Addicted After All(68)

Forgetting that we can feel all the same.

“CONNOR!” Lo screams for help again, Ryke tearing through his arms. He’s stronger than Lo. This has always been fact.

“Let him go,” Connor says in a stoic voice.

“What?” Lo breathes out the word. It pains me. I’m so close to him now. I reach out like I can touch him, but I feel a large hand on my shoulder. Garth.

He draws me to the side by a foot or two so I’m not smacked by flailing limbs. Daisy slips out of my grip, and Rose leaves her to strut further ahead towards the fight. Daisy stays upright on her own, swaying only a little.

“Connor, help me,” Lo pleads.

“I won’t,” Connor says like he wants Ryke to fight these people. “Just let him go, Lo.”

Then Surfer Tee creates a V-shape with his fingers and obscenely sticks his tongue through it. His eyes have shifted. And they land right on me. Chills race down my spine.

Lo glances over his shoulder, finding the source of the ridicule.

It was me.

All of it, I realize.

Maybe they’re saying my vagina is too big. I’m gross. I’ve slept with hundreds of faceless men. I’m diseased and disgusting. I am not fit to be a mom. I am and will always be a sex addict. Nothing more than that. I have heard it all and read it on social media. Though never have I witnessed it in Spanish.

I take another step forward, and Lo screams at me, “LILY, STAY BACK!”

My heart stops. The wrathful, pained look on his face plants me here as much as his voice. And his eyes flicker to my belly. I didn’t mean—I wouldn’t put my baby in harm’s way. I wasn’t going to. It’s just…Lo.

He breathes raggedly and nods to me like, please, Lily.

I nod back.

When he ensures that I won’t risk my safety, he spins back to his brother. In a single instant, Lo removes his hands off Ryke, and this is when I think Ryke will lose all self-control and throw a fist first, tapping into his aggressive side. He’s snapped. Long before now. But he doesn’t even have his fists barred yet, not even raised for a right hook or a sucker punch. He steps forward, then stops.

It’s so quick. The tallest of the hecklers charges him, his eyes set on Ryke. In three lengthy strides, he nails his knuckles into Ryke’s jaw. I can feel my heart beating out of my chest.

That is a sucker punch, one that lands Ryke on the cement pathway.

The other two hecklers jump on Ryke, which causes Lo to snatch their arms and land a punch or two.

I flinch as a pair of knuckles connects with Lo’s face. “Stop!” I shout at the hecklers, finding my voice with Lo’s pain. The dark ocean water is on our right, shops on our left, the moon overhead, the dock in view. We’re not that far away from the tugboat which’ll bring us to the anchored yacht.

“This is not happening,” Rose says, heading even further forward with her pepper spray in hand. The moment she passes Connor, he seizes her wrist.

“What do you think you’re doing, darling?”

“I’m fighting for my sister,” she says seriously. She’s pregnant too. And while I love having a sister that’d be willing to insert herself into a fist-fight on my behalf, now’s not a good time.

Even Daisy has enough sense to stay put—

Just as I think it, she sprints forward. And Mikey catches her around the waist. She kicks out. “Let me help him.”

“No, Daisy,” Mikey tells her.

“This is…sexist,” she says, her arms flopping around with her legs.

“Agreed,” Rose says to Connor.

“Hun,” Connor tells her, “do I need to remind you that you’re a vessel for our unborn child?”

“Are you trying to infuriate me more?” she retorts. “Now I just want to punch you.”

“I’m a truthteller. If you don’t like what I have to say, take it up with the liars of the world.” And then we’re all distracted when Surfer Tee kicks Lo hard below his chest.

“Lo!” I scream, especially as Lo crumples to the ground. My stomach caves, remembering his preexisting injury: broken ribs from the Paris riot. Hot tears squeeze through the corners of my eyes.

“Please don’t do anything rash,” Connor forces to Rose. And then he inserts himself in this fight, to defend Lo and pull him out of it. Connor ducks an incoming right hook and then protectively stands above Lo so no one can touch him. I watch Lo cough hoarsely on the cement.