Page 50 of A Very Addicted Christmas

“Did you?” she asks with hope.

“Yeah.” I nod again.

It’s not a lie. Quinn and I are good. We’re moving on. But we didn’t exactly rehash the fight. We just buried it with everything else, and even I can see the pile is growing higher and higher.

I don’t even know how to dig into it, so I don’t.

Once Joana relents and says she’ll give the Snickers to Quinn, I extend my arms to my sister. “Venha dar um abraço no seu irmãozão favorito.”Come give your favorite oldest big bro a hug.

She wraps her arms around me. We squeeze, and as we part, her nose crinkles. “Is that you or me?”

“Is what me?”

“You stink,” she tells me pointedly.

“I don’t stink,” I say with confidence. “Must be you and your House Fit groupies running around here, sweating. Leaving your stink behind.”

Call me a florist.

Because I smell like a motherfuckingflower.

Joana considers this with a half-shrug. “Whatever. It could be House Fit.” She picks up her boxing gloves, seeming distracted at a noise down the hall.

“You good on asthma meds?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

Good.

I nod to her, and then she says goodbye, planning to go shadowbox. She saunters along the hallway and disappears from my sight.

While I head downstairs, I sniff under my armpits.

The only odor I smell is Greatness with a capital G. Smiling, I’m about to check out the kitchen when I hear rustling in the parlor…and music.

Piano.

My lips flatline, and I reroute my steps to check on my client. Peeking into the parlor, I find Charlie hunched over a piano, his fingers dragging dully over the keys. Like it’s intuition and boredom that guides his hands there.

His sandy-brown hair is a tousled mess. He even pulls at the strands now, and when he sees me watching, he takes this sharp, shallow breath. Purple tint is shadowed under his eyes.

He’s not sleeping well. He’s been struggling staying cooped up with no exit in sight. That much has been clear to me.

Seriousness strains my muscles. “Can I get you anything?”

“Out.” He intakes another tensed breath. “Nothing you can give me.” He swings his feet over the piano bench and stands up. “I’mstuck. Perpetually.” The haunted look he wears is enough to send a trigger of alarm through my spine.

Nothing good is going to happen the longer Charlie Cobalt is stuck inside a house that he can’t escape. He paces.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

He’s my client. He’s the twenty-one-year-old Cobalt that I spend day-in, day-out with, and to help him avoid reaching a breaking point is the strategy.

I slip further into the room and examine the bookshelf. “You read this one yet?” I pluck outTo the Lighthouseby Virginia Woolf.

“Twice.” Tugging at his hair again, he eyes the window and the snowy white landscape. Tugging again, he comes up to me. “What’s your favorite?”

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