Page 9

Rhys

“ W hat are you doing?” Eden asks a few minutes later.

This is a ridiculous question, because I’m visibly ransacking the beach house’s cabinets and the refrigerator, but I answer seriously anyway: “I’m cooking dinner.”

I line up my discoveries on the countertop—not exactly a woolly mammoth I’ve hunted, shot, and skinned, but pretty damn satisfying: One box of rigatoni, one jar of tomato-and-basil sauce, a bag of frozen green beans dated only three months ago, and a half-empty, non-moldy plastic container of grated Romano cheese. A veritable feast.

I can’t undo any of the shitty things that have happened to Eden on my watch, but I can feed her.

She’s staring at me.

“What?” I demand.

“I guess I wasn’t expecting you to cook.”

“It’s not exactly gourmet. Boxed pasta, jarred sauce, frozen veg.”

“I just didn’t picture you cooking…anything.”

“What do you think a single guy in New York City does for food?”

“Takeout.”

“Your faith is touching.”

“Can I—help?” she asks. She unfolds herself from the couch, stretching out long legs and pushing a strand of blond hair behind one ear. She steps toward the kitchen, lithe and fluid in motion.

Yes, I think. You can stop being confusing and beautiful. You can stop getting divorced and married and jilted, you can stop needing to be rescued, you can hold still somewhere far away from me where I can’t see or touch you.

Somewhere along the line, maybe around the time I unzipped her dress, I stopped being strong enough to make her hate me. I started needing for her to see someone other than the asshole who’d stolen her money and her time with her dog and her life .

But I don’t say any of that. I say, “You probably have a lot of texts and emails to reply to.”

“God. I do.”

“Go,” I say, pointing to the couch.

She gives me an eyebrow that says, Really?

You get to boss me around? But then she heads back to the couch and settles herself there, and I putter in the kitchen.

Through the big wall of windows, as I set two pots boiling and a third with tomato sauce heating, I watch as the sun deepens toward orange.

Near the horizon, where clouds have massed, the sky turns shades of pink and purple and wild blues—even green.

My gaze strays back to her, curled up on the couch, long lean limbs and hair tinged gold by the dusky light.

I make myself look back at the sky.

“Sunset,” I say, inclining my head toward it.

She looks up from her phone. “It’s so beautiful here.”

Yes, I think, admiring the way the light touches her face, licking the gleaming porcelain of her cheek. It is.

“Did you come here a lot with Paul?”

The words are out of my mouth before I can consider if they’re a good idea, but she doesn’t flinch.

“A few times,” she says. “But I used to come to the beach with my dad when I was really little. When I came with Paul the first time, all these memories came flooding back. Sandcastles and kites and dipping my toes in the water and then crying because it was so cold it hurt. My dad would rub my feet to get the feeling back in them and then take me to the doughnut shop and let me pick out one doughnut for each hand.”

“That’s sweet.”

“He was great,” she says, eyes far away and sad.

I know—from the divorce and the wedding—the basics of Eden’s parental situation. I’d even seen the No checked next to Eden’s mom’s name on the guest list, but I hadn’t let myself think about how that might have affected Eden. Because in general, thinking about Eden was a terrible idea.

Still is, it’s just that now I don’t seem to be able to stop.

“He died when I was six,” she says. “My mom is Caryn Simmons?—”

I’d registered the fact of Eden’s mom’s fame, but with the same self-imposed distance. Now I let it sink in, what that would have meant for her. “You’re the child of pop royalty.”

“Yeah, well, Caryn Simmons is fun for the rest of the world. Not so much for me. She was always recording or on tour. I was raised by my grandmother.”

I think of her saying to Mari I’ve been through worse and I’ve done it before, and I can do it again . I’ve seen her put that brave face on so many times, and I wonder if each time she puts it on, it’s harder to take off.

Also, there’s a missing piece in there—the whole story of her relationship with her mom—but if she’s not going to volunteer more, I’m not going to press.

“How’s the guest situation?” I gesture at her phone.

She sighs. “Kind of a hot mess. Why did Hanna tell people the wedding is being rescheduled?”

I hesitate, but I might as well level with her. “She wanted to leave all our options open.”

“I don’t want my options open,” she says. “I’m not taking Paul back.”

I open my mouth, but she gives me a sharp warning look and I close it again. Not only because of the warning look. Because there is no bone in my body that believes taking Paul back is a good idea.

“Short term,” I say instead, “it means you don’t have to say you were jilted.”

She ponders that. “It is kind of nice not to have to tell people the whole story,” she says. “‘Family emergency’ is kind of great.”

“Later on, you can tell them the truth if you want,” I suggest. “That your fiancé is a giant douchebag who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

Fuck.

Sorry, Hanna! But he is!

She raises her eyebrows, amused. “That doesn’t say much for my taste in men.”

I stare at her.

She winces. “Yeah,” she says. “Well. I’m swearing off them permanently, so you don’t need to worry about me doing that again. I’m adopting your take on love and marriage.”

She goes back to her phone, and I pull out mine.

She’s swearing off men permanently.

Hanna

She’s just saying that. When he grovels, she’ll change her mind.

I don’t want him to grovel.

I don’t want her to change her mind.

What do we do if she really doesn’t want to marry him anymore?

There’s a long pause, and then Hanna sends back:

I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that.

We hit the road as soon as we clean up dinner. My first act is to pull into a gas station. Eden jumps out of the car.

“Where are you going?”

“We need snacks,” she says.

“We just ate.”

“It’s a road trip. We have to have snacks.”

Eden’s buoyancy is back. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.

It’s clear she needs to keep moving, and for now my job is to keep moving with her.

Hanna obviously still believes Eden and Paul could get back together.

I have my doubts—but I also know I’m not a reliable narrator.

What I believe about and want from Eden doesn’t live in the real world.

It lives in a fantasy world where I never had to sit across a courtroom from her.

Where we met under completely different circumstances, where there was no Teller Austin or Paul Graves.

That world doesn’t exist, and therefore, Eden and I will keep moving. And for now, at least, I’ll live in Hanna’s world, the one where we’re pretending we don’t have a problem…yet.

I finish filling the tank while Eden’s still inside. I head into the mini mart to hurry her up and discover that she’s piled a basket nearly full of shiny, bright-colored snack bags.

“What’s all that for?” I demand.

“To eat ,” she says, like I’m the dullest knife in the drawer.

“You’re going to be sleeping, not eating,” I remind her. “That was our agreement.”

“I’m not sleepy,” she says. “In fact, I can drive if you need me to.”

I shake my head.

“Don’t trust me?”

“It’s not that. I’m a terrible passenger. I don’t even like rideshares, but I tolerate them as long as I’m not sitting in the front seat, watching the driver’s every move and awaiting my doom.”

“Wow,” she says. “That’s?—”

“I know,” I say. “Grim.”

“Did something happen to you as a child, Hott?”

There’s a tease in her voice. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard it, and it feels so fucking good it takes my breath away. It makes me want to tease back, to play.

“No. I was just born to be in the driver’s seat.”

Only the corners of her mouth tip. But it’s enough. My whole body warms.

She looks away, like she didn’t mean to let me see that much. When she looks back, the tease and the not-quite-smile are gone. “Do you want to pick out some of the snacks?”

I shake my head. “That shit is super unhealthy.”

She gives me a disbelieving look. “Seriously?”

“What? It’s true.” I dig in her basket. “Cheetos? Bugles? Oreos? Cool Ranch Doritos? Do any of those even contain actual food?” I pull out the Cool Ranch Doritos and start reading the ingredients out loud, but she snatches them out of my hands.

“You don’t have to eat them,” she says. “But I will not allow you to kill my joy.”

I roll my eyes. “The number of additives in those products will kill you and your joy.”

She shakes her head vehemently. “Nope,” she says. “They may kill me, but they will not even dampen my joy.”

And with that, she takes her basket of junk food up to the front counter. I watch her go, biting back my own smile.