Addicted To The MC President

Chapter Eight Bad Habits

~ Lily ~

I told myself I wasn’t becoming a regular. That particular lie lasted approximately four days.

The first night I returned, I was curious. The second night because I had questions. The third night because I’d spent an entire board meeting wondering what Hector was doing. By the fourth night, even I was embarrassed by the excuses.

“You’ve been distracted all week,” Elias said from my office doorway, leaning against the frame like he had nowhere better to be.

I looked up from my laptop. “I’ve attended six meetings today.”

“You spent three of them staring out the window,” he replied, unmoved.

“I was thinking.”

“About motorcycle man?” he asked, one eyebrow already climbing.

I hated how quickly my facial expression betrayed me. Elias seeing my face immediately pointed at me, grinning like he’d just won something.

“There it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, closing my laptop.

“You absolutely do,” he replied, dropping into the chair across from me without being invited.

I closed my laptop mostly because he was right. Unfortunately.

The truth was that something strange had happened over the past week. For the first time since the divorce became public, I wasn’t constantly thinking about Dylan — and that should have felt liberating. Instead, it felt confusing. For years my life had revolved around managing some version of him: his affairs, his apologies, his scandals, his promises. Even after the divorce he still occupied space inside my head, because anger was easier than absence. Now entire days passed without him crossing my mind at all, and the realisation felt almost disloyal to the woman I’d been. The woman who had spent years trying to save something that had already died.

“You smiled,” Elias said, cutting into my thoughts.

I blinked. “What?”

“Just now. You smiled at absolutely nothing,” he said, watching me with quiet amusement.

“I did not.”

“You did,” he insisted.

“I was thinking.”

“About the bartender man, don't ask me how I know I'm always watching and I did some digging of my own,” he said simply.

I threw a stress ball at him. Unfortunately, his reflexes were annoyingly good — he caught it without effort and laughed, tossing it lightly in his hand.

“You’re doomed,” he announced.

“Leave my office.”

“Happy to,” he said, standing with entirely too much satisfaction. He paused at the door and turned back, and when he spoke again the teasing had disappeared from his voice.

“You’re happier,” he said, with a small shrug, like he hadn’t meant to say it but couldn’t help himself. “Just thought you should know.”

Then he left.

The comment stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon, not because I wanted it to, but because it wouldn’t leave. By six o’clock I was staring at a spreadsheet without actually reading it. By six-thirty, I was checking the time every few minutes. By seven I finally accepted defeat.

I wasn’t working. I was waiting.

The realisation was horrifying. I owned half the city. Entire companies depended on my decisions. Thousands of employees reported through chains of command that ultimately ended with me. Yet somehow my evenings now revolved around a man who mostly spends his day pouring drinks in a basement bar.

The driver didn’t even seem surprised when I gave him the address. Which was its own kind of concern.

When I stepped into the bar that night, Hector was carrying a crate of liquor bottles toward the storage room. He spotted me the moment I came through the door.

“You’re late,” he said, setting the crate down and straightening up.

I stopped. “Late?”

“By your recent standards,” he replied, his mouth twitching like he was working very hard not to smile.

The fact that he had noticed nearly made me smile back. “I didn’t realise attendance was mandatory,” I said, keeping my expression even.

“It isn’t,” he said.

I rolled my eyes and slid onto my usual stool. The word “usual” was becoming another problem entirely, because apparently, I had a usual stool now. A bartender appeared before I could flag anyone down, and a moment later a glass was placed in front of me — my drink, already made. I looked at it, then up at Hector.

“You always remember my drink?” I ask.

“You order the same thing every time,” he replied with a shrug.

The answer shouldn’t have pleased me as much as it did but it did anyway.

Over the next hour the bar filled steadily. Music drifted through the room while conversations overlapped around us. People came and went, drinks were poured, and glasses were collected.

It wasn't like what I was used to the difference becoming more noticeable every time I visited. Nobody here wanted a donation or an investment, nobody wanted an introduction or cared what my stock price looked like. A man in a construction uniform spent twenty minutes arguing with his friend about baseball. A couple near the stage debated whether to adopt another dog. Someone was celebrating a birthday. The simplicity of it fascinated me in a way I hadn’t expected.

“You keep doing that,” Hector said from behind the bar.

I glanced toward him. “Doing what?”

“Watching people,” he said, drying a glass and studying me with those quiet, observant eyes.

“I watch people everywhere,” I said.

He shook his head slightly. “No. Here you’re actually paying attention.”

I hated how true that was. The annoying thing about Hector was that he noticed things — not the obvious things, the important things.

“I spend most of my life around people pretending to be somebody,” I admitted, surprising myself a little with how easily it came out.

“And here?” he asked, setting the glass down.

I looked around the room, and the answer arrived without effort. “Here the people are so different in a good way.”

After hearing what I said something softened in his expression, “Most of them work too much to have energy left to put on an act,” he said.

I laughed quietly. “That might be the smartest thing anyone’s said to me all week.”

The conversation drifted after that, the way it always seemed to with him. Neither of us forced it. One subject became another, stories became observations, questions became full conversations, and hours passed without either of us noticing. At some point I found myself telling him about a board meeting disaster involving three executives, a botched acquisition, and a man who had accidentally sent confidential documents to the wrong group chat. Hector listened while polishing glasses, and by the time I finished, he was actually laughing.

“He survived?” he asked, setting down the glass.

“Barely,” I said.

“What happened to him?”

“He resigned,” I replied.

“Smart man,” he said, shaking his head with a grin.

The sound of my own laughter surprised me — not because it existed, but because it felt natural. When was the last time anything had felt natural? The answer disturbed me because I genuinely couldn’t remember.

Sometime after midnight the crowd began thinning. I remained exactly where I was. A rational person would have gone home hours ago, but I wasn’t behaving rationally anymore, and that realisation worried me far less than it should have.

“Insomnia?” Hector asked, glancing up at me as he stacked glasses behind the counter.

“What?” I said.

“You keep showing up at night,” he said, setting the last glass down and leaning against the counter. “Either you’re avoiding sleep or you’re avoiding something else.”

I smiled into my drink. The uncomfortable part was that he wasn’t entirely wrong. For years my penthouse had felt like an accomplishment with its marble floors and floor-to-ceiling windows. Now it mostly felt empty. The silence there wasn’t peaceful. It was lonely. At least here there was noise, conversation and a reason to enjoy life. And if that life happened to include Hector, well — that was probably unrelated. Probably.

“I’ve never slept particularly well,” I admitted instead.

“Why?” he asked, and the question was laced with genuine curiosity.

I found myself staring at the amber liquid in my glass. “Because if I stop moving, I start thinking.” I replied.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. His expression didn’t change either, but somehow I knew he understood. And that made me want to keep talking, which was a new kind of feeling to me.

“I used to think success would fix everything,” I continued speaking, more to the drink than to him. “Money. Work. Achievement. You collect enough of those things and eventually you’re supposed to become happy.”

“And?” he asked, his voice low.

I laughed softly. “I’m beginning to suspect somebody lied.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Eventually, Hector leaned his forearms against the counter and tilted his head slightly.

“You know what’s funny?” he said.

“What?” I asked, looking up at him.

“Most people in this room probably think money fixes everything,” he said, nodding toward the crowd.

And he was right — I had spent years climbing toward a life other people envied, only to discover that loneliness felt exactly the same from a penthouse. That realisation sat between us for a while, and then the music changed, someone laughed near the stage, a customer dropped a spoon, and life continued around us like it always did.

And then, without warning, I noticed something.

An entire evening had passed. Hours — actual hours — and I hadn’t thought about Dylan once.

The realisation hit me so fast it almost took my breath away. Not because I missed him. Because I didn’t. I stared down at my glass while an unexpected lump formed in my throat. I had spent years revolving and structuring my life around that man — his mistakes, his infidelity plus his needs and for one perfect evening, he hadn’t existed at all.

"Hey, you okay?" Hector asked, snapping his fingers to bring me back

I looked up. For a second I couldn’t answer, and then I smiled.

“Yeah,” I said softly.

And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I actually meant it.