Page 53 of Begin Again, Part 2

"He wasn't married!" Sienna retorted as she threw up her hands. "And we told her this!"

"Enough!" Cassandra stepped in and laid down the law. "This isn't helping anyone."

"You both may be okay with all this fuckery, but I'm not," Sienna refused to back off. "She screwed up, and she needs to own it."

The blame game carried on for a while until Eden thought she'd lose her mind. She drained the bottle, convinced their bickering would turn her into an alcoholic.

"Guys, I get it!" she said. "This is my fault, and as heartbroken as I am at how Liam found out, in a way, I'm also relieved. Holding on to this secret was eating away at me. I'm glad he knows. And I'm okay."

But even as she said the words, tears were already blurring her vision, and her lower lip trembled violently, a clear sign she wasn't too far off from a total breakdown.

"I'm okay," Eden repeated, just to convince herself. Her friends knew her too well, though. They huddled around and held her, but she still couldn't bring herself to cry. She was so afraid if she did, she wouldn't stop. And she couldn't have that, not when she had an early morning meeting with the same man whose world she'd just upended.

It didn't matter what hell she was going through privately. Publicly, she had to be the perfect image of calm and poise. It was the one lesson her mom had taught her, but Eden never saw the need to practice until now. Even when Simon left, she never cared about keeping her shit together. In the days following the breakup, she'd looked like the hell she was going through.

Not this time. This time, she had to keep it together and confront her mistakes with poise and grace.

"What are you going to do about the lawyers?" Sienna asked as she headed to Eden's bedroom, returning with a pile of blankets and pillows. She threw a few at Cassandra, and they spread them out on the floor.

"So?" Lydia nudged her.

"I don't know," Eden admitted as she collapsed tummy down on the newly made bed.

"Edie!" Lydia was outraged she didn't have a plan, never mind that it had only been an hour since her life went up in flames, and a mess of this magnitude required a little longer than that to navigate.

"If he looked at the agreement and refused to sign it, I reckon he wants more than an equal split!" Lydia carried on with her rant.

"I know that," Eden sighed.

"So you can't roll over and give in to him," Sienna added her two cents' worth. "Let's call Isaac right now."

"Let's wait for Liam's offer first and take it from there," Cassandra suggested. She was always the voice of reason.

"Are you insane?" Lydia demanded. "We can't just sit and wait for Liam to push her into a corner. He probably has an army of lawyers. We need to be prepared."

And another skirmish broke out, with both Sienna and Lydia pushing to get Isaac on board ASAP. Cassandra thought they were too emotional, and her calm approach only riled them up. They carried on for some time, all three oblivious to Eden now curled up under the blankets in a fetal position.

She was so tired that even her soul ached. She desperately wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn't without seeing the image of Liam kneeling in front of Aiden's cot and hearing his anguished cry long after it had stopped.

"Edie," Cassandra leaned over her and pulled the covers away from her head. "We're so sorry."

"I'm okay," she said as she sat up.

"No, you're not," Lydia called her out. "I don't get why you don't just cry it out. With Simon, you couldn't stop."

"Simon hurt me," Eden said, resting her head on her knees, her hair falling around her face.

"So?" Sienna frowned as she held up the bottle under the light, making sure it was truly empty.

"So I had every right to cry then," Eden explained. "This time, I don't. Everything Liam said and did is well within his rights. I've hurt him, and I have no right to cry when I wounded him."

Sienna glared at Lydia, grumbling, "I still don't get whose idea it was to only bring one bottle of wine!"

Lydia rolled her eyes and whacked her with a pillow on the head. "Well, next time, you're in charge of the drinks."

"Edie," Cassandra pulled her close in a hug, while Lydia and Sienna continued bickering. "It's okay. I think you need to get some sleep. Things will look so much better in the morning."

Eden doubted it, but she nodded anyway and excused herself. When she returned to the living room almost an hour later, after a long shower, her friends were already fast asleep. Lydia had called dibs on the couch, and the other two took up most of the space on their makeshift queen-size bed on the floor, leaving her very little room.

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