s true.” My voice shakes.
He kisses the outside of my lips, really tenderly. Where is his head at?
“Lil,” he warns, like I did something wrong. I concentrate and realize I’m pushing my pelvis right up against him, his bulge edging towards my wetness as I hike my leg around him.
I drop my foot, my whole body flaming with embarrassment. I cover my face with both my hands. This is one of those days I wish I could erase. Dr. Banning, my therapist, says that everyone has them, but I always play my bad days on loop, tormenting me for eternity.
“It’s okay, Lil,” he breathes. “Look at me.” He grips my wrists, tearing them away from my face. Still I tighten my eyes closed, too ashamed…I’d like to vanish again.
Invisibility, kick in. Please.
“I love you,” he says so empathetically that it tears open my heart. “I understand you. Please hold onto that, Lil.”
He should be angry at me. He should hate how disgusting I am—what my body is craving. It’s not right.
“Lily,” he forces, cupping my face in both his hands. “Breathe, love.”
I take a deep one, and then I sense a tall masculine body a couple feet behind me. Most likely Connor. He’s not too close, but the longer he stands there, the more my body reacts in ways I dislike. Lo studies all of my muscle tics and spasms. Diagnosing me. I cross my ankles and shut my eyes again, snuffing out every perverted image that I should not have in public or at all.
Why? Why do I have to like things that I shouldn’t?
&
nbsp; The heat of two bodies stimulates parts of me that my brain has abandoned. The sensual parts that cares little about names, relations and faces. Just the high of a climax.
Not Connor. I can’t grow wet from him.
This is so wrong.
I cling to Lo, shaking, afraid of myself. I haven’t felt this gross in a while.
His lips fall to my ear at the right moment while he rubs my back. “Shh, Lil.” He pulls me even closer to his body. No space between us. “I’m going to take care of you, love.”
With sex? I wonder. The guilt sinks to a low, hollow place.
“Not with sex,” he says, as though he can read my mind.
“I’msorry,” I mumble together, burying my face in his arm and refusing to acknowledge Rose, Ryke or Connor.
Today is a not-so-good day.
I could have reined myself in, but I slipped off the diving board and belly-flopped in the deep end. I know addictions are up-and-down kind of things, but the downs really, really hurt. At least Lo was wading in the water, there to keep me from drowning this time.
He hasn’t given up on us.
It’s silly to think that’s a possibility anyway. It’s an irrational fear that I should never let cling to me. He is my soul. I am his. The moment we give up on each other is the moment that neither of us exists.
Lo lifts me in a front-piggyback, and he carries me towards the staircase while I clutch him like a koala bear to a tree.
As we leave, I hear Daisy enter the kitchen. “Mom has already planned my birthday.” A long pause before she adds, “We’re taking the yacht out, and everyone’s invited.”
I can barely even concentrate on that future drama when my mind has zeroed in on Loren Hale and only Loren Hale. I need him.
I want him.
I just can’t let myself have all of him tonight. No sex.
But it will be enough. It has to be.
Lo climbs two more stairs before the front door bursts open and bangs against the wall.
He cranes his neck over his shoulder, and every muscle in his arms and abdomen tenses against me. I peek from the crook of his bicep and make direct eye contact with a stern, severe man. Dark brown hair that’s grayed by the temples. A jaw as hard and intimidating as Ryke Meadows’ and a glower as deathly as Loren Hale’s.
Jonathan Hale is the scariest parts of both his sons.
“Meeting,” Jonathan Hale says roughly, his voice husky and foreboding. “Now.”
My arousal still exists. I can’t just extinguish it because of Jonathan’s worst timing. So I recognize that I’m in serious trouble.
{ 12 }
LOREN HALE
I want to fucking scream.
At no one in particular.
If I could, I’d disappear in my bedroom with Lily and try to get her to a better place than the one she’s at. I hate that she’s anxious, and I hate that she’s scared of herself. And I recognize what just happened—that she became aroused from someone other than me. It’s not a new development. Since she’s been pregnant, she’s gotten hot from almost everything.
What’s different is that she’s starting to let her addiction fuck with her mind. Affect our relationship. I won’t let anything tear us apart. Especially not something we’ve both been fighting for so long.
“Loren!” my father calls.
I stand on the stairs uneasily, about to drop Lil on her feet, but she spiders my body, terrified more of herself than of my dad in the living room. After years of dealing with her sex addiction, I know how to help her, but I can’t respond to him and her at the same time.
“Lo,” she breathes.
“Lil,” I say, cupping her face with one hand and her ass with the other. I force her gaze to mine, and she cuts me off before I can speak.
“I’m only attracted to you. You know that, right?” Fear spikes her voice.
I can feel my face sharpen in aggravation. Not at her. Just the situation. I wanted time to take her upstairs and talk to her. “I know, Lil—”
“Loren, come here, now,” my dad interrupts again.
“One second!” I yell back. This is my only moment to get her on the same page as me. “Lil, you know how much you love porn?”
She nods, and I wipe some of her silent tears. My stomach twists the longer she’s upset.
“That’s all this is. You’re turned on by a lot of stuff, love. We live with two other couples, and one is into PDA…” I watch her face scrunch as she tries to understand. I figured out that she’d be aroused by the PDA quickly, and I mentioned to Connor that I was concerned she’d become scared of Ryke and him.
It’s a small regression, a speed bump.
So we tested it out. He stood behind her for a few seconds. Not even that close. I’ve seen Lily freak, but never about Connor—someone she used to think was gay.
Lily shakes her head repeatedly at me, confusion seeping in her green eyes. “I’m not turned on by your brother,” she whispers with wide eyes, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
“He could’ve been anyone, Lil. Do you understand?” The pain in her eyes—pain for me, thinking she’s hurt me somehow—breaks my heart into too many goddamn pieces. I just want to hold her tightly until it’s just us left. No one around us. Drown everything out.
She rubs her eyes. “Ryke is like a porn star?”
I almost laugh, but her chin quivers. “Lil?” My lungs drop.
“I’m not allowed to watch porn,” she says with worry. “So…if everything is like porn, then…”
No. Christ no. “Lil, don’t be afraid of the fucking world, please.” I can’t have her scared to go outside again. I’m screwing this up, really badly. And this isn’t like a failed grade on a test. I am holding my girlfriend’s wellbeing in my hands right now.
“I just…how do I fix this?” she asks me.
“LOREN!” my dad calls, like a knife in my gut.
My fingers slide into her straight brown hair and I say, “You just have to accept that what you feel is okay.”
Tears squeeze out of her eyes. “Lo…” Her throat bobs. “…it doesn’t feel okay.”
I kiss her cheek, and I whisper, “After we get done talking to my dad, I’m going to show you that it is.”
“LOREN!”
“Give him a fucking break,” Ryke retorts downstairs.
My veins pulse hard. I trust that if I leave her alone, she won’t touch herself. But in this moment, I don’t want her to face a challenge that she’s already hurdled fifty million fucking times. It’s one that’s never easy, and she doesn’t need to prove herself after an agonizing hour.
I’d rather her not be in pain at all. That means I enable her and have sex. I can’t do that. I have to settle for somewhere in the middle of pain and ecstasy. Between a high and a low.
It sounds easier finding that place than it really is.
I bring her downstairs with me, carrying her in a front-piggyback. When we enter the living room, the fireplace is lit, and outside the fogged windows, snow falls. The air is strained, especially as Ryke and my father stay standing while Daisy fidgets on the suede loveseat, crossing and uncrossing her long legs.
I sit on the couch with Lily, and my father scrutinizes her for too many seconds.
“You could have called,” I tell him, “or texted me.” None of us needed a spontaneous meeting with him. Before, we had all worked up to it.
“But I didn’t. Shit happens every day that you can’t prepare for, Loren,” he says, like I’m not familiar with that.
I’ve walked through life with a blindfold, hoping I didn’t crash into things, sometimes praying that I did. Preparation has never been my thing. My life is a “toss this dart at me” kind of random. Let’s see which body part it pierces.
My dad disinterestedly inspects hardbacks on a tall wooden shelf, all belonging to Rose and Connor. “Think of this as a life lesson,” he says.
My jaw tics in irritation. “Like I need any more of those.”
I w
ait for the, don’t be a little shit.
He buries his fists in the pockets of his black slacks, no whiskey in hand. And he faces the couch. “You’re probably right.” No insult for me. I lean back in surprise. He’s been sober for almost four months. It still seems like a dream, but these moments make it more real.
I rub Lily’s shoulders, but she squeezes her thighs around my waist. I’d rather not move her off my lap, but I’m afraid she’s going to grind on me. I scoot her onto the cushion, and I toss a purple blanket over her. She adjusts so her heel digs into the spot between her legs.
Christ, Lil.
My dad’s gaze drifts over to the foyer. “This is just between the four of us.”
“I’ve never fought with you about anything,” Connor says easily, Rose by his side. “Let’s not change that.” It sounds like a threat.
I’ve never seen anyone really hold the same power in a room as my father. Lily’s dad is submissive towards Jonathan. Soft, is what my dad calls him. And Connor has always played their game with a fake smile and a firm handshake.
This is different.
My father sizes him up, a literal once-over from head to toe.
Ryke says, “Let them fucking stay.”
Rose has already settled in a Queen Anne chair next to me, crossing her ankles, Connor standing beside the armrest.
My dad keeps his attention on Connor. “I understand why you like Ryke. What’d you call him the other day? Your attack dog.”
Ryke flips Connor off without meeting his eyes, but it’s in jest. He’s said that plenty of times to his face.
“I like him all the same,” Connor says.
“But what’s Loren to you?” my dad asks. He thinks he’s poking at a weak spot of Connor’s, but he’s doing a poor job. He can’t break the guy. He’s built of titanium or some sort of indestructible alien material. Like Superman.
I open my mouth to tell my dad to leave him alone.
But he continues, “Lo’s a college dropout, has failed at every athletic sport he’s ever tried.” My blood runs cold, and Lily suddenly clutches my hand, trying to comfort me. I can’t move. “He’s not smart or strong. Frankly, he’s a goddamn liability. So what use is he to you?” Through all these statements, I want to believe my dad is trying to protect me from Connor. Right? Like Ryke once did.
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