Addicted to You by Colina Brennan Read Free Book Online Page B

been taken along with everything
else. It was a simple black frame with a pink flower painted in one
corner. It displayed a photo of them at the park, taken on one of
many evenings Helena had joined her and Elijah. Leah had taken
Helena shopping on her birthday and let her pick out the frame.
Leah was crap at giving presents (lack of practice), and didn’t see
the point in giving something unless she was certain the recipient
would like it.
    “Looks really great,” Leah said, and meant
it.
    Helena beamed and gripped her hand before
tugging her back down the short hall to the living room. A
thirty-two-inch flat screen television stood in place of the
nineteen-inch dinosaur they’d had before. It was currently tuned
into some sitcom featuring a talking dog. She cast Helena, who had
ducked into the kitchen, a dubious look before turning the channel
to a documentary featuring a pride of lionesses stalking a
gazelle.
    The lionesses had just taken it down when
Helena returned juggling a bottle of red wine, two glasses, and a
plate of microwaved hot pockets.
    Leah smiled. They ate like queens. Oh
yeah.
    Helena made a face at the
TV, where the lionesses were stripping flesh from the gazelle while
buzzards waited in a nearby tree, and set their dinner on the
coffee table. “Well, now I’m really hungry,” she said.
    Leah liked watching animal documentaries. It
was all so basic and instinctual. Especially the ones about mating.
(They weirded Helena out.) “Survival of the fittest. Sometimes I
wish this was how humans worked. I would totally be a lioness.”
    Helena snorted. “You’d be a hyena.”
    Leah flashed her a toothy grin. “Well, you’d
be a meerkat.”
    “Meerkats are awesome .” Helena bit
into a hot pocket with an emphatic nod.
    Leah didn’t argue. She was
just glad they were getting along again. She poured herself some
wine and settled into the corner of their new—oh my God , so
comfortable—sofa.
    “So, I know I haven’t said anything all
week,” Helena began, “but congrats on finishing the twenty weeks.”
She leaned over to give Leah a quick squeeze.
    Dangit. She had been trying to avoid
thinking about it.
    “Thanks,” she said, and injected as much
cheer into her smile as she could.
    The thing was that along with feeling relief
it was finally over, she also felt a little disappointed. Not
because she wanted to go back—definitely not—but because the
thought of never seeing Blue Eyes again made her twitchy.
Especially after she’d acted on impulse and kissed the guy.
    She didn’t regret kissing him—he had clearly
enjoyed it—but she did sort of feel guilty for putting them in such
an awkward position. She bit her lip, remembering the feel of his
mouth, his body, his hand on her thigh. She had no doubt that he
wanted to finish what she had started, and she wouldn’t mind in the
least.
    But unless she went back next week, it might
as well have been a good-bye kiss.
    God, she was in trouble.
    “I thought for sure you’d quit after the
first couple weeks,” Helena said. “Thanks for sticking with
it.”
    “Does this mean we’re okay now?”
    Helena looked surprised. “We were always
okay. I mean, I was furious with you, but I wasn’t going to throw
you out.”
    No one could loosen that ache in her chest
better than Helena. Leah didn’t know what to say, but her best
friend understood her well enough to give her another quick
squeeze.
    Content, Leah selected a hot pocket and felt
the last of her worries about their friendship slip away.
    “Has Jay asked you out yet?” she asked,
waving her hot pocket through the air to try and cool it off more
quickly.
    To Leah’s amusement, Helena turned pink.
“Yeah, right. Lord of the Eyebrows? Did you see how squeamish he
got that one time you started talking about sex positions? He’s so
straight-laced, it’s embarrassing.”
    “You could fix that,” Leah said with a
smirk.
    Jay lived on the floor above them. He moved
in a year after they