Addicted After All (50 page)

With his brows knotted in concern, Connor moves quickly, handing me Jane who begins to cry like a banshee.

“Connor!” Rose calls, permanently fixed to the grass, refusing to budge, open her eyes, and see the mess on her feet.

In seconds, Connor lifts Rose in his arms, cradling her while she tries to exhale normally. More than just destroying a good pair of heels, Rose’s OCD is kicking in. Connor’s lips brush her ear while he speaks fluid French, carrying her towards the nearest bathroom.

I’m sure my eyes are still hanging out of the sockets. I watch Ryke stumble again, but Daisy holds him by the waist from behind, keeping him upright. And this time, he vomits off to the side.

“Ryke, why are you sick?!” a reporter yells. Camera flashes go off like fireworks.

I jostle Jane in my arms while she cries for her mom and dad.

Sam tenses and says to my father, “We should move him away from the video cameras.”

“No, no.” My dad rests a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “His health comes first. Go find the medics. Get them over here as fast as possible.”

Sam nods once before he leaves with Poppy.

“Jane, shh,” I whisper. Where is her lion? Oh my God. She did not drop her lion in vomit. I search for a quick second but can’t find it anywhere.

Lo sidles next to me, keeping an eye on his brother who breathes shallowly. A Fizzle employee hands Ryke a water and he takes small sips.

“What a weird day,” Lo whispers.

“Yeah,” I nod in agreement, Jane still wailing in my ear.
My dad apologized to me.
I can’t say the words now, but I know I will later. It’s a phrase I didn’t ever expect to receive. Definitely not today of all days.

Even with babies in our arms and mayhem all around us, I have the sense that we’re the pillars standing still.

The kind of people that others may be able to lean on.

{ 53 }

LOREN HALE

Heavy rain beats against Connor’s bedroom windows, the glass fogged from an afternoon storm. My shit mood pretty much resembles the weather. My throat lined with sandpaper, my fingers shake the longer I read the printed-out email in my hands.

I rub my mouth with my bicep. “Where’d you get this?” I ask, my voice hollow. I can’t move off the edge of his bed.

Connor leans against the wall, having trouble masking his emotions. Distraught lines cross his forehead. “I have my sources,” he says softly.

Tears sear my eyes, threatening to fall and soak the paper. A part of me wants to scream, to cry, to let it all combust—but it stays tight inside my chest. Eating me from the inside out.

Ryke sits on the wooden surface of Rose’s vanity, his bare feet resting on her velvet-lined stool. Without raising my head, I can feel the heat of my brother’s concern. “Lo…”

I crumple the paper in a fist and shut my eyes.

“Lo,” Ryke repeats, his tone deep. “It doesn’t fucking bother me. We should just ignore it like we always have.”

My leg bounces. These days are the hardest. The ones that make me forget about all the months I’ve spent sober. The ones that could give a flying fuck about tomorrow or yesterday—the ones that only think of right
now.
And right now, I am in so much…pain.

“This isn’t just about you,” I tell him. I ball the news article, a pre-release emailed to Connor. The time stamp is dated for tomorrow morning.

In less than three-hundred words, they discredit a legitimate paternity test. They point out how Maximoff has dark brown hair.

My father’s hair.

Ryke’s
hair.

I have lighter brown, a color shared with my birth mom. The article stretches and twists the truth into a disgusting, ugly goddamn lie. Earlier, Connor said, “People believe what they want to believe, and no proof will change stubborn preconceptions.”

His cynical view on humanity may be right, but this isn’t about Ryke’s feelings. It’s not about my feelings. I’ve learned to bear false accusations. I can take this. The ache in my stomach is not for me. Or even for Lily.

All the agony that courses through my body, razor-sharp and unrelenting, belongs to a two-month old in the room next door.

I pinch the bridge of my nose as emotions roil. “I don’t want my son confronting shit like this
every damn day
…” My voice breaks, and I take a breath. I smooth out the article, my vision too blurry to read the words. But I fold the paper into threes this time. “It’s bad enough that he has to live under a microscope. He shouldn’t have to answer any questions about who his real father is.”

With a rock in my throat, I rise from the bed, my thoughts already set in place. I can’t tell Lily about this. I don’t want to have to. I exhale deeply and face Connor. “I need a favor.” My shoulders tighten. I rarely ask him for favors, and I know that Connor Cobalt attaches a million strings to a single one. He does something for you; you do something for him.

That’s how it works.

“For you, darling, anything,” he smiles genially, but I trace grief in his blue eyes. Or maybe that’s just my own.

Ryke interjects, “You haven’t even heard the fucking favor yet. Keep it in your pants, Cobalt.”

“Just so you know, your jealousy keeps me warm at night,” Connor says and then winks.

Ryke flips him off.

I can’t even join our usual banter. I’m just trying to climb out of this quicksand. The moment Connor retrains his attention onto me, I prepare for a rejection. But he waits for me to speak at least.

“I need you to make up with my dad,” I say.

Connor doesn’t blink. He doesn’t say much of anything either.

I continue, hoping to convince him without pleading like a little kid to a parent. “He can bury this,” I explain, passing the folded paper to him. “But you have the sources.”

Connor pockets the paper. “I don’t think it will be that easy, Lo.”

“Can you try?” My eyes burn. This is my only option. My best friend and my father. That’s my last card. I have to play it. Even if these are just rumors, even if they’re dismissed in a couple weeks—this is a rumor that I
never
want Moffy to hear.

Not even once. I want him to grow up without a fragment of a doubt that I’m his father. There is a future for him that’s painted without hardship and without judgment.

I know that future is not his. No matter what I do, there will be cameras pointed at his face. People will ask questions. Over and over and over. Until his ears ring. There will be a day when he learns that his mom is a sex addict. And there will be a time where he’s ridiculed for it.

But there is another future that is full of promise and certainty, even with the knowledge of our pasts. It’s
this
future that I’m clawing to obtain. It’s the one where he knows that he was conceived from love.

That no one and nothing can devoid him of that notion. Because nothing and no one brings doubt into his head.

I can’t change other people’s beliefs. But I can stop them from spreading their lies.

I just need help.

I’m not too prideful or too ashamed to ask for it.

After a long moment, Connor steps away from the wall. When his blue eyes flit to mine, he says, “I’ll drive.”

{ 54 }

LOREN HALE

The ride to my dad’s is short and void of bodyguards. We didn’t take the time to call them, not when his house is gated. My thoughts race. Different paths. Different options. It’s possible my dad could refuse to help, just on the basis that he’d have to work with Connor.

I reject that theory. My father can be vindictive, but when it comes to his family—when it comes to
me
—he’d do almost anything. I clutch this thought tight as Connor slows the Escalade and rolls down his window.

“103190,” I tell him the security code, and he types it into the pad. Soon after, the iron gate groans open.

He parks. The mansion just outside the car door.

Ryke hesitates in the passenger seat, and then he turns to me in the back. “This may not work. And it’ll be okay if it doesn’t. Moffy won’t have a bad life. We’ll all fucking protect him from the media.”

He’s trying to prepare me for the worst. But I’d rather look to a better future than agonize over the darkest one. I’m not going to sit here and torment myself.

I don’t say anything. I just climb out of the car, the cool air filling my lungs. I lead Connor and Ryke to the front door, a lion metal knocker on the black wood. Fumbling with the key, I finally stick it in the lock and enter my father’s mansion.

I wipe my clammy hand on my jeans and head down the hall. It’s three-o’clock on a Sunday. My dad could be anywhere, but I’m sure he’s here.

I peek into every room. Wanting, desperately, to end the search as quickly as I can.

When I near the den in the back of the house, I hear his voice and no one else’s. Like he’s speaking on the phone.

“I know she spent the night at my house, Greg. I wasn’t fucking blind back then.” My blood runs cold. He’s talking about Lily. I know he is.

I stop midway to the cracked door, the hallway dim, and as I listen, I skim the photos framed on the wall. Me, as a baby. Me, as a toddler. Me and Lily, as kids. Me and Lily, as preteens.

“You knew my parenting methods were more relaxed than Samantha’s. I wasn’t going to hover. If either of you had a problem with it, you should’ve kept her at your home.” He pauses. “Oh, come on, Greg, stop blaming yourself. You’re a good goddamn father.” And then I hear the sound of ice cubes clinking against glass. “We all make mistakes.”

That sound.

Ice against glass. It breaches my ears like hammered nails. Memories wash over me in a hazy blackness. Shadows filling parts of me. I can practically feel the crystal glass in my hand. And I can visualize the one in his. Not just lime and water.

It has to be.

I have to believe it is. He’s sober. My dad
is
sober.

Ryke sets his hand on my shoulder. I can’t move. Something cements my feet to this place. Maybe fear.

“We all knew they would end up together. Christ, it was Lily and Loren. How the fuck were we supposed to know she’d become a sex addict? The best goddamn fortuneteller wouldn’t have predicted that.”

The edge in his voice is sharp,
too
sharp.

He’s sober.

My teeth ache, and I realize that I can’t hide behind this wall forever. My feet move before my mind does. I take a step forward, and Ryke’s hand falls from my shoulder. When I slip into my father’s den, I am washed deeper in memories.

The leather couch, the dark wooden cabinets, organized desk, computer hutch, flat-screen television—it’s the home of a night I’ll never forget.

I was fourteen, and I’d just fought with my father in that same hallway. When I returned to the den, Lily was waiting timidly on the couch, our sci-fi show paused on the TV. We’d always been more than just friends.

We were
best
friends.

She had all of me by then. I had most of her.

And I let Lily drown my pain with a kiss. And then something more. I lost my virginity here. Right
here.
In the torment of my fucked up childhood.

For years, I avoided this den. Like it contained every calloused feeling from that night. I can walk through it now and not be pulled under. I believe this.

I have to believe it.

The minute I enter the den, I focus on my father who gazes out the large window. Rain slides down the pane. His right hand cups a glass…

I freeze halfway to him. “Dad?”

He spins slowly, and it’s not a mistake—what I see. Amber liquid floats in the crystal goblet. Scotch. The bottle is on his desk, next to a box of cigars and a stack of clipped papers. I force myself to raise my gaze onto his.

His eyes are narrowed, sharp and black. Far gone. The difference is easy to spot now that I’ve seen him sober.

“Greg,” he says into his cellphone. “I’ll have to call you back.” He clicks his phone off and tosses it violently onto his desk. It falls and thuds on the carpet.

He swishes his drink, not even pretending that it’s something else.

“Let me guess,” I say sharply, “it’s just water?”

“Macallan 1939,” he replies. And then he takes a long sip, practically slapping me in the face. I rock back, but our cold eyes never separate. He tries giving me that look—the one where he says
you’re just a little fucking kid. Grow up.

I am grown up.

I’m more of an adult than him.

“What the
fuck
is wrong with you?!” Ryke shouts, his face blood-red as he steps nearer. I shove him back before he storms ahead.

Connor even helps by grabbing Ryke’s bicep and forcing him beside us. Before he yells and reignites old arguments, I just want simple answers.

“How long?” I ask our dad, a tremor in my voice. “How long have you been drinking behind our backs?”

He prolongs the answer with another swig of scotch. His smug smile irritates me the most. The way his lips curve. Like it’s funny that he’s drinking. And I’m not.

That’s it for me. I just snap.

I run across the den before I can process my movements. And I struggle to pry the goblet from his iron-grip. Somewhere in my head, I’m thinking:
if I can get it away from him, it ends this.
But it doesn’t end like this. I know better than that.

“Loren!” he sneers and pushes my shoulder. With two palms, I shove him back even harder. He stumbles into the window and clutches a waist-tall vase for support.

I’ve never been physical with him, not like this. But I am screaming inside. Disappointment and hurt crush beneath everything. I take a couple steps towards him and try to remove the glass again, but he raises it above his head.

“Stop acting like a little shit!” he shouts. “Talk to me like a grown fucking man.”

My throat is on fire. “Like you, Dad? Talk like you?! Are you a grown fucking man?” I point at his chest. “Is that what you are?” I swallow a brick. “How long? How fucking long have you been lying to me?!” My face twists with too much pain.