Finding Eden (36 page)

"Sometimes," he whispered, "I feel like even though the fire didn't touch me, it burned me all the same. I feel like it melted my skin away and that the world is looking at my raw, charred insides. It feels that way, Eden. And now I know that it wasn't even the first time I was burned. I felt
raw
again today. That's how I felt, standing there before my
father
being told he sold me. He
sold
me when I was three years old."

I squeezed him with all my might, wishing I could open myself up and pour my love straight into his heart, that I could tear my own skin off and give it to him to wrap around his wounds.

"I see only goodness," I whispered. "I see only beauty."

"I thought I might just drive off tonight and never come back," he said. I tensed. "Just so you would never be able to love me again. So you'd go on without me and forget I ever existed."

I paused. "Obviously you didn't follow through with that plan."
He must know that is my greatest fear. And a complete impossibility.

"No," he said. "I'd never do that. Never." He shook his head against my chest as if the statement itself was ridiculous. And it was.

I sighed, relaxing. "Evil," I said.

"Are you making fun of me?"

"Kind of, yeah."

I leaned back and took his face in my hands again, my eyes roaming over his handsome features. "You're not even a very mean drunk," I said. "I think you're failing epically if your master plan is to follow in your father's footsteps."

Calder paused and then started laughing softly. "This can't be funny," he said, grimacing. "There's nothing funny about this. It's only tragic and awful." He fell back on the bed. I lay down next to him and stared up at the ceiling.

"Sometimes tragic and awful can be funny, too. Sometimes it has to be."

We stared up at the textured ceiling for a few minutes. Finally, Calder said, "It's not that it's my master plan to become like my father. But what if . . . what if I can't help turning into him?" He shuddered. "What if it's just my destiny?"

I took in a deep, cleansing breath of air. "Someone tried to tell me what my destiny was once. I knew in my heart it wasn't true. It felt
wrong.
I don't think other people get to tell us what our destiny is, Calder. Do you feel in your heart your destiny is to be an evil, disgusting monster?"

He sighed and then was quiet for a minute. "No."

"No," I confirmed. "Not possible. I've known you all my life. I know you through and through, Calder Raynes. Not possible."

He was quiet for a minute. "That's not even my real name."

"Kieran Reed," I said quietly, recalling. I frowned up at the ceiling, wondering if I could get used to calling him by another name.

He shook his head next to me. "I'd never take that name."

"Then Calder it is."

"I guess so."

We were quiet for a minute. "I'm not even really that drunk," he said. "I like the Coke more than I like the rum."

I snorted softly and reached down between us and took his hand in mine. We lay like that for a few minutes. I didn't look over at him, but I thought he'd probably fallen asleep so I was surprised when he spoke. "I do have to say that I'm epic at one thing at least."

"What's that?"

"Getting you knocked up."

I raised my eyebrows and stared over at him. He looked at me and we both started laughing at the same time. "True enough," I said.

Calder grinned, his eyes still slightly glazed over and heavy lidded. "I'm a badass when it comes to knocking you up," he said, looking overly pleased with himself. And then he promptly fell off the bed.

I looked over the side to see him staring up at me with a shocked look on his face and I tilted my head back and laughed so hard I thought I'd pee my pants. I fell back on the bed gripping my waist and howling with laughter, part hilarity, part hysteria. And for some reason, it felt just as good as crying. It was a release, and one I needed.

Calder pounced on me and I laughed harder and so did he until we couldn't laugh any more. We lay on our sides, face to face, getting a hold of our breathing and letting the laughter fade. "I love you so much," he said, pushing my hair out of my face.

"I love you, too," I said.

"Hey, Eden," Calder mumbled after a minute.

"Yeah?" I whispered.

He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and worried his brow. "You remember how you said that at the end, in that cellar, there was love? And that maybe that's where God was?" I nodded.

"Well," he continued, sadness flooding his expression. "When I was tied to that pole, when my father . . ." He sucked in a shaky breath.

"Yes?" I whispered, putting one hand on his cheek and smoothing my thumb over his cheekbone.

"I tried not to think about it for so long because it hurt so much. And I just wonder, in that moment, where was God then? Where was the love then?" His eyes searched mine, looking for something I wasn't sure how to name. Hope? Some type of enlightenment that would make it better?

My gaze moved over his features, that strong jaw I loved so much, those deep brown eyes that could fill up with pain or with love in an instant. I let my mind travel back to that moment even though I had tried not to do that over the past three years either. I thought about the horror that had filled me—the helplessness, and the unfathomable grief—and I thought about Calder's promise to meet me at a spring in Elysium. I thought about how, in what he thought was going to be his very last moments, he had thought of me. He had sought to protect me in the only way he had left.
Don't watch this, Eden. Turn away.

I studied the man lying next to me, the one I had fallen in love with because he gave me the things that were in his mind as if I had every right to them, because he was decent and fair and good. I had fallen in love with him as he carried his best friend twenty miles to safety. I had fallen in love with him because he knew how to tease in a way that felt loving, because he laughed easily and loved deeply, and because he looked at me in a way that made me feel precious. Love beat through my blood. "We were the love," I whispered. "In that moment, we were the love."

His eyes moved over my face, looking for the truth of that and seeming to find it. He smiled that same crooked, tentative smile I had loved the first time I saw it, the one that had calmed me when I was a terrified nine-year-old girl sitting in front of a temple full of strangers who expected something of me I didn't understand.

"Will my emotions always feel like, 'one step forward, one step back?' Will I always be this unbearable mess?" he asked.

"Probably," I answered.

He leaned back and let out a soft laugh. I grinned at him.

"And I'm okay with that," I whispered, going serious. "And we'll create a Bed of Healing, Version 2.0. It'll always be the place where we can be as messy as we need to be, in all sorts of ways." I winked at him.

He laughed and so did I, leaning into each other, sinking all the way down.

And I thought to myself, even though life could be horrifying and earth-shattering, terrible and tragic, it was also filled with moments of breathtaking beauty. And sometimes you just had to laugh.

It was true what I'd once said about the stars—some things are seen more clearly in light . . . and some things are seen more clearly in darkness. Because somewhere in the dark of the night, Calder pulled me close to him and we agreed in ways both spoken and unspoken that the world was ugly and broken, and love was ridiculously dangerous and absurdly unsafe . . .
and that we would love anyway
. We would keep our fierce and tender hearts open. It felt foolish and ridiculous and
right
. It felt like the bravest thing we'd ever do.

Eden

We got on the road bright and early the next morning. We were ready to leave Indiana behind. We were ready to go home. Our new life beckoned to us and we finally had everything we needed to start building it.

As we drove, we held hands, silent in our own thoughts. Calder seemed more peaceful this morning, more himself. We stopped at Starbucks and got coffees and muffins and sat in the parking lot. I felt like the world was different today. Something had shifted. Maybe it was the fact that we had all the answers, or at least all the answers we needed. I would tear down all those papers I had pinned to the back of my closet door—the project I'd taken up in an effort to
do something
with my deep pain and confusion. I didn't need it anymore.

"You know what I've been thinking about this morning, Morning Glory?" he asked.

I tilted my head, taking a sip of my vanilla decaf latté. He stared out the front window, giving me the beauty of his profile. "Xander told me once that he believed there was a purpose to me surviving Acadia that day," he paused, "and a purpose for all the suffering."

I nodded. "Yes, I like to believe that, too," I answered. "For all of us."

He smiled over at me. "Do you think we'll know it when we see it? Do you think we'll understand the reason for the pain someday?"

I thought about that for a minute, sipping sweet warmth and swallowing it. "Maybe it's not so much about one reason or one purpose. Maybe it's like this." I considered my words, looking out the window at the seemingly endless cornfields in front of us, the endless golden sky. "We all attach things to our hearts, kind of like how I pinned all those articles up on the back of my closet door, or how you covered your studio with paintings of me." I smiled a small smile at him. "We all attach things to our hearts, the things we value, the things we need, the things that make us who we are. But maybe . . . maybe it's only when our hearts are broken, that those things can fall inside. Maybe it's only then that those things truly become part of us, and it's only then we truly
understand and recognize pain in
others
because we've experienced it, too. And we've let it make us
better
, more loving. Perhaps that's what real mercy is. Perhaps that's the purpose to the pain."

Calder watched me, seeming to take in my words and turn them over in his mind. After a minute he said, "Your deep compassion. That's what makes you glow."

I breathed out a small laugh. "That's what makes
you
glow."

A look of hurt passed over Calder's face despite the small smile he gave me. "Sometimes I wish we didn't glow so brightly."

I reached over and touched his cheek. "Me neither. But we do. We earned it. So let's make the most of it. Let's go out and find some darkness, Calder Raynes. Let's light it up."

He laughed softly and grabbed my hand and kissed it.

He leaned back in his seat and stared out the front window for a minute. "Hector tried to kill me." A shaky breath escaped his mouth. "But he saved my life, too. Once upon a time, regardless of his motives, he ended up saving me from a sure life of hell with the monster who was my real father."

He stared out the window for another minute as I waited for him to organize his thoughts, his emotions.

"I don't know what to do with that. I hate him to the depths of my soul for what he did to me, to you, to all those innocent people, and yet . . ." he shook his head and looked over at me, his whole heart in his eyes, "what fell into Hector's heart when it broke, Eden? What things did he have attached to him that became part of the fabric of who he was when he broke open?"

I creased my brow, my eyes searching his face. "Shame, grief, rage," I said. "It's hard to even imagine. Add in some insanity and just a touch of charisma . . ." I took a deep breath. "We'll never know completely what was in his mind, and I have to think that's a good thing. If we understood it, it would make us like him."

He nodded. "Yeah . . ."

"I think . . . I think, Calder, that we have to figure out how to forgive, not for the people who wronged us, but for
us.
We can't keep bitterness attached to our hearts because eventually, it might become part of us—so deeply ingrained we can't work it back out. I think we have to focus on the beauty we've been given in this life, and make
that
the thing that defines us. Because people defined by bitterness end up destroying themselves from the inside out, and eventually they destroy everyone who tries to love them, too. That's not going to be us."

Calder looked at me, love clear in his expression. He leaned over and gathered me in his arms. "You're so damn smart. You must have had a really good life teacher."

I laughed and sniffled. "I did. And he was hot, too. I wanted to do dirty things to him."

Calder smiled and nuzzled in my neck. "Maybe you can describe that to me in more detail when we get back home."

I laughed softly and pulled away, smiling into his face and brushing my thumb over his full bottom lip. "I will." My expression went serious. "I love you, Butterscotch. You have the most beautiful heart of anyone I've ever met. And maybe you feel like a mess sometimes, and
life
is a mess sometimes, but the way I see it, you're the beauty that came from the mess."