Addicted to You (6 page)

“Do you think it’s working?” he asked, keen
to prevent her from leaving.

“What?” she asked. Sarcasm
laced her voice
.
“The so-called therapy?”

“Aye.”

“It must be, I guess. Do I look like I’m
having sex?” She sounded disappointed about it.

He smiled. “Not right this second, no.”

“Well, then.”

“Yep.”

He watched her hesitate, clearly waiting for
him to make a move and prolong the moment despite the awkwardness.
He walked over to take a chair that was next to her while
suppressing that nagging thread of guilt that he should just leave
and stop making things more difficult for the both of them. After
all, this girl might really have a problem, and the best thing Will
could do was stay professional and keep his distance.

He bent to pick up the chair. Their arms
brushed, and he caught the scent of her shampoo—lavender. His
fingers closed around the edges of the chair, lifting, but his eyes
caught and remained on the way her lips had parted. A split second
later, she grabbed hold of his coat and jerked him nearer.

He forgot every excuse he’d given himself
about not wanting her. Without a thought to reason, they were
kissing. It was even better than the teasing sensations of Will’s
dreams. It was hot and hungry and desperate, as though they
couldn’t stop. Heat shot straight down his spine.

He dropped the chair.

And put his arms around her (if only he knew
her name), and the kiss became frantic, determined, significant.
His chest felt full to bursting, and for a moment, he almost drew
back, startled by his reaction. But she was warm, her lips soft and
eager, her body like a line of fire against him. She was the
furthest thing from an Ice Queen he’d ever met.

He felt shaking hands run through his hair
and stroke the back of his neck. He reached down, smoothed his palm
along her thigh and tugged her tighter against him. She gasped.

And then so did
someone
else
.

Oops.

They broke apart like guilty teenagers,
aware that they had been caught. He felt embarrassingly out of
breath. The counselor stood in front of them, shaking his head.

“I came back for my keys,” he told them
sternly.

Will stiffened his spine. The counselor’s
look alone left him feeling thoroughly chastised despite the fact
that he wasn’t really the one who had fallen off the wagon.

“I am very disappointed with you both,” the
counselor said. “I hope it wouldn’t have gone any further, but by
the look of things, I think it would have.”

Will looked down at his rumpled shirt. Then
he glanced at her, and his throat grew dry. Her pale skin was
flushed, her lips pursed into an unhappy pout, and her arms were
crossed, pushing up her chest. The urge to kiss her again was
powerful, even with the counselor watching. He looked away and
coughed into his fist.

“It’s so important to abstain from sex until
the therapy is well established. Especially sex with another
addict!”

“I’ve been coming for the
last twenty weeks.
When
will it be well established?” the girl asked
coolly.

Will cast her a surprised look. He had no
idea she’d been coming for that long, and he glanced back at the
counselor to await his answer. Will wanted to know as well.

“When you finally accept that you have a
problem, and are willing to work to fix it,” he said evenly.

The girl rolled her eyes. “It was only a
kiss.”

“Nevertheless, we are leaving now, and I
expect to see you both go home—in different directions.”

Will was very aware of the fury radiating
from his partner in crime as the three of them walked out onto the
open street. He couldn’t help feeling relieved that she was visibly
as frustrated as him, but along with that frustration was the
returning guilt that it probably shouldn’t have happened at
all.

The counselor escorted Will to his car, and
minutes later, he’d left far behind the girl who would most
definitely haunt his dreams again.

Leah had checked in on Elijah prior to the
meeting—shockingly, her mom had been home and had already made
dinner—so she went straight back to her apartment afterward. She
walked in to find Helena reveling in her new living room. Their old
one had been furnished with an assortment of discounted, inherited
and reclaimed oddments. Nothing had matched. Now with the loan Leah
took out to replace everything that had been stolen, the room was
color-coordinated (a pink sofa, Leah noted—who would have thought
such a thing existed?) and, she had to admit, pretty cool.

Helena greeted her at the door, grinning her
head off, and took her on a guided tour. Leah wondered if her
friendliness meant that she was finally forgiven.

“Look at this dinner table. Don’t you love
it? It’s so formal!” Helena gushed, running her fingers over the
dark, glossy wood. She had set a red runner along the middle and
accented it with a red crystal vase filled with dry branches long
enough to almost touch the hanging lights.

Leah did sort of look forward to eating on
it. Eventually. Her bed had become her new favorite place to
eat.

Before she could form a reply, Helena
ushered her down the hall. Her new bedroom set was cherry wood, and
the top of her dresser was already cluttered with textbooks,
papers, and the impressive three-tier, blue brocade box where she
kept her formidable collection of nail polishes and nail care
tools. Helena considered her nails a canvas. At the moment, they
were chic black and white diagonal stripes with a line of
rhinestones along the tip.

Nearly hidden behind the clutter was a
picture frame Leah thought had been taken along with everything
else. It was a simple black frame with a pink flower painted in one
corner. It displayed a photo of them at the park, taken on one of
many evenings Helena had joined her and Elijah. Leah had taken
Helena shopping on her birthday and let her pick out the frame.
Leah was crap at giving presents (lack of practice), and didn’t see
the point in giving something unless she was certain the recipient
would like it.

“Looks really great,” Leah said, and meant
it.

Helena beamed and gripped her hand before
tugging her back down the short hall to the living room. A
thirty-two-inch flat screen television stood in place of the
nineteen-inch dinosaur they’d had before. It was currently tuned
into some sitcom featuring a talking dog. She cast Helena, who had
ducked into the kitchen, a dubious look before turning the channel
to a documentary featuring a pride of lionesses stalking a
gazelle.

The lionesses had just taken it down when
Helena returned juggling a bottle of red wine, two glasses, and a
plate of microwaved hot pockets.

Leah smiled. They ate like queens. Oh
yeah.

Helena made a face at the
TV, where the lionesses were stripping flesh from the gazelle while
buzzards waited in a nearby tree, and set their dinner on the
coffee table. “Well, now I’m
really
hungry,” she said.

Leah liked watching animal documentaries. It
was all so basic and instinctual. Especially the ones about mating.
(They weirded Helena out.) “Survival of the fittest. Sometimes I
wish this was how humans worked. I would totally be a lioness.”

Helena snorted. “You’d be a hyena.”

Leah flashed her a toothy grin. “Well, you’d
be a meerkat.”

“Meerkats are
awesome
.” Helena bit
into a hot pocket with an emphatic nod.

Leah didn’t argue. She was
just glad they were getting along again. She poured herself some
wine and settled into the corner of their new—oh my
God
, so
comfortable—sofa.

“So, I know I haven’t said anything all
week,” Helena began, “but congrats on finishing the twenty weeks.”
She leaned over to give Leah a quick squeeze.

Dangit. She had been trying to avoid
thinking about it.

“Thanks,” she said, and injected as much
cheer into her smile as she could.

The thing was that along with feeling relief
it was finally over, she also felt a little disappointed. Not
because she wanted to go back—definitely not—but because the
thought of never seeing Blue Eyes again made her twitchy.
Especially after she’d acted on impulse and kissed the guy.

She didn’t regret kissing him—he had clearly
enjoyed it—but she did sort of feel guilty for putting them in such
an awkward position. She bit her lip, remembering the feel of his
mouth, his body, his hand on her thigh. She had no doubt that he
wanted to finish what she had started, and she wouldn’t mind in the
least.

But unless she went back next week, it might
as well have been a good-bye kiss.

God, she was in trouble.

“I thought for sure you’d quit after the
first couple weeks,” Helena said. “Thanks for sticking with
it.”

“Does this mean we’re okay now?”

Helena looked surprised. “We were always
okay. I mean, I was furious with you, but I wasn’t going to throw
you out.”

No one could loosen that ache in her chest
better than Helena. Leah didn’t know what to say, but her best
friend understood her well enough to give her another quick
squeeze.

Content, Leah selected a hot pocket and felt
the last of her worries about their friendship slip away.

“Has Jay asked you out yet?” she asked,
waving her hot pocket through the air to try and cool it off more
quickly.

To Leah’s amusement, Helena turned pink.
“Yeah, right. Lord of the Eyebrows? Did you see how squeamish he
got that one time you started talking about sex positions? He’s so
straight-laced, it’s embarrassing.”

“You could fix that,” Leah said with a
smirk.

Jay lived on the floor above them. He moved
in a year after they did, but they only met about six months ago
when they all wound up needing to use the apartment washer and
dryer at the same time. Since then, Jay became Helena’s go-to guy
when she needed something heavy moved and Leah paid him for his
time in baked goods.

“Don’t even! I’d never be able to take him
out in public unless he let me attack his eyebrows with tweezers.”
She made a face, and stuck out her chin. “Not that I’d want
to.”

“Oh my God,” Leah said, laughing. “You
totally want him.”

Helena’s last boyfriend had been six months
ago. She dumped him after finding out he was a serious pothead. She
and Leah had always drawn the line at drugs, no matter how wild
things got in the past.

Six months was more than enough time for
Helena to get a new boyfriend. For a while, she’d had a different
boy every month. The only reason Leah hadn’t turned the accusations
of sex addiction back at Helena was because she knew for a fact
Helena hadn’t slept with any of them. Leah could tell when her best
friend had sex because she was always unbearably cheerful the next
day.

“I do not. And it’s not like it matters
anyway, because Jay isn’t interested.”

“The guy came over and
assembled
all
your furniture for you,” she reminded Helena. “Even though
the directions were in Japanese. And he listened to you yell at him
while doing it.”

“So maybe he’s a masochist,” Helena said,
even as she hid a smile behind her wine glass.

“Or you’re both just dense.”

“Like you’re an expert. You’ve never had a
serious relationship in your life.”

To her annoyance, Leah
immediately thought of Will and what it would be like to be with
him. Not just sex, but to really
be
with him. When she didn’t immediately recoil at
the thought, she frowned and bit off a large chunk of her hot
pocket.

“Anyway, how’s Elijah?” Helena asked.

Leah took a sip of her wine to wash down the
chewy bread that was always too thick at the edges. But hey, it
beat her ramen, eggs, and hot dog diet of a couple years ago. “He’s
fine. My mom already made him dinner, so I just made sure he did
his homework.”

“Your mom was home?” Helena’s brows rose.
She had been a huge help in Elijah’s earlier years when Leah had
been learning hands-on, with little help from her mother, how to
care for an infant and then a toddler, still being a kid
herself.

“I know, right? She said she just wanted a
quiet night in. Whatever.” She shrugged and didn’t mention how
Elijah had smiled all evening. It had pissed her off. Even though
Leah had all but raised him, she still couldn’t one-hundred-percent
replace their real mom. But if their mom was going to be absent,
then she should just be absent instead of occasionally giving
Elijah false hope.

“Well, glad to hear he’s okay. I’ll have to
visit soon. Or you could bring him around.”

Due to Helena’s busy schedule, she hadn’t
seen Elijah in a few weeks, and he kept asking after her.

“Actually, we should take him out this
weekend,” she said, finally reaching for the remote to switch the
channel away from the carcass the lionesses had left behind, which
was now being picked over by vultures and other scavengers. “I’m
not working.”

“I’m taking him to the observatory on
Sunday. You should come along.”

They lapsed into the first comfortable
silence since that night Leah had screwed everything up. As Helena
flipped through channels, Leah allowed her thoughts to return to
what had happened at the meeting and what she wanted to do about
it.

Of course, she didn’t have to do anything.
It wasn’t like they had made any promises. She didn’t have to see
him again.

But she wanted to. And she wanted to know
his name. And to talk to him again. She had no idea what to do with
that.