Chapter Eighteen
Eden
On the way upstairs, he asked to see the sketch I’d done of him. He’d never brought it up before, and I’d taken it to mean he didn’t care.
I left him in the living room and retrieved the sketch from my bedside table drawer. Sinking onto my bed, I stared at the sketch in my hands. If I hadn’t been the artist, and saw this sketch hanging on a wall, I would know it was him. I would think he was handsome. The kind of dark good looks that made you do a double-take, made you want to stop and stare if you saw him on the street. I did stop and stare the first time I saw him. I’d done it many times since then. Stolen glances, seeking him out across the room when I worked. But on closer inspection, I would see the way he was looking at the artist with hooded eyes. Did I notice the way he’d looked at me? I must have. And I would see the way the artist saw him. Now I understood why he’d never asked to see it. The sketch was too revealing.
I returned to the living room empty-handed. He looked at my hands, his brows raised. I shrugged. “I can’t find it.”
His mouth quirked in amusement and then he was laughing.
When he finished laughing, I rolled my eyes and took a seat on the sofa. “What’s so funny?”
“You.”
Yeah, he knew I was lying. My face gave everything away. I leaned my head against the sofa cushion and looked at the ceiling.
“My boyfriend cheated on me,” I said, out of the blue. “He got my best friend pregnant and now they’re living in my hometown.” Killian sat next to me and slid down on the sofa, so he was at my level. I turned my head to look at him. Then I fixed my gaze on the ceiling again and told him the Luke and Lexie story and how they’d betrayed me.
“Should I beat him up?” he asked.
I laughed. “I took care of that. I mean, I didn’t beat him up. Just his car. I went after it with a baseball bat.” After the incident with Joss, my violent reaction was probably the wrong thing to confess.
Killian chuckled. “That’s fantastic.”
“It made me feel a little bit better at the time. But then I felt lousy again. Luke and I started dating in eleventh grade and we went to college together and everything. Instead of applying to art school in a city like I wanted to, I went to the same college my parents went to. The same college my boyfriend went to. The whole time I was at Penn State, I tried to convince myself it was something I wanted.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“No. It felt like a continuation of high school,” I admitted. “I don’t know…maybe he was right about me. He said I’m too much of everything. He used to tell me I should tone it down. I think he wanted a trophy girlfriend. Someone who looked good but didn’t push back. Didn’t argue. Didn’t have so many opinions. Didn’t let her temper make her say stupid things she regretted. I tried.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I repeated.
“Why would you change anything about yourself for that asshole?”
“I didn’t, really. I just tried, but usually failed. And he wasn’t always an asshole, or I never would have been with him. Before the whole Lexie thing happened, he was everything you could want in a boyfriend. Everyone liked him…” I wracked my brain trying to remember the things I loved about Luke. It used to be easy to define, and if you’d asked me to name the guy least likely to cheat on his girlfriend, it would have been Luke. But now the only strong points I could come up with was a list of things that sounded good on a resume. Baseball team, high school quarterback, Class President, 4.0 average. Clean-cut. All-American. A politician in the making.
What made it so hard to accept was that Luke had acted like the perfect boyfriend. He never missed a birthday or holiday. He was polite with good manners. Opened car doors and respected authority figures. Teachers loved him because he followed all the rules. He’d never sat in detention or gotten a speeding ticket. I asked him once if he was ever tempted to shake up the rules or rebel against something. He’d patiently explained his views on the law and its place in society. Luke was not an anarchist or a rebel. He was a pillar of society. Yet he turned out to be a liar, a cheat, and a coward.
I’d never told anyone that I felt like Luke was trying to hold me back, trying to make me less of what I was but now all the words tumbled out. “He used to say little things in a passive aggressive way, and at the time I just brushed them off. Instead of standing up to me or pushing back when I argued with him, he’d just tell me I was being unreasonable, and he wasn’t going to discuss anything with me until I calmed down and stopped acting like a toddler.”
“He said that?” Killian asked, incensed on my behalf.
“Yeah. He used this voice like he was the adult and I was the toddler which infuriated me even more.”
“You’re better off without him.”
“I didn’t have much choice. It still hurts when I think about it,” I admitted. “It made me feel like I was lacking somehow, and Lexie gave him something I couldn’t. I felt so stupid that this was going on behind my back and I didn’t even know about it. But I should have noticed. Towards the end, we never had sex. Unless I initiated it.” After the words were out, I covered my face with my hands and groaned. “I can’t believe I just told you that. I’m not even drunk. Now you think I’m pathetic.”
“No, I don’t. I like you just as you are.”
I uncovered my face and snuck a look at him. He gave me a little smile.
“You do?”
“He’s an idiot if he couldn’t appreciate you. And to cheat on you? That’s just wrong.”
I sighed. We sat in silence for a while, and I was happy he stayed, happy he wasn’t in a rush to get out the door. Something had shifted between us, not only because of that mind-blowing kiss, but because I’d told him things I’d never told anyone. And he’d listened, and he’d stayed, and he’d said exactly the right things. Maybe Killian was the last person I should trust, and maybe my moral compass was damaged, but he didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. Killian wasn’t a smooth talker who used his charm to win people over like Luke did. He wasn’t a big talker, but he said what he meant, and he meant what he said. Maybe that’s why I believed everything he did say.
“Will you tell me something about yourself?”
“What do you want to know?” he asked, sounding wary.
“Something you’ve never told anyone.”
He was silent for so long that I didn’t think he would. I kept my eyes trained on the ceiling because I thought it might make it easier to talk if I wasn’t looking at him. He could have just said no, or walked out the door, or told me something unimportant but he didn’t do any of those things.
“My mom left when I was seven and my brother was three. Connor doesn’t even remember her. But I remember everything. The day she left…her bags were packed, waiting by the door. She kissed me goodbye and told me to take care of my brother. I chased after her, begging her not to go. I was barefoot, but I chased her taxi down the street. I kept chasing it until I lost sight of it. She never even looked back. Not once. When I got home, my feet were cut up and bleeding and I tracked blood across the kitchen floor. All I could think about was that my mom would be upset. She liked to keep the house clean. I put on socks and scrubbed the floor with Pine-Sol, thinking that if I got it nice and clean she’d come back. Whenever I smell Pine-Sol, I think about that day. I fucking hate the smell of Pine-Sol.”
Oh, Killian.
I reached for his hand and took it in mine, entwining our fingers. He let out an exhale like telling that story had cost him a lot. While he’d been talking, his voice had been devoid of emotion, but I knew he had to feel it deeply. How could he not? What kind of mother would leave her two little boys to fend for themselves? “Thank you for telling me. And I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” He brushed it off as if it didn’t mean anything, as if it hadn’t crushed him. My heart ached for him. I imagined seven-year-old Killian chasing the taxi and scrubbing the floor. His heart was breaking, and he was tasked with looking after his brother, but who was there for him? I didn’t get the impression that his dad was the good guy mine was. Who tucked Killian in at night, kissed it better, baked cookies with him when he had a bad day?
After my mom died, my dad was there for us. He didn’t always get it right, we pushed him to the limits of his patience more often than we should have, but my dad never gave up, never let us down, never faltered in his drive to succeed. And I realized that that’s what real-life heroes are made of. They show up, day in and day out, and they do the heavy-lifting so the people around them feel safe and loved and secure in the knowledge that those strong shoulders can carry the burden. Even when their own hearts are breaking.
If Killian’s mother asked him to look out for his brother, I was willing to bet Killian tried to protect him from every storm. It was his nature to protect people, to be their rock, to fight the bullies of this world, to make sure nothing hurt the people he cared about. Somehow, I’d become one of those people.
Outside a siren wailed but inside my bare white living room, it was still and quiet, a warm July breeze skating through my open windows. Killian and I sat like that for a long time, side by side, holding hands, our fingers entwined. I had that same feeling I’d had when I met him, like nothing bad could happen to me if I was with him. Killian knew how to take care of things. He was street smart and he was a fixer. He knew how to repair everything that broke down at the bar—toilets, leaky faucets, broken fans, a cracked paving slab in the courtyard. His to-do list was a mile long and had become a running joke amongst the staff.
Luke was book smart, but he wasn’t a fixer. One time, Sawyer told me you couldn’t trust a guy who didn’t know his way around the engine of a car. When I laughed, he expanded on the topic, and reeled off a list of things every self-respecting guy should know how to do. “Luke wouldn’t know what to do with a wrench if it hit him on the head. If he got a flat tire, I bet he’d ask you to change it for him,” Sawyer said. My dad had taught me how to change a tire, but when Luke had gotten a flat, he’d called AAA to take care of it for him. I wasn’t there, or I would have offered to do it.
Luke said if he was meant to be a plumber or an auto mechanic, he wouldn’t waste his parents’ money on an education.
“But don’t you want to learn how to do any of those things?” I asked.
Luke looked at me like I had two heads. “Not when I can pay someone to do it for me,” he scoffed.
“If you got a flat tire, would you change it yourself?” I asked. It was an abrupt change of subject, considering that we’d been sitting in silence after Killian shared a piece of his soul with me.
“Who else is going do it?”
I laughed. “I could do it.”
He snorted. “No.”
“I’ve been thinking about DIY,” I said. “What have you been thinking about?”
“I was thinking…” He squinted into the distance, and I thought he was going to wow me with something profound. “What would I do if I got a flat tire on my way home?”
I snorted laughter. “I hope you have a spare in your trunk.”
“And a tire iron. It’s Brooklyn.”
“Danger lurks around every corner,” I teased.
“Trouble finds us even when we’re not looking for it.”
I sighed. “That was all kinds of crazy.”
Killian blew air out of his cheeks. “What were the fucking chances?”
Yeah, Killian didn’t know Joss very well. He didn’t even know Adam was her brother. Meanwhile, he knew all about my brothers and he’d even spoken to my dad on the phone. Weird.
I let go of his hand and stood. “Wait here. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Whatever you say, Sunshine.”
“Why do you call me Sunshine?”
He tilted his head and closed one eye. “You want another confession? Two in one night?”
“I’m greedy like that.”
“Hmm. Okay. You look like sunshine. And, to me, you smell like sunshine.” He gripped his lower lip between his teeth. I hadn’t expected that kind of honesty. Or any of the truths he’d revealed tonight.
“It’s Orange Blossom by Jo Malone. That’s the name of my perfume.”
“I know. I saw it on your dresser.”
Of course, he did. Ugh. We’ve had two crazy, drama-filled nights.
I walked into my bedroom, opened my bedside table drawer, and pulled out the sketch. Killian watched me as I walked toward him. I sat next to him and handed him the sketch. Pulling my legs to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them. He studied the sketch for a long time before he set it on the cushion next to him. “You have so much talent.”
I shrugged. Accepting compliments about my art was difficult. Maybe it was because I’d always wanted to be good, but I never felt like I was good enough. Art is subjective. You could reach a level of technical proficiency but still fail to stir someone’s emotions or entice them to linger over your work.
“Do you still want to go to art school?” Killian asked.
“I don’t really want to go back for another degree. But I might take some classes. Or I might just keep experimenting on walls. It was my own fault that I didn’t apply to art school. I can’t blame anyone else. That was my decision.” As I said it, I knew it was true. But now I was making my own decisions, boldly taking a leap into the unknown. It wasn’t always perfect, not by a long shot, but moving to Brooklyn had been the right decision. I wasn’t going to let one stupid drunken night overshadow the good things in my life—my job, my new friends, my art, and yes…Killian. Always Killian.
“Do you want to go on a date with me, Eden?” Killian asked.
A date. With Killian. It was so unexpected, yet it was the perfect ending to our imperfect, chaotic, messy, wonderful night. My lips curved into a smile. “I’d love to go on a date with you.”