Chapter 21 Eden #2
Eden chokes on the answer, the sound that comes out of his chest raw and inhuman.
Eden doesn’t miss people. He refuses. He stopped missing people the day his first foster family traded him on Facebook for an easier kid like he was a leftover toy or some spare produce to barter away.
Eden stopped missing people the day he realized his last name didn’t come from either of his parents but the county of the fire station where he was left a few hours after being born—a surname that should’ve been temporary had anyone ever gone through with adopting Eden, but they hadn’t.
He stopped missing people the day he realized no one—not a goddamn person—was going to miss him.
“Would it help if I tell you how much I missed you?” Charlie asks in that happy go lucky voice of his. “Maybe it would help to know that Andrew had to come drag me out of bed because I was this close to sprouting roots in my mattress. I was pathetic and sad, and I missed you so much.”
“I hate you,” Eden chokes out.
Charlie pulls out of the hug abruptly, expression shattering. “What—”
“I fucking hate you for saying that,” Eden rages. “No one misses me. No one.”
“I do.”
“Fuck you, Charlie King.” Eden slams his fists into Charlie’s chest, desperately, painfully, dizzyingly angry at this goddamn man for making him care.
“I hate you so much for making me want things I have never, ever wanted. I hate you for making me laugh. I hate you for holding me. I hate you for wearing stupid clothes I can’t hate.
I hate you for coming back again and again, even when I run.
I hate you so much because…because I don’t hate you. Why can’t I hate you?”
The expression on Charlie’s face physically hurts. It’s so goddamn understanding and kind, and Eden would run, but there’s nowhere left to go, and he’s tired. He’s so fucking tired.
“Why can’t I hate you?” Eden whispers, falling to his knees.
The ground is cold and hard, exactly like Eden deserves.
What he doesn’t deserve is for Charlie to fall to the ground with him, wrapping Eden up in his arms when all of this is his fault.
When Eden ran away, it hurt in the way it hurts to press on a bruise—sharp pain tempered by a weird relief.
As if expecting the pain lessens it. It makes no sense that somehow Charlie coming back for him hurts more.
Eden convinced himself that he would never see Charlie again, and he’d made painful peace with it.
After all, he was the one who walked away.
He’d even quit his job so he wouldn’t have to face him, so he wouldn’t ever have to see how easily Charlie would get over him.
Eden made sure he left before he got in too deep.
Only the joke was on Eden, because not only did he hurt Charlie, he broke his own heart.
Whatever resolution or comfort Charlie is here to offer is undeserved, but Eden wants it anyway. Acknowledging this shatters what’s left of Eden’s walls. There’s no denying it. Eden wants Charlie. He wants Charlie so much it hurts.
“You should go,” Eden chokes out, while at the same time fisting his hands in Charlie’s shirt and holding on so tightly, he couldn’t leave if he tried.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t,” Charlie protests.
“I’m not the kind of guy you keep, Charlie.” His voice drops, the words somehow more painful out loud than when they were echoing around in his head. “You have a family and friends, and I’m not—”
“You are,” Charlie interrupts.
“I’m not,” Eden argues. “I ran.”
“Well, I followed you.”
“Because you’re a fucking idiot.”
“Yeah, but I’m your idiot.” Charlie noses against Eden’s temple, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Your boyfriend.”
“We broke up.”
“Did we? I don’t have any memory of that officially happening.
” Charlie grabs his ass, pulling Eden into his lap.
It’s embarrassing how easily Eden lets himself be manhandled, how easily he folds himself into Charlie’s embrace and lets someone else—lets Charlie—be strong.
“I thought you didn’t want me, but my brothers pointed out some hard truths I needed to hear.
I think you do want me. I think you want me so much you don’t know how to handle it. ”
“Cocky fucker,” Eden grumbles.
“I mean, can you blame me? I’m devilishly handsome, and my boyfriend is fucking gorgeous and can’t get enough of me. He was miserable without me. He couldn’t function without me in his life. He specifically said, ‘Oh no my life is so boring and dull without Charlie.’”
“I never fucking said that.”
“You didn’t need to.” Charlie’s arms encircle him, holding him close. “I know it because…because that was me. I couldn’t stand not having you around to bitch at me or laugh at me. I missed having you around telling me what to do and how to do it. My life was black and white without you, Eden.”
“Charlie.”
“You’re my color, Eden Montgomery. You make everything brighter and more beautiful.”
“I mess things up,” Eden whispers, unsure why he can’t stop fighting Charlie offering him exactly what he wants.
Because you’re scared, his brain whispers. Scared of being wanted. Scared of being vulnerable. Scared of loving someone who might one day leave. So goddamn fucking scared.
“Don’t you know I love messes?” Charlie says with that easy smile of his. “I want a messy life, baby. That’s where the most beautiful moments happen. I don’t want things to be perfect or easy. I want a messy, colorful life. I want you.”
“You can’t say that.”
“Yet I did,” Charlie grins, that handsome as fuck smile of his on full display. How did Eden think he could live without Charlie’s smile?
“I don’t want a future without you.” He kisses Eden’s forehead, then the top of his head. There’s nothing leading in the touch, a kiss offered for nothing but comfort. “You’re mine, baby.”
“I don’t know how,” Eden utters, hands shaking and voice trembling. “I’m scared. I don’t want to hurt you again. I hurt you.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not,” Eden acknowledges, relishing the guilt he feels because it’s deserved and familiar. “I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to fuck up again.”
“Fucking up is fun,” Charlie tells him, kissing the top of his head again. “Just don’t run away from me.”
“I can’t promise that,” Eden admits. “I don’t want to but—I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Charlie’s hold on Eden tightens, his voice wobbling when he next speaks. “Then I’ll follow you. I’ll be brave for you. I’ll love you when you don’t think you deserve it because you do. But you can’t run where I can’t follow. Please.”
A buzzing noise fills Eden’s ears.
“What did you just say?”
“I said don’t go where I can’t follow. You run and I’ll come after you. Might take me a few days, my ego and my feelings get hurt sometimes.”
“I’m sorry,” Eden whispers, verbally acknowledging the hurt he caused.
“I know, baby.” Charlie kisses his forehead again, and Eden lets his eyes fall shut, unable to handle the acceptance and adoration in Charlie’s expression.
It’s not deserved, but Eden can’t keep pushing him away when this right here—being held, being cared for like this—is everything he’s never let himself want.
How many times growing up did he run? From foster families, from group homes, from the hint of a good or a bad situation, knowing it would all end the same.
No one followed him. No one came for him.
Every time he’d end up back in the system was because of stupid laws or cops, not because someone had wanted him back.
Yet here is Charlie, coming back for Eden, again, because somehow he’s seen Eden at his worst and still wants him.
“You can’t follow me forever,” Eden whispers.
“It won’t be forever,” Charlie says with all the confidence only someone like him could carry. “I just need to follow you until you realize you don’t have to run. But know this—however long it takes, however many times—I’m going to come for you, Eden. I’ll come as long as you want me.”
Something very small and fragile in Eden shatters.
Charlie’s not mad. He’s not demanding Eden change.
He’s promising to stay even when Eden is difficult, because Eden is difficult.
He’s going to be hard to love. He always is, but Charlie doesn’t sound scared off by that, which is maybe one of the most idiotic things Charlie has ever done and also possibly the most perfect.
Eden’s voice shakes, but he gets the words out nonetheless. “I want you.”
“Course you do, I’m pretty great,” Charlie teases, the lightness of his words tempered by the intensity with which he holds on to Eden. “I want you too. For as long as you’ll have me.”
Forever, Eden wants to beg, unable to get that word out.
It’s already too much. He can’t say it, not in words.
“Bedroom,” is what he gets out instead.
“What?”
“We need to go to my room, right now.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to get you naked as soon as possible, and the couch is really not big enough for what I had in mind.”
“That desperate for my ass, baby?”
“Actually, I was going to give you mine.”
The speed with which Charlie gets up off the floor would be comical if Eden didn’t feel the same kind of desperation he sees on Charlie’s face.
“Are you sure?”
“Shut up and follow me,” Eden says, unable to explain that he’s not sure.
That he hasn’t let anyone fuck him since he stopped selling himself to survive.
There hasn't been a damn person Eden wanted to be vulnerable with like that again, not physically but emotionally. He’s under no heteronormative delusion that there’s anything weak or inherently submissive about being fucked, but he also has years of experience being taken and used as if there were—enough that he put up a firm wall between what he liked in the bedroom and what he was willing to give men.
Leave it to Charlie to break that wall down, not with a sledgehammer but with a gentle touch.