This Strange Addiction by Julie Steimle (e book free reading .txt) 📕

Chapter Thirteen

Audry went out to do the shopping while Silvia stayed with Jessica to make sure things went well around the apartment while she recovered. They had to do this because Andrew had no time at all and could not take one break from his work and study. It sucked for him, really, as he hardly had any sleep, and he was forced to snatch naps in the breakroom rather than be home with his wife whom he really wanted to spend time with. He had no time to make meals, wash things, or even sit down with Jessica before he fell asleep. And Silvia basically ran the home while Audry ran errands.

Even then, Audry only intended to stay for three days after the birth. They didn’t actually need her. Not in the long term. Her job had been to handle smothering family and guests, and yet at the same time give Jessica moral support. And though Jessica was getting on with Silvia quite well, she mostly wanted to see and talk with Audry before she had to go.

Unfortunately, the only real times Jessica was up and awake enough for that was when she was breastfeeding, which was still awkward. Audry wasn’t really all that comfortable hanging around with a half-naked woman pulling out her breasts for her baby suck on. She had not even had to endure PE locker room changing alongside girls her age. She had been homeschooled. And though her parents were hippies, she was the youngest child of her family of two kids and the other child was a boy. It was embarrassing.

To make it easier for the both of them, Audry offered to brush and braid Jessica’s hair while they talked, obscuring her view of baby Ivy suckling.

“So… what’s happened between you and Hogan since we last texted each other?” Jessica asked, cradling Ivy to her as she fed.

Taking up another lock of hair with her pinky, and weaving it in the main braid, Audry thought a moment before she replied, “I showed him the tweets and all that. But really, it didn’t change anything. I knew about his past already.”

She heard Jessica sigh. Clearly she was disappointed Audry had not dumped him. Perhaps Jessica had seen the tweets as firm evidence Hogan was no good.

“We were apartment shopping when we got the call you were labor,” Audry added, braiding in another lock of hair.

Emitting a little huff, Jessica shifted with a grunt on the couch. Audry was sitting behind her on a stool.

“Come on, let it out,” Audry grumbled, knowing Jessica had things to say. “Make your complaint or it is going to drive you crazy.”

She heard Jessica huff again.

“Ok, fine. I just think that a guy like him who has played so many women does not deserve a woman like you.” Jessica gently shifted her baby so she could hold her more comfortably. Sometimes the baby let go, and she struggled to get her to latch again and hold on. Audry tried not to watch her struggle with it.

“So you don’t believe in forgiveness?” Audry weaved in another braid.

She could hear Jessica huff. “I believe in forgiveness, but not in blindly attaching to a serial—”

“He’s not a serial rapist,” Audry bit back, her heart thumped in indignation.

“I wasn’t saying that.” Jessica shifted her baby to her other breast, trying gently to get her baby to latch on. She was still struggling to figure it out, as this was new to her regardless of what her mother and her mother-in-law had shown her the first day. It didn’t always work well. “I was saying he…” She exhaled. “Come on, he isn’t the kind of man a woman can trust. He got how many women pregnant? And how many illegitimate kids does he have wandering about the earth?”

Audry colored, halting in her braiding for a second, then continued. She knew there was at least one, possibly two, set up for adoption thankfully—but still it was a point that had bothered her.

“A guy who just sleeps around isn’t exactly husband-worthy material,” Jessica said.

“What?” Audry halted in her braiding. “You mean like Rick?”

Confused for a second, Jessica replied, “I wasn’t implying that you and Rick—”

“No,” Audry shook her head. “What I mean is, Rick is just as guilty as Hogan in that he slept around.”

Jessica turned her head to look. Audry could barely hang onto her hair, though she did. “What? No. Rick never—”

Laughing, Audry said with a head shake, “Oh, so then you don’t know about Daisy MacTire?”

Jessica stiffened. She looked pale, her eyes widening. “You know about Daisy?”

Nodding sharply, Audry replied, “Yes. Which is why I think this whole argument is stupid. Your husband may have been with only you, which makes you lucky—especially in this day and age—but most men today in this world have slept with more than one woman already.”

Slowly shaking her head, her expression crestfallen, Jessica sighed. “No. That is not true. There are a lot more good men than that. I can name them. And for the record, Daisy seduced Rick. I don’t know what you know about her but—”

“I met her,” Audry said. And she braided more, getting further down.

Jessica stared more, turning her torso to face Audry. “You what? When? Where?”

“About a year ago.” Audry resumed her braiding to avert her eyes. She tied up the end with the elastic she had been keeping around her wrist then leaned back from Jessica. “It was at a conference. Daisy and a bunch of other southern yokels crashed out booth and—”

“She came with her pack?” Jessica drew in a breath.

Audry nodded. “Yeah. That’s what they called themselves. They were looking for Rick and this other guy, a Kurt Blithe.”

“I don’t know him,” Jessica said, frowning. She sighed. “So you met Daisy.”

“Yeah, and she’s a real piece of work.” Audry then sat next to Jessica to see her face. She tried to keep her eyes up, still uncomfortable. Madonna and Christ pictures made her uncomfortable

Closing her eyes, Jessica sighed. “I see….” She went silent for a while. “I’ve never met her. I’ve only heard about her.”

“Matthew has met her. So has Tom Brown,” Audry said, hoping to end this argument about Hogan’s worth once and for all. “And Randon.”

“And Rick never told me?” Jessica shook her head. Her baby gazed up at her with big blue eyes, done feeding. Ivy reached out with her tiny hands to her mother’s face, milky drops dribbling from her mouth. Pulling up her bra, then her blouse to cover herself, Jessica grabbed the burping rag and set it on her shoulder. Lifting up her newborn, she patted her baby on the back, thinking to herself with a kind grief.

“I’m sure he was embarrassed,” Audry finally admitted. “He was acting really weird around her. I’ve never seen him like that.”

“Like what?” Jessica asked. So much concern was on her face, pulling her usually optimistic brows inward.

Shrugging, Audry recalled it. “Out of control. Unfocused. Lured in. And that Daisy bragged to me that she could charm him right there so that he would go back to the hotel with her to get laid.”

Jessica stared. “What?”

Audry nodded. “I kid you not.” But then she laughed. “But she never got away with it. Randon dragged him off, and then later Tom drove those jerks away from our booth.”

Huffing, disgust replaced Jessica’s worry as she shook her head. With a glance, she asked, “So what is she like?”

Thinking, recalling, Audry stared at the ceiling. It took a bit. Daisy didn’t have the most memorable face. “I dunno. Imagine a southern slut.”

Jessica almost laughed.

“She was my height, wavy honey-blond hair. Blue eyes. And she barely wore her dress,” Audry said what she could recall. That image had never really left her. Daisy really did know all the ways to attract a man.

“Barely wore?” Jessica pulled back incredulously. “You mean…”

“She had on one of those loose summer dresses with no sleeves that hung down to her mid-thigh, but I swear she wore no bra and no underwear underneath.” Audry met her gaze so Jessica could understand her meaning.

“Oh. My. Gosh.” Jessica’s jaw had dropped. “Was it that easy to tell?”

Audry nodded. “Yeah.”

Making a face, Jessica shook her head again. “Why didn’t he tell us?”

“Matthew was there?” Audry shrugged. “All his other friends were there.”

“But not the Seven,” Jessica murmured, frowning.

Sighing, Audry wondered why it mattered so much. But then she suggested, “Maybe he didn’t want you to get involved. Like I told you, Tom drove them away from us. So the problem was solved.”

However she could see Jessica disagreed. She was frowning, and her eyes were averted down as she thought. “No. The problem is not solved if he didn’t tell us about it. Rick doesn’t usually keep secrets—or he didn’t used to.”

Funny, though, Audry believed the reverse. The Deacons seemed to be all about secrets. They carried them on their shoulders as if they ever revealed the truth things could go cataclysmically wrong. Like in Paris. He was running from somebody, but he would not say who or why. Or like when he snuck into the ski lodge when she was working on her Master’s. He was secretly there. He snuck around in general, even at conferences despite representing his father’s company. He often ditched his bodyguards and moved fast. And she knew he did not speak all that was on his mind. And she had seen him shush his close friends a lot. He had even asked her to keep secrets for him—like when his mother had come back. Why could his friends not see that about him?

Yet as Audry thought on it, she realized that perhaps he just never kept secrets from those friends. They knew his darkest side. Perhaps Andrew and Jessica knew Rick’s worst fears and crimes. He was that close to them. In fact, that morning he had checked in with Silvia, hardly looking at Audry, to find out if she needed help with anything. Silvia kept referring him back to Audry, though, whom she had put in charge of errands. So Audry had sent him out to get diapers for newborns. They had not seen him since.

Shaking her head, Jessica clenched her teeth. “So… she and her pack hunted him down.”

Audry shrugged, thinking more on it. It was a strange, the way Jessica had phrased it. Pack. Why did they call themselves a pack? Was it a cult thing? “What do you know about them?”

She got a side glance from Jessica. It was the kind of look Jessica gave her when she had a lot to say, but didn’t think Audry could handle even a portion of it, as the contents would be too weird.

“Are they a cult?” Audry asked, realizing Jessica really was the best source for truth. “I had heard rumors of him being addicted to drugs and going to rehab, and another about him escaping a cult. What is true?”

With a cringe, Jessica silently thought while her baby burped up. Nodding to herself, wiping Ivy’s mouth, Jessica finally said, “I only know what his father had told us. And Henry. Both of them were there. They kind of… rescued him. He didn’t even know what he had