Chapter Nine
Troy
The plane ride ended about fifteen minutes after I told my story to Cailin and Emily on camera, and I noticed that Eden had been flushing the whole time I was speaking. By the time I’d finished, she was as red as a tomato. I felt bad for bringing it up while she was around, but to be fair, they’d asked for a story about being hurt by past loves, and Eden was the one and only love I’d ever had. Besides, no one else knew who I was really talking about, so it wasn’t like I’d embarrassed her in front of everyone.
Only the two of us knew our little secret.
We disembarked at the small airfield near the ranch, and a black car was waiting to take us all back to the main set at the mansion. We rode in what was mostly silence, punctuated by the occasional comment from Cailin about the beautiful scenery on the Palomar property as the sun began to dip low on the horizon, and when we got out at the mansion, Eden called out to me as I strode to the entrance.
“Hey, Troy!”
I turned and arched a brow. “Hey. What’s up?”
She crossed her arms, which I supposed was meant to be an angry gesture, but only served to push her tits up so that her already-bountiful cleavage spilled out of her shirt even more. “What’s up?” she repeated. “How about whatever the hell that was back there? What were you talking about?”
“You, but I thought that was obvious enough.”
“It was. I meant the letter. What’s that about?”
I frowned. “Huh?”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Troy, if that story you told back there was true…I never got a letter from you.”
What the hell?
“It was true. Everything I said back there,” I replied. “You really didn’t get it?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide. “This whole time, I thought you just left without a word. You never called or wrote.”
“Neither did you,” I said. “Although I guess that’s understandable, considering you thought I just left you like that.”
“And you thought I didn’t show up at the bus station because I didn’t feel the same way,” she said softly. “That’s why you never called me.”
I nodded slowly. “I didn’t want to harass you after I thought you’d made your feelings pretty clear,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “Shit, Eden…”
“What exactly did the letter say?” she asked, staring up at me. “I mean, I know it probably doesn’t matter anymore, because it was so long ago, and you aren’t….” Her voice trailed off for a second. “Well, I guess I’m just curious,” she finished.
I filled her in on what the letter had said, scavenger hunt and everything, and by the time I was finished, tears were glistening in her mesmerizing eyes. “I can’t believe that all this time, I thought… I missed out on…”
Her voice trailed off again, and I nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty fucking astonished myself, to tell the truth. This whole time, I thought you didn’t want me back then. I wonder what the hell Blair did with that letter?”
Eden had been staring down at the ground for a second as she wiped her eyes, but her head snapped back up at that. “Huh? What about Blair?”
“It was her who was meant to deliver the letter. I was going to deliver it to you myself, but then I ran into her, and she said she was on her way to see you while you got your hair done at the salon. So I asked her to pass it on to you.”
Eden’s face was no longer red; she was turning rather pale now, and her hands were starting to shake. “Blair had it? She kept it from me?”
I nodded and held my hands out to calm her down. “I guess so, yeah. But that’s not important now. What’s important is that we both know the truth now. And hell, Eden, I don’t care that it’s been seven years. I still care about you, and I want to see if we—”
Eden held up a hand and cut me off with a grim look on her face. “Troy, sorry, but please hold that thought. I really need to go and find out why my so-called friend would betray me like that. I’ll be back, and we can talk then. I promise.”
With that, she spun on her heel and strode into the mansion, and I watched her go with a mystified expression on my face. I couldn’t believe it. All these years, and it was all just a big fucking misunderstanding. If only I’d called her back then to find out why she never showed up that morning; if only she’d called me to find out why I’d seemingly left without a word. Granted, we both knew why we hadn’t called—we both thought the other didn’t want to hear from us. But shit, I wished I had.
I guess I really had made the right decision in coming on this show. If I hadn’t, I never would’ve discovered the truth, and I might never have had an opportunity like this with Eden ever again. But now…now things were different, and my face lit up with a grin at the thought of all that’d just transpired.
I was finally on the road to getting her back.