Thrive (Addicted, #4)(97)

I’m not strong enough.

I fall back down, the weight of his muscles outsizing my thin arms.

“Lily!” Rose rushes in the kitchen, dressed in a black robe.

“What…” Her voice dies off.

I’m tangled with Loren Hale’s limbs while he’s completely, dangerously unresponsive.

“Connor!” Rose shouts, fear breaching her voice.

It terrifies me ten times more. “I’m trying to get him to the car,” I tell her, my body trembling. “I’m taking him to…to the hospital.”

“CONNOR!” Rose screams.

He runs into the kitchen, his hair wet, shirtless, navy pajama pants like he jumped out of the shower. He moves into action faster than Rose. “Go start the car, Rose,” he orders, his voice stoic. But there is something behind Connor Cobalt’s eyes that I don’t like.

“We have to go,” I say through a cascade of tears. I try to lift Lo again, but Connor squeezes into the small space.

“I have him, Lily. Can you go with Rose?” He glances back at my sister, who is staring wide-eyed at Lo. “Rose.”

“Whose bottle of Glenfiddich is that?” she asks in one breath.

Connor easily lifts Lo into his arms, his head hanging like he’s…I hold his neck so it doesn’t look like that. Then Connor adjusts Lo’s body, his head resting against Connor’s bare chest. Better. I lead the way, grabbing Rose’s arm so she’ll follow.

I have seen Loren Hale passed out drunk, more times than I can even count. Rose hasn’t seen him like this. And even though something brutal terrorizes every nerve inside my body, I only think one thing: he needs help.

I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and realize I didn’t do the right thing for him. I don’t want to regret not moving faster. I don’t want to open my eyes and see that he’s gone for good. So I suck down this pain and I trudge forward. To the garage. To Rose’s Escalade.

“Connor,” Rose says under her breath while he carries Lo, two paces behind us. I glance back, just to make sure Lo is still there.

“You need to drive,” he tells her, admitting that he can’t.

Rose nods quickly and takes a deep breath, her game face returning. She unlocks the car and heads to the front seat.

I open the backdoor, and I slide in first. Connor gently rests Lo next to me, his head on my lap. I concentrate on the way his chest rises and falls, so discreetly that it’s hard to see. Just keep breathing, Lo. I comb his hair out of his face, and by the time Connor shuts the passenger door, we’re speeding to the hospital.

Minutes must pass, in the quiet of the car, before someone speaks.

“It was mine,” Connor says. I can’t see his expression from the backseat, but he covers his eyes with his hand. Something he almost never does. “It was my alcohol.”

Rose reaches out and holds Connor’s hand between their seats.

I kiss Lo’s forehead. You wait for me, Loren Hale. “Promise me,” I whisper, blinking back tears. I can try to hold him as tightly as possible, but in the end, he can slip through my grasp at any moment. He can drift away without me.

Please not today.





{ 46 }

1 year : 07 months

March





LILY CALLOWAY


I forgot that I was only wearing panties and a see-through tank top. And I really don’t even care. Though the hospital staff made me put on blue scrub pants. I’ve scooted a chair as close to Lo’s bed as I could, and I hold his hand, tubes stuck in his skin and running to an IV bag with fluids.

They pumped his stomach. Now he just needs to wake up.

“You shouldn’t have had alcohol anywhere in the fucking house!” Ryke yells.

“I brought it home after a company party. I didn’t think—”

“You’re living with an alcoholic, Connor! Do you not even care about him?” Their shadows stand tall behind a gray curtain, inside the nice hospital room with a couch and a bathroom. The door is shut so hopefully no one can hear them in the hallway.

“I know you’re upset—”

“You should be upset!” His voice shakes, and his shadow paces back and forth while Connor remains fixed in one place. “Do you even know what you did?!” While Ryke stares straight at Connor, there is the longest pause in history of pauses.

And then their forms collide, Ryke’s silhouette shoving Connor roughly. Something clatters to the floor while Connor defends himself, pushing Ryke back. My heart races, especially as an elbow or arm whacks into the curtain. I can’t see a thing, really.

I’m mostly surprised that Connor doesn’t talk Ryke down.

He’s letting Lo’s brother attack him this once. The more aggressive shadow pins the other into the wall, both breathing heavily.

“I trusted him,” Connor says in a low voice.

“You can’t trust a fucking alcoholic,” Ryke growls.

“I trusted my friend,”

Connor retorts. “I see him every day, Ryke. If I knew about the allegations, I would’ve never kept him out of my sight.”

“You know what I fucking think?” Ryke asks, fuming. “I think you get off being the superhero to my brother. I think you like the way he looks at you—like you’re invulnerable. While he stands beneath you, weak, looking for guidance and you take advantage of all of that—”