Addicted After All (Addicted #3)(87)

“Mmmhhmm.”

I feign surprise. “She can’t even talk.” It’s rare that morning sex will put Lily back to sleep, and I suspect it’s because we went at it all night. We’re making up for the six weeks where we can’t do anything. I enjoy it as much as Lil.

Others in the house don’t. Rose heard us from down the hall last night and actually texted me to “put my dick away” and check in with Lily’s therapist.

She may be worried that I’m pushing Lily to a bad place, but I’m not. I can tell when she’s compulsive, and I don’t feed into that. I shut it down when it happens. I do understand Rose’s concern though. She can’t know what I do with Lily in bed, so she just speculates.

“Mmm…” Lily says again, her eyes closing entirely.

I smile, watching her enter a peaceful sleep. I sit up and grab my phone off the night stand, checking my email really quickly. I scan through them and stop on something Lil sent me from 5 p.m. yesterday, before we had sex.

The subject line: Don’t be mad! But you need to see this.

My smile fades. I glance at her, her chest rising and falling, and I lift the sheet and comforter up to her collarbones. She barely stirs.

And then I click in to see a picture of me and Lil from Hale Co.’s fourth of July party. Lily is passing me her corndog with a big goofy smile. It’s one of the cutest pictures I’ve ever seen, and I look infatuated by her.

She pasted in a link to a Celebrity Crush article. I take the risk and click it too. The headline: Lily Calloway Shares a Hotdog with Loren Hale on July 4th by Wendy Collins.

I skim the article. Wendy talks about the rumors concerning me, Ryke, Lily and my child. Other than that, she just says it’s ironic that Lily is passing me a hotdog.

I wish Lily wouldn’t read this shit. And I return to Lil’s original email and see that she typed a message to me: I thought it was a nice picture of us. Right?

My emotions just seesawed in the span of two minutes. I’m back to smiling. “Yeah, Lil,” I whisper, my gaze flitting to her as she sleeps.

I don’t trust her fully. I can’t. I end up going through my phone’s history to see what she was up to yesterday evening. My stomach drops. Tons of Celebrity Crush articles, Twitter, Tumblr—shit. I scope out those. No porn. Just television fandom stuff. She also Google searched “when should I take a paternity test” since it’s something we’ve mentioned to silence the rumors about Ryke. I don’t want to think about it right now.

I almost shut off the phone, but it buzzes.

Are you up? I need to talk to you. I’m in the kitchen. – Connor

Instead of texting back, I just carefully climb out of bed and put on drawstring pants before I leave.





{ 32 }

LOREN HALE



After walking down the hallway, I descend the stairs, skipping a couple steps at a time, and then I enter the large clean kitchen.

In khaki shorts and a navy collared shirt, Connor pours himself a cup of coffee, no dark circles under his eyes or any visible signs of exhaustion. It’s already been four weeks since Jane was born and he’s a pro. “Should I expect to be as well rested as you?” I ask him, heading to a cupboard.

He turns around while I search for cereal. “Your normal sleep cycle is ten hours,” he reminds me. “Mine is six.”

“Noted.” All I see is Ryke’s granola cereal on the shelf, so I take out the box. “What’d you need to talk about?” I open the fridge and grab the milk.

“I want you to hear this from me before it appears anywhere else.”

I slow my actions, not frozen in place, but more cautious of this conversation. I wrack my brain for the subject matter, and I come up blank. “Yeah, okay,” I say, pouring milk in my bowl. I put the cereal back and wait for him to speak.

But in a rare moment, he has trouble producing words.

I stop moving and just lean against the counter, eating my cereal unhurriedly. “I can handle whatever it is,” I remind him. “Is it Lily?” The granola lumps in my throat. I drink some of the milk to wash it down.

“No,” he says quickly. He stands opposite me, cupping his coffee, and his blue eyes flit up to mine. “It’s about me.”

I frown and set my spoon back in the bowl. “Are you getting shit at Cobalt Inc. for the Mexico stuff?”

“When I kissed you?” he says with the tilt of his head.

I flash a half-smile. “I could’ve kissed you, you know.”

“But you didn’t. I kissed you,” he says easily. “And no, I’m not getting flak from anyone directly, and I couldn’t care less about rumors.”

“Really? The Connor Cobalt that I first met was all about his reputation.”

“My reputation has superseded anything I envisioned back then. It’d take more than a dare in Mexico to hurt it…” He sips his coffee. “You don’t need to worry how people perceive me. It’s something I’ve micromanaged my whole life. I’m equipped to deal with it now.”

“So what is it then?” I ask outright.

“It’s…” He stops short and lets out a laugh. “I almost never explain this to anyone…most people wouldn’t view me the way I’d want them to. They wouldn’t really understand. So I just keep it to myself.”