I shake my head. “I don’t want to be something you try. I don’t want to be the next woman you walk away from. And I don’t want you to be the next person I care about who walks away from me.”
I’m proud of myself. I feel strong. I feel safe. I’m making myself both those things. I don’t need anyone else to do that for me.
“Hey,” he says. “I don’t want either of those things, either, and I wouldn’t be telling you any of this if I thought either of those things would happen. I know you’ve been hurt, and I willneverhurt you like that.”
You won’t,I agree in my head,because I won’t give you the power to.
This is what I should have been able to do with Paul: push him away. This is what I should have said to Paul:I won’t give you the power to hurt me again.
It’s what I should have said to my mother at nine, at eleven, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, sixteen and a half, seventeen.
I can’t go back and do that part over.
But I can refuse to be hurt again.
Rhys pushes a hand into his normally flawless hair. It’s a little long right now, and it stands on end. “When I was in New York,” he says, “I ran into my ex-girlfriend. And we started talking. She’s with someone else now, and she’s happy. She wanted to know if I still felt like marriage would never be for me. She said that she should have known that she wasn’t the woman who would change my mind about marriage. And it made me realize. You’re that woman for me, Eden. You’re the woman who can change—who hasalready changed—my mind about marriage. I want to be with you. Not just now but for as long as you’ll have me.”
All I have to do is stay strong a little bit longer and this will be over. “That’s what you thought about her, too.”
“No,” he says. A pleading note has crept into his voice, but I don’t let it penetrate my shell. “I didn’t. I knew it wasn’t working for me. The mistake I made was trying to talk myself into it. I knewshewas wrong for me. But you’re different, Eden. You’ve been different from the beginning. You made me want to break every rule I had for myself. You still do.”
I cross my arms. Like I’m protecting myself—from him. “You shouldn’t, though. You shouldn’t break your own rules. Those rules exist for a reason. To protect yourself.”
“I’m not scared, Eden. I know this can work. And I want to try.”
I close my eyes. Open them again. “I know,” I say. So strong, like steel, something that won’t bend or break, that will be left standing when all thetryingand thethis time is differentare done. “I’m the one who doesn’t think it can.”
48
Rhys
Someone is knocking on the guesthouse door. I can’t get up, because I’m weighted to the bed. This is the second morning in a row I’ve felt like I had the flu. Yesterday I stayed in bed so I wouldn’t infect anyone else.
Today I’m pretty sure it’s not the flu. It’s just that my entire body has been turned to lead.
I pull the covers over my head and ignore the knocking. I can sleep through it.
“I’m coming in,” says a voice. Preston’s.
A moment later he’s standing in the door of my bedroom, scowling at me.
“Hanna says you missed a wedding-planning meeting today. Are you trying to kill us all? You know what’s at stake here.” He looks hard at the expression on my face. “Jesus, dude, what’s wrong with you?”
“Someone increased the gravity in my room to Jupiter levels, and I can’t move.”
He gives an experimental bounce on both feet. “I’m not feeling it,” he says.
“Lift a foot,” I say. “Does it feel like you’re wearing an iron boot?”
He experiments. I appreciate his willingness to take my diagnosis seriously. “No,” he says definitively. “Try again. What the fuck happened, Rhys? And don’t bullshit me. I’ve known you for three decades.”
I turn over and push my face into the pillow. I’m going back to sleep.
Except two strong hands flip me over and drag the pillow from under my head.
“Talk,” Preston says.
He lasers his eyes into mine.
