Chapter 13
After we left our parents’ house, I dropped Summer off at The Horse’s Mouth bar where Edge was already waiting for her. She fell into his arms as soon as she saw him and didn’t move for the rest of the time. And as much as they insisted I stay for a couple of drinks, I could see how much they wanted to be alone. Since the bar is only a couple of yards from my apartment, they let me leave alone.
The night air is cool against my skin, but it’s making me feel calm for the first time today. Since my dad’s early morning phone call, I’ve been on the go all day. Talking on the phone, first with Summer, then Mom and my aunt Roxie, and then Summer some more. Harper and Veronica also called, the latter sending over a list of good psychiatrists in the area that Summer might want to talk to.
Veronica’s sister Ariel was trafficked about five years ago, so she set up a foundation to help victims and has a ton of contacts in the field. I thanked her and passed the info over to Summer, who is still insisting she’s fine and that the whole thing was over before she even had time to realize anything was wrong. I so hope she’s right, but with everything I know about the hell victims go through in the aftermath, I’m afraid she can’t possibly be.
The nighttime walk also calmed me enough to think back on the curt way I cancelled my date with Tyler. And how I refused to set up another. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But then I spent all day thinking about him in one way or another, so maybe it’s not. No guy has ever occupied my thoughts quite as completely as he does. He’s just always in there, some of my thoughts coming in his voice as though I’ve known him for ages and not just the past couple of weeks.
I should give him a chance. I want to find out where a connection like that leads. Maybe nowhere. Maybe everywhere. I’m hoping for the latter. But I’m fully aware happy endings like that are only real in books.
I stop under a street lamp and search in my oversized bag for my phone. As usual, it takes me a couple of minutes to find it under all the books, pens, receipts, and miscellaneous pieces of paper in there.
He hasn’t texted. I’d hoped for another good night text, but didn’t really expect it.
I’m sorry about this morning. I’d love to see you again.
I press send before rereading it or as much as sparing a single tiny thought on the words I chose. They came from the heart. That’s good enough.
How about right now?
The answer just appears, with no beep or buzz, because the screen of my phone hasn’t even gone dark yet.
My heart is thumping in my chest, sounding like a gong. It only grows louder, as I write back, OK, where?
Your bookstore? I’m near.
A bunch of questions are sounding in my head, some of them pleasant, some not so much. I ignore the ones telling me I should be careful, that I should think this through, and the loudest of them all, Is he following me around?
He must know where my bookstore is from the videos that went viral. He might just truly be nearby.
Yes, come over.
My fingers just type that on their own. And my hands are shaking like I’m freezing cold once I stare at the sent text that I can’t take back anymore. And the answer: I’ll be there in 5.
I consider cancelling. Locking myself in my apartment with all the lights off and not answering the door when he shows up.
But there’s only one question left in my brain and it’s loud: Didn’t you want to live more dangerously, Eden?
And the answer is yes, I very much do.
He won’t hurt me. I may not know him very well, but I know his soul. And a part of me is overjoyed that he missed me so much today that he’s willing to come over the moment I tell him he can.
I rush to the bookstore, badly fumble unlocking it and have no time left to go upstairs and change into something less summery and girly than the flowing yellow dress I’m wearing, before he’s at the door, the darkness outlining him perfectly and somehow making him stand out instead of hiding him like it does most people.
I open the door and breathe, “Hi.”
Then we just stand there. And I swear, if he wanted to grab me and kiss me right now, I’d let him. He’s an intense guy, I already knew that, but it burns so much brighter in the dark than during the day. His eyes seem to glow like the blue part of the gas flame.
“Come in,” I say and step aside.
His gaze seems to swallow me whole, and makes a pang of scorching need shoot straight through my core. The kind that makes me weak in the knees. The kind I’ve only read about and didn’t for a moment think could be real. Then he shakes his head and looks away, muttering, “Oh, this was so not a good idea.”
I don’t think he’s actually talking to me. It sounds like a thought escaping his mouth. And the scorching heat inside me dissipates. So I know it was him that was causing it. It’s that sunlight glinting off ice in his eyes that did it.
He walks past me into the bookstore, and it takes me a few breaths before I remember to close the door after him.
“Wow, that’s a lot of books,” he says, taking in the floor to ceiling bookshelves which are once again all filled with books.
“Yup, they’re all back,” I tell him. “These shelves looked so sad and lonely when I had to sell off my entire stock after that video went viral.”
He turns to me and grins, kind of sheepishly. “You haven’t made any new ones. I checked.”
“I don’t plan on it,” I say. “Online selling isn’t for me. I prefer to have people come in here and chat about books.”
He smiles wider and sits down in one of the two winged armchairs by the window. “So let’s do that. Tell me about this place. When did you open it? Why? How come you can keep it open and live off just the few customers that wander in to chat?”
I sit in the other armchair, kind of upset that he just wants to talk. That sun’s heat he brought is still coursing through my veins and I want to bask in it some more.
“I always loved reading, so for my sixteenth birthday, my dad bought me this place,” I say. “At first it was just meant as a space for me to keep all my books, since we were running out of it at home, but then it turned into a store.”
“Ah, so a sweet sixteen present from daddy?” he says. “Nice.”
“It was the best gift I’d ever gotten,” I say.
His eyes lose some of the sun. Kind of like night is gathering over that frozen lake in his eyes.
“What about you?” I ask. “What’s the best gift you’ve ever gotten?”
“You mean besides you?” The heat rising in my face has everything to do with the scorching heat that’s back in his eyes.
“You don’t have me yet,” I say and it makes him laugh. As well it should. I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to flirting. But I think this is heading somewhere good despite that.
“Yet,” he says. “But I plan on changing that very soon.”
I blush even harder and have no idea what to say. It’s as though my brain and my mouth aren’t connected anymore. And even if they were, I have no idea what would come out. Because I can’t make sense of my racing thoughts.
I’m not shocked that he said what he said. All the guys I know always say exactly what they mean… no sugar coating, no being proper. It’s just that none of them has ever said anything even remotely like this to me before. The scorching heat in his eyes has nothing on the blazing one caused by his words.
He clears his throat. “All right, all right. Sorry. I forgot how sweet and innocent you are for a moment. So tell me, what’s your favorite book of all time?”
“Of all time?” I lean back and take a deep breath. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath until just now. But there’s nothing like talking about books to bring me back to my senses no matter how gone I am.
“Is that too hard a question?” he asks, chuckling and smiling boyishly.
“A little hard, yes. I’ve read so many,” I say and smile back. “I suppose my first love was Alice in Wonderland. My dad used to read it to me at bedtime and I just fell in love with it. I have a whole collection of them. Every time I see one in a shop or a used bookstore, I snatch it up. Look… “
I get up and walk to the bookcase that has a huge Not for Sale sign across the top, painted right over the wood and that holds my entire collection of books I would never be parted with. A lot of them are different editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but there are some others too.
He picks up one of the illustrated versions and flips it open to the picture of Alice standing on a mushroom. “I heard the guy was high on magic mushrooms when he wrote it.”
“Yeah, I heard that too. Doesn’t take away from the magic of the story, though.”
I take the book from him and put it back on the shelf.
“What about you? What was your favorite book growing up?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. A tie between Batman and Superman… the comic book versions.”
“Are there other versions?”
He shrugs and looks at the rest of the books on the shelf more closely.
We’ve had conversations about books before. It’s pretty much all we’ve talked and texted about while we were getting to know each other. But it was never on such a deeply personal level.
“But that’s all kids’ stuff,” he says. “What’s your favorite adult book?”
I don’t think he meant a book with sex, which is where my mind went at hearing adult book. I’m blushing so hard I must be tomato red in the face, so it’s a good thing he’s looking at the books and not me.
I pull one off the shelves and hand it to him. “This one. Wuthering Heights. It’s dark and twisted, but I loved it the first time I read it and I still reread it about once a year.”
He looks at the cover with the main character Catherine in a pink dress running across a field of thorny branches, while Heathcliff pursues her. “Dark, huh? What’s dark for you?”
He’s looking at me like he thinks I couldn’t possibly know the first thing about dark love. Nor be able to handle it if I came in contact with it. So I take the book from his hands and put it back on the shelf.
“It’s about obsessions and the nasty things people are capable of doing to each other in the name of love,” I say and walk back to the armchairs. I’ve been misunderstood my whole life, viewed as peculiar at best, and I very much do not like it that he’s now joining that club.
He joins me by the window, standing next to the chair I’m sitting in. It’s our reflection I’m looking at, not him. My translucent face in the window and his translucent body. And I can’t help thinking that’s the truth of the two of us. We’re just a wispy figment of my imagination and not something solid, not something that can ever become a real thing.
He touches my chin softly and tilts my head so I have to look up at him. His touch is as light as a butterfly’s, but it strikes a chord deep inside me, one I didn’t know could be played, leaving me gasping for air.
“I didn’t mean to offend you… sometimes I don’t think before I speak. I can see that book means a lot to you.”
“All these books mean a lot to me,” I say. “But books aren’t all I’m about.”
He nods, a weird light passing over his eyes. It’s neither sunny nor dark, but something in between. Like twilight.
“So what are you all about, Eden?” he asks.
No one’s ever asked that before. They’ve all just assumed. He’s still just lightly touching my chin and I wish he’d do more. I wish he’d lean down and give me the kiss of my life. Because I know he could. That’s one thing of the things I’m about. Getting kissed so well I forget who I am. I didn’t think it was possible outside of fiction, but after meeting him, I’m sure it is.
“Or don’t you know?” he adds and shatters much of the illusion that was slowly building up into reality in my mind.
I’m angry again. He’s so good at making me bounce from love to anger to sweetness and everything in between.
“Maybe I should just show you, since you clearly don’t trust my words.”
I stand up and face him. He’s a head taller than me, but somehow, I feel like our eyes are level. Our lips are, that’s for sure. His are all I see. But for all my bravado I can’t close the distance and take that kiss I’ve been craving from him.
“I’m waiting,” he says, his lips curling up into a mean little grin.
“Just forget it,” I say and plop back down in the chair, crossing my arms over my chest. “You’re just toying with me.”
“I wish,” he says.
“You wish? Come on now, it’s you pumping the brakes.”
I’ve never thrown myself at a guy this hard. And he’s just standing there, rejecting me. I don’t want him to go. But I don’t want him to stay either. No one’s ever made me feel this electrified. I can’t even bring myself to look at him anymore. Not for real. Not in the reflection.
That’s why I don’t notice him reach down and pull me to my feet. And I get absolutely no warning before he’s holding me in his arms, one hand tangled in my hair at the back of my neck and the other on my lower back. Then his lips are on mine, his tongue in my mouth, his prickly beard the perfect antithesis of the sweetness of his kiss, the timelessness, the perfectness.
It’s like all that heat of the sun in his eyes has moved to this kiss and when I say I’d topple if he wasn’t holding me up, I’m not lying. I see stars and hear birds singing. None of which are actually there. But most of all, I love the roughness of the way he’s taken my kiss… and given me exactly what I craved.
Then just as suddenly as he kissed me, he breaks away, an unfocused, almost confused look in his eyes as he looks at my lips.
“I want more,” I whisper.
“Me too,” he says, also whispering, and lets me go.
“But it’s not time yet,” he adds and heads for the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With that he steps back into the darkness that brought him here. And disappears in it so completely, I’m not even completely sure he was really here. But the chiming of the bells over the door is still echoing and my lips are still tingling from his fiery kiss. He was definitely here.
But why is he gone?