After Forever by Jasinda Wilder

  "Caden..." Her voice was thick, low, tattered with guilt.

  She never, ever, called me Caden.

  She lay on her back beside me, hands covering her face. I was struggling to simply breathe, to expel the air caught in my lungs.

  "What have we done?" she asked.

  I could only shake my head, my eyes burning, heart aching in my chest. "We..." I wanted to find some way to mitigate, to deny, to erase. There was nothing. "God...what did we do?"

  Panic hit me. Flowed through me like magma rising in the conduit of a volcano. I sucked in a breath, finally getting a lungful of air, and then it left me in a rush of moaning, whimpering, panicking horror. I scrambled away, unable to see, shaking all over. Full-scale panic attack.

  I had no idea where I was suddenly, only knew that I was on fire, that I'd done something I couldn't take back, that I couldn't breathe, and I was breaking apart, shivering, bones rattling. I felt a small soft careful hand on my back. Sliding up my spine, pulling my head against her breast. I could hear her heartbeat, a mad pounding to match my own.

  "Don't cry, Cade, please." Her voice was a tiny seed of sound. "Breathe, Cade. It'll be okay. Ssshhh. Breathe for me."

  I realized I was sobbing, I wasn't breathing, only expelling the wracking grief and guilt within me. "Can't...can't..."

  She took my face in her palms and twisted my head so I was forced to look at her. "Cade...look at me. Take a breath in." I forced air into my lungs, a shuddering inbreath that made me dizzy with the sudden influx of oxygen. "Good. One more. Good. I'm here, Cade. You're not alone. You're not in this alone. We're in this together."

  How was she so calm?

  "What is this?" I pushed away from her, from the wall. I was in the corner between the bed and the wall, huddled on my knees.

  I crawled onto the bed, lay on my back, and covered my lower half with the sheet. Eden climbed up beside me, pulled the sheet up over her chest, sitting on her knees and staring down at me. Her hair was loose and wild, blonde strays and tangles wisping in her face, in her mouth, across her eyes.

  "I don't know what this is. But...we can't take it back." She ducked her head. "I'm not--I'm not sure I'm capable of even wanting to, if you want the truth."

  I sat up and looked at her sharply, puzzled, shocked. "Don't you understand that we--we--we betrayed--"

  "I KNOW!" she screamed. "I know what we did! Do you think I don't know? How could I not know what we just did? But it was...fuck...it was the best sex of my entire life."

  It wasn't for me. I couldn't say that, of course. But it was one of the most intense moments of my life. And that's saying something huge.

  She kept going. "Don't--don't say anything. I don't expect you to...I know it wasn't for you what it was for--for me. It was a betrayal, I know that. But I can't escape the other truth."

  "What other truth?"

  "That...that she might never know. That she might never find out. That she might never wake up. That--it makes me a horrible, horrible person. But that's just my life." She laughed bitterly.

  "What?" I asked.

  "It's just so perfectly ironic. The best, most intense, most meaningful sex I've ever had, ever experienced, and it's...it's nothing but a mistake for you. Meaningless."

  "It wasn't--"

  "SHUT UP!" she screeched, shoving at me, angry, furious, dropping the sheet and not caring. "I know what that was. What this is between us. It wasn't love. It wasn't even fucking. Like everything that's ever happened between you and me, there's no way to put in a box what we are, what we do, what we are to each other. You don't love me. You'll never love me."

  "Eden, I--"

  "I said shut up," she hissed, on her hands and knees, a feral animal, teeth bared, all skin and claws and bright angry eyes and hunger and something primal and furious. "You don't, won't...can't ever love me. I know. You know. But...we need each other. Now, in this. We need each other. We're the only thing we have in life. We're orphans in a huge, scary world. We're alone. We're lost in the darkness together. And we have to stick together--we have to hold on to each other. I can't face life completely alone, Cade." She knelt in front of me, gripped my arms, her eyes exposing every raw nerve in her soul, every fear and all her vulnerability. "Don't lie to me. Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. But don't...don't tear yourself to pieces over this."

  "How am I supposed to be okay with this?"

  "I don't know. Maybe you're not. But don't lie about what it is, either."

  "You keep saying that. What is it, then? What is this?"

  She wrapped her arms around herself. "It's necessary, Cade. No one can go through life completely alone, and this, what we're going through, there are no rules for it. There's no map or guidebook, or anyone to tell us what's right or wrong, or how to act or anything. There's just you and me and this thing between us. We don't know the future. How things will turn out. And I don't know about you, but I need some kind of comfort. You...you comfort me. You make me feel good, when the rest of my life is...lonely and painful."

  I couldn't bear the fragility in her voice, the pain. I slid over so our naked hips touched, pulled her against me in a hug. The embrace turned into leaning back against the wall, and her head rested on my chest. All of my muscles tensed, part of me wanting to relax and let the tension fade, enjoy what I could while I could, but the other part of me was too aware of who it was I was in bed with, what we had just done together, and how it could possibly destroy me, ruin me, ruin everything.

  She shuddered then, as I held her. I felt the tension in her body, matching mine. But she shivered, trembled, and then began to cry. Not sob, not gasp or weep, just to softly, quietly cry, shoulders shaking, sniffling. I sensed a lifetime of complexity in her quiet tears. I didn't dare ask what it was that made her cry so, with such isolated, self-contained agony. It wasn't just us, this guilt-riddled tryst of ours.

  I held her and she cried, sotto voce, for a long, long time. I felt her still, felt her breathing slow and even out. I couldn't sleep. I wanted to. I wanted to close my eyes and forget everything. There was no trace of the gin left in me, having been burned away. But I held her, unable to let go of the tension within me.

  Eden had been strong for me. She'd been a friend, a companion, a constant source of support throughout the last year. Tonight, she'd handled my panic attack--not just one, but two, at that--with calmness and kindness, even though I knew she'd been fighting her own emotional demons. She'd spoken the truth without flinching, she'd faced the fucked-up situation we'd just created without cringing away from the hard facts. I wanted to run, to bury myself in the darkness, to drown myself at the bottom of a bottle the way my dad had, so many years ago now. But I owed it to Eden to provide strength back for her, to give her something, even if it couldn't be love, or even real affection. She'd been all too right. I'd never be able to love her. Not the way she deserved. Even if--god forbid, and god forgive me for even considering it--I pulled the plug on Ever and let her die completely, I'd never be able to love Eden. This wasn't love between us. It wasn't just sex, either, which immensely complicated things. She'd always remind me of Ever. She'd always remind me of what I'd lost. I'd never be able to see her without seeing Ever's sweet, innocent green gaze.

  My thoughts whirled and swirled in endless circles, trying to sort out what this was with Eden, what I was supposed to do about it, how I was supposed to visit Ever without dying from the acid burn of guilt.

  I also wondered, deep down, how I was going to get through each day without Eden. Now that I'd tasted the illicit comfort she offered, need for it raced through my bloodstream like a narcotic.

  I fell asleep at some point in the smallest hours of the night.

  shaken

  Eden

  When I woke up, Cade was gone. Not in the bed, at least, although his side was still warm. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling with the covers rucked around my hips, wondering what my life had come to. At least this was my apartment, so I didn't have to do t
he walk of shame. But...I still had to face the fact that Cade was probably going to bolt now. He'd run, curl inward, and grow distant.

  No guy I ever fucked had stayed the night. Not once, not ever. They never stayed to talk. Never stuck around to even pretend like it had meant something. That's at least part of why I'd cried for a long time last night. He'd stayed to hold me, and it had been the sweetest, most tender moment of my life. He hadn't asked what was wrong. He hadn't kissed my tears away. But at least he'd offered silent strength. I'd known he'd be gone in the morning, and I knew that I'd never get another moment with him that wasn't freighted with guilt and awkward, tight-strung tension.

  I couldn't keep my thoughts from returning to how we'd been together. It had been raw, almost angry. Starvation-desperate, violent. Yet, for all that, it had been as far from empty fucking as I'd ever had with anyone. It had meant something. I felt tears slide down all over again as I realized that. It had meant something huge to me. Cade had given me some part of himself last night, and he'd taken what I'd offered him of myself.

  I heard the bathroom door open, and Cade entered my room, still naked. I hurriedly wiped my eyes and sniffed away the self-pity. He saw me, just as I was wiping one last errant tear away, and his amber eyes went soft with concern.

  "What's up?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "Nothing. I'm fine."

  He lifted an eyebrow, obviously not buying that line. I swallowed hard as he climbed onto my bed. His torso rippled with muscle, biceps shifting, abs cut and hard, thighs thick. I couldn't look away from him, and didn't try. I had a gorgeous, naked man in my bed, and I wasn't about to waste the opportunity to devour him. With my eyes at least. My hands itched to clutch his huge hard muscles and feel the rippling power in his body, but I didn't dare. Didn't dare move from my spot on the bed.

  I felt his eyes on me as well, and his hands curled into fists on his thighs as he sat half on the bed, one foot still on the floor. "Bullshit," he said. "'Fine' never means fine."

  I blinked hard, not knowing what to say, what to tell him. "Just...everything." Maybe that would throw him off the scent.

  "I'm not a coward, Eden." Apparently not. "I may...what we did might have been wrong, but I'm not going to vanish the next morning."

  How the hell did he know that's what I was thinking? Damn the man's insightfulness. "Everyone else does."

  "I'm not everyone else."

  "Clearly."

  He scratched his bicep. "Where do we go from here?" His eyes slid down from mine, raked over my body and then quickly away.

  "We just...keep going forward. One day at a time. Same as we've been doing."

  He flopped the rest of the way onto the bed. "That's not what I meant."

  "You and I, you mean?" I asked, turning my head to look at him. He nodded, and I rolled a shoulder. "I don't know. I really don't."

  He sighed, more of a groan than anything else. "Way I see it, we have a couple of choices. We can go back to acting like nothing happened. Call it an accident and be more careful. Or...something not that."

  I laughed. "Something not that?"

  He laughed with me. "That's as far as I'd thought it through, I guess."

  "So, we act like nothing happened." Why did that thought make my eyes sting and my heart ache with the pain of rejection?

  "Well, no, I mean, we can't act like it didn't happen. It did. But...we just have to be careful not to put ourselves in that position again."

  "You mean vulnerability? Weakness?" That came out a lot more sarcastically and bitterly than I'd intended.

  "I mean drunk and careless."

  "That's not fair and you know it, Cade." I felt my temper heating up. "It wasn't like we just...oopsed. We didn't fuck by accident. There was intent there, on both sides, and if you try to deny that, then you are a coward."

  He rubbed his face with both hands. "You're right. Fine. God, you're right. I'm sorry. But am I supposed to go, 'oh, okay, it's fine'?"

  "No, but don't act like I seduced you. Like it was just the booze making us stupid. It was more than that." I couldn't stop the words from coming out like an avalanche. "It may not mean to you what it did to me, but don't you dare cheapen it that way, Cade."

  "What did it mean to you? That's what I don't get."

  "I'm still trying to figure that out, honestly, but I know it did mean something. Like I said last night, it was...comfort. It was something real. A moment of complete vulnerability between two really fucked-up people." I sat up further, tugged the sheet up to cover my boobs. "What was it to you? Honestly."

  He didn't answer right away, and when he did, he spoke slowly, as if parsing the truth from a briar-tangle of thorny confusion. "It was that for me, too. It was...release." He glanced at me apologetically. "I'm just telling the truth. It was release. I'd had so much...tension, and frustration built up. Life tension and...sexual tension. Anger. All that."

  I knew I'd hate the answer to my next question, but I refused to shy away from the truth, no matter ugly it ever became. "Was there...was there anything in it that was...me? About me?" I couldn't meet his eyes.

  He covered his face with both hands, spoke past his palms, his words muffled. "Yeah. There was." It sounded as if the admission hurt like a knee to the gut. "I wanted it. With you. Is that what you want to hear? The most horrible truth about this whole fucked scenario? You aren't your sister, and I knew that, and I still wanted you. You. I didn't--I don't--want to want you. And no, I'm not in love with you and I never will be, but that doesn't stop me from being a shallow, selfish asshole. Clearly." The bitterness in his voice was directed at himself, but I couldn't help feeling like he resented me for making him want me.

  "I'm sorry I'm such a problem for you," I heard myself say. He didn't deserve that, but I was hurting, and he was the only target.

  "Don't," he growled, rolling toward me. "You didn't seduce me. You didn't do anything wrong."

  "Oh, so it was all you? All the guilt in this is on you?" Anger and sarcasm warred for dominance in my voice. "I was just a helpless little thing, right? How could I possibly resist you, how could I possibly keep my legs together when faced with--"

  "Oh, don't be a bitch, Eden," Cade spat, "that's not what I meant, and you goddamn well know it!"

  "Well, that's how it sounded to me!" I yelled back.

  Somehow, we were sliding toward each other, like the matching energy of our anger was a magnetic force drawing us together.

  "I just meant I should have made sure we didn't--"

  "And so should I!" I shoved at him, but my palms on his chest barely moved him. "I'm not going to let you make this all about you! I'm just as complicit--I wanted it just as much."

  "But I'm the one who--"

  "You want to know something? I've always wanted you. From the very first time Ever introduced you, I was attracted to you, and jealous of Ever for having you. All those letters, the way you just...showed up and rocked her world? Do you have any idea how fucking romantic that was? How jealous that made me? She had Billy and then she had you, and I've never gotten a guy even half as amazing as you to even fuck me more than once! And she got Billy to stick around for almost two years!"

  "He broke her fucking heart!" Cade yelled, and he was so close now that I could smell him, feel the heat from his skin. "I wouldn't be jealous of him if I were you. He was a selfish bastard who lied and cheated on her for months. He treated her like an extra piece of ass. If that's what you want, then good luck to you."

  "I know what he did to her," I said. "But it's still more than I've ever gotten."

  "You've never had a serious relationship?" Cade asked.

  I shook my head, feeling suddenly small. "Nope. I'm not relationship material, obviously. None of the guys I ever fall for want anything but a good fuck. And that's all I am, all I've ever been, and all I ever will be." I slid down to a lying position and rolled away from him.

  "You're selling yourself short, Eden. You're worth a fuckload more than that."

  I
didn't bother looking at him. "Yeah, and how do you know?"

  "Because it's obvious to anyone who isn't a blind dickwad!"

  I felt him move closer to me, felt his presence behind me. Felt his hand on my shoulder, brushing my hair away from my face. I felt his thighs rub the back of mine, his chest against my back. The slightest wriggle of my hips pressed my ass against him, and then I felt him harden in response.

  His hand slid down my arm, touched my side. My hip. And then he hissed in frustration, rolled away from me and fairly leapt off the bed.

  "We can't, Eden! Not again."

  I flew off the bed, cornering him, standing facing him. "And why not? Why can't we?"

  "Because it's wrong!" He backed away.

  I followed, and he backed up to the wall, pressed his palms flat against the wall, and then his fingers curled as if scrabbling for purchase, for something to grip instead of me. I wanted it to be me.

  "I know it's wrong, but tell me what's right! Maybe it makes me a shitty person, but at least I'm willing to admit that I want it, that I don't want to keep fighting it! I know it's temporary! I know it's never going to be anything more than what it is, but I still want it! I still want you! I want what I can get, and I'm not afraid to admit it! I know how desperate and--and pathetic that makes me, but I don't care!"

  "What about the cost? What about the...what about her?"

  "She's never going to wake up, Cade!" I screamed the one truth that lurked in the darkest hole of my heart, the thing I feared the most.

  "But what if she does?" He wasn't touching me still, but our bodies were scant millimeters from each other's.

  "Then we'll face the music. We'll--we'd figure that out if it happens."

  "And until then?"

  "Until then?" I shrugged, and his eyes followed the sway of my body. "Until then, we just..." I couldn't find the right phrase.

  "Take what we can get?" he filled in.

  I didn't answer. None was required. We stood face to face, my nipples brushing the dusting of hair on his chest, his hands curling and uncurling at his sides, both of us panting, anger not forgotten but banked, hurt not banished but buried, pain not healed but merely shoved aside, denied.