“Not a whole lot I’m proud of in my life, Eden.” I took a step her direction. Enclosing. “But I’m fuckin’ trying to be something for my son.”
Those eyes flitted over my face.
Searching.
Seeking.
“None of us are whole, Trent. None of us are without blame.”
I scoffed out a bitter laugh. “Baby, my blame is disgrace. Unconscionable. Unforgivable. I think I made that much clear.”
“I don’t believe that.” Her voice was a whisper. “Not for a second. Do you think I don’t see your grief?”
Eden edged back another step.
Temptation.
Raw, innocent seduction.
Or maybe she knew exactly what she was doing to me, the way her pulse thudded in the bare space. A space that called out to be filled.
My soul thrashed.
“Do you think I don’t see the goodness you don’t know how to show?”
Fuck me, I wanted to dip my fingers into the pure.
Into all that blamelessness radiating off her like a dream. The belief.
“You think I don’t see you?” Fingertips traced down the side of my face as she murmured that. “Absolution. I think you are looking for it, too.”
Affection in her touch.
Affection in her eyes.
Could barely see. Could barely think.
The only thing I could focus on was the whoosh of the blood I could sense racing through her veins. A thrum, thrum, thrum that bounded and banged and made me feel like I was going insane.
I inclined closer, my nose running the length of her jaw, breathing the words as I went. “I ruin everything I touch, Eden. Ruin it. Destroy it. I’m terrified of doing the same to you, just like I’m terrified I’m going to be wrong for that little boy.”
The last I choked out as my hand cinched down on her waist.
Guessed this time, I was the one who was vulnerable. The one who was putting his mangled, ugly heart on the chopping block.
Her palm found my cheek, soft and warm. “Trent.” Her gaze moved across my face, her words low and wispy, laden with emphasis. “You have the choice. You have the choice of how you live your life, no matter how you’ve lived it in the past. You have the power to decide who you are now. The kind of security you give. The kind of father that you want to be. You have the choice to love him with everything you have.”
My hand curled around her wrist, two of us sliding into a trance. “I do, Eden. Never thought it possible, the way I love him. Things I would do for him.”
But it’d cost.
It’d cost my brother.
It’d cost my soul.
It’d cost our security because we’d be running for the rest of our lives.
“I can’t lose focus, Eden. Can’t start deluding myself into thinking I’ve got anything else left after that.”
Her throat bobbed when she swallowed. Her voice a snare. “I see it, Trent. Feel it when you look at him. You’re different than you are with anyone else. Beautiful in a way I doubt that you can see in yourself. But I see clearly. You have more to give. More to share.”
She pressed that hand over my heart that raged. “Right here. I see it living right here. You deserve love just as much as anyone else. You just have to be brave enough to let it free. To give it. To receive it. You have to trust that you deserve it even if you think you’ve failed.”
My forehead dropped to hers.
This girl who believed in me the way few others had. My brothers. Gage. It ended there. Felt impossible to ask for more.
“What if our failures are already too great? What if we’ve lost too many of the ones we love? Destroyed our chance at ever feeling whole and right again? Who the fuck are we then?”
Sorrow gripped me by the throat. My mother’s sweet voice. Nathan’s face behind my eyes. Could hear both their ghosts screaming in my ear. Only reason I’d made it through that was because of Gage.
Eden gasped, grief clutching her in a fist. She grabbed at her chest like she was fighting to capture the answer. Lost, too.
“I don’t know,” she rushed, so low I could barely hear her. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”
Her entire being wept, like she had her own ghosts screaming in her ear. She twisted away, haunted in a way that caught me off guard.
Thought she was trying to escape it, too, her past, with the way she moved down the short hall at the back of the living room.
And I was the goddamned sadist who followed her. Unable to stop chasing down the pain. Knowing I’d inflict it. That I was destined to fuck this up.
I’d promised—promised I wouldn’t lose focus or direction.
One reason.
One reason.
My chest nearly caved in when she got to the bedroom doorway and her hand shot out to the threshold. She bent in two, holding her stomach and trying to catch her breath.