Twelve
Having left Eden curled up under his covers, despite her little whimper of protest, Chibs tugged on his boxers and went to check the neglected candles in the living room weren't about to burn the house down, snuffing them out. He also quickly scooped up Eden's discarded dress and purse and, as an after-thought, grabbed the half-finished bottle of wine and their glasses, before heading back up the stairs to his bedroom.
He couldn't help smiling to find her waiting for him, a half contented, half slightly self-conscious look on her face as she wrapped herself in his sheets.
"Hi," Eden murmured. "Oh, is that my purse? Can you pass it over please?"
"Hi, yourself," Chibs said, leaning down for a soft kiss, before handing her the purse and busying himself pouring the rest of the wine and retrieving something for her to wear. As much as he loved having her naked, he wanted her to be comfortable and he already knew seeing her in one of his shirts was sexy as hell.
"Thanks," Eden smiled, taking the soft flannel checked shirt he held out to her and pulling it on, just doing up a few of the buttons before pulling a tiny compact out of her purse and quickly checking for make-up smudges beneath her eyes.
"You look beautiful, lass," Chibs assured her, pushing a wine glass into her hand and sliding back into bed beside her, holding out an arm to let her snuggle into his side and planting a little kiss on the top of her head. He frowned at the tell-tale beep of a phone intruding on their peace though. "Bit late for text messages, ain't it? That big brother worried about ya?"
Despite being unsure who could be looking for her so late, Eden rolled her eyes at that. "He's not that bad. He doesn't sit up waiting for me to come home," she said. "He's my brother, not my dad …"
But she trailed off as she read whatever message was on her screen, making Chibs wonder if Seth did perhaps have something to say about her not coming home from her date with him. "Everything okay?" he prompted.
"Uh, yeah," Eden managed, less than convincingly. "Fine. Let's … Let's just get some sleep, yeah? It's late."
Why aren't you home?
No matter how much she tried to block it out, that message kept drifting back into Eden's mind over and over. She'd switched her phone to silent before letting Chibs take her in his arms to settle down for the night, his chest pressed up against her back and his face nuzzled into her neck. She loved the intimacy of having him so close, feeling him relax as sleep overtook him, and she longed to simply drift off with him. But she couldn't.
Not with her thoughts racing the way they were.
Why aren't you home?
Where the hell are you?
Who the fuck are you with?!
A string of messages had silently lit up her phone, all from the same unfamiliar number, the sender clearly getting angrier and angrier as time passed. And there was only one person who could be behind the texts. Someone she hadn't heard from in months. Someone she had started to think was firmly in her past. Someone who had zero right to be demanding any kind of answers from her on where she was or who she was with.
"Hey …" came the low, rough whisper as Chibs stirred behind her. "Problem?"
Realising he must have seen the glow of her phone screen, Eden immediately felt guilty, like she'd been caught red-handed, and set it down hastily on the nightstand. "No, it's nothing – sorry."
But the Scotsman was already sitting up, dragging a hand over his face and reaching to flick on the lamp. "Trouble sleeping, pet? Thought I mighta worn ya out better than this," he said, trying to keep it light, but with a hint of concern in his sleepy brown eyes. "Ya want me to get ya anything? Water? Tea?"
"No, no," she said quickly, not wanting any fuss and alarmed to find that his kindness was in danger of sparking unusually easy tears. "I'm fine, honestly."
Chibs sighed at that, clearly not buying it for a second. "Eden … If yer brother's got issues with this, you can tell me, you know …"
"It's not Seth, I promise," she said, trying to think of any way to keep from dragging him into her mess and failing miserably. "Shit, Filip, you didn't sign up for this …"
"I didn't sign up for anything, as you put it," he frowned, reaching out to gently tug on a lock of her bed-tousled hair. "But I got lucky enough to get a beautiful lass into my bed and, if there's gonna be any chance o' it being a more regular thing, I'd really like to get to know her better."
"Might just make you wonder what the hell you've gotten into."
"How about you let me be the judge o' that, yeah? Talk to me, darlin'."
"You really want to talk?" Eden asked, trying to sound coy as she moved to straddle his lap, the shirt she had borrowed from him slipping off one shoulder.
But he seemed to realise she was just trying to distract him and, tempted though he clearly was, he kept his focus – even as his hands came to rest on her hips, stilling her movements.
"Aye, I do," Chibs murmured, although he still leaned in to kiss his way up her throat to her ear. "I just wanna help, sweetheart. Only want one reason for you having sleepless nights with me …"
She had to smile despite herself at that, her hands resting on his chest, fingers trailing lightly over his ink as she finally paid attention to what was etched there. She hesitated as she touched the letters over his heart, the question not quite making it to her lips.
He read it on her face though and seemed to know exactly what she was thinking, covering her hand with his. "Kerrianne … My daughter," he said simply.
A little of the shadow that had crossed her face lifted, but only a little. "And … her mom?"
"It's complicated," Chibs started, cut off by her little sigh.
"That's what I was afraid of," Eden said, moving to slip from his lap, but his hands on her bare thighs held her in place.
"Hold up, darlin'," he urged her, looking into those conflicted green eyes. "Hey, I was the one who wanted to talk, so I'll talk. Kerri's ma – Fiona. My wife …"
"You're married," Eden said heavily. It wasn't a question, just a flat statement. "Shit."
"Hear me out, lass …"
"Hear you out? Filip, you're married. Getting in the middle of that's the last thing I want."
"Trust me, you ain't getting in the middle o' anything," he said firmly, never breaking eye contact with her, his strong fingers still slowly caressing the soft skin beneath them. "Married, aye, I am. Technically. But me and Fi, our life together – such as it was – was back in Ireland. We've been estranged for years, put time and thousands o' miles between us. There ain't nothin' real there but Kerri, not anymore."
Eden looked down at his chest, her long messy waves falling into her face as she tried to consider that.
Chibs smiled ruefully, lifting a hand to tuck her hair behind her ear and cup her cheek. "Can't deny I come wi' baggage, love. Perils o' getting tangled up wi' an aul' man like me."
"Maybe I like being tangled up with you …" she whispered finally, her words enough to ignite a spark of hope that all was not lost and he leaned in to find her lips with his again. "And I have baggage too."
Having gone to splash a little cold water on her face, Eden padded back to the bedroom to find Chibs waiting patiently for her, propped up by pillows as he leaned back against the headboard, a lit cigarette idling between his fingers. Instead of slipping back under the covers with him though, she perched at the end of the bed, tugging the sleeves of her borrowed shirt down over her hands nervously.
"It's your turn to hear me out, okay?" she said softly, taking a long, deep breath and then blowing it out, realising she had no idea where to start, not without just plunging right in. "So … you know Seth was in prison, right? Well, it was my fault."
"Seth told me the guy he beat down hurt you," Chibs interjected. "He was defending you – that don't make it your fault."
"But it was," Eden insisted. "I … I should have done more. I should have saved her."
"Who, darlin'?" Chibs tried, not really following her story, but hating to hear the agony creeping into her trembling voice.
Her head was down, her hands playing with her sleeves again, and for a moment, he thought she wasn't going to answer him.
"I wasn't even supposed to be on the night shift," she said suddenly, seeming to change tack completely, but something in the soft, hesitant words that followed made Chibs simply listen rather than push for an explanation. "Perry called in sick last minute, so I said I'd pull a double. I didn't even really mind. It meant partnering up with Felix and we always got on – he even said he'd drive the bus. Cracked some joke about not wanting me asleep at the wheel. It was a busy night. Nothing crazy, just the usual kind of busy. Lot of ODs, a bar brawl, accidental house fire … Lot of walking wounded … Lot of time wasters. We nearly made it through."
Eden broke off to reach for her wine glass and take a sip of what was left, conscious of Chibs and his eyes on her, even though she still had her back to him.
"In the last hour of the shift, we had to respond to a shout right on the edge of our patch," she said finally, feeling like she was right back there in the fading darkness before dawn. "Multi-vehicle pile-up. Multiple casualties. Serious injuries. The scene … The scene was a mess. Worst I'd seen in a long time. Two cars and a coach totalled, a lorry jack-knifed in the middle of it all, and another car jammed almost under it. Glass and metal everywhere. The lorry driver made it out, called 911. Everyone on the coach is walking wounded, apart from the driver who's still behind the wheel and turns out to be having a heart attack. But the cars …"
She took a breath to steady herself again, before realising what she was doing. "Shit, you don't want to hear all this," she said. "I'm rambling and you-"
"I'm listening," the biker said firmly. "No rush."
She nodded slowly, taking another sip of wine, but not even seeming to taste it. "There were police and ambos and fire trucks everywhere. The cars had got the worst of it. Turned out one of them was stolen, hit the other one head-on while trying to overtake the coach, and the lorry and the car behind it were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Front passenger in the stolen car went through the windscreen headfirst, driver's DOA, two in the back are unresponsive. Driver of the other car's got horrific crush injuries. And the third car …" she trailed off, her voice even lower and trembling when she found the words. "They … They were just a normal family. Driving through the night to get to some big family celebration. The mom driving 'cause the dad had a few beers when they stopped for dinner, the kid asleep in the back. The mom was circling the drain when we got to her … The kid was crying, the dad screaming for us to help his wife … It was bad, but there was a chance, you know? I had to help her first … I had to …"
"Oh, darlin'," Chibs sighed softly, knowing exactly how harrowing those choices were from his days as an army medic and fearing he had a fair idea where this story might go – although he couldn't yet fathom what any of it had to do with Seth ending up in bloody prison. "I'm sure you did everything you could."
She shook her head, refusing to hear that. "I should have done more," she said bitterly. "I should have known. Instead … Instead, the mom never even made it out of the ambulance and that little girl … That little girl collapsed waiting for her broken arm to be set. She … She died, Filip. She was eight years old and she died and it was all m-my fault …"
Watching her break down quietly with her head in her hands was too much for him to bear and Chibs was out of bed and kneeling in front of her in a second, his hands resting gently on her bare knees as he ducked to try to get her to look at him. "Sweetheart, you can't take that on yourself – you are not to blame. No, listen to me, you're not to blame," he insisted, reaching to tuck her hair back behind her ear. "Internal injuries, complications, that shit happens and sometimes there just ain't anything more you can do. I know it's hard, especially wi' a kid involved, but no one could blame you."
She looked back at him, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks as fast as he could wipe them away with his thumb. "They suspended me."
"Procedure," he countered. "You know that don't mean shit. They cleared you in the end, right?"
"Someone said they'd do anything to sweep it under the carpet."
"What stupid fucker …" Chibs started, until it dawned on him and suddenly he started to see a possible twist in the tale. "The da. Oh, pet, is that it? The da wouldn't let it go? Eden, the man was grieving – he ain't gonna have been in his right mind."
"He said … He said I might as well have … killed them both m-myself," Eden managed, her face crumpling all over again as everything she'd evidently bottled up for far too long came pouring out. "There were notes. At work. On my car. At my apartment. Phone calls, silent mostly. He … He followed me. I knew he was in pain, Filip, but … I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how far he might go. I didn't know how I could make it better. They were gone and it was my f-fault …"
"Jesus Christ," Chibs swore, moving to gather her into his arms and holding her tight as she cried into his chest, shushing her softly as his fingers soothed their way through her hair. "Easy now, love, I've got ya. I've got ya."
