Hyde, an Urban Fantasy (13 page)

“Great!” Eden brought Carter’s face down to hers and kissed him, almost on the lips. “Have a good day.”

“We’ll talk soon. Keep your phone handy.” He walked out, twisting to keep his eyes on Mitch until he was walking backwards.

“Study hard.” Eden shut the door after him with a smile she hoped said, “You can trust me.”

Mitch laughed as he took off his suit jacket and sat on the couch. “You got one hell of a boyfriend there.”

“He's a good guy, don't make fun of him.”

“I'm sure he is.” His smile disappeared. “Are you in love with him?”

The question he had no right to ask hung in the air between them.

With each blink of her eyes, she wished she could break the hold Mitch had on her. It didn’t work.

“I'm . . . with him.” Once spoken, the answer she’d felt compelled to give left her embarrassed and ashamed. She hurried into the kitchen for some water.

“That's it? You're
with
him?” he called from the other room, his voice getting louder as he followed her.

“It's the truth.” Why had she brought Mitch into her home? Her home that had a bed in it.

He leaned on the fridge, his shirt pulling across his chest. “Fair enough. But he's in love with you.”

“What?” she asked, refocusing her eyes.

“He’s in love with you.”

“Yes. At least, that's what he tells me.”

“Oh, the poor boy.” His laughter filled the apartment, making her cringe.

Jerk
. “Stop laughing!”

“I can't.” His carefree smile hid none of the wickedness in his eyes.

Stupid, gorgeous jerk.
“I shouldn't have told you,” she grumbled, filling two glasses from the tap.

“Why did you?”

Because that is who I am.
“You asked.” She handed him the glass. “And I don't lie.”

“Everyone lies.”

“I don't.”

“Ever?”

She shook her head. “If I'm not honest, then how can I expect other people to be honest with me?”

After one last chuckle, his mouth settled into a smirk. “You can't. People lie. Whether you accept it or not makes no difference. It simply makes you a willing participant to your abuse.”

She set her glass down on the counter, his words stinging her ears. That couldn’t be true. She’d built her entire life around the idea that the only thing she could control was herself—her actions, her words. And, if she did the right thing, other people would somehow treat her with the same respect. But it wasn’t true, now was it? Her decency made no difference at all in anyone’s life but hers. And, oh, what a life it was turning out to be.

“Okay, let’s get to work.” He left her where she stood and went back into the living room. “You got a tape measure?”

Amazed how quickly one phone call to Jolie and a Visa card worked, Eden stood in her refurbished prison apartment. Mitch had gotten security bars installed on her windows and a new keyed lock on her new door. In a day. Man, she needed an assistant. And a whole heck of a lot of money.

“Even your super-human strength can’t get through this one.” Mitch winked at her and knocked on the new metal door. There were two deadbolts, but he handed her only one key. “Call Carter and tell him to come to my office to pick up the other key on his way home.”

“I don’t get one at all?”

“That
is
the point of the bars, Eden. You
do
understand that, don’t you? You can sleep tight knowing you’d need a crowbar to get outside.” He grimaced. “You don’t have a crowbar, do you?”

§          §          §

After leaving Eden’s apartment, Mitch spent the rest of the day worrying. Not something he was accustomed to doing about someone other than himself. The idea that Eden was like him was unfathomable. Impossible.

She was
pure
.

Fuck, she probably brought sandwiches to the homeless or took in stray animals in her free time. He’d know if she struggled to keep her evil inside. He’d have seen it on her face—the weariness, the pain. Just like he saw in his own eyes every time he looked in a mirror. No, she was nothing like him. She was better.

After his last client left, Mitch sat down on the edge of Jolie’s desk and watched her work.

Without lifting her head, she asked, “Do you need something, Mitchell?”

“Nope.”

She pushed back from the desk. “Then I’m free to go?”

“You are. I’m gonna stay awhile.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s going on? I never leave first.”

“A guy should be dropping by pretty soon to pick something up.”

“Wow, could you be any more vague?” She picked up her enormous purse and stood. “Who is he?”

“My new BFF.”

“Aside from the fact I’m absolutely shocked you even
know
that expression, I’ll remind you that you don’t have an
old
BFF.”

“True. Then he’s my first. I love to try new things.”

She shook her head as if something had come loose. “No, you don’t.”

“Also true. I’d
love
to love trying new things.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mitchell.” She left, still shaking her head.

Mitch spent the next twenty minutes trying to decide which kind of asshole he wanted to be to the guy.

Carter came in, full of the kind of feigned-arrogance Mitch thought of as ‘Rookie Know It All’.

“So I’m just supposed to lock her in every night.
That’s
your great idea?”

“How else do you propose to keep her from leaving the apartment?” Leading him into the office, Mitch didn’t ask him to sit and Carter probably wouldn’t anyway. “Because, obviously, the technique of sleeping next to her, and being aware she’s leaving, hasn’t been successful thus far.”

“I don’t sleep—” He clamped his lips together and looked around the office. “I’m on meds. They make me sleepy.”

Mitch raised an eyebrow. “Meds, huh?”

“I don’t do drugs. They’re for a medical condition.”

Why he was helping a delusional girl and her sick-and-clueless boyfriend was an utter mystery to him. He gestured to a chair. “She says you’re a good man.”

Carter skipped the one Mitch had pointed to and sat on the couch, spreading his legs wide. “That’s nice to hear.”

“That she thinks you are or that she told me?”

“Both, I guess.”

“How did you two meet?” When he got a glare instead of an answer, Mitch continued, “If I had an olive branch, I’d offer it to you, but since I’m all out . . .” He held up his palms. “I’m just trying to help. She needs help, you know.”

Carter nodded, let out a deep breath, and scratched his forehead. “I know. But I don’t think it should come from you.”

“Fair enough.” Mitch wasn’t good at this kind of shit—getting people to
share
. Especially people who hated him even before they met him. No, that usually happened right
after
the introductions. And his technique for life coaching had nothing to do with people opening up emotionally. He taught his clients how to be aggressive, take no prisoners, feel no empathy for others. They paid him well for something that came naturally to him.

“I was gone,” Carter said. ”You know, when you and she— When it started happening. I was at the Police Tech Academy in the Keys. If I’d known”—Carter shook his head sadly—“I wouldn’t have gone.”

“Do you believe her when she says she was sleepwalking?”

“I believe she believes it. Eden doesn’t lie.”

“She really never lies?”

“Never.”

“How is that possible?” Mitch leaned back in his chair. “I lie before breakfast. And, if no one else is around, I lie to myself.”

“That is exactly why you should leave her alone. It’s hard for people who haven’t grown up in the system to understand. At eighteen, the state dumped us with nothing but ourselves. They wiped their hands and waved goodbye. At that point, we each had to make a decision about which path to take. Eden is on the extreme of one of those paths—no lies and no deceit. Period. End of story.”

“That’s not the end of this story, I hope. Because it sounds unbelievably boring.”

“She was right—you are an asshole.”

Mitch flinched, impressed. “She said that?”

“Not as colorfully, but, yeah, she did.”

“Huh. I wasn’t sure she’d noticed.”

“Leave us alone, man. She doesn’t deserve this.” Carter leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, but his body was still on edge. Ready to attack if given the slightest provocation. “She’s the best person I’ve ever met. That’s why I believe her when she said she wasn’t really there that night . . . with you. Something else was going on. I don’t know what
was
going on, but I know that she would never put herself into that position willingly. So, either you are a master manipulator or she was out of her mind. Literally. So which is it?”

Mitch looked at the guy. The rookie had been replaced by someone who was genuinely afraid. For someone he was in love with.
Wonder what that would feel like.
“While I consider myself a good manipulator, if she really is who you say she is, I’m not
that
good.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“How long have you guys been together?”

“Together?” Carter chuckled weakly. “That’s complicated. We’ve never really been
together
. More like two people occupying the same room but being in totally different places.” He adjusted himself, obviously uncomfortable with the direction this conversation had taken. “Shit. I think you just manipulated an answer out of me that I didn’t want to give.”

“I told you I’m not that good at it.” Mitch shrugged, giving the guy a break instead of an asshole comment. “How’d you two meet?”

“She considers me her hero.” Not an answer, a challenge.

“That’s a big job title. Congrats. So, how long have you held that position?”

“About six years or so.” With a sigh, he seemed to finally give in to Mitch’s nagging and might answer the question instead of deflecting. “Okay. We were living in the same group home. It was, like, her first week there, I think. One day, I’m on the phone with a friend and I walk into a room where four guys have her backed into a corner. It wasn’t hard to figure out what they were planning to do to her. So I told the guy I was on the phone with to call the cops.”

“Did they kick your ass?”

“Yep.”

Protecting a stranger. Would Mitch do that? Could he
let
himself do that? “You
are
a good man.”
A fucking boy scout.

“Yeah, right.” Carter picked at a thread on his sweats. “I come out of it looking like some big hero because I yelled three words into a phone.” He sighed. “Ever since then, she sees me as her protector, like her big brother.”

“People rarely sleep with their big brothers.”

“It's not like that. We don’t—” His lips slammed together, and he reddened.

Mitch would have given anything to know what the guy was about to say.
They don’t what?
Because if that sentence was going to end with, ‘fuck’, ‘sleep together’, or ‘put tab A into slot B’,
that
was something Mitch wanted to hear. He watched the boy scout’s face take on a deep burgundy hue.

Holy shit, they don’t?
Six years and they don’t? Sure, it had been years since Mitch and Jolie had been horizontal, but neither of them had any romantic feelings toward the other. Jesus, six years of friendship with someone you
want
but can’t have? It was proof that men and women
can
be friends, even when one of them spends that time crossing their fingers and hoping.