Her eyes lifted to find mine, and it stabbed my heart seeing them clouded with fear. “No one can guarantee that. Not even you Ky,” she admitted in defeat.
“Don’t underestimate me Eden.”
Our eyes latched fiercely onto each other’s, and I hoped to Christ my silent words were understood.
“What’s for dinner tonight pretty girl?” Josh’s soothing voice floated over the table and broke the trance Eden and I had on each other.
“Um, I think I want pasta,” she replied softly and her gaze dropped to the menu on the table.
“Aunt Carole makes the best chicken and mushroom pasta,” I suggested.
“Well I might have to try that then.”
Ashlyn sat opposite us, beside Josh, and had barely said a word since Eden had walked in. Her eyes latched tightly on Eden and her face was like stone. I knew this whole situation was killing her, but she refused to acknowledge it. No matter how many times I told her to speak with Eden, she wouldn’t.
“Ashlyn, I was wondering if you want to go shopping in the city sometime soon. I want to hit up Victoria’s Secret.”
Holy fuck me dead.
Instantly the thought of Eden’s sweet body wearing sexy lingerie appeared in my mind and lust shot straight to my cock. I squeezed her hand so tightly that she gasped beside me and I apologized under my breath. Josh’s roar of laughter from across the table drew me back to reality, and I shot him a look of pure death.
“Oh babe, you have just set my brother on a course of no return,” he teased arrogantly across from us.
I leaned in until my mouth was close to her ear and whispered, “You shop at Victoria’s Secret?”
She shifted until her face was barely inches from mine, and her eyes twinkled with amusement. “Yes.”
“Fuck me,” I growled. “You kill me Eden Rivers.”
I shook the thoughts from my head and looked back at a gleaming Josh and smirking Ashlyn. They pissed me off. I hid my smile behind my glass as I took a drink of my soda and finally Aunt Carole arrived to take our orders.
The rest of the dinner went well. Conversation flowed perfectly at the table and eventually I felt Eden relaxing beside me. I loosened my grip on her hand, expecting her to rip her hand from mine, yet she didn’t, not even when Aunt Carole arrived with our orders. She ate her pasta with one hand, as I struggled to eat my burger with one hand.
“Well kids, I am heading out. I have a hot date with brand new pussy tonight,” Josh announced without a care in the world. He slid out of the booth and stood at the end of the table with a smug look sweeping over his face.
Eden choked on her soda at the honesty that Josh liked to hand out to the universe.
“Shit sorry Eden, I tend to speak before I think,” he apologized profusely and looked at me warily.
“No need to apologize. Go and enjoy your, um, pussy,” Eden murmured, and I swear to God even her words blushed.
Riotous laughter filled the table and Ashlyn followed Josh out of the booth after announcing that she was also heading back to her apartment as she had an early morning meeting. Before Josh left he had invited Eden to his house for dinner later in the week, which she agreed to immediately.
“I cannot believe you just said pussy.” I laughed as I moved across the booth and slid into the seat opposite her.
“Really?” She looked across at me in amusement, raising a brow in the process
“You just don’t seem like someone who would cuss.”
“Guess what? I say fuck, shit, asshole, and cock too.”
My laughter gained the attention of Aunt Carole who glided to the table with two large slices of her famous chocolate cake. Eden’s widened glance took in the cake and then she delivered me the sweetest, most excited smile.
“This one told me that you said this was your favorite cake, so here you go sweetie. Enjoy.” Aunt Carole nodded toward me.
“I told you I’d tell her.”
We dug into our cake and silence fell over the table, well until Eden started sighing and doing the most innocent little moans as she enjoyed every bite of the cake. I thought of cats dying to try and stop thinking about the sounds coming from her deliciously enticing mouth, that was how fucked up this situation was. Nothing helped.
“So when we are finished I should walk you back to the hotel.”
“I want to stay. I want to play twenty questions,” she shot out, completely shocking me with her outburst.
“What?” I stammered back at her, confused.
She stuttered in response and started jabbing at the half eaten piece of cake. “I meant sure that would be nice. I should probably get some sleep. I have a big day tomorrow.”
“You want to play twenty questions with me?” Humor lingered in my question.
Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes dropped from mine.
“Eden, look at me,” I demanded and instantly her eyes found mine again. “You want to play twenty questions?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“I want to know you. If I am spending all this time with you, I don’t want it to be weird, and I thought if I knew things about you that I’d feel more comfortable.”
Well fuck me. I leaned back against the cushion of the booth and locked my hands behind my head. Eden, locked in my gaze, clasped her hands together on the table, but she didn’t waver. How did I get myself into this situation? For an outsider, I would expect them to think I was an asshole who was preying on a girl who couldn’t say no, but here she was taking the reins and dragging us closer together.
One month.
“Twenty questions, hey?”
The smile that lit up her face was the only answer I needed.
“I want to go and get a hot chocolate first. Do you want anything?”
“Coffee. Aunt Carole knows how I like it.”
I watched her closely as she weaved her way through the crowd, completely oblivious to the sideways glances she was receiving from every single guy in the room. As she stood at the counter, she gazed back at me over her shoulder. Innocence and sex appeal oozed off her in a terrifyingly intense wave. One minute she seemed like she was flirting, the next she was reserved and hiding behind a wall. She was pure confusion, and I felt like I was getting whiplash trying to keep up with her.
Every single plan I had was completely fucking up, and it was all due to me not being able to reign in my insecurities. I was obsessively attracted to this girl, but mostly she intrigued me. My ultimate fear was that my secret could be her biggest downfall, yet here I was coming up with stupid ideas and scenarios to try and have her in my life.
Once our order was ready she floated through the room and slid back into the booth opposite me, sliding my steaming hot cappuccino toward me.
“How do you know Chris?” she asked quietly.
Fuck.
How could I possibly answer this? I hesitated over my response before finally looking at her through concerned eyes.
“He is the cousin of someone I went to college with. He is an asshole, and you don’t need to have anything to do with him. Please promise me that no matter what you will say no to anything he says to you, if he ever approaches you again. I don’t think he will, but just in case.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I warned him that it would be in his best interest to stay away from you.”
“You did it again.”
I didn’t understand what she was implying. My brow furrowed as I looked at her over my mug. “Did what?” I finally asked.
“You saved me again.”
My heart twisted at her words. If only they were true. Those words were the most obvious lie in the world, but she would never know that. I couldn’t get into a conversation like this without freaking the fuck out. It was either leave her here for the likes of Chris who I knew would be lurking around somewhere, or quickly change where this conversation was headed.
We were here for a reason.
Twenty
fucking questions.
“What’s your favorite food?”
“Excuse me?”
“Twenty questions Eden. What’s your favorite food?”
“Oh, um as you have gathered from the Facebook stalking you had done I do love pizza, but also home cooked spaghetti.”
Noted.
“How old are you?” She continued with the game.
“I’m twenty-six. Birthday is August 15th,” I admitted with a smile and then continued with my next question. “Where are you from?”
“New Jersey. My parents are out of town though. I don’t come back so when I said I would be here for six weeks they had already had their trip to Australia booked and couldn’t back out.”
Her voice dropped low as she spoke. “Do you do this with all the people you hire?”
“What’s that?” I questioned, not exactly sure where she was going with this.
“Ask them to spend a month with you, take them out for coffee. It seems by Josh’s reaction the other day, you barely leave the office.”
“I can hand on heart say you are the only woman who I’ve asked to spend a month with, and it’s quite alarming how quickly you are learning things about me.”
“I’m just observant.” She smiled and lifted her mug to her lips, a perfect sigh escaping as she took a large sip of hot chocolate.
Eden being observant frightened me.
Her eyes lifted from mine and looked over my shoulder. “Why is your aunt staring at us like that? Actually why are all the staff staring at us?”
I twisted in my seat and sure enough Aunt Carole stood behind the counter flanked with two other ladies, all eyes latched onto Eden and me. As soon as they saw that they had been busted, they all of a sudden got busy and rushed off to different corners of the diner.
“You are the first girl I’ve brought here. You are officially the talk of Joe’s Place.”
“Do I want to be the talk of Joe’s Place?”
“You have no choice babe.”
She lifted the mug back to her lips to hide her smile behind the porcelain. I took a moment to admire her in silence. Her gaze faded away as a distant thought overtook her. It seemed to drag her away from reality right before me. My thoughts battled with each other, and I didn’t know whether to pull her back or let her succumb to her memories. Eden Rivers was the most tightly shut book I had ever encountered. I wanted to rip open the cover, disband the spine, and tear the pages of her story into a million pieces. More than anything I wanted to help her write new words, on perfectly crisp untouched paper, and to come up with the perfect title, for the perfect story.
Ky: Will I be seeing you tonight at Josh’s?
Eden: I’ll be the girl in the red jacket.
For two days Ky and I had been talking nonstop via text message. He was out of town on business so this was how it had to be. He did warn me that even though he wasn’t in town, he was still going to get his months’ worth of me. It was now routine for me to wake to a text and fall asleep after sending him a goodnight text.
Our twenty questions had continued during these text message conversations. In the past two days I had found out that his favorite color was green, he was a night owl, he didn’t like anything pineapple, and that he had a strong aversion to horror films.
His text messages were the only thing making me stay. Just today I had packed up my suitcase and lifted my phone from the bed to call the airline all because of a text message that simply read: Where’s your boyfriend now?
You would think that I’d tell someone, that I’d call the police but my fucked up head simply told me to ignore it because if I ignored it, it wasn’t really happening. Yep, I had officially lost my mind.
Instead I had opened my laptop and worked until my eyes felt like they were falling out of my head. I had set up the bed as my office space with my laptop and countless photos I had printed out of potential locations which I would be visiting in the next couple of days. My work and Ky’s text messages were the only thing that was making me stay and as long as I had those I knew that I’d be semi okay.
I was still trying to get my head around that Ky, who had come into my life so abruptly, was quickly becoming a safety I depended on; he was the one who saved me from the grips of Chris countless times yet he had asked me for nothing in return. I was choosing to ignore the intrigue that was being ignited within my closed off body when I thought of Ky Crawford. The spark that would twist and turn within my body with a simple touch of his hand was getting harder to ignore. This was so foreign to me.
But now as I stood in front of the mirror and ran my hands over my body, straightening the non-existent creases in my top, I smiled at the girl looking back at me. It was a real, legitimate smile, and that exhilarated me. I think I’d just flirted with Ky Crawford. I had mentioned the red jacket that I knew he liked? I swept subtle pink blush over my cheeks, swiped my lashes with midnight black mascara, and dabbed my lips with red lip gloss, then I found myself ready to head off to dinner at Josh’s.
The moment I stepped out of the cab in front of City Towers, my head tilted back and I took in the fifteen-story apartment building. The vast building glistened with lights that shimmered against the dark cold night sky. It was spectacular and more than inviting.
When I arrived on the thirteenth floor, music hit my ears, and it was coming from behind the door of apartment 13A. Loud bass thumping through my body destroyed the thought of a quiet dinner. I had my closed fist up to knock, when the door suddenly burst open and Ashlyn stormed out and rushed down the hall, her steps filled with brutal determination as her face twisted in anger. Her sobs hung in the air. As quickly as she appeared, she disappeared into 13C with a slam of the door behind her. I turned back and looked at Josh’s apartment just as he rushed out, his head moving back and forth as he looked up and down the empty hall before his eyes finally landed on me.
“Did you see Ashlyn? Where did she go?” Josh questioned as he hurried towards me.
“She went into that apartment.” I pointed and he took a hasty step away from me but stopped when my hand shot out and grabbed hold of his arm. “Josh I don’t think she wants to see anyone.”
“Fuck it! I knew this was a mistake. I fucked up yet again.” He ran his hands through his chocolate brown hair and began pacing the empty hall like he had the weight of the world on his broad shoulders.
“Has Ky arrived?” I asked, desperate to leave this awkward mess in the hall.
Josh stopped and turned back to me. The worry on his face not lost. “Ky arrived alright. He took one look at Lachlan and started going all caveman and throwing around shit.”
“What do you mean? Who is Lachlan?”
“Lachlan and Ashlyn have history, and Ky doesn’t like it. Thank fuck he left before he did something stupid.” Suddenly it seemed like everything dawned on him and he pleaded at me with his pale green eyes. “Can you go and make sure Ashlyn is okay? She won’t slam the door in your face.”
Everything that Josh had just divulged bounced around in my head. Who was Lachlan? Why did Ky care so much? Were Ky and Ashlyn secretly together? The feeling of being in the middle of some screwed-up game flooded me. Was I a pawn in a sick and twisted game? My mind went through every conversation I have had with Ky and Ashlyn but I couldn’t see any clues. Paranoia was a bitch that had become my evil sidekick.
“Please Eden,” Josh begged. “Go and see if she is okay?”
Nodding in agreement, I had no real choice but to say yes. I took a deep breath and made my way toward apartment 13C while all I could think about was Ky. I needed to know what was going on, but I knew that my first concern was Ashlyn. As I stood in front of the bright white wooden door, I hesitated briefly and shot a look back at Josh who smiled weakly at me before slipping back into his apartment, leaving me alone in the emptiness of the hall.
I lifted my fist knocking softly on the door and waited.
“Piss off Josh.”
“Babe, it’s Eden.”
> The click of the lock turning filled my ears and slowly the door swung open and revealed Ashlyn. Her cheeks were streaked with shed tears and her eyes rimmed red. The usually happy and sassy Ashlyn looked completely distraught as she opened the door in silent invitation.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly. What the hell kind of question was are you okay? She clearly wasn’t. “That’s a stupid question.” I shook my head dismissively.
Her smile gave me hope. I followed her into the vast open space of her apartment and hesitated by the couch as she glided into the kitchen. Not surprisingly, she reached for the freezer and pulled out a bottle of vodka before collecting two glasses from the cabinet and pouring in the crystal clear liquid. She seemed to have one mission and that mission was to forget. As she came toward me, a frown tinged her lips. Accepting the glass, I followed her lead and collapsed onto the black leather couch that took up the majority of space in her living room.
“Men are fucked up,” she admitted, after she took a large sip of straight vodka. “If it wasn’t for their cock I’d become a lesbian.”
“You clearly haven’t got the right type of vibrator,” I shot back with a smirk.
Her laughter was like music to my ears.
“Are you going to tell me who Lachlan is?” I asked softly, deciding not to hold back.
“He is the one who got away.” Her response was lightning quick, spoken without a single thought.
“Oh.” I took a sip of the vodka and the feeling of the strong liquor floating down my throat excited me. “Do you want to talk about it? I have all night, and you have vodka.”
A sheer look of determination flashed over her face, and it was almost like I was witnessing her sass reignite. “I feel like I should go back to Josh’s and flaunt the fuck out myself in front of Lachlan. I didn’t even know he was back. You’d think after two years together that he’d tell me when he’d be back in town. Obviously Australians have a different understanding of what consideration means. Fucking kangaroo lovers.”
My laughter filled the room at Ashlyn’s brutal declaration of Australians. A knowing smirk flickered over her lips and then she tipped her head back and the vodka disappeared.
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