Addicted for Now (Addicted Series 2)

by Ritchie, Krista

  It pours out of me like I’ve carved open my stomach. Every word makes me lighter and freer.

  I don’t stop.

  { 50 }

  LILY CALLOWAY

  The next morning, Lo and I head to his office. He shares all the details about his mother, and he lets me hug him whenever I reach out. While I can’t physically relate to a parent abandoning me, I understand what it feels like to want your mother to love you and not receiving the same affection in return.

  He sinks into his leather chair, and I hesitate to bring up what happened with Dr. Evans so soon after his emotional reconnection with Emily. It’s why I didn’t mention it on the phone last night. Last thing I wanted was to instill guilt and have him break his sobriety. (He admitted to sitting in the parking lot of a bar—I knew it.)

  I skim the comic books on his shelf while he works on a couple contracts. A guy who runs another indie publishing company has been giving Lo advice, so every week Lo grows more confident about the job. He even talks about hiring a partner to help with all the areas he’s weak in. And that idea, of asking someone for help, doesn’t make him balk in detest.

  I’m supposed to be unpacking boxes downstairs at Superheroes & Scones, so my lingering presence must catch Lo’s attention. “You okay, Lil?”

  I pull a She-Hulk comic off the shelf and focus on the cover while I speak. “I actually decided to go back to Allison for therapy. And my father is okay with it. He says it won’t break the deal.” He also told me that he’ll be filing a lawsuit against Dr. Evans. Hopefully, I helped some other girl that could have been harassed.

  “Fuck,” he curses. “I forgot to ask you about your last session with…” He trails off, and I meet his eyes that have grown as big as saucers.

  “I’m glad I went,” I tell him. “I would have never fired him otherwise.”

  “What the fuck did he do?”

  I hug the comic to my chest like a pillow, letting it give me some sort of strength. “He wanted me to masturbate while he shocked me,” I say very quickly.

  Lo grips the table, his eyes turning into pure fury.

  “But I said no! And then he didn’t like that so he unzipped his pants.”

  Lo jumps to his feet. I drop the comic and rush to stop him from leaving the room.

  My hands press to his chest. “I said no, Lo,” I say proudly. “I screamed it, and then I screamed for Garth. Everything worked out fine.”

  “Everything is not fine,” Lo tells me, hurt caressing his amber eyes. “Fine would be you never having to deal with that sick fuck.”

  “It’s over,” I say. “My father is handling it. I don’t want to keep dwelling about every bad thing that happens to us. I want to move on. Don’t you?” I’m ready to start the newest chapter of our lives. One where we’re not assaulted by our vices. One where we’re happy.

  His shoulders slacken and his hands rise to my cheeks. “Are you okay?” he asks, searching my eyes for the truth.

  “I feel strong,” I say. “I know that’s probably weird.”

  He shakes his head and his eyes seem to say no, not at all.

  “There’s something else,” I start. Worry shrouds his face. “Not like that. It’s a good thing, I think.” I take a deep breath and his hands fall to mine. “I’ve decided that I don’t want to see the blacklist of what I can’t do…sexually, I mean.” I grimace. Really, Lily?

  Wrinkles crease his forehead. “Why?”

  “I realized that it doesn’t matter what I can’t do with you,” I say. “We’re together…for real this time. No piece of paper or list can tell me what I’m missing. I have everything I could want.”

  I can’t even blink before his lips are on mine, before his arms have pulled me to his body. I am cloaked in Loren Hale. He brushes his hand against the back of my neck before ending the kiss, but he doesn’t retract fully. I’m still very much in his arms.

  And then he lifts me up with two hands firmly planted on my ass. My legs swoop around his waist instantly. Obviously my limbs are processing what’s happening faster than my brain.

  His eyes melt into mine as he slowly carries me backwards and sets me down on his desk. My heart beats like a drum at this—a fantasy I’ve imagined since I was in high school. Desks. Sex over them. Sex on them. Sex near them. Of course I can make furniture into something stimulating.

  Is this really happening or is it all in my dirty mind?

  The corners of his lips rise at my confusion and anticipation. His amusement only riles my cravings, but I try to push them back, not wanting to turn into a compulsive monster.

  His hands run along my thighs, my legs still tight around his waist. “How many times have you pictured this?”

  “On this specific desk?”

  He grins and kisses me again. I deepen it and hold onto the back of his hair, gripping tightly. He groans a little as he pulls away, and then he tugs off my shorts with ease. I’m about to swoop my legs back around his waist, but I stop myself. Shockingly, I even stop him, planting two firm hands on his pecs. Oh, those are nice.

  “Lil?”

  Right, focus. I meet his perplexed gaze. “I’m not stupid,” I say.

  His frown morphs into hurt. “I never said you were.”

  I shake my head. This is all coming out wrong. “What I mean is,” I start again, “after all those times you denied me sex on the beach, in the car, basically anywhere but our bedroom and bathroom, I’ve figured out that public sex has to be on that blacklist.”

  He takes a step back and the distance hurts more than I thought. I reach out and grab onto his hand for some sort of connection. He lets me hold on tight. “You said it doesn’t matter what’s on it,” Lo reminds me.

  “It doesn’t,” I say. “It doesn’t, I promise. I just don’t want to break it.”

  My words appease him enough to walk back to me, to slip his hand from mine so he can place both on my cheeks. “I won’t let you break any of those rules. That’s my promise to you.”

  “But—”

  “It’s my office,” he says with a humored smile. “It’s my private place.”

  Ohhhhh. YES! I bite my bottom lip to try and hide my grin.

  “So you’re all smiles now?” he asks. “You know what I think about smiles?”

  I shake my head, still smiling as his hands make their descent down. His fingers teasingly slide just beneath the hem of my panties.

  His lips brush my ears. “They’re not nearly as sexy as this.” He slips his fingers inside of me and presses against a tender spot. My face instantly contorts into one of sheer pleasure, my mouth opening and my eyes fluttering. A noise escapes my throat.

  He looks all too pleased. “Who’s smiling now, love?”

  Definitely you. I grab onto his shoulder as he replaces his fingers with his hard cock. I have the urge to rock against him, but I make myself stay still as can be. I want to show him that I have control. That I’m trying.

  He thrusts in and out, and I clutch onto his back, his arms, anything to hold myself together. His hand grazes my neck, and he leans forward for a kiss but I have trouble just staying still. Moving my lips seems like a difficult feat. He doesn’t seem to care. He presses his mouth against mine and urges it open. When I don’t respond, he goes to sucking my bottom lip. Noises bubble up from my throat, noises that I wasn’t even sure I could make.

  Now he’s smiling.

  He pumps faster and harder and I lose my grip, almost falling backwards on the desk. He catches me and then slowly sets me flat against a few loose papers.

  “Eyes on me, love,” he orders in a husky breath. I realize I’m staring at his cock. I look up to meet his gaze. It’s heady, intense, and fills me fuller than any other body part. I don’t break it.

  Not now. Not ever.

  { 51 }

  LILY CALLOWAY

  “Oh my God! I found your porn!” I walk out of Ryke’s closest with a shoebox. I can only imagine it holds incriminating evidence, verifying that I’m not the onl
y porn-lover of our friends. My glee is all too apparent.

  Lo and Ryke glance up from the floor, spread out with bubble wrap and boxes. We’re packing up some things from his old room at his mother’s house. He’s moving from his flat in Philly to a new apartment—same city, just a place with more guest bedrooms and less paparazzi lurking outside.

  Instead of buying all new things for the extra space, he’s trying to consolidate what he has here. Ryke planned the packing party during Sara Hale’s book club, so she’s not home. Lo doesn’t really want to meet her face-to-face, considering he’s the result of her failed marriage.

  “Open it,” Ryke tells me, motioning towards the shoebox in my hands.

  I flip the top and my spirits pop. Baseball cards. Hundreds of them. One of the guys looks kind of hunky…maybe…

  I hold up a card with the hot young player. “You totally jerked off to this.”

  Lo grins, even as he struggles wrapping an odd shaped lamp.

  Ryke gives me a look. “You would,” he refutes. “And maybe I would too if I was attracted to men. But no, I traded those with kids from grade school, I didn’t jizz on them.” He turns to Lo. “Does she do this to you?”

  “What?” he asks in amusement. “Try to find my porn?”

  I freeze, eyes wide. “You have porn?” Oh my God, there may be porn at our house. Right now. I gasp. “Where?”

  “At my dad’s place,” he explains. “From my teenage years.” Oh. That makes sense. He wouldn’t keep porn around me—even if I’ve done really well these past few weeks.

  “So I’m the only one you like to embarrass?” Ryke asks me.

  “You can’t get embarrassed,” I remind him, “and you told me to be comfortable talking about sex, so it’s your fault.” It’s true I’ve opened up around Ryke, and I think we can even call each other friends now.

  “Fucking fantastic.” He grabs a roll of tape and tries to roll it over a box, but the dispenser shrieks in revolt. He grumbles a few curse words and throws it on the ground. “Lily, can you go find me another roll of tape? There should be one in the kitchen cabinet.”

  “I’m on it.” I exit the bedroom and journey through the large house that has more unnecessary bedrooms than necessary ones. I find the kitchen and start opening as many cabinets as I can, avoiding the dishware and pots. A few drawers later, I find the miscellaneous area. I squat and discover tape behind a tub of bulbs.

  Success.

  I spin around, about to head back to Ryke’s room but something stops me. Something situated on the tea cart by the breakfast table. A small box is wedged in an overflowing basket of mail.

  It’s brown, like any normal package, but this one is different. My heart lurches to my throat. Swallowing a lump, I approach the box, confirming my suspicion. Tiny X’s are typed all across the packaging.

  My hands shake as I set the tape on the cart and inspect the label.

  From: Kinkyme.net

  It’s the same site that sent me the dildo, but I assumed the leak just mailed the package directly to my parent’s house. Wait. That’s not right. A note accompanied the sex toy, so the leak had to mail the box to their house first, place the message inside, and then send it to me.

  This is Ryke’s house. We never come here. He knows this. He knows more about us than almost anyone. We let him in.

  Lo was right from the beginning, wasn’t he?

  Tears well. Ryke made this elaborate plot, infiltrating our lives, just to cause Lo more pain—to ruin his life because he destroyed his just by simply existing.

  Why is it that the people you come to love are the ones that seem to hurt you the most?

  I continue reading the box.

  To: William Crane

  A fake name to cover his tracks. I grip the box, hating everything and then nothing at all. A horrible pain shreds my chest. Lo won’t just be hurt by the news. He’ll be devastated. How can he handle another disappointment, another betrayal? Even imagining his reaction brings a flood of tears, dripping down my cheeks.

  I have a sudden urge to rip open the box and see what’s inside. Before I search for a knife, the patter of shoes echoes, the sound growing towards me. And then the noise silences by the doorway—the kitchen doorway.

  Sara Hale sets her purse and her book club’s hardback on the counter. Her golden-brown hair compliments her flower sundress. As soon as she makes eye contact with me, her glowing face tightens. And then her gaze drops to the box in my hands.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, not peeling from the box. “What is that?” Her lip spasms. “You need to leave right now.”

  Each time she speaks, I can barely register the words. They zip right into my ear and out the other.

  “Did you not hear me?” Her eyes sear with hate. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I don’t know what I did to her. “Get out of my house!”

  “Mom, what the hell?” Ryke rushes down the stairs and into the kitchen, Lo right behind him. I’m too stunned to do much of anything.

  “You brought her here!” Sara shrieks, and then her eyes ping to Lo who hurries to my side. “And him?”

  Lo touches my shoulder, and he glances at the box in my hands. “Lo,” I say softly. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m so confused.

  Ryke follows my gaze, and before Lo or I can do a thing, his brown eyes light with fire. He faces his mother. “What the fuck did you do?” His voice is hollow and cold.

  “Get them out, Ryke,” she retorts, pointing towards the front door.

  “What the fuck did you do?!” he screams, his hands on his head. His chest rises and falls.

  “Sweetie, let’s talk about this later.” She reaches out to touch his arm, but Ryke jerks back, throwing his hands in the air.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he says. “What the fuck did you do?” He shakes his head repeatedly, and it’s then, that I know for certain, who the real leak is.

  Ryke had nothing to do with the scandal. Lo’s brother is just as innocent as the rest of us.

  “I don’t want to talk in front of them,” Sara says.

  “Did you tell the press that Lily’s a sex addict?” Ryke asks, his eyes reddening as he suppresses more volatile emotions. He’s about to explode.

  I always wanted to see Ryke Meadows flinch, but not from something like this.

  “Ryke—”

  “Did you fucking tell them?!” he yells, clutching the granite counter.

  “Yes,” she suddenly says, touching her chest as though a weight has been lifted off. All this time, we assumed that the blackmailer was a man. Yet, here she stands.

  Lo is rigid beside me, and if the perpetrator was anyone else, he’d most likely be sending the person to hell with his words. I think we’re both more concerned for Ryke in this moment.

  The painful silence stretches. Ryke stands still, unmoving, and his tears gather and threaten to fall.

  “Ryke, honey,” Sara says, “you have to understand that Jonathan—”

  “Stop,” Ryke says, his voice breaking. “I get why you did it. You ruined a girl’s life because you wanted to be free of him. You wanted people to know that you were cheated on. You couldn’t say a word about his infidelity because of the divorce contract. But if the media found out inadvertently, you’d still keep Jonathan’s money and everyone would know about Loren’s real mother. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  She doesn’t say a thing.

  Ryke shakes his head again, his voice shaking even more. “So you tormented Lily to hurt Loren, to retaliate against Jonathan fucking Hale, to stick it to his son, and I guess you strung Lily along for a while because Jonathan was squirming. You liked that. You took pleasure in his stress. And then when you leaked the news to the press, your book club friends and everyone else realized that you were cheated on. Right? You weren’t the gold digger after all. That’s great, Mom. Congratulations. You succeeded.”

  “Ryke—”

  “You know what else you did?” He blinks and tears fall.
“You lost your only son.” He goes to turn around, and Sara grabs his arm.

  “Wait, honey—”

  Ryke untangles from her hold but stops and faces her again. “What? What could you possibly say that could justify terrorizing a girl for months?”

  “You were never supposed to meet him,” she says under her breath, her cheeks slick with her own tears. She points at Lo. “He’s not your family.”

  “He’s my brother!” Ryke yells. “He would never hurt me the way you just have.” He takes a staggered breath, tugs at his shirt and holds back a scream. “You don’t get what you did, Mom. Do you even know what you did to me? Do you fucking understand?”

  Sara’s chin quivers as she cries. “Please, stop. Don’t go.” She touches his arm.

  “You’ve made me choose between you and Dad my whole fucking life. You can’t stop me from having a relationship with Lo. You can’t make that decision for me.”

  “I’m your mom.”

  “And you lied to me!” Ryke shouts, pain enveloping his face. “You ruined someone’s life for a fucking feud, and you were willing to sacrifice me doing it.”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “If I thought you’d react like this, I would have never—”

  “I don’t believe you,” he says flatly. “If you knew me at all, you’d realize that I’d hate you for what you’ve done. I can forgive you for a lot of things. But this…” He lets out a weak laugh like he’s stuck inside a nightmare. “What the fuck, Mom?” He takes a deep breath. “I’m gone in an hour. I have a few more boxes.”

  She can’t stop crying. Sara hugs the counter, expecting Ryke to come into her arms, to comfort her and say everything’s okay.

  But he can barely look at her without his breath shortening.

  “Just answer me one thing,” Ryke says. “How did you find out that she was a sex addict? I never told you that.” He didn’t? I thought maybe that’s how she learned.

  Sara sniffs and gestures to his pocket. “Your cell…your texts…”

  Oh God.

  Ryke pinches his eyes.