Finding Eden (3 page)

Danny crawled back into bed and tried not to stare at Paul’s broad chest and the lines of hard stomach muscles when he tugged his shirt over his head and then kicked off his shoes. Wearing only jeans, he got into bed. It had to be the exhaustion that had Danny letting down his guard to the point that he rolled closer, draping an arm around Paul, hugging him from behind.

“What—” Paul started, his body stiffening in Danny’s arms.

“Shut up, Paul Guy,” Danny whispered tiredly against the curve of Paul’s neck. “It’s okay to let someone besides Evie be nice to you.”

Paul didn’t acknowledge the statement, but he didn’t complain either. He relaxed within a few minutes and Danny realized he’d already fallen asleep. If it was the fucking that wore Paul out, or simply a defense mechanism, Danny didn’t know, but he refused to let him go. It could be the only time he got to hold him like this and Danny was a little too selfish to pass up the opportunity.

* * * * *

Paul awoke to that drunken feeling of knowing he hadn’t had nearly enough sleep, but his internal clock screamed at him that it was long past time to stop being a lazy asshole and get out of bed.

He rolled onto his back, feeling a strange sadness at being alone in Danny’s bed. Though he’d never admit it out loud, he needed the comfort of his best friend’s company. His body ached from too much fucking. His heart ached with the reminder Eve was really gone. He’d willingly let the love of his life go and he couldn’t imagine being more miserable than he was at that moment.

Knowing he was going to regret it at football practice that day, he reached for Danny’s cigarettes. He lit one and then let himself out the way he came in, crawling through the window too small for his big frame rather than face Danny’s parents. He stuffed his t-shirt into the back pocket of his jeans and tugged on his shoes, hopping on one foot, the cigarette in his mouth making his eyes water.

Still struggling with pulling himself together, Paul spotted Danny far out in the pasture and had to stop to stare. Even from a distance Danny was beautiful, riding with the sunshine outlining his long frame, looking completely at home on the large stallion. Paul would never understand it about himself, but sometimes Danny cut such a striking, darkly beautiful figure he had to just sit there and admire him. The horse was massive, yet Danny handled him with ease, as if meant to command and control, and that captivated Paul.

He grinned with the thought that rich little girls got ponies named Buttercup for their birthdays and rich, angry little boys got big, black stallions named Lucifer.

This was Danny’s sport, his only sport. He’d been riding since he was three and it showed. He always had an eloquent way of horseback riding Paul couldn’t help but envy. They weren’t there for his amusement, but Danny used the hay bales like barrels, weaving in and out of them until he spotted Paul. Leaping over the last one, he raced to the edge of the fence.

Danny grinned, leaning forward on Lucifer to arch an eyebrow in challenge at Paul. “Hey, sleeping beauty.”

Paul blinked tiredly and flicked ashes into the grass. “Need help running the horses?”

“Sure,” Danny agreed, which was predictable. His father owned six horses. Exercising them was Danny’s only chore and it was tedious for him because he preferred his own horse to the others. From the sweat at his temples it was obvious he’d been riding for a while and still hadn’t gotten around to the other horses. Danny waggled his eyebrows. “Saddle up, we’ll race.”

Paul pulled a face, not really thrilled with the notion of having his ass handed to him in a race he could never win. “Why not?” he asked, rather than complain, and crawled over the fence.

Racing with Danny was just asking for defeat, but Paul didn’t mind so much. The sunshine felt good on his bare back, and the distraction of riding race after race kept his mind off losing Eve.

The truth was he felt almost self-destructive over letting her go. He hated himself for it and wished once more there was some way to learn rebellion from Danny. He had always been fascinated with Danny’s reckless abandon for rules, his carelessness of others’ opinions of him.

More than fascination, Paul admired him for it and was often an enabler for his bad attitude, which was probably why the two of them got along as well as they did. Danny wanted to be the bad boy and Paul admired the hell out of him for doing it as well as he did.

* * * * *

Despite losing every horse race, Paul had started to feel a bit more in touch with himself than he had earlier that morning, when he’d found himself seeking out Danny and accepting comfort he usually avoided.

Once the chore of running the horses was done, Paul went straight from Danny’s house to football practice, which drained him more than usual. Now he was too damn tired to really comprehend anything past needing a shower and more than a few hours of sleep.

He lived only a few streets over from Danny, but Paul’s house looked like a shack in comparison to the lavish ranch house and neatly manicured grounds of the Carlow Ranch. His home was clean but small, old and worn down in a way no amount of scrubbing could fix.

Paul’s father may have been a brilliant soldier before three bullets forced him to retire early, but he was a horrific businessman. If it weren’t for his monthly retirement checks their family would starve to death.

Paul pocketed his keys and opened the truck door. His motions were slow, everything in him wanting to go back to Danny’s place. It wasn’t that the house was more beautiful and lavish, it was Danny being there. Now that Eve was gone, he was the only person in the world who really gave a shit that Paul felt as if his heart had just been ripped from his chest. Somewhere deep down there was a side of Paul that could be hurt and he needed his best friend. It was taking more strength than he knew he had not to run and hide from his life in the haven of Danny’s room.

“You’re fucked, pretty boy.”

Paul closed his eyes, the taunt making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He squeezed his keys tightly in his pocket, looking for some sort of strength of will to deal with his family. Usually it rolled off his back, but Eve leaving had allowed him to absorb a little more of Danny’s rebellion than he realized.

As Paul opened his eyes and glared at his brother John, he couldn’t hide the loathing he felt for him. The grim truths of his life became vibrantly clear for the moment. The heartbreak over Eve temporarily removed a frosted filter that had been in place for as long as he could remember. Paul learned when he was very young to psyche himself out, making violent abuse a fun game instead. He normally enjoyed seeing how much he could endure, but there was no mind game currently in existence that would make dealing with John tolerable today.

Always the odd man out, Paul had been a target for both his older brothers probably since the day he’d entered the world. Genetics were strange and Paul was a victim of recessive genes. If it weren’t for his large build that was a mirror to all the men in his family, his blond hair and light eyes would make him seem adopted. If that weren’t bad enough, he had the misfortune of being good-looking on top of it all.

One thing Paul had learned well was nothing infuriated unattractive, malicious teenage boys more than having a younger brother who wasn’t only smarter than them, but also had the gall to be far better-looking. It mattered little that Paul would have given anything to hand over his curse of beauty to both John and Peter, who would never be more than plain at best. But he couldn’t change that any more than he could change anything else about himself that made him an absolute oddity in his family.

“The old man is pissed,” John went on, giving Paul a currish smile, his brown eyes dancing in delight. His brown hair, usually dull and dry, was shaved so close to his scalp it was hard to tell the color anymore. “He’s gonna dent the shit out of that pretty mug of yours.”

“And this is new how?” Paul asked in a voice heavy with disinterest. “What the fuck is he pissed about anyway?”

“AWOL.” John pointed at him with the wrench in his hand. “Everyone knows you’ve been fucking that slut when you were supposed to be here mowing the lawn. It’s Saturday, princess.”

Paul studied his brother, whose beady eyes were dark and calculating as if looking for someone smaller and weaker to assault. He reminded Paul of a vicious pit bull who had been beaten and kicked for so long he lashed out and attacked anyone who got close to him. John would be a feral, extremely dangerous man until the day he died.

“Please don’t get married,” Paul said before he could stop himself. “You should not have kids—ever.”

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” John asked, gaping at Paul in shock, his plain features becoming mottled red in anger, making him look ugly on a soul-deep level.

“I was begging you not to get married, and if you do manage to talk some poor woman into marrying you, please pull out,” Paul said in a slow, condescending manner, raising his eyebrows in hopes of clarifying. “Sterilization should be a legal requirement for pricks like you.”

“What the fuck has gotten into you? You know I gotta kick your ass for a comment like that.” John laughed, looking at Paul in amazement.

Never one to rock the boat, Paul’s confrontational attitude was extremely out of place because he spent most of his life attempting to please others. He was so good at being and doing exactly what others required of him, even their father was running out of excuses to abuse Paul, who was always his favorite target. This was the moment they had all been waiting for, and Paul was a little too tired and defeated to point out it had nothing to do with his family’s constant need to test his limits of endurance for physical and mental abuse. He missed Eve, but his brother wouldn’t understand that. John had absolutely no concept of love.

There was an odd gleam in John’s eyes at the opportunity Paul’s rebellion presented, a sadistic glee in his voice as he said, “The old man is gonna be holding you down for me, not the other way around. Forget fixing my car, I want in.”

“Ask me if I care,” Paul said rather than cower the way John wanted him to. “I hate to ruin the party but you can’t hurt me, Johnny. None of you can.”

“Peter is in there waiting to do the old man’s dirty work and I was gonna cut you a break because three-on-one just ain’t sporting, but not anymore. We’re making you cry this time, pretty boy,” John said, his eyes still narrowed in fury. “We’re making your pussy ass cry tonight if it kills us.”

“I hope you’re right.” Paul turned away from John, heading toward the house, feeling as if he needed to cry more than anything. He wanted it desperately, an outlet for the pain crushing his heart, making him feel as if he couldn’t breathe. He had no memory of crying, not once for the length of a truly brutal childhood, but he was desperate enough for it now to try just about anything. “Come on, asshole,” Paul said as he stepped onto the porch. “Come make me cry—I dare ya.”

* * * * *

Late at night, when his life got too hard to bear, when his father’s ranting drowned out his mother’s soothing attempts to keep a nasty drunk content, Danny would start reading. He didn’t stop until his eyes were heavy and the words blurred.

He’d been doing it since he was very young, hiding from reality in books. It was a dirty secret of his, a passion for literature. If something like that had gotten out, expectations might have been made of him. He could have found himself signed up for college, a fate worse than death for someone like Danny, who naturally rebelled against rules. He’d barely made it through high school. Teachers telling him what to do and how to do it, he hated everything about the educational system.

But despite a rabid loathing for structured education, Danny did have a very well-used library card.

That was how Paul found him, sitting up in bed reading
Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
by the light of a small lamp on his bedside table. Resisting the urge to shove the book back under the mattress, Danny gaped at his best friend as he maneuvered through his bedroom window with an ease and grace that shouldn’t have been allowed a man with his broad build.

“I’m starting to feel like your girlfriend.” Danny frowned, not loving this new habit Paul was developing of dropping in whenever he felt like it. While Danny wasn’t huge on jerking off, preferring the real thing that was often readily available to him, there was always the off-chance he could get caught doing something more embarrassing than reading Dostoevsky. “What’s up?”

“Sorry,” Paul said, seeming to have the same realization as he studied Danny lying in bed in his underwear. “I should’ve knocked or something. Did I inter—”

“It’s all right,” Danny assured him, wanting to stop that conversation before it started. He closed the book and put it on the nightstand. “I was just reading.”

“Really?” Paul asked, pulling back with a frown as he stared at the thick hardback novel. “I didn’t know you read.”

Danny gave him a droll look, refusing to acknowledge that with a response. Paul winced, looking away, shifting from one foot to the other. That was a bit odd, as if he had something he couldn’t quite say. They’d been best friends since kindergarten. There wasn’t much Paul hesitated to say to him.

“What’s wrong?”

Paul looked back to him, his face painted in shadows from the near darkness of the room, showing hesitance. “I sorta got kicked out.”

“What?” Danny jumped out of bed. Paul was easily the strongest person Danny knew. If something happened to have him searching out Danny’s help in the middle of the night, he couldn’t fathom how bad it had to actually be. His worst fears were confirmed when he saw what the shadows had hidden. Red, swollen skin was just giving way to bruises that decorated his jawline, his cheekbones and his left eye. His family was usually a little craftier. The bruises were normally strategically hidden under clothes.

That realization had Danny jerking up Paul’s shirt without a care for personal space. He stared in horror at what he saw. “Holy shit,” he rasped, his mind moving on fast-forward as he stared at the battered, damaged skin that had been tanned and beautiful just a few hours earlier. “What the fuck did you do?”