Craving Absolution Read online

  When I was sixteen, I’d taken the Callie under my wing even though she was older than me, but it hadn’t been long before those roles had become blurred. We’d gone through a hell of a lot since the day we met five years ago, deaths and attacks and the birth of Will, but somehow we’d come out the other side stronger. Her grandma had adopted me into their little family, and aside from the serious case of lust I had going on for her little brother, Cody, the bonds had formed with no cracks in sight.

  I loved Callie, Gram, and Will more than I’d ever thought possible. And Cody? Well, I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. Our relationship was complicated, dragged through the mud too many times to be clean or wholesome. He’d witnessed me at my worst, a situation that I didn’t ever think I could be comfortable with, but there was still a pull there. We were like two magnets that snapped together whenever we were too close, so I’d spent the last few years making sure that we never were.

  I finally dropped Will next door at Gram’s house for the night when I knew he’d be falling asleep soon, and decided I deserved a little pampering after chasing him around the house all day. I was painting my toenails, watching Almost Famous play on the television, and wondering if I could pull off the beachy waves Kate Hudson was sporting when someone started pounding on my front door. It startled me so badly that I dropped the bottle of Purple Passion nail polish onto the coffee table and watched it splash in slow motion across the thighs of my favorite sweatpants. Mother. Fucker.

  Whoever was on the other side of the door was going to die by nail polish wand in about two seconds. I stomped around the couch in that funky walk that only girls do, balancing on my just my heels as I tried to keep my freshly painted toenails pristine, and swung the door open expecting to see a religious nut trying to save my soul.

  “I already bought my ration of Girl Scout—Cody?” I asked incredulously. What the hell?

  It took me a minute to wrap my head around the fact that the one person I’d been simultaneously dying to see and trying to avoid was at my front door. I hadn’t seen him in months. My gaze roamed down his torso, checking out his snug T-shirt and jeans before snapping back up to his face to catch him smirking at me. Smirking. I hated the word, almost as much as I hated the action.

  “Callie’s in Oregon,” I said with a snort, once I’d gotten a handle on my eye-fucking idiocy. “She left this morning to see you.”

  I watched him closely as he stared at me, taking in everything from my messy ponytail to my bare feet, and I started to worry that I had food on my face or something because he didn’t say a word. When he still didn’t speak for almost a minute, I had to bite my tongue so I wouldn’t chatter like a crazy person just to fill the silence. Cody had always had that effect on me, and it made my normally composed facade seem like a thing of the past.

  Well, screw that.

  I met his eyes with a droll look and spun around as gracefully as I could, pretending a nonchalance about his appearance at my door. “Come on in, if you want. I was just making myself pretty.”

  Cody’s large hands gripped my hips from behind before I could get more than two steps into the room, and I stopped abruptly as I felt him step forward and press his body against me.

  No, no, what was he doing? I couldn’t think with his hands on me! We needed to keep a distance between us; it was in the damn unwritten rules we’d lived by for years.

  I closed my eyes and vaguely noticed the sound of the front door closing as his breath fanned against the side of my face.

  Oh shit.

  “I’m not here to see Callie.” He spoke quietly, bumping his nose against my ear. “I’m here to see you, and you’re already beautiful.”

  Every muscle in my body froze at his sensual tone, at the memory that slammed into me from out of nowhere . . .

  • • •

  The apartment had been quiet that night as I’d tiptoed toward the living room to check the locks, but I jerked to a pause when I got there.

  Cody had been asleep on the couch, his arms wrapped around a pillow with little pink flowers all over it. I couldn’t help but smile; he looked like such a kid. When he was awake, the cocky way he carried himself belied his lack of life experience. It was only when he was sleeping that he looked so innocent.

  The exact opposite of me.

  My smile faded as I realized he was sleeping on top of my hidden stash of vodka. Why the hell wasn’t he sleeping at his grandmother’s? I clenched my hands at my sides and then needlessly flipped him off before spinning toward the bathroom in frustration. He really needed to stop sleeping in our goddamn apartment. This was a testosterone-free zone, damn it.

  I made my way into the bathroom and closed the door before turning on the light. I avoiding looking in the mirror before dropping to my knees and opening the cupboard under the sink. Inside was a supersized box of tampons, scented ones that I knew Callie wouldn’t try to steal. She made fun of me trying to make my vagina smell like a flower, but it was easy for me to laugh it off. I never actually used scented tampons.

  The truth was that I never used any kind of tampons. When I’d started losing weight, my period stopped and it hadn’t come back.

  I quietly opened the box and pulled out a small bottle of whiskey, taking a large swallow before I’d even moved from my knees. It burned all the way down my throat, the bitter taste making my face screw up in what I was sure was a very attractive expression. I set the box on the counter and climbed to my feet, turning my head away so I wouldn’t accidentally see my reflection.

  By the time I got situated, curled up on the top of the closed toilet, I was feeling so much better. My hands were tingly, and the rest of my limbs felt loose and relaxed. Thank God. Alcohol was such a soothing thing, so much better than the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed me after my “accident.” I was enjoying my buzz, trying to decide if I should go back to bed, when I was startled by the bathroom door swinging open.

  “Oh, sorry,” Cody mumbled, rubbing his bare chest. “I didn’t realize—” His eyes narrowed as he took in my tank top and shorts, and the nearly empty whiskey bottle resting between my knees.

  I froze, my eyes wide as I tried to decide how I was going to explain drinking in the bathroom in the middle of the night. God, I was fucking pathetic.

  But before I could say a word, he stepped inside, gently closing the door. “What the fuck are you doing, Farrah?”

  “Having a drink!” I replied with a wide smile, toasting him with my bottle before raising it to my lips.

  I would just have to brazen it out. Usually I could make a sarcastic or bitchy comment, and as long as I was safe in the apartment while drinking, it would be enough for him to leave me alone. But I’d barely tasted the booze on my tongue before he swiped the bottle out of my hand.

  “You don’t need this shit,” he mumbled, twisting the cap back on the bottle. “God, Farrah.”

  “How do you know what I need?” I asked belligerently as I stood from the toilet, swaying as I stepped toward him and reached for the bottle he was holding out of my reach.

  His entire demeanor pissed me off, with his gelled hair and fucking prep school clothes. What the hell did he know about anything?

  “You think you know anything about me?”

  “I know plenty,” he told me seriously, reaching up to push my hair out of my face until I ducked away. “I was there too. I think it’s easy for you to forget that, but I was there too.”

  I gasped and staggered back in shock. I couldn’t believe he was going there. What a dick. No one dared to mention that day to me.

  “Fuck you, Cody,” I said with a sneer, my lower lip trembling. I tried to push around him but he held his ground, and I huffed in frustration.

  “Let me out!” I said tightly, smacking him in the chest.

  When I looked up to find him staring at me with kind eyes, although red around the edges, I lost it.

  I slapped him again. I was sick and tired of him playing his knight-in-shining-armor g
ames. I didn’t need him stepping in all the time, treating me like a child. Fuck him.

  I swung my arms, my hands alternately flat or fisted, and beat at his chest and arms. “Don’t look at me like that! I’m fine! What, do you think you need to save me? Ha! Maybe I need to save you from those fucking polos and that ridiculous faux hawk! News flash, dickhead. If it’s not an actual Mohawk, you just look like a douche!”

  He took everything I had to give him and never once attempted to stop me. “Get it out, baby,” he murmured, rubbing my back when he could reach it. It was extremely frustrating that he was trying to console me when I wanted him to hit me back. I wanted a goddamn fight.

  What was wrong with me?

  Eventually I was crying more than I was hitting, and that pissed me off even more. I fucking hated showing emotions. It made me feel like a drama queen, as if I were begging for attention. I dropped my arms to my sides and clenched my jaw, feeling overwhelmingly embarrassed for my freak-out. I pretended that tears weren’t leaking from the corners of my eyes as I stared at his bare chest, now covered in red marks and scratches, and silently willed him to leave.

  I was so focused on trying to get my shit together that when he wrapped his arms around me, I didn’t even fight it. He pushed me back gently while I stared at the mole on his breastbone, and before I could snap out of my head, he sat down on the toilet and pulled me down with him so I was straddling his lap.

  “I know you’re hurting,” he started, pausing when I scoffed.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re fine? That’s why you’re drinking Jack in the fucking bathroom at five o’clock in the morning?”

  I didn’t have a reply to that. It was ridiculous; I knew that. I just didn’t have an explanation for it, at least not one that wouldn’t make me seem even more pathetic. God, had I really told him he needed to be saved from his haircut? I could feel him looking at me, but refused to meet his eyes.

  I knew I should get up and get the hell away from him. He was my best friend’s little brother, and we were barely friends. But when my eyes began to grow heavy, and I hiccupped with leftover tears, he gently grasped the back of my neck, and I let him pull my face to his throat.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he whispered gently, rubbing my back in slow circles. “Sleep, Farrah.”

  Strangely, I felt myself relaxing into his muscular body.

  “Tomorrow, you can pretend this never happened,” he told me seriously, his hand sliding down to grip my side, slowly burrowing under my tank top. He rubbed slowly on the side of my lower belly with his thumb, and I refused to acknowledge when he found one of my scars and paused. He turned his head and kissed my forehead gently, his thumb still resting on the small round scar burned into my skin. “Let me take care of you tonight.”

  I had fallen asleep that night to the gentle rhythm of his breathing, promising myself that I’d stay away from him from then on, thankful that he’d be leaving for school soon and I wouldn’t have to see him again.

  • • •

  I snapped back into the present as Cody squeezed my hips once and stepped around me, headed toward the kitchen.

  “You guys have any beer?” he called, as if I hadn’t just zoned out for God knows how long, and he hadn’t shown up on my doorstep like he freaking belonged there.

  “Your sister keeps that piss you like stocked,” I answered, rolling my eyes as I followed him. “I don’t know why you drink that shit.”

  “I don’t bitch about your beer, you don’t bitch about mine,” he warned, using the scarred countertop to pop the top off his beer bottle. “You in for the night?”

  “Yeah. I had Will for a while, but he sleeps better at Gram’s, so she took him a little while ago. For some reason, he refuses to sleep in his own bed when Callie’s not here.”

  I watched him with confusion as he made himself comfortable in my kitchen, then I came to a decision. I grabbed a beer for myself from the fridge, then bumped him out of the way with my hip. If he was going to act like being here without Callie was no big deal, I’d do the same.

  If anyone could pretend that a situation wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable or just plain weird, it was me. I’d had years of practice.

  “Hey, sweetheart, looks like you spilled some shit on your pants,” he joked, leaning against the countertop.

  “Yeah, thanks for the flash, Gordon. I spilled nail polish all over the place when you started pounding on my door like the gestapo. You’re buying me some new freaking sweatpants,” I grumbled, opening my bottle. “I’m going to go change. Clean the shit off the coffee table, would you?”

  I heard him bitching as I walked toward my bedroom, and grinned. He could take the blame for not being able to get that shit off Callie’s coffee table. It was his damn fault it had gotten spilled in the first place.

  Shit, my room was a disaster. I’d needed to go to the Laundromat last week, but with Callie waffling about whether she was going to Eugene or not, and trying to rearrange her schedule at the salon so her clients wouldn’t revolt, I hadn’t had time.

  Shit.

  The only clean pants I had were a huge pair of sweatpants that I wore to bed when I was having a bad night. They didn’t stay up around my waist unless I tightened the drawstring as far as it would go and then rolled them like four times, but since the options were either the sweats or a tiny-ass pair of yoga shorts . . . I stuck with the sweats.

  If only I would have listened to Gram when she told me to stop throwing damp towels in with the rest of my dirty laundry, I might have been able to wear a semi-clean pair that actually fit.

  By the time I made it back into the living room, Cody had polished off most of his beer and was grimacing as he rotated his arm slowly.

  “Does it still bother you?” I asked, startling him as I rounded the couch.

  “Nah, it’s usually not bad. Long ride today, though,” he answered, pulling a prescription bottle out of the pocket of his jeans.

  “You’ve been drinking,” I snapped dumbly as he dropped a pill into his mouth and washed it down with the last of his beer. “You better not be getting back on your bike tonight.”

  “That’s funny, coming from you,” he replied with a short bark of laughter, shaking his head.

  I almost took a step back, the hurt flashing through me quickly at his comment, but I hid that small tell. It always came back to this—always—so I shouldn’t have been surprised. I wouldn’t let him catch me off guard again.

  I turned my head toward the TV, refusing to look at him as I sat down on the far end of the couch. He’d seen me at my worst, and it seemed as if I’d never be able to escape that fact. It was why when I’d noticed him watching me over the past year, I’d ignored it.

  Was I attracted to him? Of course I was. Cody was gorgeous, and he carried himself with a confidence that had become even more apparent as he’d found his place in the Aces. I couldn’t help but be attracted to him; he was the embodiment of everything I’d ever looked for in a man—strong, kind, sexy, smart—but that didn’t mean that I would ever act on it. There was no way I could ever move past the fact that he had kept me alive and in one piece more times than I could remember. It caused an inequality in our relationship that I hated.

  The times that I could remember were bad enough; I wouldn’t even let myself contemplate how bad the times I couldn’t remember were.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said, leaning forward as if to touch my leg before I jerked away. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere, Farrah.”

  “It’s fine.” I laughed woodenly, staring with unfocused eyes at the television. “No harm, no foul. Let’s not pretend that I should be making life choices for anyone.”

  “Fuck!” he said under his breath, surprising me enough to whip my head in his direction. “This is not what I planned on happening.”

  “What exactly did you plan?” I asked calmly, my mask firmly in place. “Your sister’s not here, and your grandmother lives right next door.
Why the hell are you still in my apartment?”

  I watched as he ran his hands over the top of his head in frustration, and was about to climb off the couch to put some space between us when he reached over and dragged me toward him.

  “You know why I’m here, Farrah,” he answered quietly, turning sideways so he could settle me between his thighs with my back resting against his chest. “I gave you space, baby. I gave you thousands of miles of space, because I knew you needed it.”

  Cody tightened his arms around my torso as I scrambled to get up. He was going to get to me; he knew just what buttons to push, which words to use to get a reaction out of me, and he was going to use them. I could feel it.

  “You weren’t ready,” he said. “I got that. I knew you needed time to get your shit together, to make a life where you could stand on your own two feet. But I’m done waiting, Farrah.”

  “I didn’t ask you to wait!” I shot back, trying for boredom but sounding more panicked than I liked, so I decided to get physical and pushed on his arms. “What the fuck are you even talking about?”

  Struggling to climb off his lap, I felt his lips drag softly over my shoulder, and I froze. It had been so long since I’d felt something like that. Drunken fumbling with strangers had happened occasionally when I was in the midst of my partying days, but even if they would have been inclined, I wouldn’t have let them be tender with me. I hadn’t been able to handle own emotions back then, much less someone else’s.

  My eyes drifted shut as he nuzzled against my neck. Had that ever felt this good?

  “Do you know how beautiful you are to me?” he whispered, loosening his arms so he could run his hands up and down my belly. “Even when I was dragging you out of places, drunk out of your mind and pissed at everyone, you were still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I couldn’t get you out of my head, and then in the last year, there was just . . . so much more. You fucking light up, Farrah.”

  He dropped a kiss on my neck and lingered for a moment, inhaling my scent. “Your face was all I could think about when I was in the hospital—how your nose wrinkles when you scowl at me, the way you smile at Callie when she’s being an idiot, that soft look you get when you’re dancing with Will. Fuck, Farrah.”