Page 127 of Break the Rule
Rolling off the couch and onto the floor, Eden grunts in pain when he lands on a doll, the hard plastic digging into his knee. Fuck.
“Open the door, Eden.”
Tears prickle at the corner of Eden’s eyes, and it has nothing to do with the sharp pain in his knee. Charlie shouldn’t fucking be here. It took everything Eden had to walk away, he’s not surehe can do it again. He doesn’t know how to protect himself from this, from Charlie.
“Please, Eden. We need to talk.”
No, they don’t need to talk. Eden needs to run. He needs to hide. He needs to get the fuck out of here and away from the one person who has the power to break what’s left of Eden’s mangled, pieced together heart.
What Eden needs to do is get as far away from the door as possible, but that doesn’t explain why his feet are moving towards the front door. It doesn’t explain why he turns the deadbolt and opens it when every part of Eden is poised to break.
Swinging the front door open, he’s met with the sight of Charlie King in all his colorful glory. He’s wearing a pair of pants Eden has never seen—something loose and flowy with weird geometric blocks in various colors and little black dots. His shirt, a floral tie dye piece with paint stains on the left sleeve, clashes as horribly as the shiny purple Crocs he’s wearing. The outfit is hideous, shouldn’t work on anyone, yet it works on Charlie with his bright smile and stupidly nice face.
Eden’s fragile heart with all of its bent, broken parts shatters into a million fucking pieces.
“Hi,” Charlie whispers, pushing his sunglasses off his face and into his hair. It sends his thick waves in all directions, and it’s all Eden can do to resist smoothing them down.
“Why are you here?” Eden chokes, unsure why it comes out sounding so small.
“I miss you.” Charlie answers, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“No, you don’t.”
“The hole in my bed from where I moped for the last week suggests otherwise.”
You hurt him,Eden’s brain screams. Proof that Eden doesn’t deserve to be loved, not by someone like Charlie.
“You should go.”
“I don’t want to go.”
There’s nothing left of Eden’s heart but the messy pieces of a puzzle that never quite fit together. Pieces other people tried to reshape and mold, pieces people took and never gave back. So many pieces, too many yet not enough.
“Go away, Charlie.”
“You don’t mean that, Eden.”
“Fuck you,” Eden grits out, unsure why his eyes are watering. “Fuck off.”
“No.” Charlie steps through the open doorway, shutting it behind him before pulling Eden into his arms.
“Fuck you,” Eden says again, embarrassed by the way his arms curl around Charlie’s waist and his face finds its way into Charlie’s shoulder. Goddamn fucking Charlie. He’s being weak and pathetic and needy, and he can’t stop it because Charlie is exactly the kind of man Eden wants, the kind he needs.
“Last week sucked.” Charlie’s voice is quiet, almost sad, and it twists the knife in Eden’s chest. He hates himself, and he wishes Charlie would, too. It’s what he deserves.
“Yeah,” Eden agrees, his own voice cracked and broken like the rest of him.
“I missed you, baby.”
There he goes again, destroying Eden with a few simple words. As if Eden has any place with him still. As if Eden deserves kindness and affection. How fucking dare he.
“I bet you missed me.” Charlie murmurs, rubbing his nose against the top of Eden’s head while his hands slip beneath Eden’s sweatshirt to rest against the warm skin at his back. He touches Eden freely as if the last week never happened, as if Eden didn’t run and ruin everything the way he always does.
“Come on, admit it,” Charlie grins. “Tell me how much you missed me. It was a lot, right?”
Eden chokes on the answer, the sound that comes out of his chest raw and inhuman. Eden doesn’t miss people. He refuses. He stopped missing people the day his first foster family traded him on Facebook for an easier kid like he was a leftover toy or some spare produce to barter away. Eden stopped missing people the day he realized his last name didn’t come from either of his parents but the county of the fire station where he was left a few hours after being born—a surname that should’ve been temporary had anyone ever gone through with adopting Eden, but they hadn’t. He stopped missing people the day he realized no one—not a goddamn person—was going to miss him.
“Would it help if I tell you how much I missed you?” Charlie asks in that happy go lucky voice of his. “Maybe it would help to know that Andrew had to come drag me out of bed because I was this close to sprouting roots in my mattress. I was pathetic and sad, and I missed you so much.”
