Page 48 of Sucker Love (Sugar Pill Duet #1)

From time to time I lean over to kiss Noel’s cheek or his neck.

He’s almost too busy to be bothered with me, but the moment my lips touch his skin he melts, just a little, his body gravitating towards mine, and I know that regardless of how much attention he’s been fed right now, he is still mine .

That I can coax him to me with something as featherlight as laying lips on his ear or my fingertips walking along the inside of his knee and he is more than pliant and willing.

That if I did want to, I could jerk my head in the direction of the bathroom and he would follow me, willing as anything.

Not that I do that—I just like having the knowledge that I could.

I let him have this moment, too. In the meantime I get Killian’s attention, and he turns towards me, eyebrows raised. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to ask you something. About Arin.”

“Arin?” His brow furrows. “What about him?”

And I feel sort of sick, just having mentioned his name.

Anytime I think of Arin I do. It’s the guilt, the fact that I played some awful role it what happened to him and there was never any real closure.

One moment he was with me and the next gone, without so much as a goodbye.

And then I moved right on to the girl that my father had handpicked for me.

Guilt. Shame. Those were the dominant reasons I had shied away from this group for so long. Ashamed not just of what I was, but what had happened and my inability to so much as stand up.

“Lulu?”

Boy, I fucking hate that nickname but it does the job of breaking through my thoughts. I look back at Killian’s concerned face and clear my throat. “I just wonder what happened to him. I thought he’d be in the group chat. I always wondered what happened to him after everything.”

“Oh.” He gives me a smile. “Arin’s long gone, man. He’s over in Vegas—I think he does OnlyFans, or something like that.”

“OnlyFans?” I’m stunned.

“Yeah, he’s a camboy. He’s pretty big now. I don’t talk much to him anymore, but I think Lael keeps in touch?—”

And at the mention of her name, Lael leans close. “Huh? Lael does what now?”

“I was just telling him that you and Arin still talk.”

“Oh, yeah. Not super often, but we have a big five hour phone call a few times a year.” She rolls her eyes with a half-smile. “We last spoke over New Year’s. Why?”

Why? Why? Has everyone forgot that my dad choked him out?

It’s a Twilight Zone kind of moment where I feel like I’ve been transported to some mirror world or an alternate universe where nothing bad ever happened and Arin just happened to move away and lose touch with everyone to live his big camboy dreams. Or maybe all of my friends have been replaced with suspiciously convincing clones.

“You guys remember what happened, right?” I say carefully, my voice still low. “Between me and him?”

They exchange a glance. “That was your dad, though,” Lael points out.

“But it involved me. I’m the whole reason that happened in the first place.”

“Are you still feeling bad about that?” Killian is astonished. “Yeah, it was super bad at the time, but it’s not like you personally tried to snap his neck. Your dad did. Is he dead yet, by the way?”

“No, he’s not dead yet,” I snap, before I sit up and take a deep breath.

I will myself to be calm. Lael’s elbowing Killian in the side, remonstrating him under her breath for saying that sort of thing when I’ve already lost one parent, and he wrings his hands with a soft oops.

“I don’t know,” I say after a moment. “He never spoke to me again after that, and I never tried to reach out to him either. And then I sort of ghosted you guys after I got married, so...I thought there would be hard feelings.”

Lael and Killian look at each other again, then back at me. “No?” Lael says. “We were all young and it was a fucked up situation. But Arin is okay. More than. He just did what your dad wanted, took the money and fucked off.”

“Turned out well for him, too,” Killian adds. “Did you want to talk to him or something?”

“I could ask him for you,” Lael offers.

That sick feeling turns to full-blown nausea. The nice omelet I just had is churning in my stomach and making threats about coming up the same way it went down. I swallow the bad taste in my mouth. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t want to upset him.”

“It’s ancient history,” Lael says.

“For you guys. Not for me. And maybe not for him.” I look down at my mostly empty plate.

Noel’s thigh suddenly presses alongside mine and I know he’s been listening in the whole time, though he’s been otherwise engaged in the conversation at the other end of the table.

My gaze slides sideways and catches the flicker of concern in his amber eyes.

I resist the urge to take his hand and look up again.

“But thanks for offering,” I say, and I sound more even now.

“It’s enough to know he’s doing well. It makes me happy to hear it. ”

It does. It is a small weight that’s lifted—because there is so much of that old guilt, and I would’ve liked to hear it from Arin himself that he’s well—but it’s a weight lifted, nevertheless.

When we do leave the cafe a couple hours later, I feel lighter.

And maybe that’s the most I can ask for.

Closure is a privilege, after all. I am lucky to have gotten even a crumb of it.

Noel holds my hand as we walk in search of wherever I parked my truck, pressing close to my side. “I had fun,” he said. “I liked everyone a lot.”

I squeeze his fingers. “I think they liked you, too.”

“I hope so.”

“Now, when am I going to meet your friends?”

I catch sight of the face he makes before he lays his head on my shoulder. “I don’t know. Probably never. They’re cool, don’t get me wrong, and Jamil’s totally on board with everything, but Danika’s different.”

“Different?” I echo.

“She—well, first she was calling you a pedo for even being into me?—”

“Oh, good.”

“She’s gotten over that,” he adds hastily. “But she’s still leery. I think it’s the fact you’re still married. And I guess that’s fair, you know, it is a bit weird for me to be dating a married guy. ”

I drop a kiss on the top of his head. “No,” I say. “That is something I can actually work on.”

When I get home from work that evening, I sit down at the table in the kitchen with a pen and the folder Demi gave me, and I go through it all, page by page.

Amelia lies beneath the table, nudging my foot with her nose and thumping her tail from time to time.

As if she, in all her esoteric and inexplicable doggy empathy, somehow understands the gravity of my task.

Once I put pen to page, it’s easy. Demi’s already filled out a lot of it; my job is reduced to little more than initialing here, signing and dating there. The affidavit of irretrievable breakdown is already filled in: we no longer envision the same future . True enough.

I wish I hadn’t put it off so long. I’m starting to forget why it was that I did. All the change I once feared so much seems like a distant memory now. I relish it, the turn my life has taken, the things I’m getting back to doing. Everything I’ve missed and everything I’ve discovered.

Twenty minutes later I’m finished with the whole packet, and I call Demi to tell her so. When she doesn’t answer I text her and ask when she wants me to drop everything off.

Sick as a dog atm. Think it’s a 24-hour stomach bug thing.

Can you drop it off tomorrow night?

No problem. Hope you feel better.

Noel, who’s been sequestered away in his room working on his portfolio, comes out as I slip the folder into my backpack.

He’s dressed like he wants to go somewhere : chain harness over a mesh top and very short black shorts over ripped tights.

And a collar. It is a very distracting sight, to where I almost miss his question.

“All done?” he asks me. Both voice and face are carefully neutral, worried about displaying too much emotion either way, but I know this is what he wants—for me to be completely free and his, to not have to share me in any capacity.

To not have to worry that I, for some inexplicable and nonexistent reason, will return to my wife.

“Finished,” I confirm.

And he smiles one of those big, broad smiles that bring out the dimples I almost never get to see.

When he throws himself at me, I catch him easily in my arms. He jams his head beneath my chin and rubs his cheek furiously against my throat, cat-like, and he really is so cat-like in all his finicky affection; his tattoo was such a fitting choice.

I bury my face in hair that smells like jasmine from his shampoo and we stand like that for a long moment, just holding each other as tight as possible.

“Still have to file,” I say, my voice muffled in his hair. “And then there’s a three month cooling off period. But after that, it’ll be done done. I’ll be a single Pringle. ”

He scoffs into my neck before he lifts his head. “You’re such a loser.”

“That’s why you love me.” I touch my nose to his, and his sneer turns quickly to a smile. “I guess I won’t really be single, either, will I?”

He kisses me fiercely, without warning. It’s a claiming sort of kiss, all possessiveness and heat, his arms sliding around my neck and tugging me closer.

Tilting my head just so for the right angle, so that his tongue can slip in my mouth and he can taste me.

I let my teeth graze it like a warning. He makes a small sound and melts against me.

He does love being reminded of who’s in charge and I do love reminding him, seizing his chin in my hand, squeezing until he gasps, pulling back and watching his eyelids flutter.

“Naughty thing,” I murmur to him. “Asking for it.”

“Yes.” It’s pleading, that one word, so much yearning and heat packed into a single syllable.

I could pull him down to his knees just by his face and he would go, graceful and willing as anything.

I adore him like this, at the height of his submission, when he’s malleable and game for just about anything.

“You want to go somewhere and celebrate?” I ask him. My hand slides down his neck, fingering the clasp of his collar. “Hm? Is that what this is all about?”

His tongue darts out to wet his puffy, pouting lips. “I had an idea,” he offers softly.

“And what’s that?”

“There’s a club down in Providence.” His tawny gaze meets mine beneath the dark veil of lashes. “Well, there’s lots of clubs in Providence, but this one’s called Strapped. It’s like Anathema, but...you know, it has a lot less rules.”

“Less rules,” I echo. I think I know what that means: an actual BDSM club, with actual sex, not the watered-down version that Anathema offers. He smiles at me until my fingers tighten, just a little, around his throat. “You really want to go somewhere like that, huh?”

He sucks in a quick breath. I can feel his heartbeat beneath my palm. “I want to see what it’s all about.”

“So you’ve never been before?”

“No.” It comes out in a sort of irritated whimper, and I see a flash of his teeth. “You know I haven’t. I haven’t been anywhere. ”

“Right.” My thumb skims the underside of his jaw.

“But I want to go with you . Just—just to see what it’s like.”

It’s an enticing idea, one that speeds the pulse and quickens the breath. Of course I’ve never been to an actual sex club before, either. Anathema’s the closest thing, and it hardly counts. It’s a gay nightclub attempting to masquerade as a sex club. This would be the real deal. Kiddie gloves off.

And I’m not sure I have any business being there, but I suddenly want to, very badly. Why the hell not? I want to see what this shit really is about first hand. Maybe I’d even learn a thing or two. It’s not like we had to do anything. No binding contract that made us do anything more than observe.

“Alright,” I say, releasing him and stepping back. “Then I better get ready.”