Addicted After All (2 page)

Connor Cobalt, twenty-six, has one hand on the wheel, dressed in a white button-down. His wavy brown hair is perfectly styled like he just returned from a business meeting.

He didn’t, by the way. I know for a fact that he was in a third floor study with Rose, reading or thumbing through a dictionary—whatever they do in their spare time.

He can’t hide his blinding grin, the humor palpable in his gaze as he scrutinizes our lack of wardrobe in the cold winter. Then his deep blue eyes meet my amber ones.

“Soliciting again?” he banters with an arched brow. “How much for a blow job, darling?”

“As much as you’re worth,” I reply, opening the passenger door.

“How about you, Ryke?” Connor asks as my brother climbs into the backseat.

“I’m not for fucking sale,” Ryke says roughly, slamming his door shut.

I give Connor a look. “It’s been a long night. What were you—reading?”

“Coming, actually,” Connor says, putting the car into gear and driving back towards our house.

“Fucking fantastic,” Ryke groans. “While we were freezing our asses off, chasing these idiots, you were getting off.”

Connor doesn’t even try to restrain his grin. “I’m the all-around winner here. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone by now.” Neither is his arrogance. I actually smile and point the blowers at my body, the heat expelling.

Connor’s eyes flit to the orange and blue splatters on my ribs and shoulder. Like Ryke, red welts lie beneath the paint. His grin fades. “I don’t see how chasing them while they still had paintball guns was effective.”

“It’s called
intimidation
,” I tell him.

“You mean stupidity.”

“Yeah? What’s the better option? Calling the police? We’re not doing that, Connor,” I remind him.

“I never said we should. The press would pick up the story, and it’d put more attention on everyone.” He pauses. “You both realize that they could’ve accidentally shot you in the eye?”

“Fucking worth it,” Ryke says, crossing his arms over his chest.

I add, “If you saw the girls, you would’ve wanted us to run after them, paintball guns or not.”

Connor trains his gaze back on the road. “I did see the girls.”

I frown as I scan his features. He’s closed up again, which makes me nervous. “Is Lily okay?” I clench my teeth in fear of the possibility that she may not be. My back stiff and my muscles tense. “Connor—”

“She’s fine.” He suddenly locks the car doors, and his eyes flicker to the rearview mirror, at my older brother in the backseat, who grows more distressed. If Lily’s okay then that means— “Please don’t jump out of the car,” Connor tells him. “I’ve never injured anyone while driving, and I’d like to keep my record clean.”

His nose flares. “What’s wrong with Daisy?”

“She had a small panic attack.”

Christ.
I grimace, like knives slicing through my core, and it’s mostly from sensing my brother behind me. I rotate to look back at Ryke. He pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes tightened shut. I can tell he’s swallowing a scream and restraining himself from punching the back of the seat.

“At least she’s not pregnant,” I throw out there. A silver lining.

Ryke drops his hand and cringes. His brown eyes rise to mine. “I fucking hate when people torment her.”

I know that now.
“But if we move to another neighborhood it’s just going to be the same thing in a different setting.” We bring attention to ourselves wherever we are and that won’t change, not after Lily’s sex addiction was publicized, not after
Princesses of Philly
, and definitely not after the molestation rumors with my father.

The reality is this: Lily is pregnant. Rose is pregnant. Daisy is hanging onto her sanity. And the media is as caustic as ever—spreading rumors, trying to snap photos of Lily and Rose’s bodies, and harassing Daisy about her relationship with Ryke and his relationship with
my
girlfriend.

I’m not the smartest one of us. Or the strongest. But I fucking know everyone has a breaking point. And sometimes I wonder if our limits are going to be tested now that Ryke is with Daisy, now that I’m about to be a father, and Connor will have a child with Rose. These things stretch us further than before.

A misstep will feel fatal. Because it’s not just myself that I’m hurting. It’s Lil. It’s our kid. There’s literally no room for mistakes anymore.

I wish I could be full of conceited optimism, but to be honest, everything just scares the shit out of me.

{ 2 }

LILY CALLOWAY

I kneel on the cold tile of Ryke and Daisy’s messy bathroom, rubbing my little sister’s back as she pukes in the toilet. “We should TP their front yard,” I say with a nod. They deserve it, for all the stupid shit they’ve done to our house this past week and then jumping out of nowhere and frightening us with paintball guns.

“Or we should rip out their ball sacs. Slowly,” Rose says in a cold, threatening voice. She paces the bathroom with a Japanese paper fan, wafting cool air on herself half the time and Daisy for the other. She stops every so often to fold a crumpled towel on the floor or readjust the green bath mat. She’s already reorganized the shampoo bottles and put away Daisy’s tampons and hairbrush.

It’s very weird, but I think I’m the most composed of the three of us right now. Sex isn’t even on the brain yet. I internally smile. I make sure to file the rare accomplishment with a few others.

“I’m not touching their…stuff,” I tell Rose, and just like that my face heats.

“
Balls
,” Rose emphasizes the word, shooting me a death glare on an epic scale. I blame her hormones on the intensity of those yellow-green eyes. They’re a lot scarier now. “Or
testicles
if that makes them any better for you.”

I shake my head over and over, my face flushing. I’ve already been dizzy all night, a pregnancy symptom, and the red rash is not helping my spinning head any. “That’s worse. And I don’t have a problem with them. I like balls.” I cringe. That sounds so bad. “I mean, I like
them
.” An image of Lo’s cock, hard and very erect, pops in my head, and my skin heats.
No. No. No.
I press my thighs tighter together.

Through Rose’s intense glare, I see glimmers of sisterly concern.

I’m like a tortoise, slow and steady. I’m not one-hundred percent able to talk about sex without flushing. I’m not sure if I ever will be
that
comfortable without feeling like someone’s going to hurl a dildo at my face.

That happened two weeks ago outside of Lucky’s Diner. Not fun. And I thought being pregnant would give me some sort of reprieve like:
don’t throw sex toys at me and my unborn baby.
Not so.

“Regardless of whether you like them or not, their balls need to go,” Rose says. She’s so pissed at these guys who keep pranking us. I am too, but I don’t have war maps and battlements planned in my head.

Daisy slumps down from the toilet, finally done puking. I flush the toilet and then press a cool washcloth to her forehead while she takes deep breaths.

We’re all quiet for a minute, except for the
flap flap
of Rose’s paper fan as she beats the air at Daisy. I have these painful flashbacks of what happened, and I’m more shaken up about my sister’s reaction to the paintball guns than the actual guys.

She was polishing my toenails with a bottle of Lucky Lucky Lavender while I read pregnancy stories aloud from a “mommy-to-be” magazine. My back was to the window, but she looked up, pure dead-panic in her eyes, wide like saucers.

And that’s when the bangs went off. I saw the blue and orange paint on the window pane like neon bird crap, and we both sprung to our feet together, the nail polish spilling on the rug.

When Ryke and Lo ran down to us and out the door, Daisy muttered something and then stumbled up the stairs. She was a ghost, her breath sharp as she choked for air. Like she was gasping on dry land. I helped her to her bathroom on the second floor and tried to calm her so she’d breathe normally.

This all lasted for maybe twenty minutes, and it’s only after she vomited that she’s settling, more at ease. Her white tank top with the words—
kapow, baby
—is soaked through from sweat. She’s not wearing a bra, which I understand. Neither am I. Free-boobing is the best. Plus, we’re both very tiny up top.

“Can you talk?” I ask her, pulling a strand of blonde hair off her face. When she returned from Costa Rica with Ryke, she dyed the multi-colored strands back to blonde and then changed the tips of her hair to pastel mint-green. She’s too cool for me, and she’s my
little
sister. I don’t even think she realizes the effect she has on a lot of people. When she smiles, usually everyone does too.

Maybe that’s why Daisy’s sadness hurts so much. It’s like watching a Care Bear cry.

“I overreacted,” she says in a morose voice, tears pooling.

My stomach knots. “I was there, Daisy, it was scary.” I pull her closer to me so she’s not clinging to the toilet bowl, and I wrap my arm around her waist. She’s wearing Ryke’s blue and red Penn baseball cap backwards, and she rests her head tiredly on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, wiping her eyes quickly. “I’m just disappointed in…myself.” Her voice shakes.

I give Rose a look to
not
interject. She’s not the most comforting human being in the world. And she knows this. So she mouths,
fine
, to me and stays out of it.

“I almost peed myself,” I tell Daisy.

She laughs softly and looks up at me.

“I’m serious. I know I peed at least a little bit.”

“It’s because you’re pregnant,” Daisy says with a weak smile. “You can’t hold your bladder.”

“No, it was definitely from fear. I’m not
that
pregnant yet.” Eighteen weeks and the baby bump is just noticeable. I’ve gained maybe five pounds or less, and my doctor wants me to eat more since I’m “underweight.” I think gangly is a nicer word than underweight.

Rose is twenty weeks along and a lot more pregnant looking than me. She has a round bump in her black Calloway Couture dress that molds her body. She’s been designing more maternity kind of clothes—just for herself. Lo called her vain last week, and she swatted him with her sketchbook.

I like that she’s making sure she feels comfortable. That’s important, especially when so many things are changing.

Daisy wipes the last of her tears with her sleeve, her other forearm wrapped in a bright yellow cast. No one was surprised that Costa Rica brought Daisy a bad compound fracture and a dislocated shoulder. When she has free reign of the wild, she goes hard.

I peel off the washcloth from her forehead.

“Thanks, Lily,” she whispers to me.

My heart swells. I recognize that my addiction (and all the nasty media attention it brought) is the origin of her pain. But it’s not guilt that makes me want to be here for Daisy. It’s just purely out of love for my sister.

“Lily, your foot,” Rose says with a scrunched face.

I glance down. Lucky Lucky Lavender is spilt all over my toes, and my left nails are half painted.

Daisy says, “I’ll redo them.”

Rose fans herself. “You won’t have time. The minute Ryke barrels in here, he’ll want to hold you.” She rolls her eyes, but she adds, “It’s sort of cute.”

I picture that embrace leading to other sensual acts. But I don’t think about it
too
hard. I squirm a little, clenching my thighs. “At least you’ll probably get laid tonight,” I say to Daisy and nudge her hip. That would be a definite perk in my book. But not
by
Ryke Meadows. With Lo. Separately. I nod resolutely in my mind and avoid a dark red blush.

“I’m on my period,” Daisy says, her cheeks still pale. “So that’s out.”

We’re all quiet for a second, and I can’t hold it in. “Just have sex in the shower.” I’m surprising myself, more open than usual. Maybe all the sex talks I have with Ryke are subconsciously helping a little bit. I can share some tips without needing a desk to hide under.

“We’ve never done it like that. It’d be weird,” she says.

My brows crinkle. “You’ve never done it in the shower?”
Wait.
I hold up my hands. “Ryke says he’s done it in the
woods
before. But he’s never done it in there?” I point at the glass doors of their giant shower with three different nozzles and spigots, plus fancy cobblestone wall-tiles.

Rose looks fascinated by this talk, her back straightened and eyes alert.

“We’ve done it there, just not on my period.” Daisy isn’t shy about her love life with Ryke, which I really like. It makes it easier talking to her about Lo. “Isn’t it gross?” she asks.

“It’s worth it…” I trail off. “Though I may not be the best source. I’ve been known to rank sex above food.”

Daisy laughs softly. I’m glad I can joke about my addiction now. I even smile.

“How about a sleepover in the guest room?” Rose asks Daisy. “We’ll redo Lily’s toenails and sleep in the king-sized bed.”

“I’ll kick you,” Daisy suddenly says. “If we sleep in the same bed, I mean. I move a lot and could kick you in the womb or something and then you’ll both miscarry because of me.” She inhales sharply.

“Then you’re doing me a favor.”

“Rose!” I shout.

She rolls her eyes again, regret flashing in them. She’s not filtering
anything
lately. “It’s hot in here.” She fans herself some more, sweat beading her forehead.

“Maybe you should sit down,” Daisy suggests.

“I’ll sit down after we’ve plotted our retaliation and our plans tonight. They’re more important.” She likes to pretend her pregnancy has
no
side effects on her, even though she was the one hit with bad morning sickness. I thankfully bypassed that.

“I vote sleepover and TPing.” I raise my hand in the air just as hurried footsteps sound and the door whooshes open.

{ 3 }

LILY CALLOWAY