Chapter 39 #2
My throat tightens. “And what if there isn’t?”
“Then I’ll love you for the rest of my days from afar.” He walks over to the table. “Champagne?”
“I… guess?”
He hands me the glass, his fingers touching mine for the briefest of moments. “I’ve always said I wanted the best champagne served at my funeral,” he tells me.
I laugh softly. God, this man.
“Take a seat.” He points at one of the chairs and I do as he asks. I’m facing the cliff, staring at the image being projected.
“So, I’ve been practicing this all day. Please bear with me if there are any stumbles. I’m good when I talk about other people, a little bit terrible when I talk about myself. Bennett suggested I pre-record the voiceover, but that felt wrong.”
“Bennett knows about this?”
“He helped me with the photos.” He lifts a brow. “The kid is a genius with a scanner.”
He clicks a button I didn’t know was in his hand and the first photo appears. A baby, in his parents arms.
“Don’t worry, I’m not taking you through all the kid photos.
Some of them should never be seen. I couldn’t survive the embarrassment.
” He takes a breath. “So, these are my parents. The biggest assholes you could ever meet. The man who had to father a kid to get his inheritance, and his wife who married him because she loves diamonds.”
I look at his dad. There’s a hint of West in him. The man who seduced Leona. Who made her promises he never intended on keeping. The one who broke her heart and left her to pick up the pieces. When she was too young to know how to glue herself back together.
West clicks and the next slide appears. On it is a girl with long dark hair, laughing at something out of frame, her arm looped around a boy who’s staring back at her with big, saucer like eyes.
Leona. My chest tightens. She’s beautiful, yes, but it’s not her face that makes my chest ache.
It’s West’s. The devotion written across his expression as he stares up at her.
A boy experiencing love for the first time in his life, and not realizing it should be given freely by those who brought him into the world.
It reminds me of the way he looks at me. My throat tightens.
“She made me feel alive for the first time in my life,” he tells me. “Until the night she couldn’t anymore.” His voice cracks as he looks away from the image. “I thought if I was stronger, smarter, older, I could have stopped it.”
The slide clicks again. This time it’s West in a school uniform too stiff for his narrow shoulders. He looks older. Less… alive. His mouth a thin line.
“Boarding school,” he says. “Where they sent me when I became an inconvenience.”
Another click. West is older now. Standing next to Parker and Hudson on what looks like their first day of college. They’re all grinning, looking shy in a way I find hard to believe now.
“They saved me,” he tells me. “You all did. Became the family I didn’t think I deserved. I smiled more those first few weeks at college than I had in my whole life. And I learned that smiling makes life easier. The more you smile, the more you can get away with.”
Oh, easy-going, laid back West is being born in front of my eyes. A front, to hide the darkness. My gaze lingers on him. I remember this version of him. I was a kid, but he was always laughing. We loved it.
Click. My breath catches. It’s me. Ten years old, on West’s back, as I try to fight Autumn who’s on Asher’s back, and we’re all in the ocean. God, I remember that day. How much I adored West, even then.
“You,” he says simply. “My fighter from the very beginning. I might have been the one holding you up physically, but you hold me up in every other way.”
Our eyes meet. I’m not going to cry. Not this time.
More slides follow. Him getting his college degree.
His first job. His first win in court. Then there’s more.
A snip of a newspaper clipping showing a death covered up, followed by a record of contracts signed and debts paid.
He talks me through each one, telling me what he did to ‘clean’ up messes.
I watch him become the man who waded through L.A.
’s dark side, all with a smile on his face.
But in all of these photos of him, the smile never makes it up to his eyes. How didn’t I see that? Was I blind? I want to run over and hug him, to take the hollowness away. It hurts to see him like that.
Each click makes him wince. But he doesn’t flinch from the truth. He lays it all out, rips himself open. And he rips me open too.
I say nothing, as we reach a recent slide. West standing in front of the resort right as ground was being broken. Smiling. His eyes crinkling.
And here’s the West I fell for. The West I know. The darkness and the light, all in one man.
He exhales, like the weight of a lifetime has been pulled out of him. Then he clicks the button one last time.
The image flickers onto the cliff. Not the resort. Not a scandal. Not Leona.
It’s us.
Me on his lap in the kitchen at the North House, laughing so hard. My head is tipped back, my curls wild around my face. His arms are around my waist, his chin tucked into my shoulder, his eyes locked on me. The world goes on around us, but in that frozen moment it’s only us.
He must have taken it with his phone without me realizing. A snapshot that he wanted to keep.
“That man there,” West says quietly. “That’s who I am when I’m with you. That’s the man I want to be for the rest of my life.”
My throat tightens. A hot tear slides down my cheek before I can stop it, damn it. He sees it, and his own face crumples.
“Don’t cry,” he whispers, his voice breaking.
“God, Eden, I never wanted to make you cry. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
The only thing that’s ever been real. And I know I’ve hidden behind a thousand masks, but with you, I don’t want any of them.
With you, I want to be this man.” He gestures at the cliff, at us together. “Yours.”
I stare at him, at the man who adores me and completes me, who’s broken me and held me together in the same breath.
And I realize I’m not afraid anymore.
Because I love him. Entirely.
“Then stop running,” I whisper back. My voice is steady. “Stop hiding. Be him. You. The man who isn’t afraid of showing me the real him. The one that makes me proud because he always fights for what he loves. Even when it hurts.”
He closes the distance between us in two long strides, and when his lips crash against mine it feels like the whole world exhales.
I fling my arms around his neck, kissing him back so hard my lips feel bruised. His mouth tastes of sea salt and champagne. And as he lifts me up, against him, I can feel how hard he is. In every way.
“Eden.”
His voice vibrates against my skin, rough and tender all at once. And then a cold drop hits my cheek. Another splashes against my neck. For a moment I think he’s crying, but within seconds, rain pours down around us, soaking our hair, plastering my shirt to my skin.
West curses softly against my mouth, then laughs.
“Oh no, the projector,” I say, because it’s already getting wet.
“Leave it,” West whispers against my lips. He pulls me closer in his arms and spins us around as he kisses me again.
And I’ve never felt more happy.
“You’re soaking,” he tells me, pulling me under the ledge even though I’m not sure I could get anymore wet.
“I know.”
“And you’ve never looked more beautiful.” His voice is thick. Completely serious. “God, I love you so much.”
The way he says it, with the truth echoing every word, makes me shiver. “I love you too,” I tell him. “Every part of you.” Because he needs to know that. He needs to know that he can stop hiding. He can stop thinking I’ll hate the darkness. Because I don’t, it’s part of him.
And then his mouth is on mine again, hungrier this time, like the storm has broken both of us open and there’s no way back.
My fingers fist his shirt, tugging him down, needing him closer, needing him everywhere.
He lifts me off my feet, pressing me against the rock wall, the hard planes of his body grounding me, claiming me.
The storm drowns out everything but him, but I don’t care. His mouth is everywhere, tasting me like he’s been starved, and I cling to him, my nails dragging against his neck, letting him know just how hungry I am for him, too.
He slides down to the ground, pulling me with him, until I’m straddling him. And the way he’s smiling at me feels like the sun has come out even though it’s storming all around us.
Before I can kiss him again, his phone rumbles in his pocket. He reluctantly pulls it out reads the message, shaking his head.
“Who is it?”
He shows me his phone. There’s a message from Zach.
Just got to Liberty. The weather here is shit. Where’s the bachelor party? I can’t find anybody around. – Zach
“Oh my god.” A laugh escapes me. “Nobody told him we called it off.”
He’s going to kill me. The man hates coming to Liberty. He hates anything that takes him away from his art and his poker games. I’m going to owe him big time.
“To be fair,” West says, brushing a wet strand of hair from my cheek, “nobody knew until a couple of days ago. I’ll sort it out, don’t worry.”
The way he says it, calm and certain, like nothing could shake him, unravels me. He always does this. Somehow, he makes the chaos feel like it’s going to be okay. Like I’m going to be okay.
He types something out, then turns his phone off.
“What did you do?” I ask him.
“I told him to join Autumn and Parker for dinner.”
A laugh burst out of me. “God, I’m so stupidly in love with you.”
His eyes close for a second, like he’s letting the words soak into his bones. And when he opens them, there’s such a look of love on his face that I’m not sure I’ll ever get over it.
“Not as much as I love you, Mrs. Abbott.”
And then he kisses me again and again and again. Until the storm passes.