Addicted to You (7 page)

“What if...” Leah began, but then her face
grew warm and she couldn’t continue.

“What?” Helena asked, putting down the
remote. She had settled on a reality TV show about ghost
psychics.

Leah bandied the words around in her head.
It all sounded stupid any way she put it, so she blurted, “I know
I’m banned from sex until you give me the okay, but what if I met
someone?”

“Leah.” Helena’s voice
held a warning tone like an air raid siren. “You
just
finished
therapy.”

Leah winced. “I
mean,
really
met
someone.”

After a short pause, during which she could
practically see the gears turning in Helena’s head, Helena’s eyes
went wide. She leaned forward, clutching a beaded pillow against
her chest. “As in … as in someone you think you could have a
relationship with? That kind of ‘met’?”

Leah cringed. She was talking about feelings
again. She hoped this wasn’t becoming a trend. “Maybe.”

“Wow,” Helena breathed, leaning back against
the arm of the sofa. She turned her face into the pillow until only
large brown eyes could be seen over the beaded edges. “You must
really like this guy.”

“Enough,” she muttered.

Helena’s expression turned gleeful and she
made a muffled squeal into the pillow. “Oh my gosh! You might
actually learn how to care about a guy. You might even fall in
love!”

“Okay, you’re
getting
way
ahead
of me here,” Leah said. She grabbed another pillow and smacked it
against the one shielding Helena’s face. Who said anything about
love? That was much too strong a word to even think about yet for a
guy she barely knew. Right now, she wanted him. And she couldn’t
stop thinking about him and his voice and the way he looked at her
or the easy way they’d talked about a less-than-easy
topic.

She liked him. A lot. More than any guy
she’d ever met.

“This has never happened in the ten years
I’ve known you.”

“It’s never happened, full stop,” Leah said.
Helena, on the other hand, had had enough boyfriends for the both
of them, and she’d been in love no less than five times in the
years since they’d met.

To Helena’s benefit, she
had dumped one of them after he called Leah some choice words and
demanded Helena choose between the two of them. She had been
absolutely certain Helena would choose him because who in their
right mind would pick
her
over the guy they claimed to love? She’d been
shocked when Helena showed up at her parents’ estate and casually
asked if she could sleep over before crying all over Leah’s bed.
Leah might have cried too, but she’d deny it if Helena ever brought
it up.

That might have been the moment she decided
to hold onto Helena’s friendship no matter what. Besides Elijah,
Helena was the one person who’d always been there for her without
actually needing to be.

“So, what, you want to bring him with us on
Sunday?” Helena asked, looking way too eager.

“Are you crazy? I’m not introducing him to
you.” She hadn’t even decided yet if she wanted to see the guy
again. She wasn’t about to bring him around to meet Elijah.

“What? Why?” Helena lurched forward until
her face was inches from Leah’s. “I want to meet this guy! Details,
Leah!”

Leah gave her friend a playful shove, and
Helena retreated back to her side of the sofa. “I just wanted to
make sure it was okay with you if … if I decided to pursue
something. That’s all.”

With a giggle, Helena said, “You wanted my
blessing?”

“Well, not anymore,” she said flatly.

Helena swallowed the rest of her laughter.
“In that case,” she said, “I might make an exception, but Leah—”
She drew a breath, and the humor faded from her face, which
immediately made Leah wary. She looked concerned as she flattened
the pillow in her lap and reached for her wine glass. “If you
really like this guy, I don’t think you should just jump in bed
with him. I know you don’t agree, but I really do think you have a
bit of a problem in how you process emotion and sex.”

Leah wasn’t willing to go over this again
with her, so she didn’t reply.

Helena continued on, “If you want something
longer than one night with him, maybe you shouldn’t have sex. Not
because I’m not okay with it. But because maybe you aren’t.”

Leah swallowed and looked down at her glass.
For a moment, neither of them spoke, and the raised voices of the
people on TV filled the silence.

Finally, Helena tossed the pillow aside and
leaned forward to grasp Leah’s hand. “Just think about, okay?”

Before she could respond, Helena tugged at
her fingers and raised them close enough to her face that she could
examine Leah’s nails.

“You need a manicure. Wait here.” She hopped
off the sofa and disappeared down the hall to retrieve her box.

Leah held out her hand, studying her nails,
but all she could think about was the way it had felt to slide her
fingers through his hair.

After a few days to clear his head and think
about things objectively, Will realized he was an idiot. He was
lucky the counselor hadn’t thrown him out of the program. If James
found out what had happened, it was entirely possible Will would be
reduced to doing nothing but checking footnotes until he
graduated.

But that kiss … He couldn’t get it out of
his head. It was easier to push it to the back of his mind during
the day. But it rose, persistent, to the surface at night when he
was left to nothing but the silence of his apartment and his own
whirling thoughts. That moment when she had been pressed against
him with only the barrier of their clothes to separate them
remained suspended in his memory, a perfectly taunting reminder of
what could have happened.

There was no point in denying that he liked
her. More than that, he wanted to take her on a date. If sex was
the issue, then they simply wouldn’t have sex.

Of course, one thing continued to bother
him.

The object of his attraction didn’t know
that he had come to the meetings as a fraud and that he had been
taking note of everything. The only reason she opened up to him was
because she believed him to be one of them. The longer he lied to
her, the worse it would be when she discovered the truth. He had no
doubt she would be furious. She seemed angry a lot of the time
already.

Not to mention it was selfish wanting a girl
who had problems with self-control and sex. Maybe she was really
trying to get better, and it would be best if he didn’t go back to
the meeting on Thursday.

But he knew that wasn’t even an option. He
had to go back, and his job with James had nothing to do with
it.

The kiss, his revolving thoughts, the
guilt—it all wound round and round his head like the
snake-patterned path that wended through campus and into the
surrounding woods. An endless coil where you didn’t really know
where you were going but couldn’t stop if you wanted to find your
destination.

It took a few seconds of silence before he
realized the sound of a pencil on sketch paper had stopped. He
turned his head from where he was reclined on Finn’s sagging sofa
to find the guy in question watching him from his scarred dinner
table with one raised eyebrow.

“What?” Will asked, feeling self-conscious.
Had his face given away his thoughts?

Finn shook his head and returned to drawing
in his enormous sketchbook. Nearby, an easel featuring a
half-finished oil painting stood on paint-spattered cloth to
protect the floor. The painting sort of looked like a fish. A
robotic fish. If you squinted and turned your head to the side.
Will concluded it was abstract.

“You’re thinking about something really
hard,” Finn said, sounding amused. “Nice change of pace, I
bet.”

“Your quips have improved,” Will said,
rubbing his forehead. He stacked his hands behind his head and
returned to staring up at the speckled ceiling of Finn’s apartment.
To keep Finn from further speculating on what he was thinking
about, he said, “So tell me about this new role.”

“I’m playing the male lead,” Finn said.

Will could hear the smile in his voice, but
there was something else there as well. He turned again to look at
his friend. Finn was now staring intently down at his sketch. “All
right? And?”

Finn wasn’t a drama major and, to the
department head’s eternal frustration, Finn had no desire to be
one. But he was such an expressive and talented actor that whenever
the University put on a play, depending on the casting director, a
part was always saved for Finn just in case. This time, apparently
it was the lead. The actual drama majors probably weren’t happy
about that.

“And it’s taking up a lot of time. So I’ve
been staying up late to get my real work done.”

Will sat up and pushed off the sofa. “What
are you drawing?”

Leaning back, Finn held up his sketchbook so
Will could see. The girl on the page was skillfully rendered. The
strands of her hair, the light reflecting in her eyes, the beauty
mark on her jaw—the details jumped off the page. She was
beautiful.

She also took up the vast majority of the
other pages in Finn’s sketchbook.

“Her again,” Will said, leaning forward to
get a closer look at Finn’s drawing. “Wow. That’s really good.”

“Thanks.” He sighed and dropped his
sketchbook on the tabletop. Will gave him a sympathetic slap on the
shoulder.

The girl’s name was Kat, and she was a drama
major. He suspected the only reason Finn was so obliging of the
drama professor was because it put him in close company with Kat, a
gifted actress who often took leading roles in the University
productions. Unfortunately, from what he’d heard, Kat was about as
pleasant as chewing rusted nails. He was pretty sure she had no
idea Finn existed except in a peripheral way.

With Finn landing the lead role in this
play, though, he had probably succeeded in getting her attention,
although likely not in a positive way.

“Is she in the play too?” Will asked.

Finn nodded. “Female lead.”

“That’s great! Why are you shaking your
head?”

“Because!” Finn shoved away his sketchbook
and tossed his pencil on top of it. “She hates me. She doesn’t
respect me because I’m not serious about acting and I’m taking the
role from someone who’s actually passionate about it. And, I mean,
she’s totally right.”

“Are you going to give it up?”

Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. I get to see
her every other day now.” He dropped his head back and made a sound
like a dying donkey. “And she already has a boyfriend. God, I’m
pathetic.”

“A bit.”

His head snapped back up, his eyes narrowed.
“You’re one to talk. You like someone at your sex therapy job, and
you’re only there to spy on them.”

Squashing the immediate urge to defend
himself, Will returned to his spot on the sofa.

“Technically, it’s research.” Which he
supposed was a more acceptable, but no less culpable,

excuse for spying. “And I never said I liked
anyone.”

“You’re transparent. Who is she? Is she
older?”

Will sighed. Maybe talking about it would
help exorcise the thoughts from his mind. “No,” he said. “She’s a
student. She probably goes to REU actually, but I’ve never seen her
on campus.”

“Hot?”

“Scorching,” he admitted.

“No wonder she’s a sex addict.”

He winced. “She sort of kissed me.”

Finn picked up the pencil he’d tossed down a
moment ago and twirled it between his fingers. He gave a small
laugh. “What do you mean ‘sort of’? How does a girl ‘sort of’ kiss
you? Did she purse her lips at you?”

Will gave him a flat look, which only made
Finn laugh again.

“Okay, smartass. She kissed me.”

“You’re getting way to comfortable with
American swearing. So then what’d you do?”

“I kissed her back,” he said. That should
have been fairly obvious. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“She’s a sex addict. You’re not. You didn’t
think maybe you shouldn’t have—”

“I know,” Will said, slumping back into the
sunken sofa cushions and rubbing a hand through his hair. “I
shouldn’t have.” He popped his head back up to give his friend a
curious lift of his brow. “I can’t believe you’re actually yelling
at me for kissing a girl.”

“Getting kissed by a girl,” Finn
corrected.

“Semantics. And anyway, I wouldn’t have done
anything else.” Possibly a lie. “The counselor walked in on us and
sent us home separately. I felt like I was getting caught by my dad
or something.”

Finn had flipped his sketchbook open again
and was paging through it. “You like her?”

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t
it? He decided to be honest.

“Aye,” he mumbled, more to
hear his own admission than for Finn’s benefit. He covered his face
and groaned. “Aye, I do. Something about her just gets under my
skin.” She was complicated and irreverent and beyond gorgeous. He
wanted to know her. To peel back her many guarded layers and
really
know her. He slid
his hand down his face to scratch at his jaw. He sounded like a
lovestruck teenager. “Promise to murder me in my sleep after this,
would you?”

“That bad, huh?”

Unfortunately, yes, and he hadn’t realized
it until this moment.

“You should come out with me this weekend,”
Finn said. “Maybe I can find a pretty guy for you.”

Will laughed. “I don’t think we have the
same taste.”

“You’re just thinking about it wrong. See,
from my angle, I’ve got a much larger dating pool to pick from than
you do.”

On account of Finn being bisexual, Will
supposed this was true. During their freshman year, he had returned
to their shared dorm to find Finn in bed making out with his
then-boyfriend. It had been a shocking way to discover his
roommate’s sexuality, and he had freaked out a bit. But only in the
sense that it had surprised him.