Addicted After All

by Krista Ritchie

  Daisy smiles. “What do those look like?”

  Rose waves a finger at her. “No, no, you’re not going to distract me. I need more details than Connor.”

  Daisy scrunches her nose. “That’s not possible. He was there.”

  My eyes bug at all of this. I’ve encountered some pretty awkward moments in my life, but nothing like this. “Did you like it?” I ask the least important question, probably. I’m just curious if that’s a fantasy she’d repeat again.

  “No,” Daisy says softly, actually starting to open up. Her arms like jelly, flopping by her sides. The liquor has just loosened her joints like a limp…thing. I cough on my churro.

  Rose pats my back with a stiff hand. “I told you not to eat that.”

  I smash the churro into her chest since the dessert is obviously not nice to me. Disgruntled, she tosses it on the sidewalk.

  Poppy gapes, “Rose, you shouldn’t litter.” Our oldest sister leaves our side to pick up the churro and find a trashcan.

  “I’m feeding the birds,” Rose calls after Poppy, who is already on an environmental mission.

  Daisy is much harder to keep upright on my own, but I manage somewhat, resituating my clutch around her hip. Rose must see my struggle though because she replaces Poppy, hooking her arm with Daisy’s and leisurely strolling along.

  “I hate giving blow jobs,” Rose suddenly opens up. She rarely talks about her sex life with Connor, so my lips part in shock. Maybe she thinks it’s only fair to offer some info when she keeps prodding Daisy. “I mean…” She sighs and rolls her eyes. “The first time wasn’t awful, but it’s my least favorite thing. I’m not good at it, and Connor is huge—do not mention that I complimented his dick. Please.”

  I am soaring with these tidbits. “My lips are zipped.” No they are not. My mouth is permanently hung open. Though I can keep a sisterly secret. Rose has entrusted me with some before.

  “Do you like them?” Daisy asks me with a tipsy smile.

  “Yeah,” I say without blushing. Ah-ha! Success. “I like the control and watching Lo…” come. I can feel my ears heating. Damn.

  “I’ve never really liked them,” Daisy says honestly. “And with Ryke, I can sometimes tell that he’d rather be pleasing me instead of me pleasing him. So he usually stops me before I get him off.”

  “Aww,” I say. I’ve never made this sound out loud before, but this is an aww moment if there ever was one in my book. Some people would call it a perverted book, but I think I’m going to rename it The Lily Calloway Sexy Times Book.

  It has a nice ring to it. And it makes me feel less like a creep.

  Daisy tries to hide a bigger smile. “You know the dare?” She’s going to give us details?! Rose and I listen closely, very intrigued. “I was giving Ryke a blow job for the very first time, and that’s when Connor walked in.” She tucks her hair behind her ear, and the crowds that follow us (yes, people are trailing us, along with our bodyguards) grow in octave, so Daisy has to raise her voice. “I heard the door open, and I jerked back the same exact moment…” she trails off.

  “He ejaculated,” Rose finishes without balking.

  I wince. “Do you have to use that term?”

  “Yes,” Rose says with confidence. I wonder if I’m making Daisy feel more ashamed by being all ashamed myself. It’s a nasty cycle that I want to break.

  “Lo has come on me before,” I state. Wow it kinda felt good.

  Daisy smiles. “Really?”

  “Yeah, my face too. But not that much anymore.” I frown deeply, thinking about our current stasis of being. I feel healthier, and I like that Lo has spaced out all these steps with sex over months and months. It’s better to go slow.

  Fast is not the right speed for me.

  Daisy looks a little lost in her head.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  She takes a deep breath. “Do you ever just want to run? Like strip all of your clothes and speed down a street, using all of your strength, no one stopping you but yourself?”

  It sounds freeing, but I can’t say it’s a thought that’s ever crossed my mind. After two minutes of pathetically running, I’d face-plant or grow out of breath—baby or no baby.

  “No,” Rose says definitively. “I don’t run. I walk quickly.” This has been her motto since she discovered high heels.

  To Daisy, I say, “In theory it seems kind of nice.”

  She springs on her feet like she’s ready to take off. “All theories should be tested, at least once.”

  “RYKE, STOP!” Lo suddenly screams ahead of us.

  My heart is in my throat. Ryke has charged some random guy wearing a surfer graphic tee and frayed shorts. Lo restrains his brother by the shoulders.

  Ryke spits out nasty words…all in Spanish. We walk faster to reach the guys.

  “Go!” Rose shouts at the bodyguards and motions them like she’s herding cattle. “They need your help.”

  Mikey says, “We’re contracted to protect Daisy, Lily and Poppy, so we’re not leaving their sides.”

  Rose glares and then mutters curses while she searches for her pepper spray in her handbag.

  Poppy has fallen behind, fixated on a vendor’s booth selling porcelain sugar skulls, and Dave, her bodyguard, hovers over her. She seems highly unaware of what’s happening, and Sam is sprinting towards Poppy, leaving Connor, Loren, and Ryke alone.

  “Traitor,” Rose calls at him. “Your gender needs you!”

  “So does Poppy!” he shouts back.

  Rose purses her lips, and I focus on the surfer tee heckler, who follows our guys for every step they take. He’s not alone. With his two buddies, they jeer in Spanish. I can tell by the way they pump out their chests, their muscles flexed and their arms gesticulating.

  Three guys. Maybe these people aren’t random. Lo said that three guys have been pestering them all day, wherever they go. Maybe they found them again.

  “Should we…?” Daisy hesitates to run to Ryke, but I hold her jelly arm in a firm grip.

  “No, let’s stay out of it.” Though I want to be closer. So we keep our pace.

  Ryke yells in Spanish so loud that my ears blister. There is pain in his voice, beneath the anger, and Lo struggles to detain him as he thrashes. “Connor,” Lo says, looking for help. Connor is listening intently to these three guys, not intervening.

  We’re only five feet away. Surfer Tee yells at Ryke and Lo with just as much venom, and then laughs mockingly like he’s won a battle. Our lives are open to the public, like we live in a glass house, and people enjoy tapping on the walls, waiting and waiting for a reaction, for that little bit of entertainment. Forgetting that we aren’t performers or mannequins put on display.

  Forgetting that we can feel all the same.

  “CONNOR!” Lo screams for help again, Ryke tearing through his arms. He’s stronger than Lo. This has always been fact.

  “Let him go,” Connor says in a stoic voice.

  “What?” Lo breathes out the word. It pains me. I’m so close to him now. I reach out like I can touch him, but I feel a large hand on my shoulder. Garth.

  He draws me to the side by a foot or two so I’m not smacked by flailing limbs. Daisy slips out of my grip, and Rose leaves her to strut further ahead towards the fight. Daisy stays upright on her own, swaying only a little.

  “Connor, help me,” Lo pleads.

  “I won’t,” Connor says like he wants Ryke to fight these people. “Just let him go, Lo.”

  Then Surfer Tee creates a V-shape with his fingers and obscenely sticks his tongue through it. His eyes have shifted. And they land right on me. Chills race down my spine.

  Lo glances over his shoulder, finding the source of the ridicule.

  It was me.

  All of it, I realize.

  Maybe they’re saying my vagina is too big. I’m gross. I’ve slept with hundreds of faceless men. I’m diseased and disgusting. I am not fit to be a mom. I am and will always be a sex addict. Nothing more than that. I h
ave heard it all and read it on social media. Though never have I witnessed it in Spanish.

  I take another step forward, and Lo screams at me, “LILY, STAY BACK!”

  My heart stops. The wrathful, pained look on his face plants me here as much as his voice. And his eyes flicker to my belly. I didn’t mean—I wouldn’t put my baby in harm’s way. I wasn’t going to. It’s just…Lo.

  He breathes raggedly and nods to me like, please, Lily.

  I nod back.

  When he ensures that I won’t risk my safety, he spins back to his brother. In a single instant, Lo removes his hands off Ryke, and this is when I think Ryke will lose all self-control and throw a fist first, tapping into his aggressive side. He’s snapped. Long before now. But he doesn’t even have his fists barred yet, not even raised for a right hook or a sucker punch. He steps forward, then stops.

  It’s so quick. The tallest of the hecklers charges him, his eyes set on Ryke. In three lengthy strides, he nails his knuckles into Ryke’s jaw. I can feel my heart beating out of my chest.

  That is a sucker punch, one that lands Ryke on the cement pathway.

  The other two hecklers jump on Ryke, which causes Lo to snatch their arms and land a punch or two.

  I flinch as a pair of knuckles connects with Lo’s face. “Stop!” I shout at the hecklers, finding my voice with Lo’s pain. The dark ocean water is on our right, shops on our left, the moon overhead, the dock in view. We’re not that far away from the tugboat which’ll bring us to the anchored yacht.

  “This is not happening,” Rose says, heading even further forward with her pepper spray in hand. The moment she passes Connor, he seizes her wrist.

  “What do you think you’re doing, darling?”

  “I’m fighting for my sister,” she says seriously. She’s pregnant too. And while I love having a sister that’d be willing to insert herself into a fist-fight on my behalf, now’s not a good time.

  Even Daisy has enough sense to stay put—

  Just as I think it, she sprints forward. And Mikey catches her around the waist. She kicks out. “Let me help him.”

  “No, Daisy,” Mikey tells her.

  “This is…sexist,” she says, her arms flopping around with her legs.

  “Agreed,” Rose says to Connor.

  “Hun,” Connor tells her, “do I need to remind you that you’re a vessel for our unborn child?”

  “Are you trying to infuriate me more?” she retorts. “Now I just want to punch you.”

  “I’m a truthteller. If you don’t like what I have to say, take it up with the liars of the world.” And then we’re all distracted when Surfer Tee kicks Lo hard below his chest.

  “Lo!” I scream, especially as Lo crumples to the ground. My stomach caves, remembering his preexisting injury: broken ribs from the Paris riot. Hot tears squeeze through the corners of my eyes.

  “Please don’t do anything rash,” Connor forces to Rose. And then he inserts himself in this fight, to defend Lo and pull him out of it. Connor ducks an incoming right hook and then protectively stands above Lo so no one can touch him. I watch Lo cough hoarsely on the cement.

  He was laughing only minutes ago.

  This is wrong.

  I jerk forward on instinct, to hold Lo, to hug him. To wrap my arms around him. But Garth keeps me put.

  A fist pounds into Connor’s cheekbone as it becomes two on one, as Ryke turns his attention to Surfer Tee and lands a solid blow in his stomach. It’s reciprocated with knuckles to Ryke’s lip. They’re all beating the shit out of each other. I hate this. I glance back at our bodyguards, trying to express every sentiment and plea in my eyes.

  Please, help them.

  Garth and Mikey exchange a look between each other, and that’s all it takes. They release their holds on Daisy and me. Not so we can join the fight, but so they can.

  It’s like adding a couple of trump cards. The minute they step in, Garth pries Ryke off Surfer Tee, and Mikey assists Connor, keeping the other two at bay. The intensity drops by a million degrees.

  Ryke spits blood on the cement and says something volatile at the hecklers in Spanish. It’s such a scary fight that I didn’t realize I was shaking until Rose reaches out and clutches my jittery hand.

  “They’re okay,” Rose says softly.

  “I can’t believe that just happened,” I murmur. I watch Ryke throw his palms in the air like I’m done, I’m done. He wipes his bloody mouth with the back of his hand.

  I’ve conquered my fear of facing daylight, of standing among fans, now excited when they approach for selfies. I’m no longer crippled by the constant attention. No longer a scared little hermit who hides in her house. But I don’t want to come out to find Lo beaten on the ground, accompanied by more people that I love.

  “What if they had a knife?” I realize this could’ve been worse, easily. “What if they had a gun?” I freeze.

  Rose says, “We can only tolerate so much until we snap. Ryke’s easier to enrage, but Connor’s not and he was upset. So you have to know that whatever they were saying must’ve been verging on a threat.” She raises her chin. “If I wasn’t pregnant—”

  “You would punch back?” I presume.

  “I would impale their gross, little black hearts with my heels.”

  Thank God she’s on my side and not against me.

  The hecklers have separated from our men, and they weakly stagger back, blood staining their shirts and a few shiners swelling their eyes.

  Lo, Ryke, and Connor only appear minutely better, blood still splattering their clothes. All of them have taken hits. Connor is crouched over Lo, talking to him quietly while he nods like I’m okay.

  I try to exhale a tight breath in my chest.

  Ryke finally turns towards us, and he locks eyes with Daisy, who is all alone, a few feet ahead of me and Rose. Her chest rises and falls in a heavy, uneven rhythm, like she’s suffocating beneath a brutal wave.

  Ryke assesses her as much as she assesses him.

  She tugs at her tight shirt, and I remember her earlier thought about stripping and racing ahead and being held down by nothing at all.

  Go, I want to tell her. She can sprint to the dock. The hecklers have disappeared down a side-street, out of sight. She’s safe.

  But her feet stay on the ground, in place. “The full moon makes you crazy, you know,” she tells him softly.

  “No more fucking crazy than you.” He steps nearer to Daisy and then draws her to his chest. His hand disappears beneath her shirt, as though stretching it so she’s not as claustrophobic. The gesture is sweet. “And it’s not the full moon, Dais. It’s just people who want to shit on the ones I love. I can’t fucking take it.”

  My shoulders lift with that proclamation. Lo is still hurt and my stomach won’t untie until he’s in my arms and I’m in his.

  So I head over to him as soon as he stands, wincing and favoring his ribs. I almost start shaking again at the flash of agony in his features. “Lo?” I whisper.

  He stares down at me, his lip busted. Connor’s cheekbone is red and will probably bruise. But just by sight, Ryke has the worst of it: both cheeks and his lip beat up and bloodied.

  “I’m fine,” Lo says.

  “So fine that I can hug you?” I ask skeptically. He’s putting on a good front.

  “Go ahead, Lil,” he nods.

  I gently wrap my arms around him, keeping distance between our bodies.

  His warm breath touches my temple as he whispers, “That’s not how we hug.”

  “I’m not hurting you,” I tell him adamantly. “I know you’re in pai—”

  And then he squeezes me to his chest, in a common embrace for us, one where our bodies meld together with no seeming beginning and end. It’s like we’re one. I feel his heart thud, thud, thud against my skin.

  I’m not sure how long we stay like this, frozen in time, shielding the world from us. It’s a moment that eclipses the rest of the day and shortens my lifespan to a single solitary snapsh
ot. My belly flutters, a literal movement that causes me to straighten like a board.

  “Lo…” I whisper.

  “Lil?” He scrutinizes my expression.

  It happens again, only this time, stronger, like a foot… I touch my abdomen, my heart quickening.

  “Is he…” Lo trails off.

  I nod. “I think so.”

  Lo places his hand on my belly, and after a few quiet seconds, the faint movement happens again. Lo’s eyes smile so much that I laugh into one.

  And then he kisses me, so suddenly. His lips right on mine. My arms right around him. His around me. Where they’re meant to be.

  { 20 }

  LOREN HALE

  “Shut the door,” Ryke orders, flipping on the faucet. I close the yacht’s bathroom door behind me and sink on the tiled floor against the porcelain tub.

  I wrap an arm around my ribs that shriek in pain, maybe fractured again. I try to ignore it. I’ve had this injury before, and all I can do is wait for it to heal. Since I’m an addict, they always advise to forgo medication. I won’t take anything to numb this.

  “Fuck.” Ryke winces as he rinses his bloodied knuckles beneath the water.

  Connor inspects his own bruised cheekbone in the mirror and says something to Ryke in French, who replies back.

  “Stop,” I tell them, each large breath stabbing my lungs. “I have to know.” The girls are trying to calm down their parents, woken up after a text from an overly concerned Poppy. All I want to know is why the hell these guys have been following us and what they were saying about Lily.

  Ryke and Connor share hesitance, and it’s like someone kicks me again in the ribs.

  “I can take it,” I say with everything I have.

  I can take it.

  No one is going to bury me. I have to trust myself, more than ever. Because I picture a life where I never stand up on my own, where I’m stuck leaning on Ryke and Connor, and it hurts. I want to take those first steps by myself again. For one turn of fate, I’d like to be the kind of guy that braces them from falling.

  It’s always felt impossible.

  But it’s a goal that’s been keeping me moving.