“Oh, Eden.” I tugged her into my arms.
“It was for the best,” she said. “And I know that sounds callous, but if I’d brought up a child in that environment, if I’d exposed him or her to Tim, I-I don’t know what would have happened. If he’d hurt my baby—” She rested her forehead on my shoulder. “I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself.”
I held her tighter. “None of this was your fault.”
“I know,” she said. “Logically, I do. But . . . sometimes, I don’t know how to move forward. I lost so much in so many ways, but worst was the feeling that the people who were supposed to love me hurt and abandoned me. Not just Tim, but my parents marrying me off to a pedophile and then never checking in on me.” Her head came up. “They were ashamed of me, disappointed I’d been impure, and they turned away from me the moment the ink on the marriage license was dry. I heard nothing from them until I’d gotten my first big spread. And then they managed to find a way to be in touch.”
Rage burned a fiery trail down my spine. “They wanted money?”
She nodded. “Apparently the tractor had broken down and the barn roof was leaking.”
“You told them to fuck off, I hope.”
“I gave them the money,” she murmured. “And then made them promise to never contact me again. I was in New York. I was working. I was moving forward. I . . . didn’t want to remember my past ever again.”
“Oh, baby.”
Her face was lined with exhaustion. “I know.”
“I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“Me, too,” she murmured. “But Tim managed to kill himself by driving his drunk ass into a tree, so there is some small amount of karma in this world.”
“Well, couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” I muttered.
She froze and then she began shaking in my arms. For a second, I thought I’d made her cry, but then I heard the chuckles break free, the laughter escape. She leaned back, her green eyes glistening with tears, from the past or from the laughing, I didn’t know.
“Thank you,” she said, after taking a few deep breaths. “For listening, for understanding.”
“Always,” I murmured and then tugged her close again. “And I’m so sorry.”
She hugged me tight. “I know. Because you’re a good man.”
We stayed like that, her pulled halfway out of her chair and into mine, our arms wrapped around one another, for long moments, but eventually she shifted, sitting back into her own chair. “Regardless, of everything, I’m glad I found my way to New York, even if it was from one very unrealistic TV episode.”
I chuckled. “I’m glad, too.”
“And for a long time, I thought pushing through my past meant not telling anyone, meant locking it up deep inside. Because of you, I know that I don’t have to do that.”
I shook my head. “No, baby. That’s all you.”
“I think I need to get on the actor bandwagon and see a therapist.”
He brushed his lips to my temple. “I think you have the resources and so if you want to talk to someone, you should.”
“Yeah.” A sigh as she pressed her lips together, wiped a finger under each eye. “Okay. Enough sad. Let’s eat pancakes and do nothing for the rest of the day.” She stood then stopped, her face aghast. “Oh, no! What about your shoot? You said you had—”
“Done.” I smiled. “It was with the sunrise. Just a few friends who wanted some maternity pics.”
“You’re getting to be quite the preggo photographer.”
Speaking of . . . but shit, did I really want to bring up my suspicions after all she’d told me?
Fuck, no I didn’t, but I should tell her as soon as possible.
Except . . . wouldn’t she know? If she’d been pregnant before? Her boobs looked normal-sized this morning. I was probably worrying for nothing. It had been that incredible dress, lifting and emphasizing her assets. She didn’t seem nauseated now, and that usually happen in the morning, right?
“Damon?”
I blinked.
Suspicions or not, I’d need to broach the topic.
Just not right now, not after the emotions of the morning.
Which was why I stood and slanted my mouth across hers, only pulling back when my lungs were screaming for oxygen, and cupped her cheek. “I think you promised me world-famous pancakes.”
She grinned. “You’d better reciprocate with perfectly crispy bacon.”
“I can do that.”
Eden trailed me to the stove, scraping the ruined pancakes off the griddle and then turning it back on to reheat. “Damon?”
“Yeah?”
“You make me think that I can do a lot of things I never imagined possible.”
Those words, more than anything Eden had said thus far that morning, wove their way into my heart. I’d need them there because neither of us could have predicted the storm that was going to tear through the peaceful world we’d just begun to create for ourselves.
And I didn’t mean the baby I suspected was growing in Eden’s womb.
I meant something much darker, much more sinister.
And much more devastating.
Twelve
Eden
“And after that, we’ve got some early PR stuff for the superhero flick—they want to get some promotional shots of you in your costumes, do an ensemble photo with the whole cast in theirs, and then want to film you doing some of those YouTube only features,” Maggie said.
I lay back onto my couch, cell to my ear. “One of those Internet searches or quiz thingies?”
“Thingie is the technical term?” Maggie teased.
“Absolutely,” I agreed.
“What’s the matter?” Maggie asked. “What’s that in your tone?”
“Nothing.”
Well, nothing so much as the fact that Damon had filled my life with upheaval . . . or maybe not so much upheaval as feelings.
Yes, I was happy and hopeful.
Yes, I was also saying that as if it were a dirty four-letter word.
“Come on now,” Maggie said. “You’re my easiest client.”
I grunted. “You always say that.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“You know what.”
“So, don’t stop being it now?” I asked, lips quirking despite myself.
“Yes,” Maggie said with a laugh. “Exactly that.”
“I’m fine, Maggie,” I said and sighed heavily. “I’m . . . um. I just— I guess—”
“You’re scaring me.”
“It’s not bad,” I reassured. “It’s just that you might have to deal with some of those Is Eden Pregnant? stories.”
“What?”
“I’m seeing someone new, like actually dating someone, and it’s got me a little unsettled.” I bit my lip. “Well, not unsettled, exactly. More excited, but also nervous.” So much talk about pushing through the past and moving forward, but I couldn’t even put what Damon and I were doing into proper sentences—