She pulls away and smiles, her cheeks turning pink as she brushes my hair back and says, “That’s not why I brought you up here, Bodhi.” She gives me a quick kiss. “I think you need a nap. I think that’s the only way you’ll make it to dinner. A nap, then we can head out, okay?”
I pull her down with me, kiss her again, throw my arms around her stunning body, and then completely and totally fall asleep.
chapter twenty-four
Bodhi
I jolt awake about an hour later, lost between that place of extreme deep sleep and trying immediately to wake up. My eyes groggily open to see that Eva’s next to me on her bed, staring at a notebook that’s resting on her thighs. One of my arms is still draped over her stomach. She has a frown on her face and looks equal parts amused and pissed. Hoping this has nothing to do with me, I wiggle my fingers on her t-shirt to get her attention. I can see her smile before she even looks over in my direction.
“You’re awake,” she notices, closing her notebook and putting it on top of her laptop that’s on the table next to her.
“I am.”
She pushes herself down a little on her bed and lies right next to me. She runs her finger over the scab above my eye. “You good now?”
“Much. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” she tells me, smirking. “Just do me a favor and invite me next time.”
I laugh. “Noted. My girlfriend likes to drink with the guys.”
Eva’s face turns red. “Girlfriend …” she repeats.
It slipped from my mouth. I didn’t even realize I said it until she repeated it back to me. “Well, yeah? I mean, is that not what you want? Are we not there yet?” Panic has swarmed my mind.
She looks amused with my worried state. “We’re there, Bodhi. We’re definitely there. I’ve just never heard it spoken out loud before. You and me, girlfriend, boyfriend.”
I trace her face with my fingers. “Might be the best thing I’ve heard in a while.”
“Sounds beautiful.”
“Babe, you’re beautiful.”
God, I’ve been in love with Eva Calloway for so many years, but I haven’t been able to love her this way, until right now. It’s amazing. To lie here with her so close to me, knowing that we’re together and that I can kiss her whenever the hell I want, instead of dreaming about her every night and waking up feeling miserable in the morning when I realize she’s not next to me. It’s like I’ve caught lightning in a bottle now. I understand just how goddamn lucky I am.
Eva’s staring at me funny. “What are you thinking about?” she asks quietly.
“You. Always you.” And then I lean in and kiss her.
She sighs under our kiss as I grab her waist and shift her body so she’s on top of me. Her hands go to my bare chest and she runs her fingers up and down as our mouths continue to work magic together. It’s incredible, her fingernails on my skin, her body sitting on top of mine, her lips moving in rhythm with my own. I grab at her shirt, wanting to pull it off. I desperately want to see what she looks like sitting on top of me wearing a bra and these goddamn tight shorts.
She only pauses for a moment, but then pulls apart from our kiss and sits up. She’s smirking as she raises her arms up in the air, waiting for me to make my move. I swiftly lift her shirt over her head and toss it to the floor. She sits there, her legs on either side of my body, her breasts busting out of her tight black bra and throwing every ounce of my soul into an immediate desire to have them under my hands, or better yet, under my tongue. She doesn’t care in the least bit that I’m staring directly at them and can’t move my eyes. She runs her fingers through my hair, which suddenly breaks my gaze.
“My god, Eva. You make me—”
Then her lips are back on mine, pressing hard against my own as her fingers run along the top of my swim trunks. Dammit, my whole body is trembling with the realization that she could easily slip them right off. I pull my lips from hers, bringing them to her neck as she moves her head to the side. I start softly sucking on her skin as she groans into my ear.
“Bodhi, that feels amazing.”
My lips move to her chest. “Your body under my mouth feels amazing, babe.”
For a few minutes, I think this is it. That this is the moment where Eva and I going to have sex. With each small roll of her hips on top of mine whenever she moves, each gasp that comes from her mouth as my lips cover every square inch of her uncovered body, I question if this is indeed our moment. I can’t stop questioning it. Why am I questioning it? Shit. Stop over analyzing everything, Bodhi.
I reach at her shorts and my fingers find the cold button. She freezes, very suddenly, but there was definitely a second of her questioning my action. I move my hands away from her shorts and place them on her back, kissing her neck again before bringing my eyes to hers as I wonder what’s safe to do next. I don’t want to rush into anything she’s not ready for, but the desire to have sex with her is attacking every sane thought that might be left in my brain.
She hovers above me, her hair hanging down on either side of her face, the ends tickling my chest. Her amazing green eyes locked onto mine.
“It’s getting hard to stop this, huh?” I say to her.
She bites her lip and nods, panting a little as she does.
That lip. Every single time she bites it … I lean up and kiss it, because I absolutely have to. “We don’t have to do anything,” I make clear. “I don’t want you to feel like we’re rushing—”
“I want to, Bodhi. I really want to.”
“But …?” I question.
She sighs and moves from hovering over me to sitting next to me. She brings her knees up to her chest and rests her head on them. I sit up too, moving her hair away from her face, and bringing mine to hers. Something is definitely bothering her.
“We have all the time in the world,” I tell her. “I’m fine with waiting—”
“It’s not that at all. Trust me, I’m ready. I’ve been ready, from the moment on the beach.” She then lets out a little laugh. “I’ve actually been ready since before I even saw you on the beach.”
I love hearing this, but it doesn’t make me feel any better right this second. “What is it then? You can tell me, babe.”
She points to her notebook. “My mind is in another place. I don’t want it to be when you and I …” She’s blushing now.
“When we have sex?” I finish for her, trying not to laugh at the innocence she’s showing.
“Well … yeah.”
“I love that,” I tell her, running my fingers along her bare arm. “And I love that talking about this makes your face turn numerous different shades of red.”
Eva hits my shoulder but laughs.
I take her hand in mine. “So where is your head at right now?”
She points back to her notebook and laptop. “While you were sleeping, I was doing some researching. I was looking to see if I could find out anything about all this shit going on. Mr. Channing, Owen Edwards, your dad—”
“Did you?”
She shakes her head while leaning off her bed and grabbing her shirt. She slips it back on. I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed.
“No. Nothing,” she confirms. “Your mom though, I was able to find a bit out about your mom, I think.”
“My mom?” I question alarmingly. “What about her?” I’m suddenly nervous that Eva has uncovered the fact my mom was a multimillionaire.
“Do you remember when I told you and the guys what I heard my dad and Mr. Channing talking about?”
I nod. “The letters. Owen Edwards.”
“And?” she includes. “And Phoebe Rialson.”
I nod again.
“I want to know what has my dad and Mr. Channing so worried. I can’t find anything important about Owen, so I tried to see if there was anything on Phoebe Rialson, but there wasn’t. So I looked up Rialsons in Flagler and there’s so much history about them, going back years and years, but the Rialson name pretty
much died out in the early 1970s, when … you ready?” she questions me.
I nod my head.
“When Kenneth Rialson, from the Halifax, disappeared with his girlfriend from the beach, Annie Edwards.”
“Edwards?” I question. “Like Owen Edwards? This is the story everyone talks about, right?”
“Yes. Like Owen Edwards, and yes, the stupid story everyone talks about. I’m not sure if they’re related, Owen and Annie, but I guess it’s possible? Kenneth Rialson though, he was a junior. His dad, Ken Rialson, passed away in 1970. They had a lot of money, Bodhi, the Rialson family. Like a lot. More than anyone else in Flagler will ever have. They owned so many different businesses and a chain of car dealerships all throughout Florida, rented out vacation homes too. And when Kenneth and Annie disappeared, one of the Rialson’s bank accounts was drained the day it happened.”
“You think Kenneth and Annie took the money?”
“I do.”
“What does this have to do with my mom though?” I ask her.
“Just wait,” she says. “By looking at old news articles online about the night Kenneth and Annie disappeared, I noticed the Rialsons also had a daughter, Rebecca. She was a lot older than Kenneth and not living at home when her brother disappeared, but I dug around some more and discovered that Rebecca stayed in Flagler even after everything that happened, and got married to … hang onto the bed … Chip Channing.”
“Channing?” I choke. “Please tell me there’s no relation to …” I point my finger to her balcony.
She keeps going. “Rebecca and Chip, had one son, and named him Paul.”
My eyes go huge. “Paul Channing? The Paul Channing who died and left all of his money to his second cousin or some shit like that? Who lives across the Halifax from you?”
“Exactly,” she confirms. “Then I got to thinking, why would Mr. Channing be so concerned about losing his money and worried about a Phoebe Rialson? If the Rialson name died out when Kenneth disappeared?”
My mind spins. “What if Kenneth disappeared, but didn’t disappear? What if Rebecca knew where her brother was?”
Eva smiles. “That’s what I thought too. But there is no trace of Kenneth Rialson or Annie Edwards. But if they disappeared together, and if Rebecca knew, maybe Phoebe Rialson was Kenneth and Annie’s daughter. Which would make Paul Channing her cousin? The letters, maybe the letters and stuff explained all of this. Maybe Owen Edwards found out about them. Maybe the letters are proof that the inheritance should have stayed in their family, that it should go to Phoebe and her family, and not some long distantly related great cousin named Henry Channing. This would explain why he is so worried about losing his money.”
I’m dating a private investigator. Goddamn, this girl is incredible. “You figured all this out in the hour I was sleeping?”
She shakes her head. “No. I’ve been researching these names all night. After you left, I couldn’t sleep. I was planning on telling you everything when you got here … but I figured out the most important part, while you were sleeping.”
“Which is?”
“Phoebe Rialson.”
“You found her?” I shockingly ask. “Who is she? Where is she? You actually found her?”
“I think so?” she blushes, and then she grabs the notebook from the table next to her. “Don’t freak out, Bodhi. Promise me you won’t freak out.”
“Why do you look scared, Eva?” I question.
She flips open her notebook and I glance down at it. I see a ton of names and letters scribbled on the paper.
“I made a list of everyone,” she tells me. “Last night. Henry, Owen, Annie, the whole Rialson family. As I found new information, I kept writing more names down because I really think everything is connected somehow. I added my parents. I added your parents, and that’s when I noticed something crazy. Two of the names, they looked so similar to me. I couldn’t figure out why, but my eyes kept going back to them, so I wrote one down and then the other below it, and that’s when it hit me. Just now, while you were sleeping.”
She flips to a clean page. I watch as she writes Phoebe Rialson down, and then I watch as she writes Lenora Bishop down below it. I sit there, looking down at the paper as she matches each letter to one another, drawing a line to connect them. Every fucking letter, except for one lone letter E in my mom’s name. She looks up at me, wincing a bit as she does.
“Bodhi,” she nervously says. “What was your mom’s—”
“Elizabeth …” I say, knowing exactly what she was going to ask. “Her middle name was Elizabeth, but you already knew that, Eva.”
She nods her head. “Do you know what an anagram is?”
“I do.”
“Lenora E. Bishop is an exact anagram for Phoebe Rialson,” she whispers. “Bodhi. I think your mom is—was, could have been, Phoebe Rialson. And if this is true, the inheritance Henry Channing got from Paul Channing, might be yours.” She grabs my hands and leans in as she softly says, “Bodhi, I think Henry Channing is worried that you are coming after his money.”
chapter twenty-five
Eva
B odhi stands up and starts pacing around my room. He doesn’t say anything for a while, just walks back and forth, looking deep in thought and trying to come to terms with everything I just said.
“Say something, Bodhi,” I whisper after a few minutes.
He stops pacing and stands right in front of me, squatting down so he and I are eye level. “Eva, my mom left me almost thirty million dollars in a trust fund that I’ll have access to when I turn eighteen.”
My jaw drops. That is not what I was expecting him to say. It takes my mouth a minute to catch up. “Thirty million dollars?”
“Roughly.”
“That’s … that’s a lot of money.”
He takes a seat on my bed again. “Sometimes I forget about it and when I remember, it doesn’t feel real. Like I’m dreaming almost.”
“What are you going to do with it all?”
“Live,” he replies. “I just want to live. Travel a lot. Take care of every person who matters to me. You. Take care of—”
“Bodhi,” I interrupt him, grabbing his hands. “You don’t have to worry—”
“No,” he shakes his head. “Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t tell me not to think about you when I plan my future. You are my future. You’re what matters to me. I know what I want my life to look like, and you’re in it. Forever. You want to be in it forever, right?”
“Bodhi, of course I do,” I confirm. “You never have to ask me that. Never.”
He looks relieved. “I know it’s scary as hell to talk about this all when we’re only seventeen, what our future looks like, but why does it have to be?”
He’s waiting for me to say something, but I don’t know what to say. What are you supposed to say when your boyfriend tells you he has a trust fund with thirty million dollars in it? What are you supposed to say when you realize the rest of your life looks extremely different from what it did five minutes ago?
“You,” he continues. “I want you, Eva. I would trade every single penny of that money for you. If I’m lucky enough to have both, I’m going to run wild with it. We, we are going to run wild with it. I just don’t want this to change the way you look at me. Or the way you treat me. Or us.”
I stare up at him. He looks so worried, like I would actually treat him differently because I suddenly found out he’s going to be a millionaire one day. I move his curls away from his forehead. “Your money would never change the way I look at you, or treat you, or us. I don’t need any of it, to be happy with you, to have a future with you. Money doesn’t guarantee happiness, but what we have,” I lean in and kiss his lips, “what we have together does. As long as we’re together, I’m always going to be happy, Bodhi.”
He looks comforted by my words as he leans in and kisses me. “I don’t deserve you, Eva,” he sighs into my mouth.
“You absolutely do,” I say back. His fingers l
ace in with mine. “The money,” I continue, “do you think it might have been an inheritance she got? Money from Paul Channing? That she was Phoebe Rialson?”
“Possibly?” he answers. “I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t say anything to me about any of this. And if this money was from Paul Channing, how did Henry Channing get all that money from Paul Channing too? It doesn’t add up, does it?”
I think for a minute. “Unless the money in your trust fund is just a portion of the inheritance? If Mr. Channing doesn’t know this, and he’s afraid his money is the only money there was, and it’s going to get taken away somehow?”
“Eva, you’re talking about a ton of money then.”
“I know,” I mumble. “I just feel like this is real. That I’ve uncovered something, and the more we look into it all, the more we’re going to figure it out. I mean, if this is all true, could this be the reason why my dad was so pissed when he saw you in my hospital bed three years ago? Like I was fraternizing with the enemy?”
He raises his eyes at me. “If this is true, you think your dad knew my mom was Phoebe Rialson? How, Eva?”
“I don’t know,” I sigh. “But I just feel like I’m onto something here—”
“I think you’re definitely onto something,” he interrupts me. “But I don’t want to think about your dad knowing secrets about my mom.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “I wish he was here so I could just ask him.” A question suddenly enters my mind. “Bodhi, did your mom ever talk about your grandparents? Her parents?”
He raises his eyebrows. “You know the answer to that.”
I push a little further. “Did she ever say anything at all about them?”
He stares at me for a moment. “Just that they died in a car crash when she was eighteen, and the house was handed down to her from them.”
The irony hits us both at the same time.
Confession Page 26