Addicted To Him Read online

  “And tell them what?” he demanded. “That I was trying to give you a ride somewhere and you insisted on taking the bus?”

  “No, that you locked me in this car against my will.”

  “You are unbelieveable, you know that?” He narrowed his eyes at me.

  “So I’ve been told.” It was a lie. I’d never been told I was unbelieveable.

  “You’re also really cute when you’re trying to be tough.” His voice softened when he said this last part, almost into a flirty tone, and it threw me just enough that when he reached down near my feet and grabbed my purse, I was too slow to stop him.

  “Hey!” I said. “That’s mine.”

  “Yeah, well, possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

  I undid my seatbelt and went to grab my bag, but he held it out of my reach. My body was pressed up against his, my breasts pushing against his broad chest as I pretty much threw myself onto him.

  “Well, hey there,” Colt said, grinning at me lazily. “Nice to see you again, Princess.” He was so close I could smell the fresh scent of his laundry detergent, and I could feel his breath against my cheek. His lips were full and sexy, the stubble on his face reminding me how close we came to kissing.

  My skin felt like it was on fire and my stomach did a somersault. It was no use. I wasn’t going to get my purse back, and to try would just make him feel like he was winning. I quickly moved back to my side of the car and, in an effort to keep from being so attracted to him, tried to remind myself how infuriating he was.

  “Don’t move.” Colt got out of the car and walked into the club, through a back door marked “Employees Only.”

  I sat there for a minute. It would be easy to jump out of the car, to head for the bus stop, hop on a bus, and go back to the shelter.

  But my bus pass was in my purse. Along with my ID. Not that I needed my ID for the bus, but it was a pain in the ass to try to get your license replaced. Especially for a former foster kid, who had no birth certificate.

  I searched around the car for something I could use to help me. But the glove compartment was locked, and the car was immaculately clean.

  I couldn’t do anything but wait.

  My heart was thrumming loudly in my chest, and my head felt kind of weird – all light and jittery. I crossed my legs. My knee was shaking and wouldn’t stop.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And the whole time, I just kept getting angrier and angrier.

  I hated that I had no control over my life, hated that I was made to just sit here and wait for Colt to decide when it was time to take me back to the shelter. It reminded me of all those nights waiting in the social services office on some dirty bench, while a social worker called around to different foster parents, begging them to take me in.

  It was awful and demoralizing and I had no say in any of it.

  I was sick of feeling out of control, sick of feeling like someone else was making decisions for me.

  I got out of Colt’s car and walked toward Loose Cannons. Well, it was more like stomping, actually. By the time I got to the back entrance, I was pissed as hell. I hesitated for a second at the door that said employees only, wondering what I would do if there was a security guard or someone standing inside who was going to ask me what I was doing.

  But then I realized I didn’t care if there was. In fact, I almost welcomed it. I hoped someone did try to stop me. I’d tell them I’d been the victim of a purse snatching, and it was none other than their owner, Colt Cannon, who’d done it.

  I flung open the door. But there was no one waiting on the other side.

  I was in some kind of back hallway, where everything was dark and quiet. The walls and floor were made of cinderblocks, and the faint smell of smoke wafted through the air. It was slightly chilly, like maybe there were no heating vents back here.

  To my right was a dead end, and to the left the hallway stretched about a hundred feet before turning to the right and merging with another corridor. I could see brighter light shining from the other hallway, which probably led to the main part of the club. It must have been some kind of utility or delivery entrance I’d just come through.

  I turned to my left and starting making my way to the end of the hallway. I only passed one door, a heavy black one with a laminated sign that read “KITCHEN.”When I got to the end of the hall, I followed the light and turned into the other corridor. This one was bright and carpeted and warm, and I could hear the low murmur of voices coming from somewhere nearby, but I still couldn’t see anyone.

  Part of me wanted to turn around and head back to the car, but the bigger part of me was saying, screw it. What did I expect, that I would open the door and Colt would just be sitting there, waiting with my purse? And it wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong by being here. He took my purse. I had a right to follow him if I wanted to.

  I took a deep breath and started walking down the hall. All the doors leading off it were made of heavy oak, with glass windows, like you would see in an office building.

  One of the doors was open, and I made my way toward it carefully, hoping that if Colt wasn’t in the room, whoever it was would be friendly. Or at least know where he was.

  I crept closer and that’s when I heard it – the sound of someone crying. A girl. She was sobbing, the kind of sobs I knew all too well. The kind of sobs you made when you were tortured by something, when you’d sunk to a depth of despair you weren’t even sure was possible.

  I had a partial view into the room now, and it looked like a lounge or break room. There was a leather couch pushed up against the wall with a cream-colored marble coffee table sitting in front of it.

  A girl with long blonde hair was sitting on the couch, hunched over, her hair falling into her face. She was wearing tight gold spandex shorts and an oversized navy sweatshirt. It was an odd outfit to be wearing, but maybe someone had given her the sweatshirt because she was cold.

  There was a guy sitting next to her, young, maybe a couple years older than me. He had his arm around the blond girl and he pulled her close to him while she cried. She shifted on the couch and pushed her hair back from her face. She was startlingly pretty, with a gorgeous, perfect complexion that was dewy and glowing. Her lashes were long, and even though she was crying, there was no mascara dripping down her face.

  But there was a huge red welt on one of her cheeks, the kind of welt you got from someone hitting you. I’d had a lot of experience with welts like those. They were red as soon as you got them, and then they turned into nasty bruises. I would bet anything the girl’s cheek was going to be all kinds of shades of blue and purple in a few hours.

  “It’s okay,” the guy said, trying to soothe her. “You’re safe now, it’s okay.” His voice was cracking, though, almost like he knew it wasn’t going to be okay at all.

  The girl moved again, turning her face and burying it in the guy’s chest. I almost gasped when she did. There was a long jagged scratch down the side of her neck, and her hair on one side was shorter than the rest, ending right above her ear. It looked like maybe someone had taken a pair of scissors to the girl’s beautiful hair and just started whacking away.

  Something about the whole scene was extremely eerie and creepy and put me on edge. I quickly moved pass the doorway, hoping they were too caught up in their own situation to realize I was there.

  The rest of the doors were dark, and I kept going, not looking inside any of them for fear of what I might see. All I wanted was to get my purse and get out of there. There was a certain feeling I would get sometimes, an instinct or a sixth sense that told me when I needed to get out of a certain place, or avoid a certain person. It was a feeling, deep in my gut, that made the blood rush through my ears and my stomach burn. I was getting that feeling now.

  I thought about going back out the service entrance, then doubling around to the front of the building and asking for Colt, but I didn’t want to walk by the couple in that room ag
ain. Even though I hadn’t seen anything that horrible, I had a feeling that the less I knew about whatever was going on, the better. And I didn’t want to get caught by them, whoever they were.

  Plus, I was pretty sure that if I kept walking I would find Colt, because where else could he be? Unless he cut through the kitchen and out into the front of the club, he had to be in one of these rooms.

  I was almost to the end of the corridor and starting to think that Colt wasn’t back here after all, that I was going to have to double back down the hall anyway, when I heard his voice.

  It was low and serious, coming from the very last room at the end of the hall. I made my way down there, and as I got closer, I was able to start picking up the conversation.

  “…go to the police,” Colt was saying.

  “You know we can’t let that happen, Cole,” came the reply. It was a deep voice, that of an older man, and I was pretty sure I recognized it as the voice on Colt’s speaker phone in the car. Mick, the caller ID had said.

  “Bullshit we can’t let it happen,” Colt said. He was talking louder now.

  “Keep your fucking voice down.”

  “No,” Colt said. “There’s no way, Mick. It’s not what he would have wanted.”

  “Let it go, Colt,” Mick said. “They wouldn’t do anything anyway.”

  “You don’t know that! And that doesn’t even fucking matter. What matters is that she –”

  “What matters is that she got what she deserved,” Mick said. A shiver went down my spine. Something about the way he said that reminded me of my foster father, Karl, who used to say things like that all the time. If he hit us, if he yelled at us, if he kept food from us, well, in Karl’s opinion, everyone got what they deserved. It didn’t matter if you hadn’t done anything.

  “You fucking bastard,” Colt said, and the sound of something scraping across the floor echoed through the hallway. “If you ever say –”

  There was a huge crash then, like a chair or something being thrown to the ground.

  “Listen to me, you little shit,” Mick said. “You’re not in charge around here So shut your mouth, Colt, or I’ll kick you out on your ass faster than you can say ‘fuck you.’”

  I frowned. I didn’t get it. Why was Mick saying he was going to kick Colt out on his ass? How could he when Colt was the owner of the club? Of course, no one had actually told me he was the owner of Loose Cannons, I’d just assumed it from the way he carried himself, and because of that fact that he was in charge of hiring. But maybe I had it wrong.

  I waited for Colt to fire back at him, wondering what I should do if it became clear they were really fighting. Should I go in there and break it up? Or just let them fight it out?

  But I didn’t have to worry about that, because a second later, a man came barreling out of the room and into the hallway. Mick. He was wearing a blue and black flannel shirt over a pair of stone washed jeans. There were work boots on his feet and he stomped by me down the hall.

  I held my breath and waited for him to ask me what the hell I was doing there, but he didn’t even look at me. He just pushed by me, his weathered face crinkled into annoyance.

  I let out the breath I was holding and peeked into the room Mick had just left.

  Colt was standing there, his hands gripping the edge of a huge desk, his head lowered. “Fuck,” he swore under his breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He stood up and slammed his fist down on the desk. Once. Twice. Three times.

  “Wow,” I said, leaning against the door frame. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

  He looked up, his eyes blazing, ready to get in a fight with the first person he saw. That’s how angry he was. I recognized it because I’d had that kind of anger inside of me before. But instead of expressing it the way Colt was doing, I pushed it down as far as I could, until I couldn’t control it anymore. And then I would cut myself.

  You could argue that Colt’s way of dealing with his emotions was healthier, that at least he was trying to release them. But I knew better – you didn’t get that angry in the first place unless there was something unhealthy going on in your life. Out-of-balance emotions were the product of an out-of-balance life.

  You’d think that since I knew that, I should be able to fix the things that were making me feel that kind of pain. But it was one thing to understand why you had anger, or felt the need to cut yourself. It was quite another to try and fix whatever it was that was causing it.

  “What are you doing here?” Colt said when he realized it was me. “I told you to stay in the car.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not good at following directions”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Colt said. “Go back to the car, Olivia.” I didn’t like the way he said my name this time, like he was in charge of me, like I needed to be scolded.

  “No,” I said. “Not until you give me back my purse.”

  “I’m not letting–” he started. But then he shook his head. “Fine,” he said. “You want your bag? Here.” He reached over and picked my purse up from where it was sitting on the windowsill. “Here you go. Now you’re free to go back to the shelter, take the city bus, sleep on the streets, whatever it is you’re determined to do.”

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching out to take it from him. Our fingertips brushed, and I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but I felt like he hung onto my bag for a beat longer than was necessary, like he wanted me to stay.

  Our eyes met, and my breath hitched. For the first time, I saw something beneath the surface in him – hurt. I thought about his anger just now, how he pounded the desk like he did, how that man Mick was yelling at him, and I wondered if there was more to Colt than I’d first thought.

  Maybe he wasn’t just a rich skeezy guy who ran a strip club and got everything handed to him.

  And then, just like that, his eyes hardened again. The hurt was gone, but now it was replaced by something else, something intangible. Regret? It was odd, but I had the feeling he wanted me to stay here, with him. And not just because he thought it was the right thing to do.

  “Thanks,” I said as finally he let go of my bag.

  “You’re welcome.”

  We both stood there for a second, just looking at each other. It was weird, because nothing had happened to make me feel connected to him, except that I’d seen him get angry. And I couldn’t explain it, but somehow, I wanted to take his pain away.

  That invisible pull I’d felt toward him earlier, when I was dancing for him, and again back at his apartment, returned, stronger than ever. But now it wasn’t the pull of lust – now it was something else, something deeper.

  You have to help him.

  “Colt – ” I started, my voice soft. I wanted to tell him it was going to be okay, that whatever was going on would end up fine in the end. I wasn’t sure I believed that – the whole it’s going to be okay in the end bullshit that some people liked to spew. But I needed to say something.

  “Good luck, Princess,” Colt said, cutting me off. That playful little lilt was back in his voice, whatever vulnerability I’d seen had replaced with his usual cockiness. He reached his hand out for me to shake.

  I took it, his hand enveloping mine, big and strong and warm. My breath hitched in my chest, and I could hear the blood rushing through my ears. My body was on alert again, that connection I’d felt with him thrumming in the air, electric.

  I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to walk out of this room and never see him again. I couldn’t explain it, but I just… I didn’t.

  “So,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “What was that business proposition you were talking about earlier?”

  “Business proposition?” He frowned, confusion flooding his face.

  “Yeah, back at your apartment. You said you had a business proposition for me?”

  “Oh.” He shook his head. “It was nothing. It was a stupid idea, especially now.”

  “Especially now?”

  “Yeah, this girl
– ” He shook his head. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

  Was he talking about the girl I’d seen in that other room, the one who was crying? I wanted to ask him, but I was afraid if I pushed, he would kick me out.

  “Really?” I asked. “Because it kind of sounded important.”

  He looked at me, his eyes narrowing. “I can’t… you wouldn’t be good at it.”

  My jaw dropped. “I wouldn’t be good at it?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, just that you’d have to listen to me. I’d be your boss. And you’re not good at following directions.”

  “First of all,” I said. “You don’t know me well enough to know whether or not I’m good at following directions.” And second of all…” I trailed off. “Second of all, I’m a very motivated employee.”

  “Oh, really?” He was next to me in a flash, his body against mine, his breath warm on my cheek. “Motivated, huh?”

  “Yes.” I forced myself to keep my eyes on his.

  “You’ll do anything I say?”

  My breath hitched again, and I closed my eyes because I couldn’t take looking at him. He was just so damn beautiful, and I was afraid I was going to lose my mind or do something crazy, that’s how much I didn’t want to leave this room, how much I wanted to stay here with him. In that moment, I would have don’t anything he wanted.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Anything.”

  He ran the back of his knuckle over my jawbone, then leaned in even closer to me. “You’d have to live with me. I’d need to keep an eye on you.”

  I nodded, then forced myself to open my eyes, not caring if he kissed me, not caring if I broke my promise to Declan.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He grinned, then put his hand on the back of my neck, pulling my hair up gently. Then he closed his eyes and leaned down, his mouth coming closer to mine, his lips full and perfect. I held my breath and waited for him to kiss me.

  But a second later, he froze and opened his eyes.

  “Wow, Princess,” he said, “you really meant it.”