Craving Absolution

  “Condoms, Ladybug. Where are your condoms?”

  I looked at him stupidly for a moment as his hand went still, then finally figured out what he was yapping about.

  “I don’t have any.”

  “What?” he practically yelled.

  “Shut it!” I whispered back, afraid he was going to have Gram storming over from her apartment for the second time that night. “I don’t have any! I don’t have sex.”

  “W-what?” he sputtered as he wiggled his fingers inside me. “My fingers would beg to differ, sweetheart.”

  “I haven’t had sex in over a year,” I mumbled back. “Drunken hookups are pretty much nonexistent when you aren’t partying anymore.”

  “Goddamn it.” He groaned, dropping his forehead to my chest. “I haven’t had sex in fucking months.”

  “Oh, poor you,” I said sarcastically, the thought of him having sex with anyone else pissing me right the hell off.

  My irritation was almost instantly forgotten as his fingers began to move slowly, as if he didn’t even realize he was doing it, hitting the perfect spot inside me to have me crawling out of my skin. I whimpered deep in my throat and his head snapped up, his nostrils flaring as he took in my flushed face and clenched jaw.

  “Fuck it. I’m clean,” he muttered frantically, pulling his fingers from me to yank down his boxer briefs. “Please tell me you’re clean and on the pill.”

  “I’m clean,” I answered, staring at the V leading down to his thick cock, the hair trimmed short around it. “I can’t get pregnant.”

  He reached out to spread my knees wide, and ran his finger lightly from top to bottom before looking back up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I haven’t had a period in years, but there’s nothing wrong.” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “The doctors say I don’t have enough body fat and it’s messing with my cycle.”

  He watched me for a moment, his jaw tight, before dropping his hips to fit between my thighs.

  “I’ll buy condoms tomorrow,” he assured me in a low voice, his hand cupping the side of my face gently. “But I can’t wait.”

  With a swift thrust he buried himself to the hilt, and my face heated and tears blurred my eyes as emotion overwhelmed me. I didn’t know if it was the fact that it was the first time in years I’d felt actual intimacy with another person, how incredibly good it felt to have someone connected to me again, or the fact that it was Cody inside me. Whatever the cause, I felt warm tears roll into the hair at my temples as he began to move.

  He’d been braced with one hand above my shoulder, but at the sight of my tears, he leaned down until our torsos were flush with both of his forearms braced beneath my shoulders on the bed, his hands cradling the back of my head as if we were hugging.

  He didn’t say a word about my tears but paused, watching my face intently until I gave him a small, trembling smile.

  “I’m good,” I rasped huskily.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said quietly, dropping his forehead to mine.

  Then he began to move again, taking his time to find the things I liked, then using them until I was squirming under him and digging my nails into his back as I came.

  Half an hour later I lay in his arms, listening to Cody snore quietly as I drifted off to sleep. I’d stopped running and I didn’t regret it.

  Later, I’d blame my mistake on all the fantastic sex endorphins.

  Chapter 4

  Farrah

  I woke up at seven thirty the next morning to Cody’s hand on my ass and my phone playing the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends”—the Joe Cocker version—from somewhere in the mess on my floor. What can I say? I’m a fan, and Callie calls me the most often, so I picked a favorite for her ringtone.

  “Noooo.” I groaned, checking the clock before pulling my pillow over my head. We’d finally fallen asleep after round two only a few hours before, and I dreaded dragging my ass out of the cocoon that held the heat of Cody’s body.

  “Answer your phone, babe,” he slurred sleepily, clenching the hand on my ass as the phone stopped ringing and then started up again.

  “No way in hell,” I mumbled back grouchily. “It’s your sister. You get it.”

  I realized my mistake seconds later when the covers were whipped up on Cody’s side of the bed, letting in the cold air I’d been avoiding, before I heard his gruff, “Hello? Yeah, you called Farrah.”

  “Shit! Gimme the phone!” I yelped, wrestling out of the blankets. He ignored my waving arms and shaking head until I overestimated the size of the bed while trying frantically to untangle myself. Instead of my hand landing at the edge, it hit nothing but air—propelling me ass over teakettle onto the floor.

  “Goddamn it,” I huffed out, watching him round the bed. “Give me my phone!”

  “You okay, Ladybug?” he asked with a grin, the phone still pressed to his ear. “I thought you wanted me to answer it.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” I growled, imagining the earful that Callie must be giving him on the other end of the line. “Give me the phone and put some fucking pants on!”

  “Damn, baby, you always going to be this pissy in the morning?”

  I dropped my head against the carpet and screeched in frustration. He knew exactly what he was doing by calling me pet names and insinuating that he’d be seeing me in the mornings. Any chance of keeping things quiet between us had just been shot to hell.

  “Yeah, sister . . . Okay . . . I’ll see you tonight, then. Here’s Farrah.” He ended his conversation, reaching down to help me up off the floor as I scowled at him.

  “You’re dead to me,” I told him, grabbing the phone out of his hand.

  “Get off the phone and come back to bed, Ladybug,” he whispered loud enough for his sister to hear, then wrapped his long fingers around the sides of my head to pull me in for a deep kiss.

  I stood there stupidly watching his bare ass cross to the bed and crawl back in, the phone forgotten in my hand for almost a full minute before I snapped back to reality.

  “Why the hell are you calling me before the sun is awake?” I asked my best friend, propping the phone between chin and shoulder as I grabbed some underwear and my last clean sundress from the top of my dresser.

  “Nice try, asshole. Why is my brother answering your phone?” she asked incredulously.

  “He doesn’t understand boundaries?”

  “Why is he in our apartment before ‘the sun is awake’?”

  “Why are any of us here, Callie?” I asked rhetorically. “Why are any of us here?”

  “Why isn’t he staying at Gram’s?”

  “He was jealous because he assumed—correctly, I might add—that Will would steal Gram’s attention away from him now that he’s been usurped as the baby of the family?”

  “You’re an idiot.” She laughed.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before,” I said teasingly, grabbing a towel and turning on the shower before sitting down on the edge of the tub and dropping my head into my hands. “He came, he saw, he conquered.”

  “No!”

  “Oh yes. Apparently your baby brother has a thing for me.” I sighed, rubbing between my eyebrows with one finger to smooth the frown crease away.

  “This is not news.”

  “It was to me,” I grumbled.

  “Does this mean—”

  I cut her off. “No more about me. What happened yesterday? Did you see Grease? Did he freak out? Fall to his knees and declare his undying love? Or did he go the pussy route and cry?”

  She laughed and kindly allowed me to change the subject without calling me out on it. Callie was one of the few people who could read me like a book, and she must have sensed I was freaking out.

  “Yeah, I saw him.” She sighed. “It didn’t go so good, not at first, but we’re solid now.”

  “How solid?” I asked cautiously.

  Callie and Grease’s relationship had gone through more up
s and downs than any I had ever heard of. Up until the night before, they hadn’t even talked in almost a year—a decision Callie had made while she was dealing with an assload of survivor’s guilt and PTSD.

  “Pack-your-shit-because-we’re-moving-to-Oregon solid,” she answered giddily.

  “No fucking way.”

  “Yep. We want to move all of us up here this week.” She spoke quickly as if worried I’d interrupt. “But before you freak, I want to tell you that if you changed your mind about moving or you don’t want to go that soon, I won’t be mad. I won’t. I really want you with us, Farrah, and I hope that you’ll come. We just don’t want to waste any more time, you know?”

  I sat in silence, weighing my options before speaking. I could drop everything and move with my family to Oregon, or I could refuse to go and be stuck in an empty apartment in a town where no one cared about me. I’d be alone and lonely. It was an easy decision to make.

  “Well, I’ll have to check my schedule . . . but I’m pretty sure I’m not busy next week,” I told her flatly, pulling the phone away from my ear as she whooped.

  “Okay, yes! We’re leaving here in just a little bit so we can be home before Will goes to bed tonight. Asa is dying to see him, and we’re just . . . we’re ready to be a family. All in one place, finally.” She sniffled, but the tone of her voice was pure joy. “So, I’ll see you tonight!”

  “Okay, sis. Drive careful.”

  “Nah, I thought I’d drive recklessly this time,” she replied dryly, then her voice turned soft. “Love you.”

  “Back atcha, toots.”

  I hopped into the shower, already planning our move in my head. There was so much to do and so little time to do it. We needed to get boxes and tape, and we could probably use garbage bags for laundry and—shit! My laundry needed to be done before we started packing or I’d be screwed.

  The news couldn’t have come at a better time; it gave me a reason to think of something other than what the hell I was doing with Cody. My mind wandered as I soaped up and rinsed off, and for a while I completely forgot the man in my bedroom.

  I was planning on wearing a vintage sundress circa 1970, so I took my time parting my hair in a severe middle part before putting hot rollers in it while I listened to music from the seventies. For some reason, I found that it relaxed me to listen to the era of the day’s music while putting on my makeup and styling my hair. I hated looking in the mirror before I showered, or any time that I wasn’t actually getting ready. It was a trigger for me, something I’d learned to recognize in the hours I’d spent in therapy. I didn’t like seeing the barefaced girl with scars on her body and hollow cheeks—it reminded me too much of the day I’d walked to Callie’s with a broken arm and oozing cigar burns—so I covered her up.

  My wardrobe since high school had consisted of vintage clothing I found in thrift stores. The chain stores never had what I needed, but if I could find an old, musty, broken-down store in the middle of a dying strip mall, I usually hit gold. Some days, I was a fifties housewife with a demure little dress whose hemline floated just below my knees, and looked as if it were only missing a frilly apron. Other days, I was into nineties grunge and would wear a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots, my hair in a messy bun. I also had skinny jeans and bell-bottoms, flat-soled Vans and platform sandals. I never stayed in a particular decade, choosing instead to dress according to my mood.

  My clothes were my armor. They gave me confidence, a way to keep my head high when I wanted nothing more than to hide. I’d realized when I was young that if I didn’t try to dress like everyone else—if I made my own style, attractive but completely different from the other girls—I would never look as if I were trying to fit in. It set me apart in a way that was my choice, the only way I could assert control in the life I’d been given.

  After Echo was murdered, I’d even gone so far as to cover my body in piercings: septum, eyebrow, lip, belly button, nipples; I had piercings everywhere. I’d liked the way they made me look different—unapproachable—until suddenly I’d woken up sober for once and realized I looked exactly the same as every other emo teenager in my neighborhood. After that, I’d taken all of them out except for the one in my eyebrow. I still liked that one.

  Thankfully, things had changed drastically in the last couple of years and I was able to make my own choices for the first time in my life. They weren’t always the right ones, but they were mine. I’d grown up and left behind the girl who wanted to crawl inside herself and hide—my tormentors no longer had any hold on me—but I still loved the idea of being someone different from one day to the next.

  I had all the my half-empty shampoo and lotion bottles lined up on the counter, letting my rollers set while I chose which bottles to keep and which to throw in the trash, when Cody scared the crap out of me by knocking on the door.

  “Baby, you’ve been in there for like an hour,” he called through the door. “I need to take a shower or I’m going to smell like sex when we head to Gram’s!” He then jiggled the locked handle.

  I swung the door open without glancing in his direction, then resumed tossing the bottles into the trash. I assumed he would just hop in the shower while I worked; it wasn’t as if I hadn’t already seen the goods. I’d sorted through a couple more bottles when I finally noticed that he hadn’t moved from his place in the doorway, and turned to face him in irritation.

  As I was about to snap at him to get going, the expression on his face stopped me in my tracks.

  “Holy shit. I know it’s weird, but you look hot as fuck in those,” he rasped, motioning to my head.

  “The curlers?” I scoffed, thinking surely he was joking.

  “Shit, Ladybug.” He stepped toward me, clenching his jaw. “We don’t have time right now, but I need you to make me a promise.”

  “Okay?” I watched his face as he gripped my hips and pulled me closer, his erection pressing against me from beneath his boxer briefs.

  “Promise me that you’ll wear those for me—”

  “Shut up.” I felt my face heating as I realized he was serious.

  “No, listen. Promise me that one day I’ll come home and you’ll be wearing nothing but those . . . and an apron.”

  “You’re outta your mind!” I let out a laugh from deep in my belly, shaking my head.

  “You promised!” he reminded me, then kissed me hard on the lips. He gave me one more squeeze, rubbing his hands lightly over my ass before pushing me aside to climb in the shower, mumbling under his breath, “Fuck, now I’m hard.”

  As soon as I heard the shower running, I couldn’t help the wide smile creeping onto my lips. I couldn’t believe he had a thing for my curlers. What a freak. I hummed quietly as I finished my work, and as I set down the last bottle under the sink, something dawned on me.

  I’d just let Cody see me before I’d finished putting on my armor for the day, something I’d allowed no man to see since I was fourteen years old. I hadn’t even noticed. I’d welcomed him into the room before finishing my most important ritual of the day, my few moments of complete peace before facing the world with a smug smile on my face.

  I was bracing myself against the cabinet doors, wondering what the hell it meant, when I was rudely interrupted by Cody howling in the shower.

  “Cold! Shit! Fuck! It’s cold!” he yelled, slapping at what I assumed were the taps behind the shower curtain. “I’ve got soap in my hair! Shit! It’s burning my eyes!”

  “Sorry!” I called back, my smug smile finally in place as I looked in the mirror and started pulling out the rollers.

  My smile widened as I added, “We run out of hot water at about, eh . . . one and a half showers.”

  Chapter 5

  Casper

  I couldn’t stop staring at her.

  We spent the morning with Gram and my two-year-old nephew, and watching the three of them together was a fucking revelation. I hadn’t realized how tense it had become between Farrah and me until the tension was gone and I go
t to see her as she actually was.

  The girl was funny.

  The facial expressions I’d caught in the past were a small fraction of her arsenal. She had the most expressive face I’d ever seen, which was pretty amazing because she could also lock it down to the point that you wouldn’t even be able to tell if she was happy or mad. For the first time I was inside the inner sanctum, able to gauge every reaction—but only because she was allowing me—and it was a hell of a place to be.

  I guess Callie’s call was about more than checking in. My sister had decided to finally move from Sacramento to Oregon to be with her man, so Gram and Farrah were in full-on planning mode, making lists and shit for all the things they needed to do. I knew Gram would follow Callie, but I couldn’t help the smile on my face as Farrah told Gram she was going with them.

  I caught Farrah’s eye as we sat across from each other at Gram’s scarred-up table, the shy smile on her face making my entire fucking day. I wanted to take her back to bed that very second, but even if we hadn’t been in the middle of a conversation with my grandmother, the massive hard-on I was suddenly sporting wouldn’t have allowed me to stand up from the table. Goddamn. The woman wound me up without even trying.

  Farrah insisted on taking Will with us that afternoon to the Laundromat and to buy boxes from a moving company. There was something about the way she and the boy played off each other that had my chest tightening. It wasn’t a maternal thing, really, but the way she loved on him and knew exactly what he needed and how to take care of him made me feel stupidly proud, really proud.

  You could see the connection between them—not surprising since he’d lived with her his entire life—but it was more than that. Farrah would kill for him, and it showed in the way she held him protectively and watched him like a hawk. She loved that boy with an intensity that matched my own, and it made me dig her even more than I already did.

  By late that afternoon, we’d finally made it back from our errands. I didn’t know how she was so unruffled when I felt like dropping the baby at Gram’s and taking off on my bike to get some quiet. Will was bouncing off the walls, exhausted because he hadn’t gotten his nap, and asked every two seconds for his mom and dad. The poor kid had rarely been without both of them at the same time, and he’d finally reached his limit as we’d packed Farrah’s clean clothes into the trunk of her car. He’d cried the entire way home, and when we got there, refused to stand more than a foot away from the front door, as if he was waiting for Callie to come through it. It was sad as hell . . . and gave me a massive headache.