Chapter 14 Charlie #3
He trails off, but the unspoken words are clear. Because he didn’t know if Charlie would want him. Well, fuck that. Fuck anyone who ever made Eden unsure if he’d be wanted.
“Let me walk you to your car. You can move it into the driveway and call Addy.”
“You don’t need to walk me to my car,” Eden scoffs.
“And yet I’m going to.”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those possessive cavemen kind of guys.”
“Walking you to your car in the dark is less caveman and more gentleman I think.”
“Thought you weren’t a gentleman.”
“I can be anything you want me to be,” Charlie smirks.
“I don’t need a gentleman.”
“What about what you want?” Charlie asks, emboldened by the way Eden’s eyes darken with desire the longer he watches Charlie.
Slow, so as not to startle him, Charlie lets his fingers slip into Eden’s, his smaller hand cradled in Charlie’s larger one. Even slower, he lifts their joined hands up to his mouth to kiss the back of Eden’s hand. His arm of beaded bracelets jingles, his hand trembling when Charlie does it again.
It’s the smallest affection, yet Eden’s body trembles. Has no one ever kissed this man before? Has no one ever been gentle with him?
“Eden.”
“Shut up,” Eden hisses, chest heaving.
Suddenly Charlie isn’t sure he wants the answer, afraid it might break his heart.
“I’m going to hug you now, Eden.”
“If you must,” Eden grumbles. “Needy fucker.”
“That’s me,” Charlie whispers, slotting Eden into his arms so easily as if he belonged there.
Holding Eden close, Charlie can’t stop from appreciating the way his smaller body fits snugly in Charlie’s grasp.
His face is shoved into Charlie’s chest and his arms smashed between their bodies where Eden cradles them against his chest. He’s rigid but unmoving, and Charlie tightens the hold into a firmer hug before pressing a kiss to the top of Eden’s head.
“Fuck you,” Eden whispers.
A smile spreads across Charlie’s face as he holds Eden close. If Eden needs to pretend he doesn’t want this, then Charlie will be bold for the both of them. Eden will come around eventually. Charlie’s sure of it, if only because the alternative is something Charlie isn’t sure he wants to imagine.
Sitting on the edge of his bed in nothing but his boxers, Charlie stares at the bathroom. He’s been staring at that closed door for so long, listening for any hint of Eden, that he’s starting to actually feel like a stalker.
In Charlie’s defense, Eden’s been in there for nearly an hour.
After showing Eden his paintings, they’d gone to move Eden’s car, and Charlie had pretended to busy himself with something in the other room to afford Eden some privacy while he’d called Addy.
The call had been short and left Charlie with a lot of questions about who exactly Eden was wishing good night.
He’d sounded different on the phone talking to someone who must’ve been a child from the higher pitch of his voice and the sweetness of his words.
Did Eden have a kid? Eden said he was gay and not interested in Addy, but that doesn’t make the scenario impossible.
It’d taken every ounce of self-control Charlie possesses to not to interrupt Eden's phone call, even more to keep his curiosity to himself when Eden asked if he could shower. That was over an hour ago, and Charlie’s been waiting for him to come out of the bathroom since—the need to know if Eden is a single dad killing him.
Truthfully, Charlie isn’t sure he wants to be a dad. He loves kids. Other people’s kids. But if Eden has one, would that be a deal breaker? Charlie doesn’t know. If him being twenty years old isn’t a deal breaker, what’s one more curveball.
All Charlie can do is wonder what the hell Eden is doing in there while rubbing his hands over his knees.
Another ten minutes pass, and Charlie’s restlessness grows.
Everything Eden might need is in that bathroom.
Clean towels. One of Charlie’s favorite t-shirts that he selfishly wants to see on Eden’s body and even a pair of Charlie’s slippers and a robe, both of which will be too big but are there if he wants.
If he needed anything else, Charlie told him to yell, but he hasn’t yelled.
He hasn’t said anything or made a sound in the thirty minutes since the shower shut off, and Charlie’s about five minutes from making himself look like the caveman he swore he wasn’t.
Tapping his fingers on his knees, Charlie sighs. He’s never been nervous having someone else in his bedroom. Fuck and fun has been his motto. He and Eden have fucked, and it was fun, but there’s something else. A third F word that Charlie can feel creeping up on him—feelings.
Shit. No wonder his brothers don’t like casual sex if they feel like this any time they have sex.
The need to check on Eden, to see if he’s okay and crowd him into Charlie’s personal space, is driving him out of his mind.
Eden is so close, yet it feels so far away that Charlie is crawling out of his skin.
At this point in the night, he normally would be naked, but he kind of suspects that asking someone if they’re secretly a parent after inviting them for a sleepover is something better done without his cock hanging out.
Twenty minutes later, Eden finally emerges, and at least some of what he was doing becomes clear.
“Don’t say a fucking thing,” Eden mumbles, his arms wrapping around his middle while his shoulders hunch in on themselves.
He’s taken off his double wrists of bracelets, leaving only the one with “Ella” on it and a hair tie. He’s also dressed in Charlie’s favorite tie dye t-shirt which hangs to mid thigh on him, the neckline loose at his throat and exposing the sharp angles of his collarbones and his right shoulder.
His hair is just a little damp and hanging down around his shoulders, the ends curling up slightly as if he haphazardly tried to towel dry it.
Most noticeable of all is the lack of makeup.
Even that one night at the gallery, when his makeup had been more simple, it’d been there.
It occurs to Charlie this is the first time he’s seeing Eden without it, and the difference is striking.
Even without makeup, Eden’s natural beauty shines through from his pale skin and wide eyes to the freckles on his nose he must hide with foundation. Without his usual liner and glitter eyeshadow, his face is a little more boyish—and infinitely younger.
So much younger. Fuck.
“What?” Eden snaps.
“You told me not to say anything.”
“Well, your face is saying a lot. You might as well fucking use your words.”
“I know you said you were twenty. I guess it was just hard to see until now.”
Eden frowns. “I’m aware I look younger.”
“Oh my god,” Charlie groans, scrubbing his hands over his face. He really thought he was over this. He spent an entire week telling himself age was nothing but a number, but Eden looks so young. “Does this make me a cradle robber?”
“I’m not underage, asshole. Petite people are still grownups, you fucker.”
“Right,” Charlie mutters, straightening. “Can we pretend I didn’t say that?”
“I wish,” Eden mutters, dropping down onto Charlie’s bed. “I can leave if it makes you uncomfortable. I know it’s not what you signed up for.”
“Wait, what?”
“The makeup and the skirt. You probably have a kink for it so I’m sure—I just needed a shower. I don’t like going to sleep with my makeup on, and it’s not like I’m gonna wear dirty clothes in your bed so the skirt had to go. But I get it.”
“Do you? Because I don’t,” Charlie admits, lowering himself onto the mattress beside Eden. He’s careful to leave a little space between them despite his desire not to. Everything in Eden’s body language is making it clear he’s got one foot out the door.
“You wouldn’t be the first man to be disappointed by what’s underneath the glitter and ruffles. You’d just be the first one who didn’t pay for my company first.”
Charlie blinks, taken aback by the admission.
“You know what, I should go.” Eden rises from the bed. “You don’t want me here.”
Before Charlie can get a word out, Eden is talking again.
“I get it. You like the look. People either love it or hate it. The ones who love it, well—I’m a kink for a lot of men.
Some of them liked to pretend it made them less queer to fuck me in my skirt, my makeup all done.
Others got off on the baby face and the blonde hair.
” Eden makes a strange noise, tugging the hair tie off his left wrist and shoving his hair into a messy half-ponytail-bun thing with an expression that makes Charlie wish he were allowed to touch him right now.
“At least you looked horrified by how young I look when I walked out of the bathroom and not turned on by it. You’d be surprised how many men wanted me to pretend to be even younger than sixteen when I started.”
All his questions about whether or not Eden has a kid fly out the window as discomfort and surprise war in Charlie.
Not at the admission of sex work, Charlie would never judge, but at the age he started.
Fuck every single man who ever preyed on Eden.
Fuck them. If they were in this room, Charlie’s pretty sure he would kill them, the sick fuckers.
“Don’t look so upset, Charlie. Sleeping with a predator beats sleeping on the streets some nights.”
When Charlie was seven, he went on a merry-go-round at the local county fair.
His dad tried to warn him that it wouldn’t be smooth and slow like the one he went to at a theme park the previous year, but Charlie wanted to go anyway.
The ride had spun so fast Charlie thought he might fall off, spinning and spinning until Charlie almost puked and cried at the same time.
This is like that, but there’s nothing fun about this.
“Eden.”