Page 56 of Beneath Your Beautiful
“I won’t cheat on you,” I said, beating her to the punch, my specialty.
“Promise?”
“On my life.” I was a lot of things, not all of them good, but I’d never go behind her back with someone else. I hadn’t even looked at another woman or encouraged their advances since I met her. She watched me at the bar as much as I watched her, so she knew that. “If I did something like that, you’d have my permission to bash the hell out of my car and then swing the bat at my head.”
“I’d never hurt you, Killian,” she said softly.
The way she said it just about killed me. I knew she was saying she wouldn’t physically hurt me, and she was looking at the scar on my neck while she said it. She looked at it a lot, her eyes filled with questions I had no intention of ever answering honestly. But I couldn’t help feeling like she was talking about another kind of hurt, and that was a promise neither one of us could make. Life was messy and complicated.Iwas messy and complicated. Shit happened. Hearts got broken, intentionally or not. I’d always safeguarded mine, kept it out of danger by never getting too close to any woman. One-night stands and casual hookups had been a way of life for me and it had never been difficult to keep those boundaries in place.Until her.
I was as much at her mercy, as she was at mine. That, right there, was some scary shit.
Lifting her off my lap, I set her on the bed next to me, and leaned down to tie my laces. When I stood, she came to stand in front of me and took both my hands in hers.
“We can take it slow,” Eden said, but I thought we’d already passed slow and moved into turbo-charge. Neither one of us was built for the slow lane, and once I committed to something, I never did it in half-measures. It was all or nothing for me, and I got the feeling she wasn’t that much different. But I kept that to myself. All we could do was ride this out and see where it took us. I could only hope we ended up somewhere good.
“Ready to go?” I eyed her sexy little robe that told me she wasn’t ready to go anywhere.
“Go where?” she asked, furrowing her brows.
I laughed. She’d forgotten all about painting the wall. When it finally dawned on her, she smacked herself on the forehead and groaned. “Just give me two minutes.” She held up two fingers and flew to her dresser. After rummaging around in the drawers, she came out with shorts, a top, and a matching bra and underwear set—blue trimmed in silver. Now I’d know what was under her clothes. Pure, delicious torture.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Killian
She kept me waiting for fifteen minutes, but I didn’t complain. I was impressed she showered, dressed, dried her hair and was in the Jeep so quickly. She was wearing enormous sunglasses, short shorts, and a Ripcurl T-shirt that skimmed her waistband and hugged her body in all the right places. She looked like a Hollywood starlet. A dirty angel. A California surfer girl. A modern-day fairytale. Eden Madley was sexy, sweet, gorgeous, and mine. How in the hell had any of this happened?
While I drove, she pulled all her hair on top of her head, twisted it around and around, and tied it in a knot that secured it in place. Wispy strands of hair escaped the knot and blew in the breeze from the open windows. Her bare feet propped on the dash, she tapped out the beat of Bedouin Soundclash’s “When the Night Feels My Song” on the window frame. I had to agree with the lyrics—it was a beautiful day. An ordinary day, but a beautiful one. I didn’t feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. I felt happy in a way I hadn’t felt in so long. I wanted to hang onto it for as long as it lasted.
We picked up coffee from her favorite barista who put two and two together and came up with five. “So…you two, huh?” He put his hand over his heart and tapped it a few times. Then fluttered his eyelashes at both of us. “I knew there was something there from that first day. You two look so good together. Just for the record,” he said, putting his hand on my arm, “I knew you were straight. But it never hurts to look, right?”
Just give me the coffee and spare me the chat. Maybe I grunted in response. Who knows? Eden nudged my shoulder, prompting me to respond, so I mustered a smile and tried to be nice. “Right. Doesn’t hurt to look.”
“Have a good day,” Eden said, with a big smile and a wave.
“You too,” he said, giving us a wink like he’d been personally responsible for getting us together.
“Don’t mess with my head any more, okay?” Eden said when we were back in the Jeep and she was drinking her caffeine laced with milk and sugar. She was saving her cinnamon roll for later, having shot down my suggestion to try one of the salads or the Greek yogurt.
I glanced at her. “How do I mess with your head?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.
“You don’t know how you mess with my head?”
I pulled up in front of the bar and left the motor idling. She unfastened her seatbelt and turned in her seat to look at me.
“If we’re going to do this, we need to be open and honest with each other. I can’t handle it if you’re running hot and cold and I don’t know the reason behind it. Like, after the time I sketched your face, why were you so closed-off? You acted really cold.”
She was waiting for an answer, and I knew she wouldn’t let me go until she got one. I rubbed the back of my neck. This wasn’t going to be easy, but if I wanted to be with her, I couldn’t fall at the first hurdle. I did want to be with her. But I didn’t know how to answer her question.
“Is that why you were hanging out with Adam?” I asked. It was a dickhead move and I knew it. To her credit, she didn’t rise to it.
“Killian. Look at me.”
I looked at her. She pushed her sunglasses on top of her head and she looked at me, really looked at me the way only she could. Like she was an excavator digging out my secrets and lies and exposing them to the light.
“If you’re not ready for this, tell me now before we get into it. I don’t want you to jerk me around. I’m working on myself, and I don’t need someone to make me feel bad about myself. I care about you, and I think you care about me too. But we need to start communicating better.”
Like I said, she was strong and brave, and didn’t shy away from confrontation. And I cared about her, more than she probably knew. The last thing I wanted to do was make her feel bad about herself. I leaned back in my seat and searched my brain for the right answer. Sex was easy. Intimacy was hard for me. “If you look too closely, dig too deep, you won’t like what you find and that…scares the shit out of me.” I swallowed hard, not sure how all this honesty made me feel. I wanted her to leave, so I could go work it out at the gym. Punch a leather bag with my bare hands until my knuckles were raw and bleeding.Thatwas how it made me feel.
