Page 11 of Break the Rule
Stop crying Eden, and let me brush your hair, or I’ll cut it all off.
Swallowing down a rush of nausea, Eden takes a step back. Addy’s dark eyes shutter, but her smile never falters as if she knows one ounce of sympathy might break him.
“Fair warning,” Addy starts, offering him a distraction. “Ella has a second book hidden under her pillow. Don’t cave. You don’t have time to read two, unless you want to be late to work, and newsflash you don’t because they’re already pissed that I had to call out last minute since the babysitter is sick.”
Eden makes a derisive noise. He kind of hates the serving job, and he hates their supervisor. However, despite the grumbling they give, they have so far been mostly accommodating when Eden or Addy can’t make a shift because someone needs to watch Ella, so he does his best to behave.
“Are you kidding me, I never cave.”
“You caved when she begged you to play hide-and-seek with her when you were supposed to be doing laundry and getting ready for work.”
“Listen, if the choice is between Ella and laundry, only one of those is going to win, and it’s not my fucking underwear and socks.”
“You can tell her no sometimes, Eden. Ella isn’t going anywhere, and she won’t stop loving you if you have to tell her no sometimes,” Addy reminds him, kissing his forehead as she passes him. “Neither of us are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eden lies.
His heart beats too hard and too fast.
Sometimes he feels like that same lost, hungry teenager he was the day Addy brought him home the way you might bring a stray cat home. She’d only been a few years older than him and heavily pregnant when she found him that second time, rocking a black eye and a split lip from fighting with the guys who’d been harassing her on the bus. Her hands were as soft as her voice when she’d taken Eden to the twenty-four hour diner on the corner. She proceeded to fill his belly with warm food and shared the kind of conversation that people didn’t spare for an angry, feral kid living on the streets. He knew how he looked, half-starved and dirty, the kind of person you didn’t want to be near. It meant people left him alone, which was how he wanted it. He was easy to overlook lying on the sidewalks and hiding in the corners, easy to ignore.
With a single word and a gentle touch, Addy had taken his hand and walked him home to sleep on her couch. He can still remember the way he ranted at her that she was putting herself in danger bringing a stranger like him home. She’d pointed out his worrying about her safety was all she needed to know about his character, and Eden, too worn down to argue, had gone home with her. He never intended to stay more than one night, but one night turned to three to four, and Eden never left.
Two months after first going home with Addy, Ella was born, and though it was a tight fit to have a new baby and stray teenager in her home, Addy never kicked him out. Eventually, after months of reliable meals and having a physical mailing address, Eden was finally able to get a job and save up enough that when Ella was six months old they were able to get a two bedroom apartment. The same one they live in now. If only his brain didn’t perceive things like love and kindness as some kind of bomb waiting to explode.
Sometimes he still feels like that terrified runaway Addy brought home.
Addy isn’t going to leave you. She loves you. Ella loves you. You’re safe.
Sometimes the words don’t feel real, but he repeats them anyway. He read online that was a thing people do in therapy or some shit. Not that Eden has ever had therapy willingly. They forced it on him in foster care, or tried, but he never complied. You couldn’t pay him to sit and tell a stranger all the fucking things that are wrong with him. He settles for some self-help tips he read online and white-knuckling it through life. He’s made it this far, so he must be doing fucking fine.
Besides, he trusts Addy. He trusts her more than he’s ever trusted another living soul. She promised it was her and Eden and Ella forever, and Eden trusts her even when it sometimes feels like walking into oncoming traffic would be easier than how vulnerable it makes him feel to rely on anyone.
Letting people in is a recipe for disaster and rejection, and Eden’s had enough of that to last him a lifetime. Addy had found him at the lowest point in his life, which is the only reason he’d let her in. At the time, he’d been so sure she’d abandon him that it felt welcome to let the cycle of rejection and abandonment continue. Only, all these years later she’s still here, and for reasons entirely unknown to Eden, she seems to fucking love his brand of hot mess.
“Eyes on me.”
Opening his eyes, Eden finds Addy in front of him smiling in that all too familiar way of hers. She leans forward, pressing their foreheads together before kissing his nose then nudging him down the hallway. Making his way towards Addy and Ella’s shared room, he lets his fingers drag over the crayon portraits taped to the wall. He can’t imagine having grown-up in a home like this—wanted and loved and safe. It’s everythingElla deserves. Taped to the front of their open doorway is one she drew last week, a scribbled stick figure meant to be Eden standing with Ella and Addy.My familyshe’d said, unaware of the way she’d broken Eden entirely.
Centered on her small bed, surrounded by her army of plushies, sits Ella, talking to her favorite plush while waiting for Eden.
“You came,” she claps.
“I’ll always come,” he promises, scooting onto the edge of the bed. She snuggles into his side, holding up the book she picked about a lost puppy. They’ve read this book half a dozen times since she got it from the library, and Eden has it memorized at this point, which is good since sometimes new books give him trouble. This is why when she gets books he’s worried about, he’ll sit in the living room and practice reading them when she’s not around so he doesn’t stumble over any unfamiliar words during their story time.
“Once there was a very little puppy—” he starts, the tightness in his chest loosening. Ella fidgets to get comfortable, eventually rolling herself into the corner where she will, despite all protests, fall asleep while Eden is reading. Sure enough by the time he’s turned the last page Ella is sound asleep and drooling on her plush pig.
“Night, Ella,” Eden whispers, pressing a kiss atop her bonnet covered hair before switching off the bedside lamp then leaving the room.
When he comes out, he finds Addy waiting in the kitchen, one of Ella’s unicorn lunch boxes and a filled, reusable water bottle with the sanitation department logo on it they got for free at a street fair.
“Did you make my lunch, Mommy?”
“Smart ass,” Addy snorts. At twenty-three, she’s only a few years older than Eden, but sometimes she acts like she’s decadesolder. Then again, the world made her grow up far too fast as well, albeit in different ways. “We both know you won’t eat anything tonight if I hadn’t.”
“They let us eat whatever is left over at the end of the night,” Eden reminds her.
“Uh-huh, and you won’t eat any of it,” Addy says while holding out the lunch box. “There’s a cheese sandwich with no crust, a mixed fruit cup and a string cheese. Also some water so you don’t die of dehydration.”
