Rhys

I ’m so distracted by the red thong that it takes me a while to realize Eden’s limping.

As we walk back toward town—we still have an hour or so to kill till Joe picks us up, and I figured she’ll be happiest at the quilt show—I pull a few paces in front of her.

We’re walking on a narrow stretch, so it makes sense, and I want to make sure I see any hazard that might hurt her—even in her new, more enclosed shoes.

But also, it’s self-preservation, because if I look at her, I’m going to do something we’ll both regret.

I came pretty damn close at the checkout.

It has nothing to do with me, I told myself when her lace underwear spilled onto the floor. For all I know she wears lace thongs all the time—it’s none of my damn business.

But I hoped she’d bought them because she wanted me to see them. On her.

The electricity and the hope stirred up a potent chemical cocktail, making me buzz with dangerous need, so when I looked up and she was looking, too, when I let her see what I wanted, and she let me see right back?—

Then I recovered my senses.

Because even if there were a way to save Hanna’s business without saving the wedding —which I don’t know that there is—she got dumped . Yesterday .

Yesterday .

Not okay. Not okay to take advantage of her vulnerability.

Because Eden deserves better than swiping right. She deserves better than one and done . She deserves better than Teller and Paul, and she definitely deserves better than me.

There is nothing— nothing —in my story that would make me a good bet for Eden. My story is full of bad role models and my own failure to do better than they did.

Those are the thoughts that distract me from the moment, which is why it takes me way too long to realize Eden’s limping.

“Jesus,” I say when I finally size her up. “You okay?”

“It’s nothing serious,” she says. “Just…you were right. The sandals weren’t great for walking, and these”—she gestures at the slip-on tennis shoes—“are kinda…so-so. My feet are sore.”

“Blisters?”

“No. Just very tired and muscle-sore.”

“You want another piggy?—”

“No,” she says quickly, and even though I feel a stab of disappointment, I definitely think that was the smart answer.

Eden’s inner thighs are strong and soft as fuck, and having them wrapped around my waist made me want to pull her around my body to face me.

To line up my hardening cock against the seam of her sweatpants, to see if she’d be hotter there.

It made me want to know what it would feel like to have those thighs wrapped around my face.

All things I don’t need to be thinking about, if I want to do right by her, which is all I’ve ever wanted.

So we keep walking, now side by side. And it feels good. Nice. Her arm brushes mine occasionally, and I try not to notice the new surge of electricity each time, the way it goes straight to my cock.

There’s nothing to do except walk and talk, so we do. I ask her about how she got started with quilting (she learned it from her grandmother; sewing was the only time her grandmother sat still).

I want to know more about her grandmother, so she tells me: That she was small-minded and bitter, not very likable. That Eden knew she was safe but not cherished or adored . She longed, a lot of the time, for someone who would hug her and curl up with her and stroke her hair.

Dead father.

Absent mom.

Withholding grandmother.

Jesus.

My hands fist at my sides.

“Teller was very demonstrative,” she says. “So it was hard to resist that. That’s part of how I ended up in that marriage.”

She doesn’t say anything about Paul, and I don’t ask. I realize I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know if Paul gave her everything she didn’t get in her childhood, if she misses it now, if thoughts of him are creeping into the cracks in our conversation.

I hope not, and I hate myself for hoping.

She tells me about when she opened the quilt store, not long after she married Teller. His money made it possible for her to go from running an online store to a bricks-and-mortar one, which she still feels weird about, but also, “Thank God something good came out of that marriage.”

When she asks what it was like when my aunt got divorced, I tell her about how much time Aunt Meryl spent at our house crying and how I wasn’t old enough to understand, but I knew I wanted to stick it to the guy who’d done it.

“You were a sensitive kid,” she says.

“I guess,” I say, shrugging. “Or a vicious one.”

She’s shaking her head. “I can’t believe I thought you were cynical.”

“I am cynical.”

Eden gives me a sidelong, extremely dubious look. “You’re a giant softie,” she says. “Wearing some serious chain mail.”

She’s wrong. Maybe I was soft at one point, but life definitely kiln-fired it out of me.

“Whatever you want to believe,” I say, secretly pleased by her characterization, wrong or right.

“Ditto. We can agree to disagree.”

I cross my arms. “You know what I could use right now? Doritos.”

She snickers. “You’re in luck. I crammed the bag into my purse.”

“Dorito dust?” I hazard.

“Better than no Doritos at all.”

“Hit me.”

She does, and we walk back to the quilt festival, munching Dorito tidbits and talking about nothing at all, and at some point she says, “Is it really weird that I’m not thinking about Paul at all?” and I say, “No,” but what I’m thinking is, Oh, God, I am so, so, so fucked.