9. FIVE
FIVE
EDEN
Anderson’s fiddling with the strings of his scrubs again as he looms over me at my desk. His hands splay on the cheap veneer, humped nose just inches from mine.
“I know you took it.”
I force myself not to flinch. He doesn’t deserve my fear, and I’m not about to back down in the face of stealing allegations.
Not today, Satan.
“I didn’t take your watch, Anderson.”
“Doctor Anderson,” he spits.
He’s so close to me I can smell the eggs he had for breakfast. Rotten, just like him. My lip twists into a grimace as I lean back in my chair.
“Right. Doctor Anderson.” My finger creeps up between us to wipe his saliva off my cheek. “I didn’t take your watch. Maybe Angela has seen it.”
I keep my tone saccharine, my smile even sweeter.
On the desk, my coffee is going cold, cream curdling on the surface. My computer screen glares at me, open on the list of tasks I need to complete before the next appointment, and I get the terrible urge to throw my fist through it. That, or straight into my boss’s nose.
Anderson’s eyes narrow as he stands back to his full height—an unimpressive five foot eight. “I’ll check with her. But if she hasn’t, then you can compensate me for the loss through your paychecks.”
I wouldn’t expect anything less.
“Roger that.”
The reception door cracks open behind him, and Anderson turns to face the newcomer, plastering on an easy smile as if he hasn’t spent the last ten minutes spraying spittle at my face.
“Oh, Sebastian. How nice to see you.”
What?
Oh, hell no.
The very last person I want to see right now steps out from behind him, strutting to the desk like he owns the fucking company.
My ex-husband is dressed in a navy suit—Versace, probably; it was always his favorite—and brown loafers, with a briefcase dangling from one hand.
His hair is perfect as always, dark and combed over, his deceivingly handsome face bare-shaven.
He looks every inch the successful corporate lawyer he’s fortunate enough to be.
“Sebastian.” I don’t attempt to conceal the loathing in my voice. I’d rather spend the next three hours covered in Anderson’s saliva than have a single conversation with him.
His brown eyes darken to almost black as he fixes them on me. “Eden.”
He says my name like he’s admonishing a child. As if I’m in trouble for having the audacity to exist.
“Why are you here?”
He blesses my boss with a charming smile—the one he used to give me when he would come home after a night drinking with his friends while I stayed home with Macon.
As if that one shiny grin could make everything better.
As if it could erase the injustice of our situation and the resentment harboring in my heart.
“Andy, could you give us a moment?”
My boss doesn’t even correct him. There is no harshly spoken “Doctor Anderson” or even a flicker of annoyance on his face at the error.
Sebastian has that effect on people. He is a master at bending others to his will, at manipulating people to such a degree that they don’t realize they’ve fallen on his knife until their soul has already left their body.
It’s the reason I stayed for so long.
Anderson nods, rambling some gushy bullshit I don’t care to hear before leaving us alone.
Silence stretches between us, fraught with the peril of our history. All the while, I force myself to hold his gaze, determined not to wither beneath the brutality of it.
He sucks in a long breath. “I’m getting married.”
I gape back at him with confusion. “Congratulations?”
We’ve been divorced for years. I couldn’t give less of a shit about his relationship status. Macon’s already told me he’s in a relationship with some girl in her freshman year of college, and I’ve caught glimpses of her through the window, waiting in the car when Sebastain comes to pick him up.
Macon likes her, says she’s fun and watches musicals with him on the big TV while his dad’s out, so I have no reason to hate her. I trust my son’s judgment. Besides, if anything, I feel bad for her. She’s inherited a twenty-eight-year-old manchild who can’t wash his own laundry.
“That’s all you have to say?”
I almost laugh. “What? Are you expecting a hug?”
He shakes his head, raising his gaze to the ceiling as if praying to a higher power. “God, you really haven’t changed, have you?”
“Thank you?” I say, though something tells me it wasn’t a compliment.
His frown deepens, his eyes alight with so much hostility I almost wish Anderson was still yelling at me instead.
“Would it kill you to act your age for once in your life? To show some semblance of maturity and respect?”
Respect. The word makes me scoff, though I have the wherewithal to disguise it with a cough. Sebastian sees straight through me, though. After all, he didn’t get where he is in his career without impeccable attention to detail.
“Did you seriously deem it necessary to come to my place of work just to tell me that you’re getting remarried?”
“No.”
“Oh?”
He widens his stance, his chest broadening, the picture of perfect confidence. “Eliana and I have been talking.” He pauses, scrutinizing my face to make sure I’m listening. “About Macon and what we think is best for him.”
When has he ever cared about what’s best for our son? When he chose drinking over his newborn son? When Macon was three and he left for work then didn’t return for four days? Or when he missed Macon’s kindergarten graduation because “it’s all needless nonsense anyway”?
My pulse begins to quicken. I don’t like the sound of where this is going, don’t like how it ignites a sense of anxiety so severe my stomach churns in a bid to expel it.
I’ve suddenly lost the humor in this conversation.
“Seb—”
He holds up a hand to silence me. “Let me finish. I’m getting married. We live in a nice four-bedroom house in the suburbs with a big yard that he can use to play ball games. He will have his own room, his own bathroom. And I have the means to buy him anything he wants.”
“Macon hates ball games,” I whisper.
Sebastian continues like he didn’t hear me. “I’m asking you not to be selfish here.”
I look down at my hands, twisting them on my lap. “You haven’t asked me anything yet.”
“Eliana and I think it’s best if Macon comes to live with us.” His eyes bore into me like the sharpest of blades as he tacks on, “Full time.”
Goosebumps ignite on my skin, spreading down my arms like wildfire, the chill of his words skidding down my back like ice.
He’s going to try to take Macon away from me.
He can’t do—there’s no way he—oh, God.
“He’s happy with me.” I look him right in the eye as I say it.
I will not allow him to take my son from me, not when I’ve given up my entire life to raise him, to be there for him, to love him.
I may not have the same resources, and I may not be able to give him the material things my ex-husband can, but I can give him something Sebastian will never be capable of…
love without conditions. The freedom to be whomever he is without fear of judgment, admonishment, or consequence. Love. “He won’t agree to it.”
He hates his weekends with you. I’m desperate to say it, to spit it at him with all the vitriol that has brewed within me over the years, and watch his face collapse as he learns that his son can’t stand to be around him.
I want to hurt him.
Want to tear his decrepit, rotting heart right out of his chest the way he’s doing to me.
But I won’t. It wouldn’t be worth breaking Macon’s trust just for a miniscule taste of triumph.
“It isn’t his choice,” Sebastian states.
But I feel no satisfaction. The triumph dissolves into the smog of Sebastian’s threats, lost to the torturous imaginings of a life without seeing my son’s face every morning.
Without hearing him singing through the thin wall dividing his room from the living area.
Without tucking him into bed with Mr. Snuggles and a kiss to his little head.
“You’ll have to go through the courts,” I sputter. “And I won’t make it easy for you. Believe me, I will fight you at every turn. I will stop at nothing to keep my son where—”
“Our son,” he growls. “That’s exactly the problem with you, Eden. You can’t see further than your own nose, so how could I possibly trust that you have Macon’s best interest at heart?”
How can he say that after everything I’ve done?
After everything I’ve given up so he could pursue his white-collar dreams and green-paper bills. After the things I’ve sacrificed so that Macon never has to go without. The meals I haven’t eaten so Macon can go to sleep with his stomach full. My ambitions. My bed. My youth.
God, it feels like my ribs are splintering.
“It would be much easier if you just sign the petition, Eden. Save yourself the humiliation and the money you don’t have.
They’ll side with me, and you know it. You live in a one-bedroom apartment above a craft store.
You don’t even sleep in a bed, and you’re all alone.
Don’t stop Eliana and me from giving Macon what he needs… a real family.”
God, I hate him.
I hate him so fucking much.
I wish I could go back to high school and tell my stupid seventeen-year-old self to leave the quarterback alone. To never go to that house party and sleep with him in a bed belonging to someone whose name I can’t even remember now.
But if I did that, then I wouldn’t have Macon.
And as awful as his father is, I wouldn’t give up my little boy for the world.
“Hello again, gorgeous. Have you missed me?” Alex Wolfe stops dead in the center of the room, his eyes pinging between my ex-husband and me like he’s watching a game of tennis. He shifts on his feet, looking at me with concern. “Am I interrupting something?”
Never in my entire life have I been so happy to see somebody.
“Yes,” Sebastian grits through his teeth just as I shout, “No!”
An idea is forming. One that could go terribly fucking wrong if Alex doesn’t play along, but it’s the one time I’m glad for his overly flirtatious, overfamiliar disposition.
I told Sebastian I’d fight him at all costs, and that starts now.
“Actually…” I spin back to Sebastian with a small smile on my lips. “I’m not alone. As it happens, I’m also seeing someone. Isn’t that right, honey?”
Alex’s eyes bulge, as do my ex-husband’s.
“What?”
I’m not sure which of them said it, but there’s no turning back now. I’ve started it, and now I have to finish it.
Beckoning Alex to my side, I watch with a thundering heart as he steps behind my desk with a questioning expression.
“I missed you today.” My smile is too clenched, my words too tight, and my eyes too wide with desperation for any of this to be believable.
But to my utmost surprise, he grins, wide and glistening with perfect white teeth, and his eyes shimmer with a mix of mischief and delight. Leaning over me, he presses a kiss to my hair, lingering just long enough that even I believe it’s real. “Back at you, babe.”
“So…” I whirl back to Sebastian. “As you can see, you aren’t the only one who can give Macon a ‘real family.’” It might be a step too far to use air quotes, but I do so anyway.
He scowls. “Is it serious?”
“Very,” Alex answers for me. “Eden here is the center of my universe. The apple of my eye. My beloved. The light of my—”
“Okay,” I interrupt before he can go any further.
I appreciate his commitment more than he’ll ever know, but if he carries on, this charade will be over before it’s begun.
“Sebastian, you are welcome to file a petition.” No, he isn’t.
“But evidently, the process won’t be as smooth for you as you first thought.
And who do you think the courts will side with?
The mother who has raised him singlehandedly for the past ten years, or the father who has only now decided to take an interest in his life? ”
If looks could kill, I’d be bleeding out on the floor. Dusting off his suit, his knuckles turn white around the handle of his briefcase. “We’ll talk about this another time.”
“Certainly.”
Without another word, he heads for the door. But then he pauses, shaking his head, and looks back at us. Though, to my surprise, it’s Alex who’s got his attention. “Aren’t you that soccer player for the Seattle Strikers? Alex…something?”
“Wolfe.” Alex holds out his hands. “And yep, in the flesh.”
Sebastian narrows his eyes on me like he doesn’t know how I managed to land myself a star athlete. I haven’t. I would never be able to, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Interesting,” he says more to himself than anyone else before finally leaving the room.
I don’t breathe until I hear the front door close behind him.
But if I thought I’d get a second to absorb what just took place, I’m mistaken. Because Alex leans against my desk, his arms crossed against his chest, with an expectant and somewhat amused expression on his face.
“Hey, um, what the fuck was that?”
“Yeah, so…I need a favor.”