Chapter 3
Eden
As soon as she got home, Eden sank into her loveseat and got on her phone.
“You won’t believe what’s happened,” she texted Blair, whom she had been casually chatting with since getting back to the city. “And I don’t know what to do.”
It was Thursday, and Blair had mentioned going back to work on Friday. Would she even be able to answer right now? I’ve got to tell someone, and she’s the only one who could understand!
Eden watched her phone, but nothing. Irritated, she got up and paced in her living area, going through every moment of what had happened. Him. It’s him. Bryce. Benson. Whatever.
Was Liam gonna show up too?
She had a nervous trip to the bathroom, and upon returning to her loveseat, noticed her phone screen was lit up. It was Blair, asking what was wrong.
“I’ve accidentally met one of the guests! One of MY guests! He was the freaking financial advisor I saw at the firm today!”
Three dots appeared on the screen.
“Call me.”
Eden wasn’t sure she could say what had happened out loud. Then again, maybe it was for the best that she didn’t have to put her words into text without worrying about awful typos and accidentally activating emojis. Like an eggplant. She used that one a lot.
“What do you mean, one of the guests was at the firm?” Blair asked when she picked up.
Eden started from the beginning. By the time she retold that sordid tale – no details from the island included – she was out of breath and hiding beneath the blanket on her loveseat.
“You’re shitting me.” That was Blair’s commentary after a few seconds of silence. “Which one was it? I swear I would have recognized him. God, it wasn’t Perkins, was it? He’s like… girl, I’m sorry. Not a looker.”
Eden swallowed the lump in her throat. “Guess you’ve never seen ‘Smith’ before. He’s younger. Definitely hot.” She squeaked that last bit.
“Smith?” Oh, God, was Blair looking him up? “Benson Smith. Oh, my God. I did see him on the island. Shit, I had no idea!”
“I’m not saying you did.” Eden sucked in her cheeks as she tried not to think of the intimate details of Benson Smith. “But I don’t know what to do. He asked me out! What do I do?”
“Well, that entirely depends on whether you want to go out with him or not.”
“But that’s not allowed!”
“That’s what you’re worried about?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. It’s weird, right? Like, what are the odds? And what if he keeps treating me like Butterfly? I’d go mental. This is real life! Have you ever heard of this happening?”
“I’ve heard of Butterflies and guests getting into relationships and dating away from the island.
They always find a way to swap contacts if they really want to.
I mean, just writing down a phone number, for one thing.
But spotting each other in the wild? Going about errands? No. Never heard of it.”
“What do I do?”
“Well…” Blair clearly didn’t know what to say, but with Eden so desperate… could she at least try? “I guess it really depends on whether you think it’s worth taking things off the island, so to speak.”
Eden made a rude gesture of impatience toward her ceiling. “How am I supposed to know?”
“Did you have fun with him?”
“Obviously. I just thought… you know. That was it. I was moving on and putting that fun behind me. Back to being a serious adult with some money. Which was the whole point of today! Figuring out what to do with that money!”
“Dating a bigshot finance guy might be a good way to go about that. And you won’t have to pay for the service.”
“I kinda am! With sex!”
She could practically hear Blair shrugging on the other end of the line.
“Honestly, I’m not sure why I called. I guess because I’m so new to this. I’m afraid of regretting going out with him. He’s like… older than me.”
“How much older?”
“He’s at least forty.”
“So, what I’m hearing is that he’s stable.”
“You’re not helping.”
“I thought I was?”
“Right.” Eden sighed. Energy drained from her.
Talking about this – about Benson, the island, money – was more than she could handle, apparently.
I wish I could start the whole day over.
She would cancel the appointment and pretend it never happened.
Bryce would never have a real name. He’d just be a seductive enigma in linen clothing, swinging his ego around like he owned the place. And Eden.
I mean… Brim.
Whoever Benson thought he was asking out, it wasn’t Eden.
It was Brim, the Butterfly, who was available anywhere, anytime, for whatever fun he wanted.
Eden was a woman with her own life, her own opinions, and her own goals.
Who knew if they were compatible out here?
They might ruin their memories of one another by having a spat about politics or, heaven forbid, religion.
Why couldn’t he have stayed a memory? A recent one, no less?
She thanked Blair for hearing her out and giving her some advice. When they hung up, Eden remained on her couch, pulling the blanket up to her chin and attempting not to think about her weekend.
By the time she exited the bath and had some dinner that evening, Eden still didn’t know what to do.
Benson had given her his number, but she had smartly not reciprocated.
Would he harass me? Or would he give me space to think?
Eden would never know. Especially if she never initiated anything with him.
She sat cross-legged on her bed, towel wrapped around her shoulders until her hair dried. Yet she merely stared at her phone. At the number she had inputted into her directory without attaching a name. Bryce. Benson. Whatever.
Benson. Smith.
She opened a browser on her phone and searched for his name.
With his long career, it didn’t take long to discover the man beyond LPS.
Benson was frequent on the charity dinner circuit.
He often attached his name to donations, both personal and on behalf of the firm he was already a senior partner at.
Most of the grainy photos Eden found on her small phone screen were of a younger man who smiled more often.
In the later photos, he was much more reticent.
But, you know, in a hot way…
There were some photos of him with women.
One repeat customer was a willowy woman with blond hair.
She often wore her hair up and bedecked herself in floor-length evening gowns.
Her makeup was a blend of the very late 2000s and early 2010s, evoking the idea that the photos were old enough to have been a relationship long before La Mariposa.
Indeed, one article referred to her as “Sydney Smith,” and it didn’t take rocket science to figure out that it was Benson’s wife. Ex-wife, I’m assuming. Sydney did not show up in any photos since 2015.
There was another young woman, though. And Eden’s heart stopped when she realized how young the teenager with light brown hair and braces was when she kept popping up on Benson’s arm at charity dinners and local high-profile events.
Please be his daughter… please be his daughter…
She finally found a caption that read, “Drew Smith wows the red carpet at Saturday night’s For the Felines Gala. The self-professed cat lover is the daughter of financial advisor Benson Smith, of LPS, and Sydney Smith-Kaplan, board member of The Giving House, who sponsored the event.”
Benson didn’t just have an ex-wife and a daughter. His daughter was old enough to do what Eden had done that past weekend! Probably!
“Wow.” She fell back against her pillow and headboard, forgetting that her hair was still wet. The damp imprint left on her pillowcase wouldn’t be noticed until she went to sleep. Until then? “He has a daughter. Only a few years younger than me.”
Eden waited for that to sink in – to make her feel disgusted that this man had gone to a tropical island to fuck his way through women young enough to be his daughter.
She waited. A good bit.
“Damnit.” Every time she attempted to conjure the anger upon imagining his face, her memories went right back to what they did together that weekend. Dinner. Hot tub. Flirting by the pool. Going fuck crazy in his cottage and at the orgy where…
Neal.
Eden bit her lip as she thought of them both going at her like it was the world’s way of saying, This is what you want, right?
She recalled thinking that it was too bad she couldn’t meet men like them here in the city – even with the intricate dance of dating making things more awkward and difficult.
And while Eden swore she didn’t really need those men, exactly, her body remembered.
Good God, did it remember.
Benson’s hands on her. The way he slammed his kisses against her lips. The erotic undulation of his hips even before he fucked her. The way he fucked her.
What he said; what he did.
How open he was to things. He granted Eden the kind of new experiences she could not have found so safely elsewhere.
It won’t be the same here on the mainland. They were both under stress here. The weather sucked. There were obligations. They no longer had the responsibility-free space to do whatever they wanted while the sun shone brightly, and they barely wore any clothes.
Yet he was so quick to ask me out… even after that…
Had he really been thinking about her that much since coming back from the island? Were the memories of Eden’s cries of pleasure haunting him as much as he lurked in the shadows of her dreams?
Benson was older, but that also meant he might be stable, like Blair insinuated. He had already been through one marriage and knew what he wanted. He had to be responsible for his kid. He has a kid… Who was an adult now. But that also meant she was only a few years younger than Eden…
Shit, she was making it sound like they were getting married! As if!
“Fuck it.” She tossed her phone to the end of her bed and pulled open the drawer beneath her bed. Within another box, she kept one of her most expensive possessions. And one of her most used.
If I still can’t stop thinking about him after this, then I’ll text him.