Hothouse Flower (Addicted #4)(38)

“Jealous?”

“Not in the f*cking slightest,” I tell her. The shower turns on, the pipes groaning through the walls. I glance at my closed bedroom door and then back at the floorboards. “Daisy, you weren’t looking at porn to try and fall asleep, were you?” It’s a f*cking path that no one would want her to go down.

“No…” She sounds like she has something else to add, so I wait for her to speak again. I can hear her shifting on her bed. “I had a guy over tonight.”

The temperature drops ten degrees. My head is f*cking submerged beneath an ocean again, that gritty salt water sliding down my throat. I see an older guy f*cking the hell out of her, and I almost kick the coffee table. I calm down with a deep breath. “Yeah?” I run my hand through my hair a couple times, messing up the already disheveled strands.

“Yeah,” she says, leaving it at that.

“Did you look at porn together?” I shoot up to my feet and head to the f*cking kitchen, the phone to my ear with one hand. I open the fridge, nothing in there but a case of water and a leftover sub from Lucky’s. Don’t punch the f*cking wall.

“That would definitely be another weird thing for the night, but no, we didn’t watch it together.”

“Is he still there?” Don’t f*cking think about it. I open the freezer to distract me. It’s just as bare as the fridge. A package of freezer-burnt chicken and a tray of ice. In the last four months, I’ve spent almost no time in my apartment. Maybe to grab some clean clothes and my climbing gear. Other than that, I’ve been at Daisy’s place.

I’ve been sleeping in the same bed as her. I’ve been taking care of her. She’s mine. She feels like she belongs to me. I don’t want to share her with any other f*cking guy. And I don’t want to be with any other f*cking girl.

Anything else feels like a sickening betrayal. How the f*ck did we get to this place?

“No,” she says. “He’s gone. I thought maybe I wasn’t doing it right, so I was going to look at porn.”

“What’s it?” I ask, finding a packet of oatmeal in a drawer. I tear it with my teeth and pour it into a bowl. I uncap the water bottle as she answers.

“Sex. I can’t orgasm. I think it’s a physiological problem,” she states matter-of-factly. I remember a time when she claimed that she orgasmed before. We were in Cancun for Spring Break, and she said she skipped foreplay, just went straight to sex and experienced something more. I should have been happy for her, but I felt more f*cking joy when she admitted that she got it wrong. That she thought she climaxed, but after talking to her sisters, it didn’t seem euphoric enough to be that heightened peak.

“You can orgasm,” I tell her. “I’ve f*cking heard you, sweetheart.”

There’s no answer. I called her sweetheart—I do it unconsciously, and I know every time I say it, her lips rise.

“Daisy?”

“Huh?” She laughs a little. “Can you say that again?”

“No.” I realize I’ve overflowed my f*cking oatmeal with half the water bottle. “Shit,” I curse. I have to dump all of it in the trash.

“Sorry,” she says.

“No, it’s not you,” I tell her. After scraping all of the oatmeal out, I toss the bowl too hard in the sink and it cracks. What the f*ck is wrong with me today? I shake my head. “I f*cking hate talking to you on the phone.”

“Me too.”

I lean against the cupboard and stare at my bedroom door, keeping an eye on whether or not it opens again. I have to be f*cking cautious with people I bring over. I had a one-night stand steal a pair of my f*cking boxer-briefs a year and a half ago. She sold them for three grand on eBay. “Were you careful with this guy?” I ask her.

“We didn’t have sex,” she says.

I shut my eyes and take a deep breath. Thank f*cking God. “Was he a part of your weird f*cking night?”

“Oh yeah,” she says. “I just don’t understand why I meet people and they seem so perfect for me, and then I get them in bed, and they’re just…wrong.” She pauses. “I think it’s me.”

“I already hate this f*cking guy.” That’s a real understatement.

“You would hate him more if you saw him last night. He thought I was a virgin, and he was happy to deflower me upon a first-time meeting.”

I glare. I want to rewind time and take everything back. I want to tell her to not date a single f*cking soul. I wish my brother’s claims hadn’t gotten to me. “Stay away from him.”

“I plan on it.”

The shower cuts off. “Hey, Daisy?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s almost four in the morning where you are. Take a f*cking Ambien and go to sleep, okay? Call me when you have time.”

She hesitates. “I have time to talk more now.”

“You need to sleep before you go to work.”

“It’s pointless. I have to be in for hair and makeup at five thirty. Ambien may knock me out for hours, so I might as well just stay up.”

My door swings open, and Emilia stands with a towel wrapped around her chest, her hair dry. “You’re out of soap,” she says. “I couldn’t find any in your cabinets.” She hasn’t even taken a shower yet.