Tempting Eden (16 page)

“Yeah, was your old apartment the one that blew?” I hoped it was, for his sake, wiping away the bad memories that no doubt lingered in the Reed home. The blast had rocked Lowood and leveled one of the tenement buildings, damaging the neighboring structures. One woman was killed and several others injured. It was big news for a day … until the city turned its gaze back inward and southward, away from the poorer neighborhoods.

“I passed by there not long after that, and there were still some of her flowers, just a couple of scraggly plants with the same beautiful blooms. They seem to have persevered somehow, even though the apartments right next door were obliterated by the explosion. Anyway, I sketched and painted my memory of her flowers and waited until I got out to have it done. I let the resident prison ‘artist’ do the rest of my ink. He was actually pretty good, but he couldn’t do the colors like I wanted for Helen’s piece.”

“It’s beautiful, Jack.”

“Thanks.”

I smiled. “I think you are officially the first man I’ve ever seen who can pull off a flower tattoo.”

He snugged me in closer so that my head lay against his right breast. Then he whipped the sheet over us.

“What about the other ones?”

He shrugged beneath me. “My arms are the usual hyper-masculine tribal stuff.”

I raised my head to look him in the eye. “Hey, don’t knock it. It’s sexy as hell.”

His smile made me melt all over again. It was like some secret weapon.

“And there are some random things here and there. Some images that stick with me.”

“Like the bars across your ribs?” They were evenly spaced and clearly prison bars, dark and shadowed.

“Yes, like those. I have one bar for each year I spent inside.”

“Why would you want to remember that by getting it permanently in ink?” I traced each bar with my index finger.

He stroked down my back, his fingertips creating goosebumps as they went. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

“I can’t make any such promise. But I promise I’ll
try
not to.”

“I was actually thinking of a quote from Thoreau when I had that one done.”

I didn’t manage to stifle a small giggle. “I’m beginning to suspect you’re smarter than I am.”

He dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Not at all.”

“Adele certainly seems to think so. But go on, professor.”

“Well, Thoreau wrote something like, ‘Things do not change; we change.’”

“Deep.”

“That’s what the bars are for. They remind me my cell will always be there. But I won’t. I’ve changed, grown, gotten out. I’m free now. The bars remind me I’ll never be there again, if that makes sense.”

I smoothed my hand over the bars, thinking of what sort of horrors he’d been through while behind them. “It does, actually.”

His hand traced lower, stroking the upper curve of my ass. “You know what I’ve decided?”

“What’s that?”

“You ask about me constantly, but you never tell me anything about you.”

I closed my eyes. “There’s not much to tell, really.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.” He sighed. “Eden, you know my whole life story—good, bad, and ugly—from me and from Ms. Temple.”

He was right. I needed to give him something more, and I wanted to. But I couldn’t give it all. If I did, he would never look at me the same way.

I started with the truth. “Well, like I said, it’s all boring and cookie cutter. I had the perfect start. I went to the right schools, met the right people, ran in the right crowd. Everything was laid out for me from the very beginning. I could have gone anywhere, been anything. I could be lazing along the Seine right now. I could be climbing Everest. I could be the mogul of my own real estate firm.”

“So, that begs the question—why aren’t you doing any of those things?”

I screwed my eyes shut even tighter as Mason walked across the insides of my eyelids, leering at me.

“I got pregnant with Adele when I was a teenager.”

“I know. I did the math. But that’s what keeps you here? Seems like Adele would be game for just about anything—world travel, mountain-climbing, Parisian adventures.”

My palms grew sweaty, and I buried my hands in the sheets.
Here we go.
“You can imagine that I, a Rochester, pregnant at seventeen, didn’t go over too well with my family. My father died when I was a child. Mother, on the other hand, was alive and well and perfectly livid when I told her. She demanded to know who the father was.”

“Mason?”

I hated hearing his name. “Yes, but you and Rosa are the only ones who know. I never told my mother. Adele doesn’t know.” I braced myself for his inevitable question. The one I couldn’t answer.

“Why is he a secret?”

I chewed on my lower lip. I’d never even told Rosa the why of it all, but I knew she suspected. I wanted to unburden myself, to finally tell someone my secrets. This man, who was at once a mystery, yet also an open book, offered me the very thing I craved. I didn’t even know how thirsty I was for it until I was here, at the edge, gazing at the deep blue of the truth. Could I fall over the cliff if I knew Jack would be waiting to catch me in the still waters below?

“Brad Mason was, well, he was everything.” I had to stop and will the tremor from my voice. After a few moments, I continued. “For a while, he was my God, more or less. I met him at a charity home-build thing that my school did over in Ensley. My high school class was there building a house for a low-income family. I was a senior. Mason was twenty-five. I saw him standing on the roof nailing shingles, and I thought he hung the moon. He had such an easy way about him. Confident, you know? Like he
knew
things. Like he could do anything.”

I could still see Mason in my memory. “He dazzled me that day. Wearing an old Radiohead t-shirt and using a nail gun like a pro. His hair was blond, the beautiful yellow shade that many women would kill for.”

I’d climbed up on the roof, carrying a box of nails to him under the watchful eye of the site safety supervisor. Mason was tall and lanky, easily the most handsome man I’d ever seen. He gave me a crooked smile and held out his hand in introduction. I took it.

“He got my number when my teacher wasn’t looking. I giggled and blushed. I felt so grown-up, flirting with a twenty-five-year-old, you know? And I was so happy that he picked me out of all the girls that were there. He picked
me
. I sort of floated through the rest of the day. I still remember my mother asking me what had me ‘so addled’ over dinner that night.” I had hastily folded my napkin and excused myself from the table.

Alone in my room, I laid on my bed and stared at the plaster ceiling, following the cracks with my eyes as I’d done so many times. I heard the familiar creaks. The house was built high on top of Red Mountain in the late 1800s. I was certain there were at least a few ghosts rattling around. I drowsed off to sleep but woke to the buzzing of my phone. It was Mason. “He called me that night, and every night after.”

Jack listened patiently as I went back over my missteps. “Go on,” he urged.

“We became almost inseparable, though I hid it from my family. He
insisted
that he remain my secret. I couldn’t tell anyone about him. He kept in contact, calling my phone, checking on me at all times. I thought he was just attentive, caring. Now I know that he was ‘grooming’ me. They do that, you know.”

“Who does that?”

I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat. “Abusers.” The word was barely a whisper.

His hand fisted against my back. “He hurt you?”

I spread my palm along his chest, grazing the flowers.

“He was nice at first. So nice. He took me out, showed me things, snuck me into bars. He treated me like I was the most important person in the world. I was seventeen. I’d never felt so wanted, needed. He never touched me, though. I was young and stupid and wanted him. But he held off, never laying a finger on me. He waited until…” I let my words trail off. I didn’t know if I could share this part of my past. It was something that I’d never shared with anyone. I tilted my head up and looked into Jack’s eyes. There was a gentleness there that I never could have imagined.

“Tell me.”

The kindness in his eyes, his voice, melted my resistance. “I graduated in the spring, just like everyone else. I’d already been accepted into Duke. My mother took me to a fancy lunch at the country club. I begged off for the rest of the evening and told her I was going out with my friends. She let me go. I met up with him at a restaurant downtown. I paid. I always paid. And then he took me back to his place. I’d never been there before. It was in an old Victorian house that had been split into duplexes. His was on the back. The stairs felt wobbly, creaky, but he led me up them. I followed. I was excited and scared all at once. I’d never, well, I’d never been with anyone, so…”

Could I do this? Could I tell? I took a deep breath and let the truth rush out of me. “So we went inside. He poured wine. I drank. He poured more and more. I remember lying on his couch. It smelled funny. Like old sweat and stale weed. I tried to get up. But he put his hand on my shoulder. He was on top of me. I told him I was drunk and that I wanted to go home. I was scared. But he, he didn’t listen. He just… He pushed me down harder and he—” My voice broke on a sob I didn’t even know was there.

“Shhhh.” Jack turned to face me and wrapped me in his arms. I buried my face into the crook of his neck.

My tears overtook me. I was devastated to hear it out loud. It was the one secret I’d kept the longest. The one I couldn’t bear to show under the light of day. For so long I’d felt like it was my fault, as if I’d done something that made me deserve it.

“Don’t cry. Don’t cry. It’s okay.” He smoothed my hair and kissed the top of my head.

My hitching breaths slowly dissipated and I quieted again. But there was more. I dreaded the rest. Hated every bit of it even more than what Mason had done that first night. But the cork was out of the bottle. I had to tell him, to keep going.

“I got pregnant.”

He nodded. “Adele.”

“Yes. When Mason found out I was pregnant, he threatened to take her. To fight me for custody. I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t bear it. She became my world, my everything, the moment I saw her and held her. So I had to make a deal with him.”

He tensed, the muscles in his shoulders stiffening against me. “What sort of deal?”

“Money. That’s really all he ever wanted. When he met me that day at the home build project, he asked me my name. I gave it, not thinking a thing about it. He was practically salivating at the thought of getting a Rochester into his grasp. But he didn’t realize my family name was just a front. We have the house and a couple of other holdings that will pay until my mother dies. Other than that, we’re practically paupers.”

“But you pay him? Is that why he showed up that day at the house?”

“Yes. I do. Just to keep him away. To make him leave Adele alone. I was so stupid then. And now, I’m paying for my mistake. I have to. I couldn’t bear for Adele to know the truth. I tell her that her father was a boy I met at summer camp, kind and sweet, but that I can’t remember his name or anything about him other than how nice he was. She believed me when she was little, not so much now. She’s challenged me on it a few times, but I avoid letting it come to a head. Sometimes, I work late or take projects out of town when she starts up on me about it. I can’t tell her, no matter how much she pushes. I never want her to know the truth. I’d do anything to keep it from her.”

Another tear slipped down my cheek because I already knew the pitch-black depths to which I’d sink to keep Mason quiet. So much was riding on this Belle Mar deal that I felt sick just thinking about it. I’d do whatever it took to get the building sold.

“So, no court then? No rape charge?”

I flinched at the word.

“I’m sorry.” He spread his hand along my back and pressed me to him, as if trying to stanch my wound.

It’s odd, I never thought the word when I would remember what happened. It was just that: “what happened.” I kept it vague, like an unfortunate incident that’s best forgotten. It was as if it would hurt me in a way that could never be undone if I said the word. Jack, though, he didn’t fear it. Just like Maria said, he was solid in every way that counted.

“No, it’s okay. I mean, it’s the truth. But I could never admit that in court. Never. It would wreck my family name even more than the pregnancy did. And the repercussions would be even worse for my professional life. I couldn’t bear for anyone to look at me differently. To look at me with pity. And, more than anything else, I never want Adele to feel like I did. Dirty. To be a child of-of… Do you understand?”

He nestled into my hair, his voice low against my ear. “I understand. I do. I know how it feels to be trapped, caged by someone else. But do you understand that none of it was your fault?”

“I-I…want to. But, I don’t know why, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m somehow to blame. Like, maybe I led him on or I shouldn—”

“Eden, no. You did nothing wrong. You hear me?” His tone was gruff as he pushed me away. His eyes bored into me, shaking me out of my fear. “Tell me you know that it wasn’t your fault.”

His intensity took my breath away.

“Tell me, Eden.” His voice softened, but his look was no less demanding.

“It-It wasn’t my fault.”

“Good.” He relaxed, and I fell back into his arms. His voice was a deep rumble. “Never think for a second you have any blame in this. Never.”

Maybe not in this. Maybe he was right. But I had committed plenty of other blameworthy sins since my graduation all that time ago. Things I couldn’t tell Jack, not yet, not ever.

CHAPTER TWELVE

J
ACK

E
DEN NAPPED THROUGH THE
afternoon with me and left, despite my protestations, to get back home before her mother got suspicious. I was insatiable for her, barely letting her slip out of my bed before tugging her back down again and kissing her until she wanted more and more. I smiled, thinking of how she’d talked about getting caught. She was almost girlish, as if we were star-crossed teenage lovers and the sun was rising to drive us apart.