32. Eden
32
EDEN
I have to stop because it starts raining too heavily.
Kiki’s yet-to-be-fixed windshield wipers are like, “Nope, not today!” When it gets worse, I stop at the first motel I come to. It’s our motel. The one Carter and I had made love in the day we met. It’s late, and I know I can’t drive through the night to Maine, let alone a rainy one.
Sure, there are a few other motels around, but I’m familiar with this one, so it makes it a no-brainer for me to pull into their parking space. But if I’m perfectly honest with myself, not only is it the familiarity, it’s also the need to catch my breath, the necessity to stop.
Truth is, driving back to Maine is the last thing I want to do.
Tears stain my cheeks, and more fill my eyes.
Here I am, looking at the motel bed.
Our motel bed.
The memory of his eyes, how he’d looked at me, makes my heart ache. Bittersweet, the scene plays vividly in my mind. His gaze had been fixed upon me with such intensity. The emotions overwhelmed me as I remembered the warmth of his embrace on that bed, how tightly he’d held me, pressed closely against his body, providing warmth and relieving my pain.
I can almost feel his embrace. I can almost feel his presence. A man of unwavering determination, who doesn’t give up until the last card has been played.
“It was a decision of the heart, one I don’t regret and would do again,” he’d said at that last meeting. Those were his exact words.
More tears roll down my cheeks.
I should have waited until he’d returned before I left, but in my haste, in my panic, I’d packed my things. Now I wonder how I could have been so stupid. I didn’t even leave him a message explaining my reasons. If he finds I’m gone and all my belongings with me, he’ll assume the worst.
I ran.
I’ll never run again.
I remind myself that it’s never too late to do the right thing.
Wiping my face and mascara spiders, I grab my phone and dial his number. He doesn’t pick up. I try again, with no luck. In my “Recents,” I find that he tried to reach me earlier once.
It will be hard to face him, the hardest thing I’ll ever do, but I need to tell him how sorry I am for my actions that have drastically altered his future.
How do you even confess to someone that you obliterated their dreams? Is there a roadmap for that?
There are no words to rebuild what I’ve broken.
While I know it won’t alter the outcome, my confession will provide us with the closure we both need.
I’ll miss his unwavering determination, his emotional intelligence, the meaningful glances we exchanged, and his unique humor he reserved solely for me.
Quickly, I grab my bags.
I have to return to him at once, try to explain.
I should never have just left—not without talking to him first.
I reach for the door to open it, already firing up the Uber app. I’m startled by the huge, tall shadow standing in front of me.
Stumbling back, I drop all of my bags.
A face with dripping wet hair stares down at me.
Carter.
Through the heavy rain, I hadn’t heard his footsteps. I hadn’t heard anything.
“Eden, baby, what the fuck?”
Worry is written all over his face. I don’t know how he found me, and even when he asks me, I can’t get the words out. Not at first.
“Baby?”
“How did you…?”
“Find you? I made a fucking U-turn. I had an inkling, and then I saw your car.” The concern in his eyes, the way he reaches for my hand, doesn’t help. I inch back. “Were you running away?”
“No. I promise it’s not what it looks like,” I say as I step farther back. “I wasn’t running away. I mean, at first, I was, but just now, I decided I was coming back. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Panicked, why?” He steps into the room and closes the door, his jacket dripping. “Why did you panic, what’s going on?” He runs a hand through his wet hair.
“You’re wet…let me grab you a towel.”
“No. First, tell me what’s going on.”
The hem of my shirt is in my hands, and I keep twisting and untwisting it. My teeth dig into my bottom lip. “You’re going to want to strangle me,” I say in a soft voice.
He reaches out to take my hand, but I pull it away. “Eden, why would I do that?”
I avert my gaze, unable to look him in the eye anymore. “It’s…” My voice breaks, and I trail off.
“Eden, baby, whatever it is, we’ll handle it together.”
“You say that now…”
“Hey,” he says in a sharp voice. “Come on, sit down. Over here on the bed. You know you can tell me anything.”
He takes off his wet jacket, and sits next to me on the corner of the motel bed. The frame lets out a subtle squeak under the added weight. I take a deep, shaking breath and finally lift my gaze to meet his.
I open my mouth, and no noise comes out.
Carter’s expression softens. “I never want you to be afraid to tell me anything. Baby, if it isn’t clear by now, let me spell it out for you: I’m serious about you, about us. I don’t see us just as boyfriend and girlfriend, I see you as my wife. Not a fake one. A real one. In the course of all this craziness, you’ve captured my heart. I don’t want to lose that.”
My breath catches in my throat.
What?
I blink. Twice.
“That’s why you left, isn’t it? Because you thought I was stepping away from what we had? That I didn’t want to hold onto you, just like your ex-fiancé didn’t? That I wouldn’t sense how awful it might feel for both of us to lose what we’ve become—even if it had been planned? No. Let’s give this marriage a proper shot. Stay with me, Eden, forever.”
My eyes sting with tears, and I try to hold them at bay. This is all so overwhelming. It’s all too good to be true. I can’t speak at first. I sit there, staring into his expectant eyes, at a loss for words.
Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted? To be a wife? To have a man love me so much he wants to spend the rest of his life with me?
I shake my head. “I can’t…”
“I’m headstrong. I don’t know if you noticed, but once I make up my mind about something, I stick to it. I won’t accept a no. I want to be the man who gives you a world of dreams, who fixes what was done to you, who deserves your trust, who makes all of this right. Having said that”—he gets down on his knee in front of me, and I gasp—“I figured you’d respond more to action than words.”
“Wait…”
Not listening, he reaches into his pocket and my heart stops when he pulls out a small, gray satin box. The way he smiles at me makes my heart melt.
When he opens it, I about fall off the bed.
The most beautiful diamond ring sits on a small pillow. It glistens with a unique, asymmetrical cut, casting fractured rainbows in the dim motel room light.
“ Carter …” is all I can say.
“Do you want to be my wife, baby?”
I shake my head, tears falling. “I’m sorry, so sorry, Carter, but I can’t. You’re not going to want to marry me. You’re going to hate me…”
“I would never hate you.”
“Uh-huh…” More tears stain my face.
“It’s all right, it’s going to be okay. Take a deep breath. Please, baby, don’t cry.” He gets back up and sits next to me. “Now relax and tell me what happened.”
When I manage to speak, my voice is barely above a whisper. “It’s me who got you fired.” Tears start to fall again, and my breathing picks up. God, why is it suddenly so hard to breathe? It’s like something was squeezing the air out of my lungs.
He narrows his eyes at me. “How?”
Ring-ring.
Carter grabs his phone and quickly pushes the incoming call away. “Sorry, baby. Go on.”
“I told Gretchen about us living together and she showed up in the apartment and then she talked to Hattie, and then she told Huxley, and Hattie just told me…and it’s all my fau?—”
“Hey, hey, whoa,” Carter says, sliding his arm around me. “Stop. It doesn’t matter, baby.”
“Yes, it does, Carter, it?—”
“Not to me.”
Ring-ring.
“Goddammit.” Carter grabs his phone. “It’s Bradley again.”
“You should take it,” I say just when he’s about to turn off his phone. “It seems important. I’ll go grab a towel for you, and freshen up a little.”