The Thrill of It Read Online Free PDF

other Louboutins, both decked out in painted-on jeans and slinky tops. I want to cover his eyes so he can’t see them, but I’m too late. He’s drawn to them, moth to the flame. But they turn the other way and we keep walking. I ignore the look of hunger I saw in his beautiful green eyes as he shakes his head, as if he can shake them off.
    “I guess,” he says in a low voice, then trails off. Maybe his mind is wandering back to the women. Or maybe that’s all there is to say because we both know what’s unsaid. Somedays, the arrow coming out hurts like hell. Somedays you miss your drug like you can’t even believe. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise — withdrawal is a bitch on wheels. It feels like someone is ripping your fingernails out with pliers.
    “How was dinner tonight? Did your mom try to set you up?”
    “It was the usual. The way it always is.”
    “Did it make you miss Cam?”
    We stop at the light on Seventh Avenue, waiting to cross.
    Cam.
    Trey’s question pierces me because no one would ever ask it; no one else could. I can’t seem to tell my mom the truth, or my roommate Kristen, or even Joanne at SLAA. But Trey? The only guy who’s ever made me feel any sort of reckless abandon, any sort of true desire – apparently I can open up to him about taking money for not-quite-sex.
    “Do I miss Cam?” I muse out loud as if I’m turning over the words, considering them from every angle.
    With a vengeance.
    With the blaze of a thousand suns.
    With every piece of twisted DNA in my body.
    Cam is the arrow. I miss being his. Being in control. Being powerful. I want the arrow back in.
    Being Cam’s was the only thing that ever made me feel like my life wasn’t orchestrated by a master puppeteer.
    “Maybe a little,” I admit.
    “Did you call him?”
    I shake my head. Not calling Cam is a daily battle, but it’s one that makes me hate myself. Because how can I want to hold hands with Trey and yet still miss Cam like a phantom limb? I am gross. I am disgusting. Miranda is right. I don’t deserve redemption.
    “Have you ever gone skydiving?”
    I stop and stare at Trey’s non-sequitur as an ambulance zooms down the street, its horn blaring. “What kind of segue is that?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe we just need a thrill in our lives. Don’t you miss the high?”
    “Every day,” I admit as we cross the street.
    Miranda forced me to go to SLAA but I knew I belonged there, because I was drugged on love, on almost sex, on power. Knowing didn’t stop me from wanting my drug though. I am dependent. I still am.
    Trey stops at the subway entrance.
    “Maybe we just need to find the daring in the every day,” he says, then perches on the railing that leads down into the subway station. He’s seated on the edge, holding on with his hands. He leans so far that his back is nearly parallel to the sidewalk.
    “Trey!”
    He lets himself fall further, so his head is upside down. It’s New York, so most people ignore him, but a few of them on the steps below point as they keep clicking down the stairs. Trey hooks his feet around the bottom of the railing, and then lets go with his hands. His head, arms and chest drop down.
    Rationally, logically, I know he’s not going to fall. But all I can picture is his gorgeous face smashed to bits on the concrete far below.
    “If you’re worried, just grab me,” he says, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. I reach for his brown leather belt and jerk it hard, yanking him upright. His face is red and near to mine and the air is crackling like an electrical storm. My heart is racing and my adrenaline is surging, and I’m no longer thinking about Cam. I’m thinking about this guy. So close to me. His mischievous grin. His sparkling eyes. How they know me, see through me. How I let him in that first night, and we talked about everything – music, happiness, the future, even my grandparents who I never see and who I miss terribly some days. I’m remembering