Page 36 of Soul Mates: Hercules Valentine and I

I chuckle. “I’m alone.”

Eden steps into my room. She’s wearing the same outfit she wore yesterday. Her smile is earnest and relaxed. “She’s gone.”

“Yep.” I tilt my head curiously. “Have you been with Nero since yesterday?”

Eden’s face is aglow as she nods.

My chest tightens. “Then you told him your real name?”

She shakes her head.

“No? Why not?”

She slowly walks over to sit on the foot of my bed. Her eyes are alight, her skin glowing. I’m not anticipating bad news, which is why I’m confused about why she didn’t tell Nero her real name.

“I never had so much fun with a guy in my life.” She hoists her legs onto my bed and sits with her arms wrapped around her calves.

My eyebrows shoot up as my smile mirrors hers. “Oh, really? What did you do?”

Simpering, she gazes out the window without focus. “He asked if I wanted to go to a party, and I said I wasn’t dressed for a party. He said I couldn’t make myself more beautiful than I already am. And you know what? I knew he wasn’t BSing me just to get me to part my thighs. He meant it. But he wanted me to feel comfortable, so he asked if I wanted to go swimming instead.”

“I said, ‘Swimming? It’s cold out there, you know,’ and he said, ‘The water’s warm.’ So I said, ‘What the hell, let’s do it.’ But the house wasn’t a house, Pais. It was a mansion. The kind of place where people who have money like your family live.”

I knitted my eyebrows. “We don’t own mansions, Eden.” The house in Manhattan is mansionesque. But it belonged to my grandfather, who was prone to buying expensive properties just for the hell of it. My parents are minimalist, though, which is why whenever I think about it, I’m still baffled that we ever moved into Grandpa’s monstrosity of a house.

I stop thinking about myself and set my focus back on Eden’s exciting recount of her night. Eden’s eyes turn brighter when she tells me that they drove down a winding road through a forest that was part of the same property.

“You’re not a slasher ax murderer?” she asked him and then warned him that she was no victim.

And she isn’t. Eden is trained in advanced self-defense. She’s given me multiple lessons on how to strike the vulnerable spots of a would-be attacker. During freshman year, she used to be worried about how I went jogging alone early in the morning.

“Paisley,” she would say, “God made men physically stronger than us, so you can’t beat a man in a fistfight, but you can weaken him, wound him, and then run.” Step-by-step, she showed me how to do it and made me repeat the moves until she was certain that I got them.

Nero told her that he wasn’t an ax murderer, gun murderer, strangler, or any other kind of murderer and started taking off his clothes while she drove to prove it.

“You’d better not get naked,” she said, splitting her attention between him and the road.

He said he was keeping his underwear on but jokingly pointed out that not only wasn’t he a murderer, but he wasn’t a pervert, either.

Eden grins at the bed as if amused by her memories. “I have to admit, though, Paisley, I’ve never wanted to have sex with anyone more than I wanted him. Which is crazy because he wasn’t making those kinds of moves on me. He was just fun.”

Then, she said, they arrived at a cute cottage with a glistening lake spread before it.

“That’s what you want to swim in?” she asked him.

He told her to trust him, and she did. She stripped down to her panties and bra. He grew a boner but still kept his distance. He took her by the hand and said, “Let’s dive in so you can get warm.”

“The lake is heated, Pais. Who heats a lake? Rich people do. I bet your family heats a lake!”

I raise a finger to drive home this point. “No, we don’t.”

“Well, he does, and do you want to know why? He’s a Valentine. His name is Nero Valentine. That guy you left with—he’s a Valentine too. They’re cousins. Did he tell you?”

I widen my eyes, pretending to be shocked. “No.”

Exhaling as if she’s expelling all the life from her, she falls back on my bed and entwines her fingers on top of her chest. “He’s very smart, very cute, and out of my league, at least for now.”

“No, he’s not.” I stare out the window. Thank goodness it’s Saturday. I’m finally starting to get sleepy.