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

  “Of course you need sugar,” she says, picking up my offering, taking it, damn near clutching at it. Yeah. That’s what my girl needs. She needs the familiar more than the new. I can give her that, no problem. No problem whatsoever.

  She offers a small smile. “Shame on me. I forgot your coffee. But I brought you this.” She reaches into the front pocket of her jeans and hands me a thumb drive. “I believe this is something you want?”

  “I do,” I say, taking it, the document her mom asked me to look at.

  Then I eye Harley up and down, surveying her jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers. She’s usually dolled up. Today she looks like a college student. “What’s up with the outfit? You slumming it today, Layla?”

  She sneers at me, and even that, that sneer, makes me feel like I did good by giving her the out that she might not have realized she needed. “Oh, haha. It’s called casual Friday, Cam. Ever heard of it?”

  “Never. And I had no idea you owned sneakers.” I gesture to the couch. “Sit for a minute. We can catch up more.”

  “I believe we are fully caught up,” she points out, giving me a saucy stare. Almost as if her words surprise her. As if she wasn’t expecting to be so sassy.

  “Aren’t you full of fire today?” I remark.

  She smiles like she has a secret. “Maybe I am.”

  3

  Harley

  I feel like I can breathe again.

  Like I know what I’m doing.

  I might not have any more answers, but I know this: I’m not ready to go all in.

  But I also know I love the options I have here in this office. I can sass and tease and be as snarky as I want. I can toss out barbs and heated remarks, and it’s like tasting freedom and power on my tongue, like little sugar crystals are dissolving, leaving behind a wonderful flavor that only makes me want more of them.

  That makes me want to lap up more of this secret life of mine. It’s that push-pull again.

  “Then, since you’re so fiery, let me show you what I might have for you.”

  Fiery. I like the sound of that. Fire is strong. Fire is powerful.

  But I’m not ready for what he mentioned last night, and I push back because I can. “I told you I needed a week. If you’re going to be pushy, I will walk so fast. Wait. I will run,” I say. I can speak the truth to Cam—I can say all my truths that I can’t voice to my mother. “And I don’t feel like sitting.” I jut out my chin and back up against the bookshelves stacked with his law tomes. He slinks over, like a smooth, agile cat.

  “Sit. Stand. Run. It’s all good with me, baby. Don’t you know that? There’s no pressure, because with me, you can be whoever you want. You can be anybody. You can do anything. And I will always love you.”

  I narrow my eyes. “What? You don’t love me. This isn’t about love. Love is a dirty word,” I tell him.

  “I love you in my own way, and sooner or later, you’ll just accept it. I’m proud of you and I always will be, and I will always take care of you.” He takes a beat, scratches his jaw. “So, listen, I’ve got a businessman coming in from California. This is easy. So easy. I slide you back in, baby, with the simplest of jobs. All he wants is dinner. He’s the honored guest at a swank charity dinner. A tux-and-evening-gown shindig on the town, five-hundred-bucks-a-plate kind of thing. And he wants the most beautiful woman at his side. All you have to do is wear a gorgeous dress and smile and say you’re his girlfriend. He wants to introduce you to everyone as his girlfriend. That’s it. An easy one. You can do this in your sleep, nice and smooth.”

  The offer is appealing, because his offers have always been appealing. For the intrigue. For the choices. “How much?”

  He rattles off a four-figure number as he stalks closer.

  “For that? Just for the girlfriend experience? Seriously? Where do you find these men?”

  He shrugs and grins. “What can I say? When you are known for having the best, all the men pay top dollar.”

  Cam is a foot away from me now and he leans in close, pressing a hand against the wall, half pinning me. “You’ll do it, won’t you?”

  “I have to think about it,” I say, because I need the space.

  “What do I have to do to convince you? You know you love it. You know how much you love the way they fall at your feet. Even the freaks. You love all my freaks.”

  He’s right. He knows he’s right. I love his freaks because they own their freakish ways. Because they know who they are. They might be fucked up fifty ways to Sunday, but they let themselves have their freak in the most honest way. By buying it.

  When you live with someone and she is a freak in front of you but paints her ways as normal, that’s how love becomes a filthy thing.

  Maybe that’s the truth about love. It’s only for sale. It’s only an exchange. “Maybe.”

  “So you’ll do it,” he says, and puts his other palm against the bookcase. Now I’m not half pinned. I’m all pinned. But I’m not scared, because he’d never hurt me, never ever in my whole life, and there’s a part of me that’s still bewitched by his promises, that’s still drawn to all that we were together.

  That’s why I came here today. To be bewitched. But maybe I’m not ready for all of it. “I didn’t say I’d do it,” I say.

  “I’ll beg you if I have to, baby doll,” he says playfully. “I will, I swear I will. I will get down on my hands and knees for you.”

  “Stop,” I tease, laughing. “You’ve never begged for anything in your life, Cam.”

  “I’d beg for you though. Say yes.”

  He wants what I have. My words, my yes, my no. The permission slip I was never allowed to sign with my mom is what Cam presents to me, always has, always will. He never changes. He is the rock. He is solid and steady and reliable, and he will always be there for me.

  And I love him too—a dirty and filthy, true and pure kind of love.

  But I also love what he gives me.

  He lets me hold the cards for the first time. Holding them feels so good, so unusual, so damn great. So I play them. “Tell me what the story is my mom is working on. She said she was working on a blackmail story.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “This file she sent over has a tip about a congressman she’s looking into. But blackmail? Isn’t that your thing?”

  “Yeah,” I admit.

  He shoots me a quizzical look. “You don’t think she’s looking into something involving you?”

  “No. How could she?” I say.

  But then…

  Could she? Could she somehow have heard Miranda is blackmailing a former call girl?

  No. That would be too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t it?

  That’s when I know I need to leave.

  I say goodbye, feeling a pang of longing as I go.

  But what I’m longing for is clear as mud.

  4

  Trey

  I crouch down on the floor, wrist looped over the top of the sketchpad like I’m cradling it as I draw. A candle flickers from the scratched-up kitchen table that’s wedged next to the counter in my studio apartment. The flame illuminates the pages—and all the crumpled-up, tossed-aside ones behind me. I am adrift in a sea of discarded drawings, a jumble of not-good-enough sketches.

  Angels are littered behind me.

  I’m no angel. I would laugh at me if I wore angels on my body. The sign of the hypocrite. Pages upon pages of wings have formed a towering pile by my side. How can I wear wings on my body after all I’ve done with it? Numbers, dates, names. I’ve tried them all, in every script imaginable. But they give too much away. They invite questions, and questions demand answers, and my life, my past, my brothers are not answers anyone can have or know.

  It’s easier to deny.

  Easier to lie.

  They are mine, they stay with me, by my side. Always.

  I outline a new drawing with a faded pencil. This one could live on my ribs, grow roots in my flesh. The candle burns until my hand is cramped, until my wrist hurts, u
ntil my knees are sore from digging into the floor for hours upon endless hours.

  I’ve probably missed a meeting. I’ve probably missed everything. But everything is already missed.

  I blow out the candle as my phone rings, and now her name is the only light in my home.

  I slide my thumb across the screen and bring the phone to my ear, but when I open my mouth, no words come out.

  She says hello. She says my name. She asks me if I’m there.

  But I can’t manage speech, so I hang up.

  Don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about it.

  After Will died, I figured the house would feel like a funeral home. Hushed voices, sad music, the sounds of distance and longing echoing against the walls, the sad lament to our lives. My mom, my dad, and I would trudge to the breakfast table, go through the motions, manage a spoonful of cereal, a bite of cold toast. We’d heave a sigh, a pat on the hand, some kind of we’ll make it through gesture, and then we’d be on our way—me to school, them to the hospital.

  Eventually, over time, we’d find a way to move on. I hunted for those ways. I tracked down a nonprofit that planted trees to remember the dead. I printed out information online, brought it to the dinner table, and took a deep nervous breath, steeling myself.

  “Maybe we could plant a few trees for Will, Jake, and Drew.”

  She cringed when I said their names. “Why would we do that?” she asked, as if my question made no sense.

  “To remember them. Don’t you want to remember them?”

  My mother glared at me with cold eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But I thought it would be nice. I thought it would help.”

  She shook her head, then huffed out through her nose. “No. There will be no trees.”

  I tried to protest, but she held up a hand, then left the dinner table, her chicken salad untouched.

  I looked at my father. “What did I do wrong?”

  He sighed. “You didn’t do anything wrong. She’s just having a hard time.”

  A hard time. That was a euphemism if I ever heard one. More like an ice age. Because that’s what it became.

  The next morning, she locked the door to the room that would have been the nursery. But at dinner that night, I decided to try talking about them again. I’d received a sympathy card from one of my teachers. A drawing of a midnight-blue sky with winking stars, next to words from The Little Prince.

  I showed the card to my mom, then gulped nervously before I read the words out loud. “In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night.” I placed the card on the table. “I believe that. Do you believe that too?”

  Something mournful flashed in her eyes. For the briefest of moments, I saw all her sadness well up, all her pain, and I could have sworn she was about to fall apart. Maybe that’s why my dad reached over to her and gently laid a hand on her shoulder. But then her eyes went dark, as if any remnant of light had been snuffed out.

  “No. I don’t believe that,” she said crisply, and stabbed her pasta with her fork. She took a bite, then started rambling about a new clinical study she was undertaking on a better form of Botox.

  She buried herself in work, in her patients, in fixing noses, tucking tummies, lifting breasts. Same for my dad. As for me, the message was clear. That was that. My brothers were gone. Dust off your hands, don’t discuss it, move on.

  Jake, Will, and Drew were not to be mentioned. Their names were never breathed in the house again.

  5

  Harley

  “Hi. I’m Layla, and I’m a sex and love addict.”

  The meeting begins, and I say the words of introduction, the words we all say, the words that make me cringe. Because I know what people think of love and sex addicts.

  They think sex addicts screw everything in sight. That they have zero control over sexual urges—like a bunny rabbit, a bitch in heat, a dog howling at the moon. That they climb the walls, scale the fences to get their next fix. They think sex addicts are nymphos, porn stars, jokes.

  And they think love addicts are just fine and dandy. They think love addiction is maybe kind of cool. There’s a song about it, right?

  What could be better than love? The thing that makes life worth living. If you’re going to be addicted to something, it might as well be love, right? It’s such a better neediness than drugs or alcohol or eating disorders.

  Don’t ask me.

  I don’t have a clue about love.

  I don’t understand it.

  It’s a code, it’s a cryptogram, it’s the puzzle I will never solve.

  It’s the riddle that leaves me scratching my head, saying huh. Because I thought I had an inkling, that I was coming close, but then bam. Blow to the head, knocked me down flat.

  I glance around the claustrophobic Sunday school room at the other junkies parked on tiny chairs, our nervous, twitchy fingers tapping out rhythms of worry, of wishes, of I-have-to-get-away. We’re all fumbling in the dark. Deaf, dumb, and blind.

  Or maybe I’m the only one like that. Maybe my feet are encased in concrete, immovable, and the rest of the former users are gliding on, skating away from me.

  I scan the faces as we go through the requisite hellos, thanks for sharing, and daily affirmations, wondering if the rest of them flit through their days and nights tailed by the same black cloud of confusion.

  “Little victories,” Joanne begins, while the steadfast and hardy hanging kitten watches over us from her framed post on the wall, some sort of patron saint of recovery. “Let’s talk about little victories today. Who wants to start?”

  Ainsley raises her hand. She’s the gal who can’t stay away from her teachers.

  “Ainsley. Tell us about a victory.”

  “I made it through classes this last week and didn’t try to flirt with any of my professors.”

  There is clapping all around.

  “Excellent news. That is a huge accomplishment. Every little step matters. Chloe, what about you?”

  Chloe smiles proudly. “I had an awful day at work, and I went for a run instead of trying to find a guy at a bar for a booty call.”

  More praise from Joanne. More clapping. Everyone has been so behaved today, it seems. Maybe something is in the air. A new drug, an elixir that makes us forget how love and sex, sex and love used to fuck us all in the head—and yet, how much we wanted to be fucked back. It’s hard to stay away from the fix. Because the fix feels good. The fix takes away the pain. The fix mends the hole in the heart.

  Joanne turns to Gavin. He’s hooked on anonymous sex through Craigslist. “I haven’t been on Craigslist in a week,” he admits, and we all cheer him on.

  Trey should go next. Only Trey’s not here. He hasn’t texted, he hasn’t called, and I haven’t heard from him since he took off this morning. That boy vexes me, and I have no clue what to make of him. Trey is a riddle I can’t solve. Is what I feel for him real or not? Nor do I know what to make of my mom’s work. My mind keeps returning to the terrible blackmail story she’s researching, but I remind myself there must be thousands of extortion stories unfolding every day.

  Joanne turns to me. “Layla? Anything you can share?”

  “A victory?” I scrunch up my forehead. Can we discuss all the ways the opposing team pummeled me instead? Fumbles, interceptions, and then how I let myself be sacked. All the losses I piled up from my own weakness. Because I can’t defend myself. I am indefensible. I am what Miranda called me, and there are no excuses, there is no redemption, there is only the never-ending payment.

  Victories, I scoff to myself. As if I’m capable.

  But then, I remember this morning in front of the mirror, how I resisted the extra makeup, and it’s the smallest thing in the world, but it’s the biggest thing in the moment, because it’s my only hope right now. I latch onto it. “I didn’t put on much makeup this morning,” I of
fer, because that’s all I can come up with.

  “Hey, every little bit counts. Step by step. Day by day. You can do it,” Joanne says.

  I don’t know what I can do. All I know is what I can mess up. I am wading in the knee-deep quicksand of my mistakes.

  When the group meeting ends, Joanne calls me aside.

  “Hey. I know I said this the other night, but I’m here for you. If you want to talk. We haven’t had a one-on-one check-in in a while. You want to sit with me for a minute?”

  “Sure,” I say half-heartedly, because what else can I do? I don’t have anyone else to talk to, so I might as well stay and talk to her. Trey’s disappeared, and I can tell my mom everything about a kiss, a screw, a schlong, but God forbid I tell her my heart has been target practice my whole life and it’s full of bullet holes.

  Can you fix it, Mom?

  No, but how about a mani-pedi and a little dish on best bedroom tricks?

  I head into a separate room with Joanne, who dips her hand into a canvas bag and sets to work on her latest creation, an earthy-looking brown-and-yellow mass of yarn that appears to be transforming into a sweater.

  “Check-in time,” she says with a bright smile.

  “Is that a sweater for your fiancé?” I ask, beginning my ritual dance of avoidance. I hate telling Joanne things. I hate telling anyone things. I hate people knowing me. But I go through the motions because otherwise I’ll probably wander aimlessly around New York City tonight.

  “It is,” she beams.

  “Does he like sweaters?” I ask, another deflection.

  “He does.”

  “What are his favorite colors?”

  “Green and brown.”

  “Is this sweater a surprise?”