To Hate Adam Connor

So she cried for Mufasa…after all the times she told me how much she hated me, she had a heart after all.

I kneeled in front of her and waited for her to wake up and scream at me. When she didn’t, I surprised myself by reaching up and gently touching her exposed wrist. Maybe I did want her to wake up and scream at me. Maybe I did enjoy seeing that heat in her eyes, that flash of something I couldn’t exactly put a name on. My thoughts strayed to Adeline, how calm she was, how…soft, for lack of a better word. How much she had changed in just a few years…was I missing her? The old Adeline? Is that what this was?

Don’t get me wrong, Lucy looked soft in all the right places, but there was something about her that was solid. Real. For all her crazy, she was also normal, and I envied her for that freedom.

She knew who she was, and she had no problem showing herself to the world.

When she made a soft noise in her sleep, I got up, threw a thin blanket over her, and left her alone.

As much as I seemed to enjoy going head to head with her, I had to stop myself from getting close. Short or long, meaningful or meaningless—any kind of relationship with a fan was a bad idea, and Lucy Meyer was the worst kind of fan, the kind that wasn’t afraid to get in your face and force you to recognize her. My only focus was getting full custody of Aiden and giving him a new normal, and I had to remember that at all times. None of it mattered anyway; I’d find someone to look after Aiden while he spent his week with Adeline, and we wouldn’t see Lucy again.

I wasn’t looking for a quick lay—I’d had enough of those to last a lifetime—and I wasn’t looking for a relationship either. What I was looking for was my bed. I was tired and sleep-deprived. I needed to get at least a few hours of sleep in before another day started and we did all the same things all over again.

Chapter Nine

Lucy

“Olive, are you one hundred percent sure about this?”

“Why? Come out so I can see.”

“Are you sure you gave her my dress size and not some imaginary girl you cooked up in your mind?” I looked down at myself, yet again, and tried to make a decision. “Once you see this, it can never be unseen. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Lucy, come on. Get out of there.”

“As you wish, my green Olive.” I shrugged, tried to take a deep breath, and stepped out of the bathroom.

It was around ten o’clock in the morning and we were in Olive’s bedroom, where she did bad, bad things with her pretty husband that she didn’t share with her friend—share as in tell—trying on dresses for the LA gala for Soul Ache we were supposed to attend that evening.

A short while before, Jason’s stylist had dropped off ten different options for both Olive and me, and we were trying them on until we found the right ones.

“Oh my God.” Olive breathed out when she lifted her head up from her phone, her eyes glued to my chest. “Oh my God. What’s happening to your boobs?”

I frowned at her and put my hands under my boobs, glancing down for a short moment. “This dress is happening to my boobies. What does it look like from there?”

“Oh, it looks…it just looks, you know. Like a lot.”

“Well, I warned you. Can’t say I didn’t.” As I was walking to the full-length mirror, I pushed my thumbs between the thick fabric and my breasts and tried to pull it up higher. The only issue was that nothing was budging. I looked at myself in the mirror, and then glanced at Olive over my shoulder.

“You know, I think I can actually motorboat myself in this dress. How fun would that be?”

“Lucy.” She groaned and sat up on her knees on the bed. “Come here. Let me see if I can pull it up.”

“I already tried that,” I said, but I still turned around to walk over to her. “I think this is as high as it can go. My poor boobs can’t even breathe in this thing. How do you even manage to walk with your puppies? I mean, sure, they’re good to sleep on, but this”—I lifted my boobs even higher with my hands—“this is just ridiculous. They’re almost touching my chin, for God’s sake! Help me get out of this before I explode.”

“But the strapless looks so good with your short hair.”

“Try, Olive,” I said, giving up and letting go of my boobs as I stood in front of her. “Just try to make it work then.”

She bit her bottom lip and just kept looking at my boobs.

I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “Excuse me! I’m not just some piece of meat.”

“I’m sorry.” She laughed. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t look away.” Eyes still on me, she started to yank up the fabric.

“Well, thanks,” I drawled when she managed to make it even worse. “I always wanted to know how it would feel if my chin disappeared between my boobs.”

She laughed and let go of the dress, watching my boobs bounce in the aftermath. Then she reached out with her finger and pushed at the swell of my breast.

“It feels nice, right?” I asked, pressing with my own finger at my other breast. “Like a soft cloud. That’s why I love sleeping on yours.”

She nodded absently. “You definitely look like a D.”

“I’m not a D. Barely a C.”

“Well, the dress makes you look like a D.” She pulled back her finger and looked up at my face, then back at my boobs. “Huh.”

“Huh, what?”

“Actually your face looks smaller than your boobs. It’s weird. I hope I don’t look like that when I’m wearing a strapless dress. If I do and you never said anything…”

“I will definitely tell you if your face looks ten times smaller than your boobs.” I walked back to the mirror just so I could see if there was even a small possibility of me wearing it that night. The dress was beautiful; the way it hugged my body actually did wonders for my waist and hips, but there was no way I could go out in public and quite possibly in front of cameras looking like I was about to eat my own bosom. “If I didn’t have short hair, I might’ve actually considered wearing it, just to get people’s attention—and when I say people, I mean hot men. No, not hot boys, hot men.” I managed to let out a sigh. “Because hot boys suck. Jameson was a hot boy with a big dick and tattoos, but I want hot men and their—hopefully—big dicks.” I thought about that for a moment, then looked at Olive. “Okay, that’s not fair. I’ll share with the rest of the women in the world. I’ll settle with only one hot man. I won’t love him, but I’ll use him for sex. And he has to have a big dick. Like a dick that knows how to go to places, you know. Places not every dick can go.”

“I think I get it,” she replied, cutting off my tirade. “You want a big cock.”

“Ah,” I sighed softly, holding my heart. “Do you even know how happy it makes my heart to hear you say ‘big cock’. I feel like you’ve grown so much. And I don’t just want a big dick, Olive. I want a killer dick. There is a difference. I’d like to have a thick one, not too long, though, because I don’t wanna be poked in all the wrong places. My dear vagina needs to be able to take it all in and hug. I want a killer dick, like it needs to put me into a coma after sex.”

She laughed and got off the bed. “Got it. We’ll order you a killer dick online. A pink one. And what are you even talking about? Have you even read my book? I say cock and dick plenty of times. I say even more…stuff.”