Jordie was addicted to sex since he’d first gotten there. There was a huge difference between being addicted and just liking it. He was addicted to alcohol in some sense, in that he went for it to stop feeling what he was feeling. He had sex because he wanted to. Minus his trip to Louisiana, he had never had sex to get rid of what he was feeling. He’d tried to fuck his feelings for Kacey out of himself, which was very stupid, but the whole time he was drunk. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have made a lot of those decisions if he hadn’t been drunk through it all.
“February was the last time.”
“February?!” she almost shrieked.
“Yup,” he said proudly, which really that wasn’t something to be proud of, but small victories, he guessed. “When I was in Louisiana.”
“Really? That surprises me, honestly,” she admitted and he grinned. “Why is that?”
“Sex means nothing to me anymore if it can’t be with the person I want it to be with,” he said slowly, avoiding eye contact. He felt the gazes of everyone on him, but he ignored them, sucking in a deep breath as flashes of Kacey’s gorgeous naked body appeared. As much as he wouldn’t mind plowing into a female at the moment, he wanted more. He wanted Kacey, and he was cleaning up to be the man she needed. Not just for him, but also for her and for Karson’s child. There was a huge possibility that she had moved on—he fully expected her to—but he needed something to get him through this fight. Knowing that he soon would be a man worthy of her love did that for him. It made him fight as hard as he could against his sickness.
“Not the answer I expected,” she said, and he looked up at her. “So your visitor, Natasha Gallagher?”
Where was she going with this? “Yeah?”
“Are you two in a relationship?”
Natasha, the doctor he’d slept with in Louisiana, had been visiting him since he was admitted. She was doing a work-study up in Colorado and she wanted to support him. He hadn’t expected her to, or even asked her; she just started coming every Saturday. If he was honest, it was nice to talk to someone who wasn’t trying to pry his head open and find out all the bad inside. Despite her offering her body to him every single time, their visits were the highlight of his week.
“No, she’s just a friend.”
“You don’t have friends.”
He grinned. “I have a few, but really, just a friend.”
“But you’ve slept with her?”
“Yup, she’s got killer tits,” he said before laughing along with his group while Portia just stared at him.
“But not in the last six months?”
“No, it was a one-time deal.”
“But you stayed friends?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
She eyed him slowly and then shook her head. “You are a very confusing man, Mr. Thomas. One minute I think I have you pegged, but then you hit me with that. How is it that you don’t do relationships, but you are friends with a girl you’ve slept with? You aren’t having sex until it can be with someone you want it to be with, which is very uncharacteristic of your personality. You give off a very careless, playboy image that I have slowly but surely discovered is just an act that is covering the real you.”
Jordie grinned, sliding to the edge of his seat. “And that is, Ms. Portia?”
Portia smiled. “A very decent guy with a past that has you hiding yourself.”
She let that sink in as everyone watched for his next response, but there wasn’t one. He didn’t know what to say, and soon she was talking again.
“You want so badly to keep everyone at arm’s length so that they can’t hurt you, because you see no happiness in your life. You choose only the people you know won’t leave you. But, even with them, you don’t let them completely in on purpose. Yet, you want happiness. Just in this last week, you’ve opened up about wanting children and a part of you wants a wife. But I had seriously pegged you to be alone the rest of your life because you won’t allow anyone in. And then you say that—that you aren’t having sex because it means nothing if it can’t be with the person you want it to be with. So, Jordie, who is that person? I have a feeling you know her, but you’re scared to let her