The Thrill of It (No Regrets Book 2) Read online

  I take over the reins, my hands gripping his shoulders. I ride him, up and down, until my thighs are quaking, and even then, I keep going, watching as his face contorts in pleasure, and he tells me over and over how much he loves me, and loves fucking me, and loves everything. His coarseness and his love send me spinning, and my body is consumed with wildfire, and the whole damn forest is burning down, taking everything in its wake.

  I shout his name, louder than I’ve ever been, and then he’s doing the same, and we’re both savage and sweaty and hot and horny, and we collapse into each other’s arms. He tosses the condom into the trash can next to us, then wraps his arms around me again.

  I don’t let go for a long time, and he makes no move to pull away. The longer we stay like this, the more I know that there is a difference between love and addiction, and this here with him—this is some kind of love, and some kind of good.

  My thoughts drift off, roaming over these last few weeks, these last several months. How my life isn’t black and white, but it’s not gray either. It’s bursting with colors, and sometimes they are shades of black as I grapple with the darkness and the fear that still lives inside me, and other days they’re purple or blue when I’m happy and sad at the same time. Some days everything is orange and fiery and I am alive and burning like the sun.

  I am learning to live with all these colors, all these pieces of me. I am beginning to stop swatting away the girl I was. Because I can let go of who I used to be, but I don’t have to hate her, nor do I have to be ashamed of who I was. She served a purpose. Layla freed me from my mom. Besides, had I not been Layla, I might never have met Trey.

  I trace my fingers over the trees on his ribs, the reminders of his brothers.

  “Do you miss them?”

  “Yes,” he says into my hair, as he gently rubs his hand up and down my naked back. “But I have to believe there was a meaning behind it all. And look, if they hadn’t died, I might never have become fucked up, and if I wasn’t fucked up, I might not have met you.”

  I pull back to look at him. “You’re crazy, and I love your crazy, because I was thinking the same thing. Well, about me.”

  “If we weren’t addicted, we might never have met.”

  “So maybe there’s a purpose to everything, even the shitty stuff in life,” I say. “Even Miranda.” Then, in a low, worried voice, I add, “I haven’t heard from her in a while.”

  “But you’re not supposed to, right? I mean, it’s over?”

  “Yeah, it’s over. But the book will come out, and what if someone recognizes themselves in it?”

  Because some days it’s hard to believe our debts are really paid off. Are scores ever truly settled? Can we ever stop looking over our shoulders? I wonder if I’ll always sleep with one eye open, always watch my back to see who’s going to try to trip me up next. God knows, there are so many more people who could surface and demand something from me. More blood, more words, more ink.

  “Then we’ll deal with it. Together. Trust me, there is nothing, not a thing on this planet, that we cannot get through. I promise you,” he says, and he taps my arrow. “Staying.”

  “Staying,” I repeat.

  The arrow is staying.

  Now I know. Now I get it. I understand. This is love. It’s not a game. It’s not a razor’s edge. It’s not a transaction.

  The poets are right. The dreamers are right. The lovers are right. This isn’t nothing. This is everything.

  28

  Harley

  A Few Weeks Later

  Joanne knits another row on a hot-pink pair of socks as she begins the meeting. We go around and say our introductions at the girls-only meeting. Chloe, Ainsley, a new gal named Katrina.

  They each say their hellos, and we say hi back. Then it’s my turn.

  “I’m Harley, and I’m a sex and love addict,” I say, and Joanne beams at me. It’s been a few weeks now since I started using my real name here. It still feels weird and clunky after having the mask of Layla for so many months.

  “Hi, Harley,” the other women say to me.

  Then we talk and we share, and look, I’m not going to say I am sunshine and unicorns and the girl who overshares. I am still mostly a closed book, and I don’t know that healing means being open about everything. But I’m trying.

  Sometimes I just practice the words in my head. I like the way they sound as I rewrite my story.

  I’m Harley, I’m a sex and love addict. I’m in recovery. I was a virgin, I was a call girl, I was my mother’s daughter. Now I am a friend, I am a girlfriend, I am trying. I am twenty-one, and I don’t care how many guys I’ve kissed. There is only one guy I am kissing and will kiss. Now and always. And that has to count for something.

  When the meeting ends, I chat with Joanne for a few minutes, then say goodbye, because it’s my birthday and I’m having cake and watching a movie with Trey, Kristen, and Jordan.

  I rush up the steps and out onto the street, heading to my apartment. For a brief moment, my stomach cramps, as if I’ve run too far, and I have a stitch in my side. It reminds me of field hockey practice when we’d do laps.

  But the feeling fades quickly, and I’m grateful for its exit because it’s time for cake when I arrive home and unlock the door to my apartment.

  Kristen’s in the kitchen lining up twenty-one pink-and-yellow birthday candles in a circle on the chocolate cake. “Can’t promise it’ll be any good. I’m not really known for my mad baking skills,” Kristen says with a shrug.

  “I bet it’s fabulous,” I say, and squeeze her arm.

  Trey and Jordan join us in the kitchen as Kristen lights the candles, and they all start singing. I don’t even pretend to act humble, or like it’s no big deal. It is a big deal. I’m celebrating my birthday the way I want—with my friends, and my boyfriend, with a cake that’s not made by my mom—and my life is finally starting to feel like my own. Moment by moment. Like I belong to myself.

  So I sing along, and the four of us are loud as we can be.

  “Now make a wish,” Kristen says, gesturing to the candles.

  Leaning close, I gather my breath, and blow the flames out all at once. I wish for more moments like this.

  “What did you wish for?” Trey asks as he reaches for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine. I love that we hold hands, that we held hands as friends, and now as more.

  “I can’t tell you, or it won’t come true.”

  He sticks out his tongue at me as Kristen serves the cake on small plates for each of us.

  “Mmm. Delicious,” Jordan declares after a bite.

  Kristen rolls her eyes. “You’re just saying that to score points.”

  “No. This really is good cake,” Trey says after he takes a forkful.

  “Now you’re just backing up your buddy,” she says.

  “Kristen, you are going to have to accept that you actually made a delicious cake in a tiny New York kitchen,” I tell her after I finish another bite.

  Soon, she and Jordan have moved to the living room to queue up the movie on the laptop, while Trey and I wash off the plates. As I rinse the final one, he loops his arms around my waist, rests his chin on my shoulder, and sneaks a kiss on my neck.

  “Mmm. Is that my birthday present?”

  He tugs me against him, my back to his front. “I have many presents for you,” he says in a sexy, suggestive voice.

  I shut off the faucet and turn around in his arms. “Being with you, like this, is all I want.”

  “But I still want to give you more presents,” he says playfully.

  I brush my lips against his. “I will gladly accept. But this is already the best birthday ever,” I say, because it is. Because I am living in the moment. In the present. Making the most of it. Taking every day one day at a time.

  Then we kiss, one of those sweet, lingering kisses that makes me feel like I’m floating.

  “C’mon. Opening credits are starting,” Kristen says, calling out to us.

 
We head into the living room, and start the movie, all curled up on the couch like puppies in a litter, Kristen and Jordan tangled together, and Trey and I wrapped up in each other.

  But after a half hour, my stomach starts to churn again.

  “Excuse me,” I say, and head to the bathroom. As soon as I shut the door, I feel the cake rising back up, so I cover my mouth with my hand, then quickly realize that won’t do the trick. I bend over the toilet and say goodbye to my birthday cake.

  I cough a few times, flush the toilet, then wash my hands. I reach for my toothbrush, squirt on some toothpaste, and brush my teeth to get rid of the yucky taste. I watch myself in the mirror, the repetitive motion lulling away the strange twists in my stomach.

  Then it hits me.

  Like a huge wave I didn’t see coming, it slams me to the shore, and I drop my toothbrush into the sink. I kneel and open the cupboard below the sink, rummaging for something Kristen once needed several months ago.

  My heart is speeding and smashing against the walls of my chest. No way, no way, no way.

  But as I count backward, I’m certain it’s been more than four weeks since my last period, and I don’t know how this could have happened. We were safe. Every time. But then, condoms can break. Is it my fault, since I always put them on him? Did I slip and nick one with my fingernail? No. I’m just freaking out. I’m being ridiculous like Kristen was when she bought this test. Hers was negative, as I predicted it would be.

  She flashed the stick before me, cheering up and down over one pink line.

  I reach for the other stick, the one she didn’t need, since hers was negative.

  I read the instructions, and it’s not morning, it’s night. But hell if I care. I need to know. I need to settle my paranoid heart.

  I sit down on the toilet, pee on the stick, and wait all those interminable minutes for an answer.

  Trey told me nothing on the planet could come between us, but if anything could, this would be it, right? Nothing would scare him more than this. Nothing in the entire universe.

  I close my eyes, lean my head against the wall, and pray.

  When I open my eyes and hold up the stick, I am seasick, my future is out of focus, and even though my world has gone blurry, I can clearly see two pink lines.

  And I have no idea how the father of the baby is going to take this news.

  29

  Harley

  The moonlight streams across his beautiful face, but I can’t bear to look at him. I stare out the window—the slats of the blinds chop silver streaks from the moon that shine into my room, and I wish I were anywhere but here, on top of the covers, in bed with the man I love, on the night of my twenty-first birthday. I don’t know how to be false or fake with Trey, but I don’t know how to tell him the truth right now either.

  “Hey,” he says softly, brushing strands of hair from my forehead. “Are you feeling better?”

  I wince inside, but put on a brave face for him, adjusting the pillow to busy myself, as if it’s absolutely vital to find the perfect alignment for my head. Anything to avoid eye contact as we lie side by side, the pinball-machine sounds of late-night New York City mingling with the playlist on my phone.

  “My head still hurts,” I mumble, rubbing my palm roughly against my forehead to exorcise the headache I don’t have. I couldn’t very well tell him that my stomach hurt. That I’d thrown up my birthday cake. I might as well put an advertisement on my forehead saying I’m preggers. And that’s the one thing I can’t tell him. Not yet. Not tonight.

  I claimed I had a migraine from the stifling August heat, and it had made me nauseous. I only wish I had a migraine. I’d welcome a headache from hell with open arms, because a headache would go away.

  Instead, I will spend the night in this strange twilight state of hiding the truth from Trey on the outside, while on the inside grappling with the massive detour my future just slammed in front of me. And it’s so damn unfair. I’ve been running a race for so long, an endless, ragged one, and I finally crossed the white tape of the finish line, triumphant on the other side of love and hope and possibility. And now it’s as if an invisible hand has plucked me from the ground and sent me straight back to the starting line.

  Only this time, I have even more to lose. I have everything to lose.

  “Do you need an ibuprofen?”

  He believes me. Of course he believes me.

  “I took one already. Just waiting for it to kick in,” I say, but there’s nothing true in those words.

  I want to be honest with him, but I don’t have an earthly clue how to say the only words that could scare him off. Not just far, far away, but to another time zone. Another continent. And not for the usual reasons a guy would be freaked out to have a pregnant girlfriend, but because of what it means to him.

  Loss.

  I cling to the faint hope that the test was wrong, that I can retake it tomorrow morning. I exhale hard, wishing for one pink line so desperately I feel as if I’m clutching the possibility of it in my hands, a precious, fragile thing.

  Trey skims his hand along my bare arm. “I hate that you don’t feel well. Not just because it’s your birthday, but because I don’t want you to ever hurt,” Trey says. His touch feels so comforting and reassuring, and yet I don’t deserve it, because I’m lying to him. I shift my gaze around the dark room to the closet door, the open window, and the sky-blue dresser I snagged from a woman in the building next door when she was moving out.

  “Hopefully it’ll be gone in the morning,” I say, and that’s more than a hope—it’s me begging the universe.

  He leans in and kisses my forehead, pressing his soft lips against me in the most tender, caring way. “But I’ll take care of you. You know that, right?”

  “Sure,” I say, but I don’t actually know that. That’s what people promise to each other, but words are easy. Backing them up is the hard part. Will he take care of me if he knows why I don’t feel well? Will he take care of me when I’m big and round and fat? Will he take care of a kid?

  “Because, you know, I could be a really good nurse, don’t you think?” he says with a sly smile. “Do you need a cold compress, babe? How about a sponge bath?”

  Despite the ominous feeling in my chest, I manage one small laugh. I try not to let on that I’m withering inside. I play along with him instead, finally making eye contact. I nearly melt when I look into his beautiful green eyes—eyes that know me inside and out, that make me want to spill everything to him. But I know how to pretend, so I fake happiness. “Nurse Trey now, is it?”

  He lowers his voice, making it deep as he runs his hand along my hip, tugging me close. “I’ve got just what the doctor ordered.”

  I want to laugh. I want to be fun and silly. I wish it were just a normal night, so I try it on for size. “What did the doctor order?”

  “The doctor says you need another birthday present,” he says into my ear, his breath hot against my neck. He presses his lips to my skin, and I’m tempted to let my mind go blank, to drug myself in the moment, as he burns a trail of kisses to the hollow of my throat. His lips find mine, and he brushes them softly, deepening the kiss in seconds. I nearly cry because I want to stop time and kiss like this all night long, and all my life too, but it feels like a mirage of a false reality, and I know it’ll fade by morning.

  I break the kiss.

  “I think I just need to sleep,” I say, and then I turn over and stare at the shadows crawling across the wall, my companions in furtiveness.

  He kisses the back of my neck gently, easily shedding the heated potential of a moment ago. “Feel better, Harley,” he whispers. “I loved spending your birthday with you. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I say as I close my eyes.

  Then he tucks the covers around me. He spoons me, his strong body curving around mine. For the first time since we’ve been together, we’re going to bed to sleep. In minutes, his breathing turns slow and rhythmic. He’s never had trouble falling asle
ep, nor have I.

  But tonight, I don’t sleep. I lie awake, my mind both a speedway and a traffic jam. I’m racing, darting, but I keep returning to the same shoulder of the road, stalled-out. Replaying how this could have happened. Trying to pinpoint the time when the condom failed.

  The night in his tattoo parlor? Or maybe the time after we all went out to see that band? Or the quickie in the bathroom at the coffee shop a few weeks ago? Because we don’t hold back—we come together. Over and over, bodies slamming into each other, lips joining in a frenzy, consumed with need and want and heat.

  But when it happened is irrelevant.

  What matters is what’s next, and where we go from here. I don’t have a clue how to be a mother. Hell, I don’t even know what I want to do with my life. I’m only halfway finished with college, and having a baby isn’t anywhere in the curriculum. But this is the real kicker—I can’t think of two people less equipped to be parents than Trey Westin and me. The former sex addict and the ex–call girl.

  When the sun blares through the window the next day, it might as well be shouting, Life’s a bitch, sucker. Try to hit this curveball.

  I shower and dress quickly.

  Trey stretches languidly in bed, his arms rising above his head, the covers snaking down to his waist. His beautiful chest is on display, his body a canvas of art, from the birds on his pecs to the sunbursts on his shoulder.

  Usually, I savor this sight. Now, as I stand in the doorway, I want him out of my bed so badly. I want to kick him out of my apartment with my combat boots, and then run like a madwoman to Duane Reade.

  He smiles lazily at me as if this is just another day. Not judgment day. “Want to get some bagels?”

  I shake my head. “I forgot I had a paper due. I need to go turn it in.”

  He sits up. “Summer classes suck, huh? I’ll go with you.”

  “No, it’s okay. I really need to take care of it. Can I meet up with you later?”