Into the Fire (32 page)

“Random?” Jenk pushed Izzy, and the car rocked as he bumped into it. “Fuck you, douchebag—she’s a friend of mine, and you know it.
That’s
why you should’ve talked to her.”

Izzy pushed Jenkins back. “Fuck
you
—you’re just jealous because I had a taste of something you never tapped.”

Lopez said something in Spanish that sounded like a plea to God for strength.

But Jenkins just laughed as he walked away, pulling Lopez with him. “Zanella, you’re
such
an asshole.”

“That
was
a pretty assholeish thing to say,” Eden pointed out as Izzy got into the car and turned the key. He jammed the car into gear, his movements jerky.

When he turned to look at her, it was clear some of his anger was aimed at her. “For the record,” he said. “I’m not into three-ways—at least not with another guy.”

Oh,
crap.
“You speak Spanish?”

He pulled out of the driveway a little too fast. “Did you really tell Jay Lopez—”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He was…Just…” She closed her eyes. “This is going to sound crazy…”

“I know he didn’t hit on you,” Izzy said. “Not Lopez. No chance. So if you’re thinking about lying, babe, spare yourself the effort.”

“He was nice,” she said. “Okay? That’s what I was going to say. He was just so…nice.”

“So you ask him if he wants to have a three-way?” His voice went up an octave. “That’s what you say to someone you think is
nice
?”

“
Too
nice.” Eden fought the tears that sprang to her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just…I open my mouth and it just…It comes out.”

Izzy was silent then, just driving, his eyes on the road in front of them.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” she finally broke the silence by whispering.

He glanced at her. “Is that what happened with Richie?” he asked. “You tried to play hardball and put him in his place, and he took it as a real invitation?”

“I thought it didn’t matter to you—how it happened.”

“It doesn’t,” he said, but then added, “I’m just concerned, because, if that
is
what happened, you haven’t seemed to learn your lesson.”

“My lesson,” she asked. “My
lesson
?”

“I’ve been watching you, Eed,” Izzy said, “and you can’t seem to have a simple conversation with a man without bringing sex into the equation. And cranking the volume to eleven. First with Dave and now—”

“I’m sorry,” Eden cut him off. “I’m still back at
lesson.
So what you’re saying is, if I mouthed off to Richie and he forced himself on me, that would be
my
fault?”

“That’s not what I said!”

Her voice shook. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you just told me that I should learn to keep my mouth shut and my eyes averted to avoid being raped in the future.”

Izzy turned the wheel sharply, pulling into a side street and breaking to a stop. “Please tell me that’s not how it happened. That he raped you.”

Oh, crap, she was screwing this up. Izzy was going to take her to Vegas—and dump her back at her mother’s house. “That’s not how it happened,” she said obediently.

But it was obvious he didn’t believe her. He just sat there, looking at her. Waiting. Angry and apprehensive.

“He sent Jerry to Palm Springs,” Eden told him quietly, looking down at her lap, praying she could get through this without crying, praying he would believe her. Her own mother hadn’t. “To pick something up—probably drugs. I was home alone. In Jerry’s brother’s apartment. And he came over—Richie. To drop off this stuff that Jerry supposedly left in his van. He wasn’t sure what it was, right? This was what he told me when I opened the door—but he thought it was really important to Jerry. And it was so obviously, you know, a ring box. Like the one you gave me? Only it was wrapped, so I couldn’t open it to see what was inside. He had these flowers, too. Roses. An armful. And a bottle of wine.

“And he goes,
I’m not really sure what’s up, but Jer’s on his way back and he asked me to bring this over and open the wine, let it breathe.
And I was so sure this was it—that Jerry was going to ask me to marry him, and…I was stupid. I took the chain off the door and…I let Richie in. I never did before. He came knocking a lot when Jerry wasn’t home, but I never let him in. I didn’t pretend that I liked him—he knew I didn’t. He knew that I didn’t want Jerry to work for him.

“But now he’s in the kitchen, and he’s opening the wine, and he gets out three glasses—you know, ’cause Jerry’s coming home? And I’m putting the flowers into water, and I only had my back to him for a few seconds and…” She shook her head. “I don’t remember drinking the wine. But I must’ve.

“Next thing I know, it’s morning, and I’m in bed and I’m naked and I’m…” She cleared her throat, because damn it, her voice was starting to wobble. “I’m bruised. Sore. In…sexual places. And, God, I was so sick. I barely made it to the bathroom before I threw up. The headache was…I’ve never felt anything like it.”

“Rohypnol,” Izzy said. “The date rape drug. God
damn
it.”

Eden nodded. “That was my guess, too. The good news is that I don’t remember any of it.” She looked away, because the darkness in his eyes was just too hard to face. “At first I thought I was just hung over, you know? But Jerry wasn’t home and…the kitchen was clean. No flowers, no ring box. Just two wine glasses in the dish drain. Two—not three. When I saw that, I knew.”

“And you didn’t…?”

“No. I did it all wrong. Totally. I didn’t know I could get a blood test.” Eden had done her share of research well after the fact, and had discovered that traces of the drug would’ve still been in her bloodstream—but only that next morning. “Although, I couldn’t go to the police—they would’ve sent me back to Las Vegas, you know? I knew about the morning-after pill, but…I had no cash.”

Fifty-three cents. That was all she’d found in the apartment, even after searching through pockets and under the couch cushions. It wasn’t even enough to ride the bus.

“I knew I couldn’t afford either the visit to the clinic or the prescription,” she continued. “And the only free clinic I could walk to refused to treat me because I was under eighteen. I needed a note from one of my parents.”

“God
damn
it,” he said again.

“So I went home,” Eden told Izzy. “And I crossed my fingers.”

She rubbed her belly, but it was more to soothe herself than Pinkie, who was sleeping. “I was afraid of him,” she continued softly. “Richie. And I was probably even more afraid that if it came down to a he-said-she-said, Jerry wouldn’t believe me. So I pretended that I didn’t remember anything about that night—no recollection whatsoever of Richie coming over. I just played it like it didn’t happen, and just kept leaning on Jerry to find another job. He told me he did, but…He lied. And Richie finally told Jerry that
I’d
called
him
that night. He said
I
came on to him and…Jerry believed him. And he left me at that Krispy Kreme.”

Izzy was holding on to the steering wheel with both hands. “I don’t get how you could want to have this guy’s baby.”

“I’m not,” Eden told him. “I’m having
my
baby. Maybe not being able to remember it—the sex…See, even though I know what happened, what Richie did, it feels like there was me, and then…there was me and Pinkie.”

“Immaculate conception, huh?” Izzy said.

“I
do
remember that next morning,” she told him. “Not so much with the immaculate. The whole thing was so obviously meant to put me in my place. Or maybe to make me leave LA.”

Which, in the long run, had worked.

He touched her, then, pushing her hair behind her ear, his fingers gentle. But Eden couldn’t look at him.

“Can I kill him?” Izzy said. “Because I really,
really
want to kill him.”

She did turn to him then, suddenly aware that she’d been holding her breath. “You believe me?”

“Nothing dramatic,” Izzy said. “No conversation beforehand. None of that
This is for Eden
avenger movie-dialogue shit. Just a fast double-pop and out go his lights.”

“You’re kidding, right?” she said. “Sometimes I can’t tell when you’re kidding and when you’re—”

“I’m dead fucking serious.” He was. He was even angrier than he’d been when he’d found her locked in the bathroom. “You don’t want me to kill him, how about if I beat him,” Izzy suggested, “within an inch of his miserable life? Rearrange his face, a few teeth on the sidewalk, break a knee or an elbow…?”

“
This
was why I couldn’t tell Danny.”

“Both,” he decided. “I’d like to break ’em both.”

“Unless,” she argued, raising her voice, “he has his posse break
your
knees and elbows first. Please, Izzy, I don’t want you to kill anyone—what’s done is done. I’m gone—I don’t want to go back there, and I really don’t want
you
to go back there, because you’ll drag me with you. Please,
please,
if you want to help make it better just…tell me you believe me!”

“I believe you,” he said, no hesitation. “I’m just…” Now he paused, and looked at her, hard. “Why do I get the feeling there’s something more—that you’re not telling me?”

Because there
was
something more that she wasn’t telling him. Something that she’d hoped she’d never have to tell him—she’d just pray he never found out.

“Ah, fuck me,” Izzy said. “I’m right. What else did he do to you?”

Eden shook her head. “It’s bad.”

“Just tell me,” he said.

So Eden opened her mouth. “Richie told me that there’s a video,” she admitted. “From that night.”

Izzy nodded. “A video.”

“I haven’t seen it,” she said. “For all I know, he was bluffing, but…” She braced herself and just said it. “He said he was going to put it on the Internet.”

Izzy was silent for several long moments. “That’s it?” he finally said.

“He said I walk around and I talk—I act like I’m drunk. Like I’m having…fun.”

“Rohypnol can do that,” Izzy said.

Eden couldn’t help it, she started to cry. “What if your friends find out? What if they see it?”

He touched her again, his hand warm against her head as he stroked her hair.

“Some of them will think I’m a sucker and a loser,” Izzy told her, “and some of them will think I’m the luckiest bastard on the planet. Which is no different than the current consensus. Who the fuck cares what they think?”

Eden searched through her handbag for a Kleenex, but finally gave up and just wiped her nose on her sleeve. “What if
you
see it and think I’m lying?” she whispered.

“Why would you lie?” he asked her just as quietly. “When I asked you to marry me, it didn’t have anything to do with the past. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all about the future. You want to look me in the eye right now and say,
whoops, sorry, Iz, I got a little carried away and made up all that shit about Richie and the roofies
—”

“I didn’t,” she said hotly.

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you,” Izzy told her. “I’m saying that it doesn’t matter. I mean, yeah, it matters that this guy did this to you. That matters a fuckload. And it also matters—from here on in—that you’re honest with me. That we’re honest with each other. Okay?”

Eden nodded.

But he wasn’t done. “If you really don’t want me to kill Richie, I won’t. But can I just state for the record that if there is a video, it’s evidence of a crime.”

“And what do we do with this
evidence
?” she asked. “Go to the police, and have them watch it while I sit there, in the room—”

“No,” Izzy said. “Of course not. It just…feels wrong to let him get away with this.”

“He-said-she-said,” Eden told him. “Who’s going to believe me? Jerry—who supposedly loved me—didn’t even want to
hear
my side.”

“Jerry’s a tool,” Izzy said. “I thought we established that months ago.”

“You said you were, too,” she reminded him.

“I am,” he agreed. “I’m also a jackass, a jerk and…an asshole, I believe is what Jenkins just called me. Oh, my God. What if
your
friends find out?”

Eden actually laughed. Rolled her eyes.

“No, no,” he said. “I say,
What if your friends find out?
and you say,
Who the fuck cares what they think?
Let’s try it again. What if your friends find out?”

“Who the fuck cares what they think?” Eden obediently countered.

“Spoken like a true Zanella,” he said, and put the car back in gear. “Let’s take this show to Vegas and make it so.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

S
ACRAMENTO
, C
ALIFORNIA

M
urphy sat in Steve and Paul’s tastefully decorated master bathroom, towel around his waist.

He’d been sitting there for way more than three minutes. Probably more like sixty-three.

His original intention had been to wait just a little while, until it became a little less obvious that he’d broken down and cried while he was in the shower.

He should have just gone with the soap-in-the-eyes explanation. But he knew that Hannah would know that he was lying, which would totally ruin the mood.

She wouldn’t understand why he’d cried—and he wasn’t sure he could explain. But she’d think it was about Angelina, and, yeah, in a way it was. In a way, everything he did, every breath he took was about Angelina. But this…

He’d cried not because he’d wanted Angelina, but rather because he wanted Hannah. He
wanted
Han—with a sharpness and desperate immediacy that no longer existed when he thought about his wife.

He’d cried, not because it felt wrong, but because it didn’t.

It was weird. With Han being Angel’s best friend, it should’ve felt like the worst of betrayals.

But it didn’t.

He would’ve thought that looking at Hannah, spending time with her, would’ve been a wound-opening reminder of what they’d both lost.

But it wasn’t.

Instead, it was…what it was.

Life. Unfair and painful at times. But always moving forward, always shifting, changing, with time’s relentless passage smoothing down the jagged parts until it no longer hurt quite so much just to breathe.

Murphy stood and adjusted his towel. He opened the bathroom door and…

The house was dead silent.

He crossed through Steve and Paul’s freakishly neat bedroom and into the hall. He went down to the right, past the bathroom, where the door to the guest room—the former chaos room—was ajar.

He gently pushed it open.

Hannah was in the bed, asleep, her breathing slow and steady.

She’d taken off the spread and hung it carefully on the back of a chair. The bedclothes beneath it were white, too, and she lay on her side beneath the covers, pristine sheet clutched to her chest as she faced the door—no doubt so that she could see him if he came in.

She wasn’t particularly pretty—at least not in delicate-flower mode. Her nose was too big, her face too round, her shoulders too broad, her mouth too wide, her laughter too loud.

Her eyes were uncommonly beautiful, though. They sparkled with humor and flashed with anger—and held such warmth and passion. With them closed, she looked almost childlike and sweet, dark lashes against her soft cheeks.

But the freckles? Completely ridiculous on a woman who could kick most people’s asses. And yet, somehow? Adorable.

She had them on her arms and shoulders, too—she’d always complained about the copious amounts of sunblock she’d had to use. Where the sun kissed her skin, she freckled and burned.

She currently had her classic summer farmer’s tan—which meant most of the freckles on her arms were below a clearly marked T-shirt sleeve line. But she had some on her shoulders, too, from the super-hot days she’d worn a tank top or her bathing suit. It was all contrasted sharply by the paleness of the rest of her skin.

No doubt about it, she was naked beneath that sheet.

Jesus, he was a fool.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. Or he shouldn’t have
stopped
kissing her. He should have just climbed into the shower with her. Or he shouldn’t have brought her here at all. He should have driven her back to Dalton and then gone and turned himself in.

But trying to figure out what he should have done an hour or more ago wasn’t going to help him. What was he going to do now, was the question he should be answering.

Climbing into bed with Hannah was no longer an option.

Which meant he should probably start by getting dressed.

Han had dragged their duffle into the room—the bag into which they’d both thrown several changes of clothes. It was over by the door, and he went to it, to find a clean pair of boxers and a T-shirt, some shorts and socks.

He didn’t move quickly, but somehow, in moving, he woke Hannah.

“Murph,” she said quietly, and he turned.

Her eyes were open—such a powerful mix of blue and green amidst all that white. Blue and green and sadness and remorse.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

She
was apologizing to
him
?

She sighed. “I should’ve—”

“No.” He shook his head, straightening up and crossing to the bed. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Except give you too much time to think.”

“Nah,” he said, “that wasn’t it.”

She gave him a disbelieving look that was pure Hannah. That, combined with the fact that he knew she was naked under that sheet was doubly disconcerting. She was
Hannah,
and for so many years he wouldn’t allow himself to want her, but goddamn, now he could and he did.

“Don’t bullshit me, bwee,” she told him. “We know each other better than that.”

“I’m not. I’m…here, right?”

“To get your clothes,” she pointed out.

“Only because you were sleeping.”

“I’m not sleeping now,” she said.

Now.

She realized what she’d said and immediately backpedaled. “That wasn’t meant to be…I wasn’t trying to…” She closed her eyes. “Can we just go back to me saying I’m sorry? I’m just…really sorry. Just go, okay? Let’s not beat a dead horse. Wake me up whenever you’re ready to go out.” She turned away.

God, but he hated when she did that. And God, her shoulders and back were lovely—all that smooth skin.

Murphy sat down on the edge of the bed and tapped her arm.

She turned her head to look at him.

“Please don’t turn your back on me when we’re having a conversation,” he said.

She blinked at him. “The conversation was over.”

“Because you turned your back on me,” Murphy argued. “It’s beyond passive aggressive. It’s rude—and you’re better than that.”

“Rude?” Her temper sparked and she pushed herself up on one elbow, her other hand holding the sheet to her chest. “What am I supposed to do, Murph? What’s
not
rude? Wait until
you
decide that the conversation is over?”

“You could say,
I’d like to end the conversation.
That gives
me
an option to say,
well, I’ve got something else to add.”

“I’d like to end this conversation,” she said from between clenched teeth.

“I’ve got something else to add,” he shot back.

Hannah looked at him, widening her eyes as she shook her head slightly, her expression a very impatient
go on.

Problem was, he wasn’t quite sure exactly how to say this…

“I just wanted to, um,” he cleared his throat, “point out that I’m, you know, clean. Now. And yeah, it’s now—a different now. But it’s definitely…now?”

Hannah was silent. She just looked at him. And looked at him. Finally, she said, “Was that, like, a really
lame
way of saying that you still want to have sex with me?”

“I didn’t think it was
that
lame,” Murphy defended himself.

“So…Your answer would be
yes
?”

“Yes.” He nodded.

She narrowed her eyes and got defensive. “It’s not because you’re feeling sorry for me, is it? Because if—”

“No,” he said. “Jesus, Han, if I’m feeling sorry for anyone here, it’s me. Because I blew it. You were right—I got too much inside my head. I took too long—and I…made you feel bad again. Not to mention totally killing the mood.”

Hannah sat up, letting the covers fall away from her bare breasts. She’d fallen asleep with wet hair, and it stood straight up, charmingly, in places. Not that Murphy was looking at her hair.

“Mood back?” she asked.

She was beautiful—and self-conscious, despite the snappy comeback. Murph dragged his gaze back up to her eyes. “Miraculously jump-started,” he agreed as he reached for her.

She melted into his arms as he lost the towel and slipped into bed beside her. She was smooth and cool beneath his hands, against his body, her hands sliding down his back, her legs intertwined with his as he kissed her, as she kissed him.

And he understood completely why
clean
had been on her wish list.

Along with
slow,
which he was pretty sure he was going to fail to deliver. Particularly when she opened her legs, cradling him exactly where he wanted to be. And especially when she reached between them to find him and guide him…

“Han,” he said, pulling away from her kisses to look down at her.

She held his gaze as she shifted her hips, pushing him even more deeply inside of her.

“Hahhh,” he said. “Cahhh.”

She laughed up at him, as she moved beneath him—no small feat, considering he was so much taller and broader than she was. “I have no clue what you just said.”

“Condom,” he managed, trying to speak clearly, which was stupid because, Jesus, the last thing he wanted was to stop what they were doing. “Do we need one?”

She was on the pill—she’d told him that when he’d wondered what she was taking, every day at breakfast. It was to regulate her periods, which maybe wasn’t the same thing as birth control. But, “We’re good,” she told him now.

Good was such a massive understatement. It was so beyond good, it hurt, and Murphy had to close his eyes and even put his head down to hide his face. He had to have been crushing her, but she clung to him, pulling him even closer, straining, her fingers in his hair, her thighs taut against him.

Slow. She wanted slow, but he couldn’t remember what the word meant, as he moved on top of her, inside of her. There was only Hannah and pleasure—which, right now, were one and the same thing.

“Murph,” she breathed into his ear. “God…Don’t…stop…”

Stop
was somewhere out there with
slow
—not in his current two-word vocabulary—but he knew enough to recognize that
stop
combined with
don’t
was a good thing, that he could quit worrying about what he wasn’t doing and focus on what he was, and just…feel.

Just be.

Just feel…good…

Not angry, not sorrowful, not hopeless, not lost.

And, dear sweet Jesus, not, not,
not
alone.

“Hannah,” he said, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him, couldn’t possibly read his lips, with his mouth against her throat. “God, I need you so much…”

She came, almost as if she’d heard him, as if she knew from the tightness in his voice that he was seconds from his own release.

And Murphy remembered, with a sudden sharp clarity. Hannah.

Beneath him, just like this, her legs locked around him, coming completely undone. It was as sexy now as it had been then, and he surrendered the last of his tenuous control, letting himself crash into her even as she unraveled, and…
God.

It was unbelievably good.

As they lay there, together, gasping for air, Murphy could feel Hannah’s heart beating. He could feel his, too. Pounding. Triple time.

He was okay.

He was.

Or he would’ve been—if Hannah hadn’t started to cry.

L
AS
V
EGAS
, N
EVADA

The Happy Ending Wedding Chapel rented wedding gowns.

They also had locker rooms where the brides and grooms could shower off the dirt from the road before they took this monumental step toward the rest of their lives.

Or toward the rest of their next three months.

Lopez’s words rang in Izzy’s head as he made sure his rows of ribbons were neatly lined up on the left breast of his dress uniform.

He’d forgotten to pack socks, but that was no big. It wasn’t as if he’d never gone sockless before.

You’re supposed to be in love.
Both
of you.

“That’s crazy,” Izzy answered Lopez now, as he stared at himself in the mirror. “I’m not in love with her.”

Are you sure about that, man? Because you weren’t in love with Tracy, and all she did was whisper the word
relationship
and you were running for the next county. Why should this girl be different?

That was a no-brainer. Eden was pregnant.

So are 750,000 unwed fifteen- to nineteen-year-olds across America. You’re not marrying them, dickweed.

“You’re making that number up,” Izzy scoffed.

I read it online. While I was researching the myriad of programs available for single mothers in the state of California alone. You want to spend time with this girl, Zanella? You don’t have to marry her. Help get her into a program. Then, you know, date her.

“You’re not here,” Izzy told the imaginary Lopez in his head. Which meant that Izzy was the one who made that stupid number up. And he damn well knew exactly what
he
meant when he used the word
date.

You really think, with her living in your one-bedroom apartment, that you’re going to be able to keep your hands offa her? Talk about deluded…

“Shut the fuck up,” Izzy said.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Oops. The little bald man in the tuxedo—the guy who’d taken Izzy’s credit card after he’d ordered the deluxe package: wedding, gown rental, photo of the happy couple and custom prenup—had beamed himself into the locker room, inches from Izzy’s elbow. There was no other way Izzy wouldn’t have heard him come in.

Either that, or this wedding thing was far more distracting than he’d thought.

“Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you,” Izzy told him.

The man delicately cleared his throat. He had a fake English accent that didn’t work well with his Elmer Fudd face. “Sir, if you’ll just—”

“Whoa. Stop. I’m not an officer.”

The man blinked at him through his impossibly thick eyeglasses. “I’m sorry, sir—”

“I’m enlisted,” Izzy explained.

“I address all of the gentlemen who come to this establishment as
sir,
” Fudd told him, pushing his glasses up his nose for punctuation. “The lady awaits you. Sir. If you’ll step this way…?”