Chapter 37 Eden
Chapter thirty-seven
Eden
“Because it Means Something”
I noticed how he reacted when I told him I loved him. I didn’t mean to. It slipped out of me in the heat of the moment. I hadn’t planned on saying it, and I certainly hadn’t meant for it to land like a bullet… but I could tell it hit, and it hit hard.
He had become so still that I could’ve been convinced he was gone. His breath hitched, body freezing for just a second. It was only a brief moment, but I felt something that he had been trying to hold together fracture.
He didn’t fight me anymore when I got up.
He didn’t stop me when I turned around to push him down on the mattress so I could climb atop him.
His head was hanging almost off the edge of the bed, exposing his throat like a sacrifice on an altar as he arched into the mattress when I settled myself onto the hard length of him.
He seemed stunned for a minute, maybe still wound up in what I had said, even as I moved against him: rolling my hips, taking him as deep and slow as I could. I wanted to tear that numbness off his face and bring him back to me, even if I had to break him down to do it.
Then he snapped back, reaching up to grab both of my hips to pull me down on him harder.
He watched where we were joined as he helped me build a rhythm.
I could tell he was close, he held me just a little too tight, hands shaking.
I built him up to the edge and stopped. He flinched like I had stabbed him, cock throbbing inside me.
I climbed off of him slowly, letting the denial hang heavy in the air between us.
Then, on my hands and knees, I slipped him into my mouth.
He groaned, a ragged, desperate sound, one hand grabbing a handful of my hair as he pushed my head down and held it there while he came into my mouth with a frustrated growl.
I didn’t swallow it. Instead, I moved atop him, and he craned his head up to see me. His pupils overtook all but a sliver of those amber eyes. I didn’t have to say anything; I just took his chin with my fingers and he parted his lips at the silent command.
I spit it into his mouth, and he swallowed it without hesitation before rising to kiss me, and I let him. It was questioning at first, as though he didn’t know if I would allow it. When I didn’t deny him, he fell into the passion of it.
I lay back on the bed, and he fell between my thighs.
I was reminded of how good he was at this as he chased me to, and then over the edge of ecstasy.
He said he didn’t get much action in this line of work, but he’d practiced somewhere.
You didn’t just naturally have that kind of…
talent. I didn’t know why it surprised me, either, because this man was all precision and method.
When he learned something, he learned it.
It was almost clinical, but it was also desperate.
Like maybe if he made me come hard enough, I’d forget what he’d done.
I didn’t forget, but I still shattered against his mouth, crying out, hips bucking, fingers twisting into the sheets. My legs trembled beneath him, even after I came down.
He lay across me afterward, panting into my shoulder, our sweat-slicked bodies sticking skin to skin. His breath caught like he wanted to say something but couldn’t form the words.
I should have felt victorious, satisfied that I had taken control.
I’d made him feel every ounce of chaos in me, every sharp edge I’d sharpened on the guilt he was putting me through.
He’d submitted to my rage, giving me whatever I wanted.
He had offered me submission, not just out of lust or a play of power, but something darker. A penance.
And yet now, in the dark with him collapsed on top of me, our hearts drumming against each other, I just felt empty.
“You’re heavy,” I whispered.
“Sorry,” he grunted, rolling off of me and onto his back beside me.
He ran a hand across his face, staring up at the ceiling. The silence between us wasn’t peaceful; it was full of things unsaid.
“Do you regret it?” I asked, voice wrecked from screaming and crying.
He didn’t answer right away, he didn’t look away from the ceiling. “Yes.”
My heart dropped, but then he propped himself up on his elbow and looked at me. “But I don’t regret you.”
The distinction gutted me. I wasn’t sure why it made it worse, but it did. “You don’t regret me.” I repeated quietly, looking at him as he studied my expression.
His eyes were glued on me, but they weren’t the same cold and glazed facade. He looked like a different person.
“Don’t,” I whispered, voice cracked and sharp. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He didn’t speak for a long moment. Just watched me, breathing like it hurt. “I thought I was protecting you. I just want you to know why I did it.”
“You weren’t protecting me, you were protecting yourself from what it would mean for me to know. You were afraid of how it would affect you, what it might cost you.”
His silence was tortured.
“You’re a coward who didn’t want me to see how broken you really are.”
He didn’t flinch but his mouth pressed into that grim, guilty line that he always wore when I hit too close to the bone. “You’re right.”
I hated that he didn’t fight back. I wanted him to.
I wanted to scream at him; I wanted to claw at the walls of his apathy until he gave me something again.
But now? He was lying there vulnerable and open, and it was somehow worse because now, for the first time, I wasn’t just looking at the man I’d loved…
I was looking at the wreckage he kept hidden behind all that control.
I was looking at someone who I wasn’t sure loved me back.
“I don’t think I can forgive you.”
“That’s okay. I’ll still be here, even if you don’t.”
I hated him for that too: for the patience and stillness, for the way he let me just… be in my grief and anger instead of rushing to push me into some false comfort. He saw me in my suffering. Maybe that was the cruelest form of mercy.
“How many men are left?” I asked, my voice even and low.
“One. Then just Matteo and his two right hands. That’s it.”
Something twisted in my stomach at the thought of this finality. “You followed him today?”
He nodded. “I’ll take him out tomorrow. Quiet, no mess.”
Of course he would. Ticking lives off like items on a to-do list.
“And then? Are you really just going to leave?” The question sounded smaller than I meant it to be, bare of emotion. Bone showing through flesh.
“That’s the plan. That’s always been the plan.”
I was sickened by how much I hadn’t wanted that answer. How much I clung to it, even after everything.
“Why go through all of this to just leave?”
“Because it’s the only thing I can give you.”
I stared at him, stunned. His eyes flicked back to mine, and there it was again: something raw that he wasn’t trying to hide anymore.
“I can give you this. I can make sure you never have to look over your shoulder again. I can make sure that you can go back to your life.”
“I don’t think I can go back to that life,” I whispered, voice growing even smaller.
He reached for my hand then, his fingers hovering near mine without closing the distance. “You were never supposed to be part of the damage.”
“But I am,” I whispered.
“I know, but I will have to go.”
“You don’t have to do anything; you’re choosing to. Don’t pretend this is about anything other than your own fear.”
“It is about fear. I have made enemies my entire life, people who will eventually catch up to me… Maybe not today, or next year, or the next… but someday, they will. It’s a matter of time. If they find me, they’ll kill me. If I’m with you… they’ll kill you to make a point.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. I’ve seen it happen to entire families. A man played house but one day came home to his son’s head in the microwave and his wife cut into so many pieces that he was still finding her a year later.”
A chill slid down my spine.
“I was never supposed to get this deep into your life. It wasn’t my plan. I was trying to keep as much distance from you as possible, while still keeping you safe. I was never going to be able to be part of something normal.”
“You didn’t plan on it, but you did it. You let me believe that this meant something—”
“It did,” he snapped, leaning towards me. “It does. That’s why I have to go; that’s why I have to pull the trigger before they do. That’s why I have to get out before anyone connects you with me. You told me you knew I couldn’t stay, Eden, that I couldn’t give you anything when this was done.”
The silence that followed was deafening, but I couldn’t speak. Those had just been words – I’d never meant it. I had always hoped there was some way to keep him.
“I wish you knew how sorry I am,” he breathed.
I wanted to scream at him, throw something, hit him, drag him back onto the bed and rip him apart again with my hands, with my mouth, with my rage and need and grief.
But I didn’t move. It felt like he was already too far away.