Thrive (Addicted #4)

by Krista Ritchie

“I have to go,” I say, about to turn around. “I have to find my best friend.” Wrong term, Lily. I redden. “My boyfriend,” I amend and then wince. Still not right. “My fiancé. And yes, they are all the same person.” So there.

Rose is being lauded for having a boyfriend for over a year, for only sleeping with him. But I’ve been with too many no-named guys. She’s a model that other people can copy whereas I’m dirty, right? No one should follow my footsteps. I never thought of it like that. I never thought that she’d be praised and I’d still be condemned. It’s not fair. If I had been committed to Loren Hale all my life, would people love me more? Probably.

“You were right,” I breathe. He was so right. “Right about what?” His voice is low, like the hollow of a cave. “Connor and Rose don’t need us.” They never needed us like we need them. Are we leeches then? We suck the life out of our friends and will never, ever be strong enough to pay them back.

“The world is never going to understand us,” he tells me, his eyes so impassioned that I can’t look away. “But it doesn’t matter, Lil. We have each other, and I get your pain, I understand how badly it hurts, so I need you to block out the other people today, okay? They don’t exist in our world.” Our world.

My shoulders relax, and I whisper, “Do we have superpowers in our world?” “Yeah,” he says, “but you’re not invisible.” Damn. “What can I do then?” “Fly,” he says, “with me.”

Sex with Lily Calloway just may be the most toxic, mind-altering experience of my life. I do it pretty much every night and every morning, and together, we still manage to go into another dimension of pleasure.

I doubt she would’ve approved of this alternative, but it’s just one night of insane sex. I won’t let Lily get used to this and make it a new routine.

“Where’s my spoon?” She pats the mattress beside her. I kiss her forehead. “I’m going to take a shower.” I trust that she won’t masturbate while I’m gone. I had to have satiated her enough, only sleep on her mind. I tuck the edges of the comforter around her thin body. “I love you, Lil.” “I love you…” Her eyes close, and she breathes out the last word. “…too.”

“I’m not Ryke or Rose,” he reminds me. “I trust that you won’t enable Lily and vice versa.” Then what’s this about? I frown. To convince me more, Connor says, “Just a few minutes downstairs.” “If you don’t mind my stench.” “You smell lovely, darling.” He already aims for the staircase. “Just how I dream of.”

When Rose and Connor left for their honeymoon, the words “slut” and “whore” and “gross” were never thrown around in the media. The headlines commended Rose for being monogamous, strong and open enough to defend her right to be submissive in bed. The polar opposite happened to Lily. She was degraded, humiliated and dragged through the mud. Still is. Every fucking day.

While my girlfriend sinks under the weight of the world’s hypocrisy, she bears this immeasurable guilt that no one understands. No one but me.

Deep down, she wishes that Rose had the same outcome as her, so at least she could feel less singled out, less repulsed by herself, less like a spot on the world that should have been wiped clean. And she can’t destroy those feelings or try to explain them. Because they seem completely fucked up. But I know what it’s like to have emotions that war within you. To want something so cold and callous, only to feel a shred of self-worth. I get it. I fucking get it.

He rests against the center island, facing me, and he stares at his mug with a lost look in his eyes, one I don’t see often from him. “What is it?” I ask. “My mother is dying,” he says out loud. “She’ll be gone within the week. Breast cancer.” My jaw slowly drops. I can count on my hand the number of times he’s mentioned his mom. She stepped down from her position as CEO of Cobalt Inc. a few days ago. Now I know why. “I’m sorry,” I say, my brows bunched in confusion and a bit of hurt for him.

“Don’t be,” he tells me. “She wouldn’t want your apology.” “She sounds…” “Cold,” he finishes. “I was going to say like Rose, no offense.” His deep blue eyes rise to mine. “They’re not alike. Katarina doesn’t have the capacity to love someone other than herself. If anything, she’s more like me.” “Was…like you,” I say. He’s finally admitted to loving Rose. He smiles. “Love still seems like an irrational concept to me.” He pauses. “But in believing in it, I’ve become like everyone else.” “Are you okay with that?” “More than okay,” he admits.

“Are you going to the funeral?” I scratch the back of my neck. “I mean, when it happens…” I cringe. Everything sounds wrong. Is there even a right way to talk about someone’s mother dying? “She doesn’t want one.” I open my mouth to ask why, but he cuts me off. “She doesn’t want people from Cobalt Inc. to waste their time mourning a corpse when they should be working. Her words.”

“Revenge isn’t a benefit, Lo. It’s self-gratification, an emotional response with very little logic and even less reward.”

“Poppy, if that’s you, I need your opinion on the mannequins.” Rose’s voice sounds further back in the store, and I hear paper crinkling and the clap of her heels. “Do you like the headless, faceless or realistic ones?” My stomach flips a little, and I notice the three mannequins she’s talking about. The middle one has a smooth head. “The faceless one is really freaky,” I say, my voice squeaking out.

“I miss you,” I blurt out, tears welling. “I know you may never forgive me. I was cold and⁠—” “You should be cold,” she snaps, taking a few steps forward. She tentatively stops, still ten feet separating us. “What happened was fucked up.” I shake my head. “I should be happy that people admire you,” I choke on the words. “You’re my sister, and I love you.” Tears slide down my cheeks. “And I should be so, so happy that you didn’t have to experience what I did.” But deep down, I’ve been wishing for a different outcome. That desire to place pain within my sister has festered guilt too vast to handle. It eats at me every day, tearing at all the good parts.

“Lily,” she says forcefully. “The media shouldn’t have shamed you to begin with. And since they did, they shouldn’t have treated me any differently. If our roles were reversed, I’d be so fucking furious that I’d have stormed twenty news outlets by now and wrung their necks.” She flips her hair off her shoulder. “I’m not going to lie to you, I called seven of them to bitch, and the only reason I stopped was because Connor told me that I was making the headlines worse.” She takes a strained breath. “It’s not right, and you know…I wish, more than anything, that you were treated like me and I was treated like you.”

“Can I hug you?” I ask. She scrunches her nose. “Is that what happens now?” “Yes,” I nod. She sighs and then places the box on the floor. “Don’t make it last too long.” I smile and wrap my arms around my stiff, rigid sister. She pats my back like she’s giving it a golf clap.

Our limo driver slams on the brake for the third time, and I fall backwards on the leather seat, laughing so much that my chest hurts. Lo breathes heavily, his hand gripping the seat above me, and as he stares down, he shakes his head. But his own smile envelops his face and dimples his cheeks. “You think he’s doing it on purpose?” he asks, his amber eyes flitting down my body, creating hot trails. “He’d be a grade-A cock-blocker,” I say. “Well, I refuse to be cock-blocked tonight.” The headiness, the desire in his gaze sweeps me into a bigger, better ride than the swerving limo ever could. “You ready?”

I love that he’s hornier than me. I love that I can laugh during sex. But mostly, I love that being tangled together in the backseat of a car is no longer wrong. It won’t turn me into a compulsive monster anymore. It’s a level of control that I never thought I’d reach. Yet, here it is. I’m starting to feel normal. Or at least, our kind of normal.

“You would be an awful lay if you were a guy,” he explains the source of his humor. “Huh.” He kisses me and clarifies, “You wouldn’t be able to last that long.”

“How am I as a girl…?” I grip his biceps, distracted as his thrusts turn slow and deep. Oh God. My back arches, and my lips part in need. His amber eyes graze me as though I’m the most beautiful broken thing he’s ever been a part of. “You’re perfect.” It’s a lie, but he makes it sound so true. I cry as he hits another sensitive place. My hand drifts to his ass that tightens with each push into me.

He must read my faraway expression because he says, “Can you believe I’ve been sober for this long?” “Yes,” I say definitively.

“We’re doing well, aren’t we?” he asks. “This…” He motions between the two of us. “It’s working.” He’s been so confident about our new routine—sex almost three times a day and wherever we like—that it’s a surprise hearing him question it now.

He says, “Can you believe you’ve learned how to control most of your compulsions?” He rests his arms on my shoulders, like we’re about to dance. “It still feels like a dream,” I whisper. “It’s real to me,” he says. “It took you years. It wasn’t an overnight thing, Lil.” His gaze falls to my lips. And after a long moment, he breaks the quiet. “I want to marry you.” The words rock me back a little. He holds tighter. “Soon,” he continues on. “In the next year maybe?”

“Next year,” I smile and slap his arm in excitement. “What if we get married on 6-16?” He’s grinning. His sharp jawline and cheekbones just plain gorgeous. “Whatever you want.”

He leans down, kissing me with the Christmas lights shimmering overhead. With the snow falling, it’s a picture perfect moment. I wish I could snap-shot it and save it for later. Maybe because I have a feeling. One that hits me as he hugs me to his chest. We’ve never let ourselves be excited about something further down the road. Two addicts constructing a future together: when I think of it like that, it all begins to sound like make-believe. Too rooted in fantasy to ever come true.

“Did you swim here a lot?” he asks, prying. Like he wants to make up for lost time. “When I was a little kid, Lily and I used to sneak down here a bunch of nights,” I say, offering him something. His hard features darken. “If you say to have sex⁠—” “We were like…seven.” I scowl. “It was innocent.”

“After he found out?” I say. “He locked the pool.” I toss my crumpled napkin on the table. “He was worried about you drowning?” “No,” I say sharply, irritation bearing down on me the longer we discuss this shit. “He asked me if I wanted to swim competitively. I told him no. So he told me that the pool wasn’t a privilege that I’d earned yet.”

“Wow, it’s nice talking to you, big bro. Let’s do this again sometime. I get so much out of it.” He shoots me a look. Yeah, he’s been there for me many times, more than I can describe. “I don’t talk to my mom, and I sure as fucking hell don’t talk to my dad, so I don’t see what there is to say.” “Did you ever like Dad?” I ask. “Like growing up?” That’s what I want to know. “Sure,” he says. “In the beginning.”

“He texted me twice, once to say: I’m in Barbados, bitch. And then another time to send me an actual picture of himself tanning on a damn yacht.” I blocked his number after that. Like I need to be reminded that he’s profiting off of Connor and Rose’s sex tapes.

“Are we just going to leave Scott Van Wright to him?” Ryke asks me. “Isn’t that what you’ve always done?” I turn back to my brother. He nods. “Yeah, I guess it is. We have to choose our battles, don’t we?” “Yeah.” And Connor wouldn’t want us stepping near that one.

“At least we all know which Calloway girls play dirty,” he says. I easily read into the sexual innuendo. “No dirtier than you,” Daisy says, passing us. Ryke stiffens, realizing that conversation went south…closer to his penis than he probably intended. Or maybe he did mean it. Ryke watches her open the glass sliding door. I lean forward and whisper-hiss, “Are you staring at my sister’s butt?” “What?” He cringes at me like I’m the crazy one.

“I fucking don’t,” Ryke says easily. This is going badly. I take a sip from a Fizz Life can and

“We need to talk,” I say, “about your sex addiction.” He chokes on his drink, coughing hoarsely. Lo and I pat his back at the same time. “It’s really, really out of control,” I tell him. And then Ryke wipes his mouth with his arm. “You can’t be serious.” “We just had to let go of Michelle. That’s the third store manager you’ve slept with. And I really liked Michelle.” I would’ve kept her around, but it complicates things. “And I completely understand. You can’t control yourself, but if you wanted to get away with hiding your addiction, you shouldn’t have slept with people we know. That’s sex addiction 101.” Ryke leans back in his chair. “That doesn’t make me a fucking sex addict.” “It’s okay,” I say. “I know it’s hard to admit, especially since you’ve been with so many women. But we’re here for you now. You can get this under control.” I put my hand on his arm in comfort. His lips part a little. I think he’s finally out of the denial stage. And then he says, “I can’t tell if you’re being fucking serious.” He looks to Lo. “Is she for real right now?”

“Can you at least admit that you screw more than the average male?” I ask. He always gets numbers from waitresses when we eat lunch out, and I’ve seen him slip into so many bathrooms with girls. He does one-night stands with zero shame. In and out. Sex, sex, sex. Wow. That does sound like me. Except for the zero shame part.

“No,” Ryke snaps back and points to Lo. “Your boyfriend fucks more than the average male and way more than me. You two have sex once every night.” Twice. Sometimes three or four times. “He has an excuse,” I defend. “He’s dating a recovering sex addict.” Ryke laughs into a grin. “Don’t fool yourself,” he says kind of meanly. His eyes flit over my shoulder to Lo. I can feel his smile as they both gang up on me. “He wants it just as badly as you.”

“We just went through this,” Lo says. He touches my head. “Sex addict.” He motions to Ryke. “Not a sex addict.” “How about this?” Ryke refutes. He waves to me. “In a relationship.” His hands lie flat on his chest. “Single.”

“Or…” I say, a light bulb blinking. “What kind of girl are you not attracted to?” We can just hire someone Ryke would never sleep with. Problem solved. “I like all women,” he proclaims. Problem not solved. “That’s so something a sex addict would say,” I tell him. He chucks a fry at my face. I eat it. So there.

“So how’d it go?” Lo asks. “How does anything like that fucking go?” Ryke says. “We made eye contact. We talked for a couple minutes. Exchanged numbers and hooked up. The fucking end.” “Whoa, don’t get so hostile.” Ryke takes a deep breath, glances at Daisy once or twice and then shakes his head. “I didn’t realize that’s why you were firing the girls. I wouldn’t have gone near them if I knew that was the case.”

“There’s too much sugar in that, Daisy. I thought we agreed to just eat the vegetables.” “I didn’t think⁠—” “It’s fine. I’ll get you a new plate.”

“You’re already too skinny,” Ryke tells her, his features downcast like the storm outside. “In your eyes, maybe,” she says softly. “To the people that matter, I’m fat.” “Do I not fucking matter?” he asks, hurt passing through his voice. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I realize that you’re the only one who wanted me. I get it. I’m just a bastard. Thanks.”

“Grow up,” he sneers. “You shouldn’t have to call your goddamn girlfriend when you’re feeling weak.” He removes his hand off my head, and taps my cheek, twice with force. My head jerks back on the second contact. And disgust lingers in my dad’s eyes. For not being strong enough to withstand a fucking slap to the face. “Hey!” Ryke yells at him. I feel Lily’s hand in mine almost immediately. And I spin around, done with this shit. Just over everything. “Lo…” she says, hurrying next to me, but I readjust our hands, lacing my fingers with hers. “Don’t leave me,” I whisper. I’m afraid of myself, I realize. I don’t want to drink. Yes I do. I do so fucking badly.

“You don’t understand!” I shout back, squeezing Lily’s hand. “You don’t get it.” “What don’t I get?” he growls. “How can you put up with that shit and then defend him?” “Because he’s just like me,” I retort. “He’s nothing like you.” “He’s in pain!” I shout. I’ve given you your life, Loren. “And he’s hurting me before I can hurt him.” You can sell me down the river, son.

“Do you want to drink?” Ryke asks. He’s killing me. “Please, stop,” I sneer, my voice scratching my ears. “I just need…air.”

“Jesus Christ. Who gave my number to a telemarketer?” “Not me,” she says quickly. “Maybe someone posted it online. That happened to Ryke, you know.” “I’m also not sleeping with random girls who’ve decided to share my number with the world,”

“Your father is being accused of molesting you.” He keeps speaking, but the words don’t register in my brain. I stare blankly at the white sink. Your father is being accused of molesting you.