Addicted to You by Colina Brennan

nine,” Leah said evenly. Raising her
voice never worked except to ignite her mom’s stubbornness.
    “Exactly,” she said, her gaze sharpening on
the TV again. Apparently, the conversation was over.
    Leah ground her teeth. This was the last
straw. She was taking Elijah whether her parents consented or
not.
    Warm fingers closed around her fist, and she
looked over to see Helena giving her a tight, encouraging smile.
Slowly, she relaxed her jaw.
    “By the way,” her mom said, “there’s a party
this weekend. It’s being hosted by some friends, and they asked us
to bring Elijah.” Her tone of voice suggested this particular
condition annoyed her. “I’ll need you to go as well to keep an eye
on him.”
    Leah glowered, but her mom was so intent on
the news anchor that it did her little good.
    “You want me to watch him at a party full of
people, but you think he’s fine on his own in an empty house?”
    “Well, I can’t have him causing trouble at a
party, now can I?” Incredulously, she made it sound as if Leah were
the one being unreasonable.
    “Elijah doesn’t cause trouble at all,” Leah
said, her voice rising in spite of herself. “If you were around
more often, you’d know that.”
    Now, her mom did look at her, with an
expression filled with ice. It was the same look Leah sometimes saw
reflected back from a mirror. She felt suddenly cold despite the
burn of anger in her chest.
    “My life involves more than sitting around
and looking at stars,” her mom said coolly. Her gaze flickered to
Helena, who was pretending she wasn’t listening by flipping through
a pamphlet she’d picked up at the observatory. “You will attend the
party.”
    “Let Elijah move in with me.”
    “This is not a negotiation, Leah,” she said,
a warning in her voice.
    “Then I’m not going. And you’ll just have to
look after your son like a real mother for once.” She was bluffing,
of course. She would never leave Elijah to wander a party alone.
Knowing her parents, they would drop him off in a corner, order him
to stay put, and then disappear for hours.
    Her parents never asked her for anything—the
one good thing about them—so she had to take advantage of it
now.
    Her mom gave Leah a scrutinizing look. Very
little in the way of genuine emotion passed over her face even
though Leah had just accused her of not being a real mom. Not that
Leah was surprised. Their deal in regards to Elijah had, after all,
essentially released her from any obligations to him.
    The deliberation in her mom’s eyes wasn’t
for Elijah. It was for herself and Leah’s dad. How badly did they
want to impress these so-called friends of theirs?
    “We’ll consider it.”
    Apparently, the answer was ‘a lot.’ That was
the most leeway she’d ever given Leah on this subject.
    Leah nodded. She was willing to leave it for
now instead of pushing harder and risking setting off her mom’s
contradictory nature. Her mom hated being told what to do and
sometimes did the exact opposite just to spite the offender.
    With nothing else to discuss, she and Helena
said their good-byes. They couldn’t get out the door fast
enough.

Chapter Fourteen
     
    Having avoided directly interacting with his
boss for a week (it helped that Will only went into the office
Mondays and Fridays, and he’d called in sick on Monday), Will was
beginning to feel the weight of his conscience. James had responded
by email to last week’s notes with a terse, “Let’s discuss when you
come in.”
    Not only did Will not want to disappoint his
boss, he didn’t want to disappoint himself, and this shoddy work
would do him no favors. But analyzing whether the counselor’s
methods were working (in his opinion, no) while trying to make his
own diagnoses and treatment suggestions by dissecting their mental
and social behaviors meant he’d have to dissect the girl who’d
taken over his every spare thought lately.
    This wasn’t what he meant by wanting to get
to know her.