After Forever (15 page)

Eden had been strong for me. She’d been a friend, a companion, a constant source of support throughout the last year. Tonight, she’d handled my panic attack—not just one, but two, at that—with calmness and kindness, even though I knew she’d been fighting her own emotional demons. She’d spoken the truth without flinching, she’d faced the fucked-up situation we’d just created without cringing away from the hard facts. I wanted to run, to bury myself in the darkness, to drown myself at the bottom of a bottle the way my dad had, so many years ago now. But I owed it to Eden to provide strength back for her, to give her
something
, even if it couldn’t be love, or even real affection. She’d been all too right. I’d never be able to love her. Not the way she deserved. Even if—god forbid, and god forgive me for even considering it—I pulled the plug on Ever and let her die completely, I’d never be able to love Eden. This wasn’t love between us. It wasn’t just sex, either, which immensely complicated things. She’d always remind me of Ever. She’d always remind me of what I’d lost. I’d never be able to see her without seeing Ever’s sweet, innocent green gaze.

My thoughts whirled and swirled in endless circles, trying to sort out what this was with Eden, what I was supposed to do about it, how I was supposed to visit Ever without dying from the acid burn of guilt.
 

I also wondered, deep down, how I was going to get through each day without Eden. Now that I’d tasted the illicit comfort she offered, need for it raced through my bloodstream like a narcotic.

I fell asleep at some point in the smallest hours of the night.

shaken

Eden

When I woke up, Cade was gone. Not in the bed, at least, although his side was still warm. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling with the covers rucked around my hips, wondering what my life had come to. At least this was my apartment, so I didn’t have to do the walk of shame. But…I still had to face the fact that Cade was probably going to bolt now. He’d run, curl inward, and grow distant.
 

No guy I ever fucked had stayed the night. Not once, not ever. They never stayed to talk. Never stuck around to even pretend like it had meant something. That’s at least part of why I’d cried for a long time last night. He’d stayed to hold me, and it had been the sweetest, most tender moment of my life. He hadn’t asked what was wrong. He hadn’t kissed my tears away. But at least he’d offered silent strength. I’d known he’d be gone in the morning, and I knew that I’d never get another moment with him that wasn’t freighted with guilt and awkward, tight-strung tension.

I couldn’t keep my thoughts from returning to how we’d been together. It had been raw, almost angry. Starvation-desperate, violent. Yet, for all that, it had been as far from empty fucking as I’d ever had with anyone. It had
meant
something. I felt tears slide down all over again as I realized that. It had meant something huge to me. Cade had given me some part of himself last night, and he’d taken what I’d offered him of myself.
 

I heard the bathroom door open, and Cade entered my room, still naked. I hurriedly wiped my eyes and sniffed away the self-pity. He saw me, just as I was wiping one last errant tear away, and his amber eyes went soft with concern.

“What’s up?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

He lifted an eyebrow, obviously not buying that line. I swallowed hard as he climbed onto my bed. His torso rippled with muscle, biceps shifting, abs cut and hard, thighs thick. I couldn’t look away from him, and didn’t try. I had a gorgeous, naked man in my bed, and I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity to devour him. With my eyes at least. My hands itched to clutch his huge hard muscles and feel the rippling power in his body, but I didn’t dare. Didn’t dare move from my spot on the bed.

I felt his eyes on me as well, and his hands curled into fists on his thighs as he sat half on the bed, one foot still on the floor. “Bullshit,” he said. “‘Fine’ never means fine.”

I blinked hard, not knowing what to say, what to tell him. “Just…everything.” Maybe that would throw him off the scent.

“I’m not a coward, Eden.” Apparently not. “I may…what we did might have been wrong, but I’m not going to vanish the next morning.”

How the hell did he know that’s what I was thinking? Damn the man’s insightfulness. “Everyone else does.”

“I’m not everyone else.”

“Clearly.”
 

He scratched his bicep. “Where do we go from here?” His eyes slid down from mine, raked over my body and then quickly away.

“We just…keep going forward. One day at a time. Same as we’ve been doing.”

He flopped the rest of the way onto the bed. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You and I, you mean?” I asked, turning my head to look at him. He nodded, and I rolled a shoulder. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

He sighed, more of a groan than anything else. “Way I see it, we have a couple of choices. We can go back to acting like nothing happened. Call it an accident and be more careful. Or…something not that.”

I laughed. “Something not that?”

He laughed with me. “That’s as far as I’d thought it through, I guess.”

“So, we act like nothing happened.” Why did that thought make my eyes sting and my heart ache with the pain of rejection?
 

“Well, no, I mean, we can’t act like it didn’t happen. It did. But…we just have to be careful not to put ourselves in that position again.”

“You mean vulnerability? Weakness?” That came out a lot more sarcastically and bitterly than I’d intended.
 

“I mean drunk and careless.”

“That’s not fair and you know it, Cade.” I felt my temper heating up. “It wasn’t like we just…oopsed. We didn’t fuck by accident. There was intent there, on
both
sides, and if you try to deny that, then you
are
a coward.”

He rubbed his face with both hands. “You’re right. Fine. God, you’re right. I’m sorry. But am I supposed to go, ‘oh, okay, it’s fine’?”

“No, but don’t act like I seduced you. Like it was just the booze making us stupid. It was more than that.” I couldn’t stop the words from coming out like an avalanche. “It may not mean to you what it did to me, but
don’t you dare
cheapen it that way, Cade.”

“What did it mean to you? That’s what I don’t get.”

“I’m still trying to figure that out, honestly, but I know it
did
mean something. Like I said last night, it was…comfort. It was something real. A moment of complete vulnerability between two really fucked-up people.” I sat up further, tugged the sheet up to cover my boobs. “What was it to you? Honestly.”
 

He didn’t answer right away, and when he did, he spoke slowly, as if parsing the truth from a briar-tangle of thorny confusion. “It was that for me, too. It was…release.” He glanced at me apologetically. “I’m just telling the truth. It was release. I’d had so much…tension, and frustration built up. Life tension and…sexual tension. Anger. All that.”

I knew I’d hate the answer to my next question, but I refused to shy away from the truth, no matter ugly it ever became. “Was there…was there anything in it that was…me? About me?” I couldn’t meet his eyes.

He covered his face with both hands, spoke past his palms, his words muffled. “Yeah. There was.” It sounded as if the admission hurt like a knee to the gut. “I wanted it. With you. Is that what you want to hear? The most horrible truth about this whole fucked scenario? You aren’t your sister, and I knew that, and I still wanted you.
You
. I didn’t—I
don’t
—want to want you. And no, I’m not in love with you and I never will be, but that doesn’t stop me from being a shallow, selfish asshole. Clearly.” The bitterness in his voice was directed at himself, but I couldn’t help feeling like he resented me for making him want me.
 

“I’m sorry I’m such a problem for you,” I heard myself say. He didn’t deserve that, but I was hurting, and he was the only target.

“
Don’t
,” he growled, rolling toward me. “You didn’t seduce me.
You
didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh, so it was all you? All the guilt in this is on you?” Anger and sarcasm warred for dominance in my voice. “I was just a helpless little thing, right? How could I possibly resist you, how could I possibly keep my legs together when faced with—”

“Oh, don’t be a bitch, Eden,” Cade spat, “that’s not what I meant, and you goddamn well know it!”

“Well, that’s how it sounded to me!” I yelled back.
 

Somehow, we were sliding toward each other, like the matching energy of our anger was a magnetic force drawing us together.
 

“I just meant I should have made sure we didn’t—”

“And so should I!” I shoved at him, but my palms on his chest barely moved him. “I’m not going to let you make this all about you! I’m just as complicit—I wanted it just as much.”

“But I’m the one who—”

“You want to know something? I’ve
always
wanted you. From the very first time Ever introduced you, I was attracted to you, and jealous of Ever for having you. All those letters, the way you just…showed up and rocked her world? Do you have any idea how fucking romantic that was? How jealous that made me? She had Billy and then she had you, and I’ve never gotten a guy even half as amazing as you to even
fuck
me more than once! And she got Billy to stick around for almost two years!”

“He broke her fucking heart!” Cade yelled, and he was so close now that I could smell him, feel the heat from his skin. “I wouldn’t be jealous of him if I were you. He was a selfish bastard who lied and cheated on her for months. He treated her like an extra piece of ass. If that’s what you want, then good luck to you.”

“I know what he did to her,” I said. “But it’s still more than I’ve ever gotten.”

“You’ve never had a serious relationship?” Cade asked.

I shook my head, feeling suddenly small. “Nope. I’m not relationship material, obviously. None of the guys I ever fall for want anything but a good fuck. And that’s all I am, all I’ve ever been, and all I ever will be.” I slid down to a lying position and rolled away from him.

“You’re selling yourself short, Eden. You’re worth a fuckload more than that.”
 

I didn’t bother looking at him. “Yeah, and how do you know?”

“Because it’s obvious to anyone who isn’t a blind dickwad!”
 

I felt him move closer to me, felt his presence behind me. Felt his hand on my shoulder, brushing my hair away from my face. I felt his thighs rub the back of mine, his chest against my back. The slightest wriggle of my hips pressed my ass against him, and then I felt him harden in response.
 

His hand slid down my arm, touched my side. My hip. And then he hissed in frustration, rolled away from me and fairly leapt off the bed.
 

“We can’t, Eden! Not again.”

I flew off the bed, cornering him, standing facing him. “And why not? Why can’t we?”

“Because it’s wrong!” He backed away.

I followed, and he backed up to the wall, pressed his palms flat against the wall, and then his fingers curled as if scrabbling for purchase, for something to grip instead of me. I wanted it to be me.
 

“I know it’s wrong, but tell me what’s right! Maybe it makes me a shitty person, but at least I’m willing to admit that I want it, that I don’t want to keep fighting it! I know it’s temporary! I know it’s never going to be anything more than what it is, but I still want it! I still want you! I want what I can get, and I’m not afraid to admit it! I know how desperate and—and
pathetic
that makes me, but I don’t care!”

“What about the cost? What about the…what about
her
?”

“She’s
never
going to wake up, Cade!” I screamed the one truth that lurked in the darkest hole of my heart, the thing I feared the most.
 

“But what if she does?” He wasn’t touching me still, but our bodies were scant millimeters from each other’s.

“Then we’ll face the music. We’ll—we’d figure that out if it happens.”

“And until then?”

“Until then?” I shrugged, and his eyes followed the sway of my body. “Until then, we just…” I couldn’t find the right phrase.

“Take what we can get?” he filled in.

I didn’t answer. None was required. We stood face to face, my nipples brushing the dusting of hair on his chest, his hands curling and uncurling at his sides, both of us panting, anger not forgotten but banked, hurt not banished but buried, pain not healed but merely shoved aside, denied.
 

There was silence, and it crackled with electricity.

His eyes wavered, locked on mine as if refusing to look elsewhere, refusing to allow himself to see me, to look at my naked body. So I held his gaze. And then, as if stubbornly relinquishing a tenuous finger hold, his amber gaze flickered down to my tits, to my thighs pressed together and hiding my core. I held my head high and endured his scrutiny. Let him look. I watched his eyes for the disappointment when he saw the extra flesh at my belly, my hips, my ass, the weight I couldn’t lose no matter how hard I tried. That disappointment always came. They’d undress me eagerly enough, and then once they got a good look at me, at what my clothes hid, I’d see the disappointment, the disgust or dissatisfaction, or whatever it was. And I waited for it to enter Cade’s expression.
 

It never did.
 

“You’re beautiful, Eden. You are. You have to know that.”

I shook my head. “I don’t.”

“I wish I could show you.”

“Not your job. Not your problem.”

“Gotta be someone’s.”

“But not yours.” I let my gaze trace the contours of his torso, and finally let my eyes settle on his cock.
 

God, it was a beautiful thing. Straight, thick, hard as a rock.
 

I wanted it.

He was still at war with himself. And I? I fought myself as well. Fought off the desire to wrap my hands around him. Fought the urge to go to my knees and suck him dry. I was good at that. But I wouldn’t. I’d talked a good game, like I wasn’t afraid to admit that I wanted him, that I wanted to feel him again, but the reality was that I was terrified. I was terrified that I’d give in to wanting him and he’d push me away, like all the others had.