Page 41 of Tempting Eden

“Deep.”

“That’s what the bars are for. They remind me my cell will always be there. But I won’t. I’ve changed, grown, gotten out. I’m free now. The bars remind me I’ll never be there again, if that makes sense.”

I smoothed my hand over the bars, thinking of what sort of horrors he’d been through while behind them. “It does, actually.”

His hand traced lower, stroking the upper curve of my ass. “You know what I’ve decided?”

“What’s that?”

“You ask about me constantly, but you never tell me anything about you.”

I closed my eyes. “There’s not much to tell, really.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.” He sighed. “Eden, you know my whole life story—good, bad, and ugly—from me and from Ms. Temple.”

He was right. I needed to give him something more, and I wanted to. But I couldn’t give it all. If I did, he would never look at me the same way.

I started with the truth. “Well, like I said, it’s all boring and cookie cutter. I had the perfect start. I went to the right schools, met the right people, ran in the right crowd. Everything was laid out for me from the very beginning. I could have gone anywhere, been anything. I could be lazing along the Seine right now. I could be climbing Everest. I could be the mogul of my own real estate firm.”

“So, that begs the question—why aren’t you doing any of those things?”

I screwed my eyes shut even tighter as Mason walked across the insides of my eyelids, leering at me.

“I got pregnant with Adele when I was a teenager.”

“I know. I did the math. But that’s what keeps you here? Seems like Adele would be game for just about anything—world travel, mountain-climbing, Parisian adventures.”

My palms grew sweaty, and I buried my hands in the sheets.Here we go.“You can imagine that I, a Rochester, pregnant at seventeen, didn’t go over too well with my family. My father died when I was a child. Mother, on the other hand, was alive and well and perfectly livid when I told her. She demanded to know who the father was.”

“Mason?”

I hated hearing his name. “Yes, but you and Rosa are the only ones who know. I never told my mother. Adele doesn’t know.” I braced myself for his inevitable question. The one I couldn’t answer.

“Why is he a secret?”

I chewed on my lower lip. I’d never even told Rosa the why of it all, but I knew she suspected. I wanted to unburden myself, to finally tell someone my secrets. This man, who was at once a mystery, yet also an open book, offered me the very thing I craved. I didn’t even know how thirsty I was for it until I was here, at the edge, gazing at the deep blue of the truth. Could I fall over the cliff if I knew Jack would be waiting to catch me in the still waters below?

“Brad Mason was, well, he was everything.” I had to stop and will the tremor from my voice. After a few moments, I continued. “For a while, he was my God, more or less. I met him at a charity home-build thing that my school did over in Ensley. My high school class was there building a house for a low-income family. I was a senior. Mason was twenty-five. I saw him standing on the roof nailing shingles, and I thought he hung the moon. He had such an easy way about him. Confident, you know? Like heknewthings. Like he could do anything.”

I could still see Mason in my memory. “He dazzled me that day. Wearing an old Radiohead t-shirt and using a nail gun like a pro. His hair was blond, the beautiful yellow shade that many women would kill for.”

I’d climbed up on the roof, carrying a box of nails to him under the watchful eye of the site safety supervisor. Mason was tall and lanky, easily the most handsome man I’d ever seen. He gave me a crooked smile and held out his hand in introduction. I took it.

“He got my number when my teacher wasn’t looking. I giggled and blushed. I felt so grown-up, flirting with a twenty-five-year-old, you know? And I was so happy that he picked me out of all the girls that were there. He pickedme. I sort of floated through the rest of the day. I still remember my mother asking me what had me ‘so addled’ over dinner that night.” I had hastily folded my napkin and excused myself from the table.

Alone in my room, I laid on my bed and stared at the plaster ceiling, following the cracks with my eyes as I’d done so many times. I heard the familiar creaks. The house was built high on top of Red Mountain in the late 1800s. I was certain there were at least a few ghosts rattling around. I drowsed off to sleep but woke to the buzzing of my phone. It was Mason. “He called me that night, and every night after.”

Jack listened patiently as I went back over my missteps. “Go on,” he urged.

“We became almost inseparable, though I hid it from my family. Heinsistedthat he remain my secret. I couldn’t tell anyone about him. He kept in contact, calling my phone, checking on me at all times. I thought he was just attentive, caring. Now I know that he was ‘grooming’ me. They do that, you know.”

“Who does that?”

I swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the lump in my throat. “Abusers.” The word was barely a whisper.

His hand fisted against my back. “He hurt you?”

I spread my palm along his chest, grazing the flowers.

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