Covet (Sinful Secrets 3)

“You’re contagious?” I swallow. “Is that it?”

He frowns down at me. I can feel dissatisfaction coming from him, but I don’t know what I did to earn it. Finally, in a hard tone, he says, “Do you know why I’m here?”

My pulse quickens. “Would you like to tell me?”

His hand closes around my arm as his eyes shut. “I can’t.”

“You can and should. So I can take good care of you.”

I step in closer, caress his face with my gaze before I dare to wrap my arms around his waist. I lay my cheek against his warm chest. His arms close around my shoulders. I can feel him take in two breaths—shallow, fast.

“Finley…you can’t get what I have.” All his muscles tighten as he exhales. “I’m an addict.”

Eighteen

Finley

“I don’t understand.” Perhaps I do, a bit, but my mouth runs away with me as I look up at his face. “An addict, meaning—”

“Addict. Junkie. Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, of course.” I flinch at his hard tone, and I feel his body stiffen against mine. I lower my arms to my sides and look up at him.

“I’m afraid I—I can’t imagine you…as that. You’re so—” What I want to say is, he’s so handsome. He looks strong and healthy. “Sensible” is what I stammer instead. “Smart,” I add. “And you’re…well, you’re Homer Carnegie. How can that be true?”

I watch his jaw tighten, his nostrils flaring slightly as he inhales. His eyes close on the exhale.

“That’s why you’re here? To dry out? Or the equivalent?”

He nods once.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He rubs his forehead, his face angled toward the ground. “Figured we’d be out in time.”

In time…for what? “To avoid withdrawal?”

His hand covers his face, though I see his lips; I see them twist as he bites his cheek. “I was tapering. That night you came in…I was fucking stupid. I had everything in that one bottle.” He sighs softly. “And I dropped it in the tub.”

My mouth opens. “That’s what you were doing with the water. You jumped up and…” I can see him in my memory, which makes my cheeks warm. “You were tapering your dosage, to decrease…to quit. Therefore you had brought some along. And...was it all ruined?”

He nods, his gaze meeting mine for one small moment before dipping back down to the ground.

“That’s what you were at the clinic for, the time I saw you in the street?”

He exhales. “I was going to ask the doctor. But I saw you.” His mouth tugs up a bit on one side, revealing his dimple.

“Oh, Declan. And I suppose that’s why you offered to help with the herding? To butter me up?”

He rubs his head, and then gives me a guilty look.

“Well, that backfired quite spectacularly.”

He angles himself slightly away from me, and I sense more than hear him take a long breath.

After that, he sits down. I can feel it—him turning away from me. He got the secret out, and now he’s feeling…bare. Perhaps ashamed.

“You could feel the seizure coming.” I’m thinking aloud. “That’s why you went at the rocks that way. It wasn’t out of temper.”