Kiss Me Gone (10 page)

Dare

I pulled into the garage, killed the engine and hit the control button to lower the automatic door. My face felt hot from Eden's last words, but I wasn't angry with her. I could have saved both of us so much trouble over the last few years if I had manned up and answered that first email she had sent. I had to find a way to make up for that failure or she would leave again.

I also had to smooth over what had happened at Cam's. If I could and the sooner the better.

"Laurie is the local coordinator of
For the Fallen
," I started, the back of my mind working on a way to make her forget about the McPhersons and Molly. "It's a charity--"

"I know what it is," she interrupted. "I used to work the bake sales when Michael was alive."

Her eyes rolled in my direction, anger sparking in the hazel irises. "I hear they've moved on to cheesy beefcake calendars."

My gut felt like it dropped to the truck's floor. The charity had started supplementing its fundraising with some pretty racy calendars of male firefighters. The inaugural calendar had gone on sale early December for this year. I was Mr. July. Across the country, we had sold out in two weeks and added over a hundred thousand dollars to the charity's funding. We had so many requests coming in, a new version in which buyers could add their own dates was about to release.

"Yeah," I answered, trying to sound like I wasn't one of the firefighters who had flashed his ass at the camera. "They do everything they can to raise money for the families who have lost a provider on the job. That includes you, Eden."

"So the appointment with Laurie is about me?"

Her question sounded more like snark than an honest attempt to gain information. Giving a sharp nod, I opened my door and stepped out. Still in her seatbelt, Eden stared at me, her expression unreadable.

"If she's Molly's friend--"

"She's her sister," I corrected. My balls pulled tight at the admission. I had avoided the McPhersons and Molly as best as I could, but Laurie was a different matter. We had worked closely on the calendar shoots and I hadn't deflected her attempts at flirting. I had never formed an intention of going out with her, but only because she wasn't the type of woman I could fuck and leave behind.

"Laurie isn't anything like Molly," I added then realized I was digging myself into a deeper hole with Eden.

She still hadn't released her seatbelt and her face had turned into a blank mask. I shut my door and walked around to her side of the truck. I opened her door and reached across her lap for the belt's release.

"I don't want
For the Fallen's
money." She brushed my hand away and unlatched the belt on her own then waited until I took a full step back from the truck before she left the vehicle.

"Fine, I'll cancel the meeting." It was a lie. I would postpone the meeting until I convinced Eden it was a good idea.

"I'm serious," she said, eyeing me with suspicion. "Mike wasn't even legally my dad. Helen made sure he couldn't legally adopt me as his."

I bobbed my head in understanding while making a note to ask Laurie if that would be an issue. "Can we go inside now?"

She hesitated, her gaze darting to the closed garage door before she offered a slight nod, her arm sweeping in a gesture for me to lead the way. I had the feeling I would need to lock her bag in the closet to get her to stay just the night, but even then I had a sick certainty clawing at my gut that she might leave with just the clothes she was wearing, the torn and taped photo of Michael secured in the cheap canvas wallet.

As soon as we both crossed into the house, I shut the kitchen door and pushed her gently against its surface. My hands came up on each side of her shoulders so she couldn't easily retreat to another room.

"I know I shouldn't have run off that night." I paused when she closed her eyes, her lips beginning to tremble. She didn't want to talk about the past, but I didn't see how we could move forward without doing so. Every other minute, I felt like she would flee if I turned my back for a few seconds. "I should have taken you with me, out of Helen's reach."

She snorted at the idea and I had to agree it was a ridiculous assertion. My mother would have turned us both away, but there were other places I could have taken Eden. I had been living at home to save money, not because I had to.

"I wasn't eighteen. My mom would have loved to have Mary O'Donnell's son arrested for harboring a minor, even if she didn't give a shit about me."

The truth came out hot, the quiver controlling her mouth making the words warble with a hurt she clearly tried to hold inside.

"Then I should have answered your emails. I know I let you down."

"Yeah," she answered flatly. "You did."

Her response stabbed at my chest. As much as I knew I had screwed up and acted selfishly, part of me didn't expect Eden to acknowledge my failure, her face quietly revealing just how badly I had hurt her. But she had to understand -- I'd been hurt, too. My father had betrayed the family and I didn't know when I walked away from the scene whether Eden had been complicit in that betrayal.

"I thought I was in love with you."

Her eyelids flew up, the sudden motion releasing the tears that had built behind them. Her head jerked to the side so she wouldn't have to look at me.

"And what do you think now?" she asked softly.

Was it crazy to tell her I still thought I was in love with her? Should I tell her about all the searching online for the barest hint of her existence or how many pieces of ass I had cycled through searching for just a glimmer of the same spark I had felt with her that night in the truck?

I dropped my hands to my sides. "I want to find out how I feel. I want to get to know you again--"

She shoved hard at my chest, her form too light to budge me even an inch. I put my hands against the door again and leaned into Eden, pinning her body in place. She licked once at her lips, the gesture an innocent prelude to the tirade she was about to unleash. She looked up, her gaze cold, robotic.

"We left the same night, before dawn." She blinked once, the last of her tears escaping before she dried up completely. "I didn't know anything about it, didn't know that some doctor who had worked at the hospital and transferred out to Connecticut had proposed to her. They married a few weeks later."

I eased the pressure of my body against her, tried to gently cup her shoulders but she shook off my attempt.

"The high school principal, Heather Doyle -- you know her."

Her eyes sharpened with a fresh accusation and I nodded. "She's my mother's godmother."

Eden smiled at the admission, her mouth all sharp angles meant to cut.

"She found out about my breaking curfew, made sure I lost all of that semester's credits."

"I didn't know."

Her mouth contorted but she managed to continue talking. "I started getting death threats on my Facebook and in my email. Molly...Anna...a few of the boys Tom hung out with."

She chewed at her lip for a few seconds, stopping only when a drop of blood appeared. "Mrs. Doyle posted on Facebook about 'clearing the trash' from the school. I stopped counting after the first fifty responses about how it was all so much better, how the school didn't need any sluts."

I tried again to touch her but she slapped at my hands.

"So I repeated the last semester of high school in Connecticut, started college the semester after that."

Her mouth flattened into a straight line, her entire body beginning to shake.

"Baby, we don't have too--"

Her head shook violently at the suggestion she stop. I didn't want to know what came next. I had the sick feeling she was building up to something worse than death threats.

"I moved into the dorms so Helen and Philip didn't have to schedule their little sex parties around me. You see, he knew what she was going to do with your dad before it ever happened."

Bile rose up to edge the back of my tongue. I forced it down and concentrated on standing despite how light my head suddenly felt.

"She taped it."

I jerked back, ready to slam my fist into the door, but then I saw her flinch. I pulled her to me, wrapped her in a tight hug. Whatever Helen had done to my family, I knew deep down she had been even more merciless to her own daughter.

"Did they tape you?" I asked, the image of this doctor putting hidden cameras in Eden's bedroom and bathroom suddenly filling my mind. My stomach had turned into a rolling pit of acid. I still wanted to punch my way through bricks, but more than that I wanted to comfort the woman in my arms, protect her. If I released the fury I felt, she would be gone that much sooner.

"I don't know. I was already in the dorms when I found out about the taping they did with your dad and their parties." She squirmed against my tight hold, but I wouldn't let her go. I wasn't ever going to let go.

"I got into a fight with her. Philip was up for chief of staff, there was this man on the hospital board, he was interested in me..."

Her knees gave out at the memory. I lifted her up, carried her to the couch and sat down, still holding her on my lap with my arms securing her in place.

"Baby," I tried again, desperate for her to stop, to give me the chance to make her forget about the past before I had to hear its dark history. I wanted her to forget about all my failures to be there for her, about her mother's betrayals. "You don't have to--"

She met my gaze for an instant and I knew she couldn't stop. It was almost as if her body had entered a state of shock and she was numbly reciting the events.

"They might have excused my refusal, but first Helen had to remind me about everything I had came from them. She went through my bag and found Michael's photo."

Her voice broke. She swallowed hard, growling her frustration. "I wasn't supposed to keep it. She destroyed all the others. She tore it up. That's when I blurted out what she had done the night before we moved into his house. I didn't think he knew."

"So they stopped paying for school?" I regretted the question. She had almost wound down and I really didn't want to hear what they had done.

"If that had been all they had done, I wouldn't have been in Pole Town," she answered. "She called the cops and said that I had stolen the television in my dorm room from Philip's house. They both signed affidavits. I went to jail, lost my job at the school bookstore, emerged with an arrest record..."

Eden went limp in my arms as the last of her story came out.

"Baby, it's over," I said, rubbing at her arm. I brushed my lips against her forehead, my chest tightening as she started talking again.

"It's never over. I was homeless after that. I..."

She froze for a few seconds and I had the feeling she was skipping over something so terrible she couldn't force the words out. With all the horrible things I had already learned, I couldn't imagine how things could have been worse after she got out of jail. I pictured her on the streets, her beauty a magnet for the worst kind of men.

"Eventually, I found Helen's mom." A dry laugh shook her body. "But you know what they say -- like mother like daughter. That's how I wound up in Pole Town."

I had expended most of my energy keeping Eden close. She had saved enough of her own to untangle from my grip. I reached out but she side stepped away, her legs wobbly but able to support her weight.

"I'm getting my bag," she whispered.

My head jerked up. "No, don't."

"And I would like to take those other clothes as well, the ones from your ex-lovers."

"No," I repeated, shock poisoning my body so that I couldn't get my legs or arms to work.

"I'll pay you back as soon as I can."

Unshed tears in her eyes, she started down the hall intent on gathering her things and leaving me all over again.

Eden

Did I really think he would let me walk out? Did I even want to go?

Before I could reach an answer to either question, I found my back pressed against the wall in Dare's bedroom. He lifted me up, my feet dangling off the ground and all my weight supported by the hard press of his body against mine.

His eyes shimmered with an angry heat.

"You're not leaving," he insisted. "You have no money. You don't even have any identification."

He had me on that point, but I wasn't ready to admit just how bad my situation was without his help.

"You need an address to get one, money to pay the fees, you'll need a copy of your birth certificate, which will also cost you."

Dare rattled off reason after reason for me to stay, but I had bigger reasons to leave. His hands curled around the lapels of the coat he had bought me the day before and he gave me a hard shake, my skull bouncing lightly against the wall.

"Stay here until the ID arrives and I'll hand you five hundred dollars."

Some of the fury faded from his gaze but he kept me suspended. I should have been terrified, but I wasn't. I'd already had a lover, my only lover, beat me once. I didn't think Dare would do any such thing, but that possibility was irrelevant. He only needed words to break me, words or a cold glance that conveyed he finally saw me for what I was -- what everyone else said I was.

A nuisance, trash, an ungrateful sponge...

"Eden," he growled, his skin starting to glow red. "You're staying. I don't care if you sleep on the couch, if you never say a word to me the entire time, but you are not leaving until we get you your ID and find a place where you can start over."

I had a place where I thought I could start over, but it was on the other side of the country, the application for assistance I had found over a year old.

"Eden," he repeated, his voice growing sterner.

"Put me down," I whispered.

He shook his head. "Not until you promise to stay and I believe you."

I almost smiled at that. He would never believe me because I couldn't make the promise and believe I would keep it. It wouldn't even be my fault when I broke the promise. Molly or Bloody Mary would get to him eventually. Maybe they would use sweet Laurie Quade to get to him, undoubtedly the L.Q. on the post-it covering his ass in the photo.

He was an idiot if he thought I couldn't hear the positive feelings he had for the woman when he talked about her in the truck. It didn't matter that it was only a few words spoken in her defense. I knew. He respected her. She was above her sister. And to all of Hagersburg, I was below Molly Quade, so what fucking chance did I have with Dare in the long run?

"I promise," I answered, my voice as vacant as I felt inside. "Now put me down."

He shook his head. "I don't believe you."

I rolled my lips, licked at them then rolled them again. My mouth started to quiver. To convince him, I would have to convince myself. Even trying to believe I would really stay would open me up to more hurt. Hope wasn't for someone like me. I'd learned hope was a joke after Michael's death. Hope sustained fools until it abandoned them altogether. I couldn't afford to be a fool, not even for Dare O'Donnell.

"I can't help you on that," I said after a few more seconds had passed with him staring up at me, his entire face stamped with the accusation that I was a liar. "All I can do is promise I'll stay until the ID arrives. You said yourself, what else can I do?"

Relenting, he lowered me to the ground. His arms shook from all the effort of holding me up. I could see that the argument had drained him. Leaning back, he sunk onto the mattress. I turned, only to close the closet door I had opened in an effort to retrieve my bag.

His hands closed around my hips and he pulled me onto his lap.

"You can do more than promise," he said, his words filling my ear with moist heat.