46. TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FOUR
EDEN
The front door slams.
I can hear it from the bedroom, the creaking of hinges causing moths of anxiety to catch flight in my stomach. Alex must be home. For the past two nights, I’ve forced myself to fall asleep before he comes in, too chicken shit to deal with the uncertainty of whether or not he’ll knock on the door.
At this point, I don’t even know if I want to talk to him.
The sadness of his rejection has morphed into anger, a steady thrumming of rage and disbelief that he could seduce me with pretty words only to throw me to the curb as soon as it was over.
As if I’m just one of the many girls he uses to get himself off.
It’s not like I was delusional enough to think I was special or that letting him into my pants would magically flip the switch on our fake relationship.
But I did think we had a common understanding.
A mutual respect. That, given the nature of our situation and the existence of my ten-year-old son in his home, the least he could do after defiling me in a laundry room is look me in the fucking eye.
Speaking of Macon, he’s been asking about Alex, wondering why he hasn’t been home for two days to eat dinner with us or play video games. He misses him. So, on top of feeling like shit, I’m also waist deep in mom guilt. Because my choices have yet again had a negative impact on my son.
Well, I’ve learned my lesson now. That’s the last time I ever let Alex Wolfe touch me in any capacity outside the boundaries of our arrangement.
There’s a knock at the door. Tentative, light, and unsure. It can’t be Macon. He fell asleep hours ago, and if he’d woken up, he wouldn’t have bothered announcing his arrival, just thrown the door wide open and climbed into bed with me.
It’s Alex, then. I guess he’s mustered up a little courage to finally have a conversation.
I have half a mind to ignore him and give him a taste of what he’s put me through over the last few days. But, evidently, I’m not a woman who possesses much self-control.
“Come in.”
His head appears first, peeking around the door, and I swallow a gasp at the state of him. His eyes are dark and smokey, as if he hasn’t slept for days, and he wears guilt on his face like a second-degree burn.
When he finally steps into the room, slowly, like I’m a lion who could attack at any moment, his arms hang limply by his sides, and there’s an unkept five o’clock shadow ticking across his jaw.
His gaze drops to the floor. “Hi.”
I stare at him in silence.
Petty as it may be, I’m aiming to make this interaction as uncomfortable for him as possible.
Realizing I’m not going to respond, he peels his gaze from the ground and looks at me. “Are you okay?”
“Never been better.”
“Good. That’s, uh…”—he scratches the back of his neck—“good.”
“You said that already.”
He tries to smile, but it falls short. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
I pull the covers farther up my body and fold my hands in front of me. Watching. Waiting. For an apology? I don’t know. I’m not sure I even possess the will to hold out hope for one of those, but an acknowledgement of what happened would be nice.
I don’t get it.
“Did you guys eat dinner?”
“We ordered Chinese food.”
There’s a flare of something in his eyes, and I know why. Chinese food is his favorite. I even ordered his favorite dishes: chop suey and crab rangoon. I barely touched it and sent the leftovers home with Aspen. I may be pathetic, but I can be a petty bitch when I want to be.
Alex clears his throat. “That’s good.”
“Is that all you’re capable of saying today?”
“No, um, I came because…well, I came to say…” He looks at the bed and points with a half-mast finger. “Can I sit?”
I wave my hand as if it means nothing to me what he does with his body, but internally, I’m spiraling because, let’s be real, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all if I didn’t care what he does with his body. I care. A lot, it seems.
I also don’t want him anywhere near the bed because, if he looks closely enough, he’ll see the stains from my melted ice cream and, most notably, my tears.
He lowers himself to the mattress beside my outstretched legs, his back ramrod straight, and I hug my knees to my chest in a bid to put as much distance between him and my body as possible.
Not that it makes much difference. I can smell him from here.
The eucalyptus scent of his body wash is stronger than usual, as if he’s recently showered, and it makes the backs of my eyes burn.
Because the last time I was close enough to smell him, he was kissing me with more passion than I have ever experienced, and his fingers were curling into the place I haven’t had the courage to share with anyone since my divorce.
He was looking at me like I meant something…
right before he took a hammer to my trust and shattered it.
“Well, spit it out, then.”
He flinches. Then he gathers himself, sucking in a breath, and settles solemn eyes onto me. “I’m sorry.”
Huh, I wasn’t expecting that.
Men don’t apologize. They ask how long you’re going to be pissed off for, or redirect the blame onto you, but they don’t ever say sorry—at least, not in my experience.
“For what exactly?” I reposition myself so I’m sitting higher on my pillows. “Fingering me on a washing machine, or for ghosting me afterward?”
He winces. “Both, I guess.”
Shit. That hurts. “Well, I’m sorry you regret what happened, but need I remind you that it was you who initiated it?”
“No, I know, I–” His eyes screw shut. “Wait, I didn’t say I regretted it.”
“You said you were sorry it happened.”
“Well, yes, but no, that’s not what I meant.
I didn’t regret it. I don’t regret it. It’s just…
I… Shit, what I’m trying to say is… I don’t…
” he trails off, his brows pulled so tightly together they’ve become one enormous eyebrow.
He picks at the bed sheets, dusting off invisible lint, and I subtly shift the bedding away from him to hide the evidence of my mental breakdown.
Because as cold as I’m being right now, I have, in fact, spent the last forty-eight hours in inconsolable tears.
I force a bored expression onto my face.
“It seems like you don’t know what you want to say, so why don’t you go and take another two to three days to work it out?
And I’ll just wait here, alone, in an apartment that isn’t mine, without any of my own stuff, while my son asks where you are.
And I’ll lie and tell him you’re at training camp, because I don’t actually know the answer, and you’re not answering your messages. Sound good to you?”
His face crumbles. “God, Eden, you’re killing me here.”
That earns him a caustic snort. It’s possibly the most unattractive noise I’ve ever made, but I couldn’t give less of a shit. “Oh, I’m sorry, you must be really suffering.”
His head hangs low between his shoulders. “No, I get it.”
“Get what? That it was really shitty what you did? That it’s exactly the kind of thing my ex-husband used to put me through?”
His head snaps up. “I am nothing like that man.”
“Really?” I release a sad laugh. “Because from where I’m sitting, you pulled exactly the same shit that he did.
You got what you wanted and then you disappeared on me, Alex.
For days. You didn’t give me a heads up, didn’t let me know when you’d be coming back.
You just expected me to be here, waiting for you, in this cold, empty fucking apartment that feels the furthest thing from home.
Worst of all, you did it to Macon. He’s grown really attached to you, and he doesn’t understand why you didn’t say goodbye before going to your ‘training camp.’” I put the last words in air quotes to really drive the point home.
I think that’s why it’s affected me so much.
How much his disappearing act has confused and upset Macon.
How I had to lie to him again in an attempt to soften the blow and cover for yet another man’s shitty behavior.
And how it took me right back to being eighteen with a newborn, scared and alone, as I waited to see if Sebastian would finally walk back through the door.
“Fuck.” Alex grabs a fistful of his hair. “It wasn’t like that. I swear, it wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like, Alex? Because you keep saying words, but you’re not actually telling me anything.”
“I got scared, okay?” he bellows, his voice thundering with anger and frustration. It isn’t aimed at me, though, but himself. His shoulders drop, his head falling heavy between his shoulders once more. “I got scared.”
“Of what? Me?”
“Sort of, yeah.” He nods, no longer able to look me in the eye. “Scared of what I was feeling for you, anyway.”
“What, um…” I swallow. “What were those feelings?”
“I don’t know.” His hands tremble in his lap.
“Like a warmth, where my heart is. And happiness, I guess. What happened in the laundry room, you know, with us… I’ve never experienced anything like that with someone else.
It was really intense, and when it was done, you gave me this cute little smile, and it felt like my heart stopped. ”
Color me confused.
“And that made you freak out?”
He nods again. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t been that happy in a long time.”
“And that’s a bad thing, because…”
A solitary tear slips loose from his eye and rolls down his face. “Because the happier you are, the harder it hurts when it’s taken away.”