Page 22

CHAPTER 22

ELI

‘ Daddy smiles more when you’re here. ’

Mo’s words continue to repeat in my head as the three of us cuddle up in Edin’s bed to watch a movie. This is probably one of our favorite after-dinner activities in the evening lately. I know Edin’s touch starved, but I think Mo might crave affection as much as Edin does. We find ourselves up here at least three nights a week.

I can’t concentrate on the movie, though. All I can think about are Mo’s words. ‘ Daddy smiles more when you’re here. ’ That means something is definitely growing between us, right? It’s not just on my end?

We spend more time apart now, which I hate. Edin goes to class and hockey. Most of the time, he’s fine, but his hip still bothers him. The team doc has sent him for more tests, and they insist it’s just a bruise. He’s fine.

I admit I haven’t known Edin all that long, but I can’t imagine he’d prolong an injury’s pain for any reason. He wants to play hockey and go pro. He’s not going to do something to jeopardize that. Claiming an injury that prevents him from ice time isn’t something he’d do.

I’m worried. I wish I knew a doctor.

Mo falls asleep before the end credits are rolling. I’m not sure if Edin’s actually into the movie or if he remains curled up with me because he’s comfortable. Either way, we don’t move until the movie’s over.

Then it’s a very careful game of untangling ourselves without waking up Mo. Once I’m out from behind Edin, I gently pick up Mo and bring her to bed. Edin always follows, but he’s usually waiting outside the door to watch.

I don’t think he’s comfortable carrying Mo yet. There are moments when pain in his hip will stop him in his tracks, as if he suddenly twisted the wrong way. He’s afraid of that happening with Mo in his arms and dropping his daughter. I can’t imagine how frustrating that is for him.

We’ve always made sure Mo gets ready for bed early before starting the movie. She’s already taken a shower, brushed her teeth, and is in her pajamas. Edin’s also made a habit of straightening her bed and pulling her blankets back, so there’s less of a chance of waking her when we put her down.

As soon as she’s supine, Mo sighs and turns to lay on her side. I give her a minute to settle again before pulling her blanket up and tucking her in. On her nightstand is a bottle of water that I move closer to her. Taking a step back, I make sure she doesn’t wake up and need something before turning for the door.

Usually, Edin’s there with a smile. Something small and sweet. But in the dim moon nightlight, I can see a very different expression tonight. I’m not sure what it is, but he looks… spooked. My stomach drops. Tonight is the night he tells me to leave, isn’t it?

He takes several steps backward into the hall as I approach and shut the door nearly all the way, but don’t latch it behind me. Edin stares at me with that unsettled expression. Then he turns and heads into his room. It takes me a minute to follow because I’m not sure if he wants me to.

When I finally do, he’s sitting on the edge of his bed. I shut the door and instead of joining him, I give him some space and sit on his desk chair across the room.

“I need to explain something,” Edin says.

I nod. “Okay.”

It’s several long minutes before he speaks again. I’m trying to keep myself under control and not push him to talk. In the silence, a million things race as I try and fail to come up with anything at all to convince him to let me stay.

‘ Daddy smiles more when you’re here. ’

“Lydia was the first girl I had sex with,” Edin finally continues, and I admit that’s not where I thought this was going. “Not the only, but the first. We were barely fifteen. She was… cute, I guess. Loved hockey. I’d been playing hockey since I was a kid, so I was definitely seduced by the fact she loved the sport I loved. We weren’t seeing each other. It wasn’t like that.”

Edin pauses for a minute and stares at his phone on the edge of the bed. “Honestly, I’m not surprised I got her pregnant. I’d been fascinated with my dick as soon as I realized it did things other than piss.” He gives me a demure look, and I try not to laugh. “I’m not even going to tell you when I started getting in trouble for sex things. It’s horrifying when I think back on it. But I was a teenager, and my dick made me feel good, so… yeah.”

“As someone who has a dick, I get that.”

He gives me an amused smile and for just a minute, the spooked expression he’d had disappears. Unfortunately, it’s not long before his amusement fades and he looks unsettled again.

“Anyway, Lydia got pregnant. Our parents were furious; mine especially. They’d been warning me and grounding me and threatening me since the first time listening to what my dick wanted got me in trouble. This was the final straw. ‘ If you can make adult decisions to have sex, then fine. You’re going to be an adult since you’re in such a damn hurry.’ I’ll never forget those words because they turned out to be a life sentence.”

The misery on his face makes me clench my hands around the seat of the chair so I don’t launch myself across the room and take him in my arms. He just looks so… miserable.

“Lydia’s uncle gave us a small house he owned in town. Tiny. I wouldn’t call it big enough for three people, but there we were. Our parents forced us to get married and live as a family should. I was forced to quit hockey so I could get a job and provide for my family after school. At first, Lydia and I tried to make the best of it. We’d fucked up together, and we knew that. Since it wasn’t like we didn’t like each other, we decided to try to be happy. That would really show our families that they were fucking stupid.”

Edin closes his eyes. “That didn’t last long. Lydia hated being pregnant. She was uncomfortable all the time. Birth was hard and painful, and she didn’t know how to make Mo stop crying. She cried as much as Mo did in helpless frustration. I can’t tell you how many times she’d scream at our crying daughter, ‘ What do you want from me? ’ because she’d already changed her and fed her and burped her and washed her. But nothing Lydia did seemed to stop Mo from crying.

“It’s not surprising that she grew to resent Mo and hate me. She was miserable. Every time our parents stopped in, we became more miserable with all the little barbs, ‘ I told you so’s, ’ and ‘ You made this bed, now you have to lie in it ’ bullshit. The absolute burning fury that began to manifest in me every time I saw my parents made me see red. The last time my parents came over, I broke the door as I forced them out, screaming back at them how much I hated them. They were never allowed back in our lives—not mine and not Mo’s.”

Edin glances at me, but it’s almost like he’s ashamed by the way he quickly bows his head.

“Life was miserable. Dark. I hated everything except Mo, but I was trapped. I refused to leave Mo alone with Lydia because she was awful. Always yelling at Mo. Throwing things. Banging things. Breaking things. I was afraid for Mo, though I don’t think Lydia ever touched her. She knew I’d have lost my shit. But the thing was… as much as I tried to do what needed to be done and make sure we had food and shit, I was spiraling.

“Depression was a very dark place to be. I tried so fucking hard to be there for Mo and to give her a smile and make sure she knew I loved her, but… it felt like a mountain I was never going to scale. That’s when the suicidal thoughts started. Just the helpless ones: I might as well not be here since I can’t do anything right. What’s the point? We’re all miserable already.

“They were just thoughts. Until they weren’t.”

I hold my breath as I stare at him. Edin’s eyes close and he takes a shaky breath.

“Dak and I have been best friends since we were kids playing hockey together. He was there all the time to support me, as were his dads. They’re a great family. Some of the best people I’ve ever met. Dak left for college and the solitude really fucked with me a little more. His dads were still there, still checking on Mo and me. But… I felt so… helpless. Hopeless.

“Dak had been trying for over a year to get me to visit him. I would never leave Mo with Lydia, though. That was unacceptable. It wasn’t safe. The thing is, I knew the invitation was for Mo and me, but I thought it would be the end of my strength to get away from Lydia and my rotten life for days or a week or whatever, only to be dropped back into it. I didn’t think I’d survive that.

“Then the day came when I was ready to leave. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t stay in this miserable life. It wasn’t a life worth living. I’d lost everything, and I hated…”

Edin’s words trail off as he squeezes his eyes closed. He holds his breath before wiping his eyes. My heart aches for him. I don’t know if he wants to keep space between us, though, so I stay where I am.

When he speaks again, his words are quiet and shaky. “I had a knife in my hand. Pressed to my chest.” He absently rubs his sternum over his heart. “For a single minute, right before I began to apply pressure, I felt at peace knowing this was the release I needed. Then my daughter walked into the kitchen, having woken up crying from her nap.

“I can’t explain what happened then. How it felt like the world around me spun wildly. I threw the knife into the sink, mortified that if she’d come in just a few minutes later, she’d have found me on the floor surrounded by a pool of blood. Dead. I picked her up and hugged her tightly, trying to keep my own sobs quiet while I soothed her. The horror of that has stayed with me, but you know what I thought? You know the words that kept going through my head?”

I shake my head, though I think it was a rhetorical question.

“Next time, I can’t be anywhere where Morgan will be the one to find me dead.” Tears streak down his cheeks as he remembers. “I knew I needed to get out of there. I packed her bags and mine and loaded us into the car. We stayed at a friend’s house for two weeks while I worked out my two-week notice. I emptied the bank account I shared with Lydia and opened a private one where I had the last two weeks and vacation payout from work deposited. Then I drove away with my baby.

“I’d called Dak during that time and told him we were ready to visit. They were somewhere south. Like way south in the Caribbean or something on a boat. It would take them six days to get to the port, so I drove around for days. We did an amusement park and some other things, wasting money I didn’t have, but I wanted to give Mo some happy memories.

“In hindsight, I think my thought was to leave Mo with the only person I trusted. That way I could die in peace knowing my daughter was with someone who’d love her and give her the life she deserved.”

“Edin,” I whisper.

He nods. “Yeah. That didn’t happen. Dak knew as soon as he saw me and… helped me. Not just with Mo, but in all the ways. I agreed to stay with them—him and Sparrow, his new husband. I agreed to counseling as long as I could sign parental rights to them because I was terrified that if this therapist said I was unfit to care for my child, she’d send her back to Lydia and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

“For the past three years, I’ve been in therapy. About six months in, my therapist suggested I get on the ice again. Just skate around because skating always brought me peace. Coach found me on the ice one day and he worked with me. Challenging me. Last year, after two years of therapy and some antidepressants and finally finding some peace, I enrolled at Longwood U and Coach brought me onto the team.”

“And you moved into a frat house,” I muse.

He gives me a grin. “Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking, honestly. We were living with Dak, but I know that when Mo and I showed up on their proverbial doorstep, we’d interrupted their honeymoon and we’d been there ever since. They’d only just gotten married, and I think that’s what convinced me to move out because the start of their life together was hugely disrupted when they suddenly had a suicidal man and his five-year-old daughter to take care of. I guess I just wanted to let them have their space, so I thought that living with forty twenty-year-olds was a good idea.”

Edin gives me another demure look, and I laugh.

“My point in telling you this is literally everything in my life up till dropping in on Dak has caused me some really fucked up trauma I can’t shake. I’m straight, but I don’t have sex with women because I’d have a fucking mental breakdown knowing the horrible outcome could just start all over again. Yes, that’s not how it works, but it’s what my head tells me. So I went the whole gay-for-pay route because it’s easy, quick money, and doesn’t require me to have so much time away from my kid. Then it turned out that sex in general is now a triggering aspect, so I learned to erase gender entirely and lock myself in my head while I performed. I didn’t let them touch me. I didn’t let them do anything but take my dick because… I needed the control. I needed to be able to control my entire life after not having that control for far too long. As you can imagine, getting close to someone, and letting them in, can also be triggering because I’ve lived with locking up my emotions for so long just so I can exist in a residual pattern of working to take care of my family, trying to keep my kid smiling, intervening with Lydia and Mo.”

“Then I come along and force you out of the protective shell around you,” I whisper.

Edin nods. He looks exhausted. “Yeah. You took the control away again and… everything fell apart. That’s why I broke down after. Every time. Until I was so physically and mentally wrung out from getting hurt that even my emotional hurricane couldn’t break through.”

“But you’re feeling better now so your… emotional hurricane is back,” I say, trying to work out what he’s telling me.

He sighs. “Yes. While I was too lost in my pain to think straight, you worked your way in and… I don’t hate it. But all those voices in my head are speaking up again. All the fears and warnings and I don’t really know what to do. I need to protect my peace of mind, Eli. I can’t let myself spiral again. For my sake and especially for my daughter’s. But… I like you.”

That’s as much as I can take. I get up and cross the room to sit beside him. I’m so fucking relieved when I reach for him, and he leans into me that I almost cry. Bringing him into my arms, I hug him tightly. Minutes pass without either of us speaking. The way he clings to me tells me just how difficult admitting all this has been and how much he needs to be held right now.

“Listen” I say, pressing my lips to his head. “First, thank you for trusting me with this. I had no idea… I… don’t even have words. I hate that you’ve been through all this, and I wish I could do something to make it all go away. Second, there’s no pressure here, Edin. I’m not giving you an ultimatum. I’m not making you choose a situation. As much as I’ve been here, I’m not taking your control over your life from you, and I never will. I promise you this with every fiber of my being.”

He takes a deep, shaky breath and nods.

“I’m also not asking for anything from you. Yes, I want to keep spending time with you. Yes, I want to keep seeing you. Nothing has made me happier than being in your company and hearing your laughter, seeing your smile. Spending time with Mo. But I promise you, Edin, I’m not asking you for a commitment of any kind. We can keep going just like we are, but now, maybe you’ll be able to rest a little easier, having told me where you’re coming from and knowing I still want you.”

“You do…” His words sound like a cross between a question and a statement of disbelief.

“I do,” I confirm. “The only thing I’m going to say is that I’m never letting someone else touch you at Confessions. Otherwise, everything is at your pace. Your comfort level. Okay?”

Edin sighs, and I finally feel the tension in his body relax. “Okay.”

Without another word, I pull him up the bed and lie down with him, keeping him tucked into my chest. I struggle with a hand to untangle the bedding beneath us because I don’t want to let him go. I can feel his smile against my collarbone as I do, but finally, I wrap us up in a blanket and hold him tightly.

I’d do anything to take all that shit from his past. I’m left with several questions—where Lydia is now being the primary one. But I think he’s already emotionally drained after reliving it all for me, so for tonight, we’re done talking about this unless he wants to add anything. Tonight, I’m going to hold him tightly and make sure he knows he’s not alone and I’ll do whatever he needs for me to protect him.