The Promise of Paradise

Chapter Twenty-Three


Garbled country music jarred Eddie awake. “Shit.” He reached a hand in the direction of the motel nightstand and jabbed his thumb at the alarm clock. There. Silence. Falling back against the flat pillow, he flung an arm over his face. Jesus, but he had a headache to beat all headaches. And he guessed he’d forgotten to close the curtains last night, because now a strip of sunlight streamed across the bed, eye-level.

“Eddie?”

He squirmed. For a few minutes, he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone in the bed.

Cass poked a finger at his bare shoulder. “You feeling okay?”

He didn’t answer. What the hell did she think? The last twenty-four hours had tossed him into the center of a tornado. If he looked in the mirror, he wasn’t even sure whose face he’d see, or if he’d recognize it. Couple that with the fact that last night’s binge had left him with someone playing drums inside his skull and someone else painting the roof of his mouth with acid, and no, he wasn’t feeling okay. Or anything close to it.

She trailed her fingertips along his spine. “Want some water?”

He shook his head, still staring at the backs of his eyelids.

Did I sleep with her? He didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know. The bed dipped, squeaking a little as she got up.

“I’m going for some coffee,” she said. “I’ll bring you back some.”

Eddie heard the soft slipping of fabric over skin as she dressed. Grunting, he waited until the door closed before he turned over and opened his eyes. He took his time surveying the room, looking for signs of a knockdown, drag-out, all-clothes-off-in-sixty-seconds adventure the minute they’d stepped inside the room last night.

It’s happened before. I’d be a fool to think it couldn’t have happened again.

But he didn’t see much out of place. No chairs tipped onto the carpet. No ice spilled the length of the dresser. Even the bedspread covering his lower half, in some God-awful plum pattern, appeared smooth and tucked in. Only his shorts and shirt lay tossed on the floor, alongside the two motorcycle helmets.

Eddie slid from the bed and lurched into the bathroom. He dropped the toilet lid and slipped to an awkward seat. Leaning forward, he rested his head in both hands and stared at his lap. At least he still wore his boxers. That was a good sign. He couldn’t remember actually doing anything with Cass by the time they’d collapsed inside this wreck of a room, but then again, he couldn’t remember walking the two blocks from the bar to the motel, either, or checking in at the front desk.

“Idiot,” he said to his feet. He turned on the cold water. The fact that Ashton Kirk had just twisted him inside out didn’t give him any excuse to ride around New Hampshire, screwing the first willing woman who came along. Pull yourself together, West. Other women have treated you worse than Ash did. Didn’t mean he had to crawl into a hole and wait for next year. Jesus, she’s just a woman. Thousands more in the damn sea, remember?

He stood, grabbed a towel, and wet it until it dripped. Then he slapped it across his cheeks and draped it around the back of his neck. He spat into the toilet and flushed. The way he figured it, he had two choices. One, he could head back to Paradise, ignore her for the rest of the summer, and by the time autumn rolled around, be back to his usual self. Or two, he could go back to Lycian Street, march upstairs, and tell her exactly what he thought of the lies she’d told.

Eddie ground his teeth together. He didn’t really like either option, because both required him to turn his back on the first woman who’d made him feel alive in years. Still, what choice did he have? He jammed the heel of one hand against his forehead and tried to ignore the heave working its way up his throat. Gonna be sick, he thought, a second before last night’s burgers and tequila caught up with him. Bending over the toilet just in time, he hugged the cold porcelain with both arms as he sank to his knees and lost everything inside him.

* * *

“Eddie?” It was Cass’s voice. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Only a few minutes, probably. Struggling to a stand, he flushed the toilet and rubbed a hand over his face.

“Yeah.” He pushed his way back into the dingy bedroom. Cass waited by the bed, sipping a steaming cup of coffee. Another sat on the dresser.

She cocked her head, hair streaming over one shoulder. “Gonna be all right?”

He shrugged, reached for his clothes and pulled them on. “Thanks for the joe.” He took a long gulp, letting it burn his lips. Black. Good.

“You're welcome.” She ran a finger down the side of his face. “You look like hell.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

She smiled and sank to a seat in one of the chairs near the window. “Okay.” She paused. “We didn’t sleep together last night.”

Eddie jerked a little at her words. “You’re…well, I…”

She laughed outright then. “Oh, please. I know you’ve been wondering since the minute you woke up. I know you, Eddie. I know that guilty look that makes your eyes all squinty.”

He felt himself redden and stared down at the coffee, as if it might hold the answers within its darkness. “Listen, I’m sorry,” he said after a minute. “I didn’t mean to drag you all the way over here just to listen to my problems.”

She flipped a hand into the air. “I didn’t do much listening. After you fell asleep halfway in the door, it was all I could do to get you undressed…” Her eyelashes fluttered toward her lap, coquettish. “Thought I might get a little action after all.”

A smile tugged at his face.

Cass shrugged. “But you kept talking about Ashton this, and Ashton that.” She looked back up at him. “I thought her name was Ashley.”

So did I.

Eddie found his wallet, tossed in the open drawer of the nightstand, and stuffed it into his back pocket. “I gotta get back home. Things to take care of. You ready?”

She shook her head. “I have a couple friends in town. Called ‘em this morning.” She spun the watch on her thin wrist. “We’re meeting over at the diner in twenty minutes. I figured you could use some time to yourself.”

He nodded, relieved. The ride back to Paradise, the sorting out he needed to do, was better suited for solitude. He bent down and planted a kiss on his ex-girlfriend’s cheek. “You’re okay,” he mumbled. “Thanks.”

Cass leaned back in the chair, letting her glance slide down his torso. “No problem. Make sure she knows what she’s missing.”

Eddie smiled for real this time and dropped a hand onto her shoulder. Then he picked up the motorcycle helmets and headed out into the sun.

* * *

He took the long way back to Paradise. Avoiding the main road, he chose the back ones instead, the narrow ones that wound their way through woods and past lakes and by the occasional house or gas station. He drove slowly at first, savoring the feel of the handlebars and the hum of the engine beneath him. He waved to a little girl playing in her front yard and a pair of joggers. He watched fields and trees change places every mile or so.

But try as he might, Eddie couldn’t get her out of his head. Ash. Ashton Kirk. Okay, the damn senator’s daughter. That’s who she was, then. His grip tightened. And wrong or right, somewhere in between all the stories they’d told each other that summer, he’d fallen in love with her. He ground to a halt as a stop sign caught him by surprise.

In love with her? Are you out of your mind? He shook his head at the inner voice that argued back. Bottom line, that’s what it came down to. Sure, Ash had lied to him, and that broke something inside him. It made him ache, the idea that he’d bared his soul while she’d kept hers banded tightly up. It made him wonder how she really felt about him, and what else she might be hiding.

What it didn’t do, though, was change the way Eddie felt when he was with her. It didn’t change the fact that in meeting Ash, in living with her, in spending all those minutes together that added up to something more, he’d come alive for the first time in three years.

She'd taken away his guard. She'd made him laugh. She'd pissed him off. She'd made him remember what it was like to be a regular guy, someone who wasn’t trying to get into bed with a woman because it was easier than talking to her. God, she reminded me I still had a heart beating under the mess I became after the accident.

Eddie sped up as he reached Paradise’s town limits. The thoughts tumbled faster and faster inside his head. He needed to get back to Lycian Street. He needed to see her. He needed to talk to her.

Whoever she really is.