Page 226 of Ominous: Part 1

Eden stares at me blankly, and I have no idea what she’s thinking. It’s unnerving. Like when she strolled up the staircase last night with Dom’s hand in hers and smiled back at me while I held the knife to my lips.

Then she whispers, “You let her go?”

I don’t repeat myself. Instead, I say, “Tell me about your heart problem.” I glance at where the organ beats beneath my shirt on her body. It feels odd, knowing a weakness of hers. Understanding she isn’t invincible. I don’t like the feeling because I can’t be with her all the time. I can’t insulate her from the world. That would make me… my dad.

She doesn’t speak for a second, and I know she’s still thinking about Winslet. I don’t feel relief having told her. I don’t feel anything. It wasn’t my fault. I did nothing wrong. Winslet could make her own decisions, and she had been doing so for a very, very long time.

I wasn’t her keeper.

But Eden’s lips curve up again, and I feel as if she thinks, maybe, I should’ve been.

“I was diagnosed when I was fourteen. I had a panic attack.” She shrugs, as if that alone is nothing. “I woke up in the middle of the night with a racing heart. I’d had a bad dream. I dreamed about the time someone snuck into my room and… they used me. It wasn’t so far-fetched, the nightmare.” Her words are steady. “He was my brother’s friend, and he spent the night often enough at my house.”

I feel my blood run cold. I’m not sure what I expected her to say, but it was none of this. I dig the tips of my nails into my palms. I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood. “Used you? Used youhow?”

She shrugs, so flippant. “Don’t worry. Nothing actuallyhappenedto me. I was still your little virgin. But I told him he could when he kept begging me. When he said I just had to lay there. I didn’t have to do anything. And maybe I liked it, in the end. Maybe I wanted to feel wanted.”

The pressure in my chest rises.

“I wantedsomeoneto want me. Maybe what Winslet wanted that night.”

I try my very best not to outwardly react to her comparison. She wasn’t there. She doesn’t know anything about it. What Winslet wanted.

“It’s whatyouwant, too, isn’t it?” Her smile is cruel. Her tone is condescending, but the truth is louder than all of it. “You want someone to know all of your bullshit, and want you anyway, because you’re so tired of pretending, aren’t you? It must be exhausting, wearing your perfect, shiny, rich boy mask all the time.”

I clench my teeth together, but there is nothing I can honestly say to refute her statement.

I’m terrified she’s going to leave. This is the part where she’s figured me out, just like Mom. Just like Dad. Just like the meeting they had in the white room with the doctors in white coats, and they found out their son wasn’t just temperamental. He wasn’t simply sporadically violent in fits like children sometimes have. He wasn’t moody or only six and volatile and prone to temper tantrums.

He was fucked up.

There was no fixing him.

Me. There is no fixingme.

Cold slithers under my skin. I glance at Dom again, and he is still so oblivious. I feel raw, exposed. I don’t believe I did anything wrong, but with Eden’s story, that won’t mean she doesn’t. And I never told the police what I saw. Now, she could fuck me up.

“You’re not leaving me.” I blurt it out because I can’t stop it. And I couldn’t let her leave right now if she tried. I’d rather not have to hurt her to make her stay, though. I want her to choose it.Choose me. Stay with me.

“Eden, you’re not leaving—”

“I never said I was.” She smiles at me, though, and it doesn’t seem to match her words. She takes a step back, and I want to grab her, but I force myself to remain motionless. Sighing, she rakes her fingers through her mass of hair, and she turns from me, to look at Dom, staring at him in contemplation as she crosses her arms over her chest. “I won’t leave you. We all want someone to want all the fucked-up parts of us, don’t we?” She glances at me. “Yours just happen to be a little more fucked than the rest of us. But what, exactly, does that say about me?” She doesn’t pause for an answer, and I wouldn’t have been able to give her one, anyway. “I’m not going to tell him, or anyone, if you’re wondering.”

I was.

“So, whenever you start thinking you’re the worst person in the world, Eli, just remember,I’m the one keeping your secrets.”

37

Eden

“Did you happen to see Dominic?”

I look up from carrying dishes to the sink, trails of golden butter swirling around the white plate, shells of lobster I didn’t eat, probably from Eli’s meal.

I set the stack of plates down quickly, but soft enough they don’t clink together, and I discreetly wipe my hands on the back of my shirt as I turn around.

It isn’t Eli’s shirt, because I changed into one of my favorites, a light, oversized sweater, emerald green and slightly cropped, showing a sliver of skin over my high-rise black jeans, fishnet stockings beneath them. I tug down my shirt, not wanting Eli’s dad to see all of that, but since I didn’t know I was having dinner with him until I was already here, I didn’t have much to choose from.