“I know you are, Mason. Sorry isn’t going to fix us, though. Love is not supposed to hurt this way, Mason. You can’t hold back what you did from me, turn around and do something that the outcome could have been worse than I imagine. Love hurts at times, we know it does because we’ve fought, screamed, and said mean things over the years. It shouldn’t hurt like this. I’m worth more than a love turned into lies. So are you, and the thought of losing you when we have so much to live for hurts so much.”
Her eyes move over my entire face. I can’t read what she’s thinking, can barely keep my eyes open, but I feel her relief as if she were touching me.
Swinging my legs over the bed, the rush of dizziness causes my head to swirl. Taking a moment, I notice an IV in my arm, and my body jerks on a shudder. I want to wrench the damn thing out so I can hold my wife without any obstacle restricting me from tugging her as close to me as I can get her. That is, if she’ll allow me to.
“Ever since you found out, hell before that even, I kept telling myself a freight train was coming. Every time you pushed me away, I thought this is it, it’s hit me head-on. It didn’t until I saw those pictures of you. One look at the fear on your face. A look no one but those who know you would notice, and I knew I was in denial. I had too much running through my head at the time to grasp hold of it. I don’t know where we go from here. I only know I need to kiss my wife.”
I reach out with a gentle finger, and lift Eden’s chin, shifting her face so that I can hold the gaze she doesn’t want to give me.
There’s no passion when she focuses on me briefly before shoving my hand away, and ramming the chair back until she’s out of my reach. It’s replaced by grief that burns the tip of my finger and shoots up my arm, landing in the middle of my chest.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Eden
I find it troubling to believe that the sole purpose of life's heartaches, is to teach us a fateful lesson that we have been destined to learn. Because there’s no lesson except to drown in guilt when watching your husband’s ashen face, his blown-out pupils, his screams for me as I stood in the corner of the emergency room while the nurse and doctor tended to him and know I could have stopped it from happening.
I stare at the man I’m deeply in love with and exam his swollen eye, his split cheek, the goose egg knot right below his temple, and I’m thankful, so utterly grateful he isn’t hurt worse.
Or dead.
“Where’s my wedding band?” The confusion dripping from Mason along with the panic in his eyes as he frantically looks back and forth from his ring finger to me nearly gives me that nervous breakdown I thought for sure I was having.
The pressure in my chest started the minute Mason drove away. It climbed every time I looked at the clock. I thought for sure it would mount to its peak whenever my phone would ring, and Chance would tell me there was still no news about Mason’s whereabouts. It nearly crested from the empty bottles of alcohol I found while Aubrey and I cleaned my house from top to bottom, doing our best to remove the wreckage once we hit the master bedroom.
It hadn’t come close until I saw the state of mind Mason was in after Chance and Scott placed him on the bed in the emergency room. I will never in all my days share that with Mason. It was and hopefully will be the utmost scariest thing I will witness in my life.
“No, you dumb fuckers, do not take off my wedding ring,” Mason yelled, body thrashing and arms swinging as Scott and Chance held him down while a male nurse strapped him down and another preceded to take off his ring in case they had to perform surgery.
Mason went stiff when they slipped it off and handed it to me. Then he did the one thing I’ve seen Mason do once in his life, and that was when Hector died.
He broke down in tears. Once that first tear fell, others followed in a stream through screaming and yelling and incoherent words.
I understood every single one he said.
It broke me in pieces. Shattered in shards and sent my breakdown soaring.
My breathing escalated. I felt my pulse quicken and anxiety-filled my chest. I did everything I could to try and steady it, but it did me no good when Mason looked right through me as if he saw a ghost.
Tears welled in his eyes.
“Sir, we are giving to your wife, I promise.” the male nurse said.
Mason lost it then. He went absolutely insane.
“No, my wife won’t want it. She doesn’t want anything from me. She won’t even let me touch her. All I want to do is touch my wife, you son of a bitch.”
My knees buckled, and Chance had to hold me up before I crashed to the floor.
Mason didn’t stop there. He didn’t shut up, didn’t stop trying to get out the restraints until the drugs started to take him under so they could do what needed to be done.
“Promises are what have me here in the first place, I broke them. I never wanted to break them. You can’t take my ring away from me. My wife is gone, that ring is all I have left of her. I never take it off unless I’m boxing. I won’t be doing that anymore, either. I choose Eden. I will always choose her over everything else. I promise I do.”
I took his words in like a knife to my heart as I fell to the floor and hit my chin on the side of the hospital bed.
Guilt. It’s deep inside of me, so deep, it expands in my lungs, causing my heart to beat hard enough to punch through my ribs.
“I have it.” I croak out, as I watch a lone tear fall down his face. I lean forward and wipe it away.
The relief in his eyes has me slipping out of the chair and dropping to my knees.
Emotion. There’s so much of it in this room. So much of it in the glassed over stormy eyes of my husband that I want to make the negative ones go away.
Mason’s expression changes in an instant, his smirk grows, the man lets out a low growl that punctures through the hurt. This isn’t a place, nor the time for it to hit between my legs, but it does. Those eyes lock on mine in awe, admiration, and love. I missed this look as much as I missed everything that makes up my husband.
“Eden,” he brushes his knuckles across my cheeks, and all I can do is let out a whimper as I lean into his touch. “Baby, get off of the floor and climb into this bed with me. Let me hold you. I’m done wishing for something I’ll never have again. But you, I’ll never stop wanting you. Never stop wanting to touch you. God, Eden, can’t tell you how sorry I am. Please tell me you believe that.” He whispers, tears spilling over my eyes. He wipes them away with his thumbs.
“I do, Mason.” My chest heaves, and he draws in a sharp breath when I take his hand and slide his ring into place. I kiss over it, push to stand, and help him lay back down, tucking myself next to him as carefully as I can. He needs to rest so I can take him to the cottage.
I know Mason well enough that due to what he did to our bedroom along with Natalie and the paparazzi, he won’t want to live here anymore. Besides that, there’s only one person he’ll turn to for help.
Chance.
“I’ve been busted up before. It never stopped me from holding you, it’s not going to stop me now. It’s one of the things I need from you.”
His arms tighten around me, the lust in his eyes stunning me before he cups my face, lightly kissing my forehead, my nose, and then my lips.