35. EIGHTEEN
EIGHTEEN
EDEN
The last thing I needed was to wake up this morning having leaked on Alex’s sheets, but here we are. Mother Nature waits for nobody. And if she wants to show up two days early with no prior warning, then she damn well will.
Now that she has, she’s certainly working her hardest to make her presence known. If it isn’t enough that she’s managed to make it look as if I murdered someone in here last night, the cantankerous old hag has a death grip on my uterus and is refusing to let go.
I have half the mattress stripped when the door to the bedroom bursts open, and my son—dressed in a pair of SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas—bounds his way inside.
“Mom! I had the best sleep ever, oh my gosh. The bed is so big it was like sleeping on a spaceship. I can’t believe we get to stay in the Alex Wolfe’s house!”
After spending the rest of yesterday playing video games with Alex, we’d ordered pizza for dinner. I was worried he’d have trouble sleeping in such a new environment and thought he might climb in with me at some point during the night.
Evidently, I needn’t have worried.
“Wait.” He freezes, staring slack-jawed at the stain on the sheets. “Mom, you’re bleeding. You need to go to the hospital right now.”
One glance of blood and my child has hit the panic button.
“No, honey, I’m fine. It’s just—”
“ALEX!” he screams at the top of his lungs.
Ah, shit.
“Please don’t do that. Buddy, it’s all good. It’s just my—”
Too late.
“ALEX! MOM IS GONNA DIE!” he screams again, and to my utmost horror, I hear frenzied footsteps running down the hallway.
“Macon, it’s my period. That’s all. I’m not dying.”
“Oh.” His body sags. “Well, that’s okay, then.”
Footsteps draw closer, and I have no choice but to yank at the sheet as hard as I can. But the stupid thing gets caught on the corner farthest away from me, causing me to topple backward. I fall to the floor with a thud.
Fuck, I think I broke my coccyx.
Of course, this is the moment Alex joins us. As if the whole situation wasn’t humiliating enough already.
“What’s going on?”
To his credit, he looks genuinely concerned. He should be, but only for the threat this situation has on my sanity.
Alex assesses the situation with furrowed brows, scanning over Macon then the blood-stained sheets. They widen when they finally reach me on the floor, legs askew and dressed in nothing but an oversized t-shirt and a now ruined pair of panties.
This is all a bit too much to deal with at six o’clock in the morning.
“It’s okay.” Macon shuffles over to his side and pats him on the arm. “She’s not hurt. It’s just her period.”
Brilliant.
“I saw the blood and thought she was dying,” my wonderful, incredibly helpful son explains.
“There’s just so much of it. It’s okay, though.
Mom told me about periods before, and she said that they’re normal and that if I ever have a relationship with someone who has them when I’m a grownup, then I should buy them chocolate and get them a heat pack.
” He pauses then looks thoughtfully up at Alex.
“Do you have a heat pack I can give to Mom?”
I’m very much of the opinion that all children deserve to have a voice, but right now, I really need this child to stop talking. “Hey, buddy?” I wince. “Can you go get ready for school?”
He frowns. “What about the heat pack?”
“We can sort that out later.”
“Okay.” He shrugs. “If you’re sure.”
Very much so.
Macon is the center of my entire universe, but he lacks the ability to read a room. And as proud as I am to have raised a son as empathic and well-meaning as him, I fear that any further commentary on the volume of blood I’ve expelled will send me over the edge.
He pads back to his room, and I peel myself off the floor with a shudder.
“I’m sorry about the sheets,” I murmur, cheeks burning with shame. “I’ll replace them.”
If Alex were anything like Sebastian, he’d berate me for ruining his expensive Egyptian cotton and suggest a full hysterectomy to prevent the situation from happening again.
Alex’s expression, though, takes me off guard. Amused without being mocking. Concerned too, though apparently not for the state of his sheets. Concerned for…me?
“Don’t worry about them. I’ve got some hydrogen peroxide somewhere. It’ll sort them right out.”
To my utmost horror, he takes a handful of the sheets and tugs them from the bed. I stare at the splattered material now firmly in his grasp in disbelief.
“You…don’t care?”
He tilts his head to one side. “Why would I? I’ve done worse damage with a nosebleed.”
“But it came out of my vagina.”
He nods once. Slowly. “That’s generally how periods work.”
“And now you’re touching it.”
He chuckles. “I’m not touching the blood. But even if I were, it wouldn’t be a big deal.”
I’m so confused.
He’s a man. And in my experience, men consider periods to be the single most disgusting thing they could ever have the misfortune of encountering.
As if fifty percent of the human population doesn’t experience it every month.
But he’s just standing there, all nonchalant, not a care in the world, holding my ruined sheets in his bare hands.
In my mind, someone holds up a green flag and waves it with vigor.
“It’s a period, Eden. It’s not dirty or gross or shameful. Most women get them, you know? You’re not the only one.”
Well, yes, of course I know that. It’s just a surprise that he does too.
“Right.” I clear my throat. “That’s…yes, well…okay.”
His lips purse together as he fights to contain a laugh. Strangely, it doesn’t raise my hackles, but that might be due to the fact that I’m still processing the chaos of the last fifteen minutes.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m buffering.”
“Makes sense.” He snorts. “I’ll go get these washed, and then I want to talk to you about something.”
“Can’t you talk to me now? You’re here. I’m here. Seems as good a time as any.”
He rubs a hand across his jaw. “I figured you were probably wanting to shower and, um, put some clothes on.”
His gaze falls to my bare legs, lingering there so long I start to wonder if he’s counting the hairs I haven’t shaved for over a week.
Oh god, what if there’s blood on them?
But then his eyes turn heated, running up my thighs with such intensity that I have a hard time not squeezing them together.
What is it about this man that makes me constantly feel warm and breathless?
His body, yes, is objectively hot. But Sebastian had abs when we were together, and I never had the urge to rub my clit on them.
Alex’s flirting is an obvious issue. He’s so good at it that it puts me at a severe disadvantage, but I’m still not convinced that’s the reason I feel so compelled to throw myself at him.
I have a terrible feeling that it’s simply because he’s kind to me.
The bar really is on the floor.
“You’re right.” I nod, taking a step away from him, even though there’s already at least eight feet between us. “I forgot I was basically naked.”
“Actually…” He smirks. “I’d argue that you’re wearing too many clothes.”
Welp. There he goes again.
I give him my back, tutting as if he’s pissed me off. It’s easier for him to believe that his flirting irritates me.
Because he’s a playboy. A well-known, well-documented playboy. Flirting is his default setting, and just because it’s aimed in my direction now, it doesn’t mean that he’s interested in me.
Our fake relationship must have dampened his opportunity to go out and fuck the rest of America. And he made it perfectly clear in our initial discussions of the agreement that love and relationships are two things he’s not interested in.
I’d be a fool to fall for his charm.
But fall I do anyway.
It turns out that the thing Alex wanted to talk to me about was joining him at practice. Apparently, the investors will be there, and he wants to use the opportunity to rub our relationship in their faces.
So, we dropped Macon off at school together, much to my son’s excitement, who yelled out the window of Alex’s Bugatti that the captain of the Seattle Strikers is now his personal driver. And now, I sit in the stands of the training ground, shivering from the chill in the air.
On the grass, Alex runs drills with his team, kitted out in his track pants and a long-sleeve thermal that highlights every peak and valley on his abdomen. As always, his long hair is tied at the back of his head in a topknot.
“Score a shot against me and I’ll give you fifty bucks,” Arun, the team’s keeper says, situating himself in front of the goal. “If I block it, I get to cut off your ponytail.”
Don’t take the bet, I whisper inside my head. I’ve never been into men with topknots before, but it suits him. It’s wild and free, just like he is, and it would be a damn shame if he ever caved to the teasing of his teammates and cut it.
Fortunately, whether of his own volition or because I managed to successfully master the art of telepathy, Alex shakes his head and winks. “What will Eden have to grab onto if I do that?”
What did he just say?
“Wait, you like having your hair pulled?” Theo asks. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
Alex stares at me across the grass, his gaze hot as fire. “I love it.”
Something flutters in my stomach because I can’t help feeling that he’s giving me the information to use later.
But that can’t happen.
No matter how hell-bent on it my body seems to be. Or how relentless he is with his flirting. Or how many times I see him without his shirt on. Nothing good could ever come of it.
He’s an expert in casual sex, and I’m so inexperienced that I can’t even be considered a novice.
Sebastian is the only man I’ve ever slept with, and he was as self-centered inside the bedroom as he has always been outside of it. In the years that we were married, I don’t think he made me come once.
So, no, I can never cross that line with Alex.
Because pathetic as it is, if he were to achieve something that Sebastian never could, I fear nothing would stop me from falling in love with him.
Kindness and orgasms are apparently my only two requirements in a man.
“Enjoying the show?”