Page 129 of Break the Rule
“Don’t you know I love messes?” Charlie says with that easy smile of his. “I want a messy life, baby. That’s where the most beautiful moments happen. I don’t want things to be perfect or easy. I want a messy, colorful life. I want you.”
“You can’t say that.”
“Yet I did,” Charlie grins, that handsome as fuck smile of his on full display. How did Eden think he could live without Charlie’s smile?
“I don’t want a future without you.” He kisses Eden’s forehead, then the top of his head. There’s nothing leading in the touch, a kiss offered for nothing but comfort. “You’re mine, baby.”
“I don’t know how,” Eden utters, hands shaking and voice trembling. “I’m scared. I don’t want to hurt you again. I hurt you.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not,” Eden acknowledges, relishing the guilt he feels because it’s deserved and familiar. “I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to fuck up again.”
“Fucking up is fun,” Charlie tells him, kissing the top of his head again. “Just don’t run away from me.”
“I can’t promise that,” Eden admits. “I don’t want to but—I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Charlie’s hold on Eden tightens, his voice wobbling when he next speaks. “Then I’ll follow you. I’ll be brave for you. I’ll love you when you don’t think you deserve it because you do. But you can’t run where I can’t follow.Please.”
A buzzing noise fills Eden’s ears.
“What did you just say?”
“I said don’t go where I can’t follow. You run and I’ll come after you. Might take me a few days, my ego and my feelings get hurt sometimes.”
“I’m sorry,” Eden whispers, verbally acknowledging the hurt he caused.
“I know, baby.” Charlie kisses his forehead again, and Eden lets his eyes fall shut, unable to handle the acceptance and adoration in Charlie’s expression. It’s not deserved, but Eden can’t keep pushing him away when this right here—being held, being cared for like this—is everything he’s never let himself want.
How many times growing up did he run? From foster families, from group homes, from the hint of a good or a bad situation, knowing it would all end the same. No one followed him. No one came for him. Every time he’d end up back in the system was because of stupid laws or cops, not because someone had wanted him back. Yet here is Charlie, coming back for Eden,again, because somehow he’s seen Eden at his worst and still wants him.
“You can’t follow me forever,” Eden whispers.
“It won’t be forever,” Charlie says with all the confidence only someone like him could carry. “I just need to follow you until you realize you don’t have to run. But know this—however long it takes, however many times—I’m going to come for you, Eden. I’ll come as long as you want me.”
Something very small and fragile in Eden shatters. Charlie’s not mad. He’s not demanding Eden change. He’s promising to stay even when Eden is difficult, because Edenisdifficult. He’s going to be hard to love. He always is, but Charlie doesn’t sound scared off by that, which is maybe one of the most idiotic things Charlie has ever done and also possibly the most perfect.
Eden’s voice shakes, but he gets the words out nonetheless. “I want you.”
“Course you do, I’m pretty great,” Charlie teases, the lightness of his words tempered by the intensity with which he holds on to Eden. “I want you too. For as long as you’ll have me.”
Forever, Eden wants to beg, unable to get that word out.
It’s already too much. He can’t say it, not in words.
“Bedroom,” is what he gets out instead.
“What?”
“We need to go to my room, right now.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to get you naked as soon as possible, and the couch is really not big enough for what I had in mind.”
“That desperate for my ass, baby?”
“Actually, I was going to give you mine.”
