Trusting Stone (26 page)

She remembered that she had managed to overcome that on her own. She knew it was in there somewhere—the strength to survive this. To survive Sebastian Stone.

Eden opened her eyes, stepping back quickly from the edge of the sidewalk. She took her phone back out of her bag and texted Joachim, knowing there was no one else she could turn to.
I’m not hanging in there. At all
.

As she had hoped, he texted back immediately.
I’ll be at your place in an hour xx
. If nothing else, she at least had Joachim, despite all their unresolved issues.

Eden reluctantly opened the front door to Joachim, who immediately scooped her up in his arms. Somehow, now in the safety of her
apartment
, she felt that her text to Joachim had been dramatic. And she still had Sebastian’s request to not see him anymore hanging over her. She hated that he still seemed to have some control over her.

“Jesus, Eden, you’re a mess. First things first, you get in the shower and I’ll order Chinese food. You look like you haven’t eaten in days.” Joachim kept talking as he walked her to the bathroom. She didn’t have the energy to protest. He turned on the shower, checking the temperature. “Now as much as I’d like to help you into the shower, I won’t,” he joked, looking at her for a reaction. “Too soon for jokes, I see. I’ll be right outside then.” He pulled the door gently behind him and Eden slowly peeled off her work clothes.

Stepping into the shower felt better than she imagined it would. She turned the cold down and let the hot water pour over her, almost scalding her skin. She wanted it to burn away the pain, burn away the memories of Sebastian and leave her feeling new again. When she
finally
emerged a half an hour later, wrapped up in her terry cloth bathrobe, she couldn’t help but smile. Chinese food was laid across her coffee table, and her laptop was set up in the middle of it while Joachim waved two DVDs in front of her.

“
Dirty
Dancing
or
Catch
Me If You Can
? I’m thinking this is a bit too cliché.” He indicated
Dirty
Dancing
. “So how about we compromise—Leonardo di Caprio and
ice cream
after the Chinese, instead of crying over Patrick Swayze?”

“Perfect. I really needed this.” The pain was still throbbing inside her, but she felt marginally better with Joachim sitting next to her on the couch. He had bought all her
favorite
Chinese food, obviously remembering what she used to order when they were still
students
together in Boston. Maybe her mother was right—maybe Joachim did know her better than anyone else. Even Sebastian. After all, how well could you know someone after seven weeks? She pushed the thought away. She didn’t want to think about her parents, or Sebastian, or whether or not Joachim was secretly glad she and Sebastian had broken up. All she wanted to do was watch the movie, eat, and rest.

“I’m not going to ask you what happened, Eden, just that I hope you’re alright and you know I’m here for you. As much as you need me.” Joachim spoke softly, not moving his eyes off the screen.

Eden closed her eyes and listened to Tom Hanks’ smooth drawl, grateful to have a friend like Joachim, despite all the mess that had started clouding their friendship.

She woke up when Joachim picked her up in his arms, gently cradling her against his chest, and carried her to her room. In her haze, she became worried that he might be expecting to stay with her as he pulled back the duvet, but when he tucked her in, not even trying to take her bathrobe off her, she remembered who he was—faithful Joachim who had saved her when she needed him. He would never take advantage of her.

“Thank you,” she whispered as he bent down and lightly kissed her on the forehead.

“He’s an idiot if he let you get away, Eden, a complete idiot.” Joachim turned and walked out, switching off her light as he went.

The next morning, she woke to see the sun pouring in her window. She had
finally
managed to sleep. She could hear someone in her
apartment,
and smiled when she heard Jo’s familiar voice singing “New York, New York.” Eden shuffled out of bed, still wearing her robe from the night before, but feeling ten times better. She ignored the lump that still held strong in her chest and opened her bedroom door. Joachim was laying out breakfast muffins and taking the tops off two steaming cups from Starbucks.

“Ready for breakfast? It’s a beautiful Thursday, Eden. You can’t stay inside on a day like this. Let’s go to the park, maybe
catch
a movie, what do you say? I remembered that you didn’t have work today and I took the day off so we could hang out. No more moping, alright?”

He beamed at her from across her
apartment
. She nodded her head in response. Eden felt grateful in that moment and wished she didn’t have that nagging feeling inside her that Joachim would never be truly satisfied with their platonic friendship. But despite her efforts to push him away, he had been there for her when she needed him, again and again.

“That sort of day sounds great.” Just then, she felt her phone buzz. She had slipped it into her bathrobe before she joined Joachim. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the text from Sebastian.
WHAT IS JOACHIM BENEDICT DOING IN YOUR
APARTMENT
?

Eden almost dropped her phone as she felt the
color
drain out of her face. She rushed to the window, flinging it open and peering down onto the busy sidewalk below. She could see his town car parked across the
street
. Eden didn’t know how long he had been there, but he must have seen Joachim when he went out to get breakfast. She scrambled to get her thoughts together, trying to figure out what she should write back, if anything at all.
He’s a friend
.
What do you want from me?

She looked back over the balcony and watched, horrified, as the car door flew open and Sebastian jumped out. Even though she couldn’t see his face, she knew he was furious just by the way he carried himself. She stepped back, wanting nothing more than to have Joachim out of her
apartment
. Sebastian was here and that’s all she could focus on in that moment—she would see him again. And if he was here, it meant he still cared, and that meant there was a chance she’d been wrong about her being part of a revenge plan.

She could hear Joachim asking her if she was alright, but she couldn’t respond, waiting for the bang on the door. She knew her doorman would send him straight up. It didn’t come, and she
suddenly
hurried across the
apartment
, still ignoring Joachim as he tried to understand her strange
behavior
. Eden flung her front door open to find Sebastian standing in front of it, his fists clenched, his face a livid mask of anger and violence that made Eden step back. Sebastian took it as an invitation and walked into the
apartment
, clearly struggling to control his rage.

“Couldn’t even wait more than a week, Benedict. Seems rather desperate, even for you.”

Joachim glanced at Eden, but all she could do was stand with her back against the open front door, looking at her bare feet.

“It’s not what you think, Sebastian, she’s a wreck. She needed a friend. Someone who would be there for her in a crisis. A crisis, by the way, that you caused.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about and I suggest you leave.”

“This isn’t your
apartment
, you don’t own it, and you don’t own Eden. She’s a free agent. I’ll leave when she asks me to leave.”

With that, Sebastian turned to Eden. She didn’t even have to look up to know exactly what he was thinking, what he was demanding of her. “Please, Joachim, I think you need to go. Please.”

Joachim walked across to her, side-stepping Sebastian as if he wasn’t even in the room. “Eden, come on, you don’t need to do this. This isn’t right. This isn’t what you need. He left you! Don’t let him control you like this.”

“You don’t know what I need, not about this.” Eden looked at him, forcing her face to become hard. She believed every word she said. While Joachim knew how to take care of her, he had no idea what she wanted. He wrongly assumed the two were the same. “Don’t make me ask you again. For the sake of our friendship.” She moved aside and held the door for him.

“Eden...” Joachim tried one last time as he walked through the door, begging her with his eyes.

She stared back at him as she closed the door, hoping she would see him again so she could
apologize
.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Eden stayed facing the door, leaning her forehead against the cool wood, scared to turn and face the seething anger she could feel behind her, and at the same time, desperate to find out why Sebastian was here after he had made it clear how little she meant to him. Just being this close to Sebastian eased the lump inside her chest and she desperately wanted to take off her bathrobe and throw herself at him, feel him in her as she had done so many times in the past weeks.

What did he want from her? She knew he was jealous of Joachim, but they weren’t even together anymore. What right did Sebastian have to demand anything of her anymore? Sebastian spoke first.

“I told you not to see Joachim Benedict again.”

“You can’t do this. You can’t come into my
apartment
and dictate who I can have here,” Eden said, still with her back to him. His response shocked her.

“When it comes to Joachim Benedict, I certainly can. Did you fuck him?” he growled, clearly still having to control his wrath.

Eden turned around
finally
. Now it was her turn to try and control her anger. “What did you just ask me?”

“You heard me perfectly clearly, Eden. Now answer me.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything anymore, Sebastian. I owe you no explanation. You let me go. I have no intention of dating someone who is in business with potential rapists. And someone who clearly doesn’t care what that might mean to me.”

“Is that what you think, Eden, that I don’t care?”

“Why else would you have been doing business with them? You made me think that we were…” She couldn’t finish her sentence. Mara had been right, she knew nothing about men. She’d given herself to Sebastian without even looking back. And he had used her, betrayed her. And the worst of it was that she still wanted him, despite everything he had done. “You have no idea what you’ve done, Seb. Just tell me what you want then go.”

“First answer me about Joachim.” He stepped closer to her
suddenly
. He clearly wasn’t going to let this go. It was more than she could take.

“Not until you tell me what is going on.”

“Fine. I’ll tell you. But I’m not going to leave. I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to get too upset. Promise you’ll trust me and not run.”

Eden looked up at him. The past week had been one of the worst in her life and she wanted nothing more than to trust him, but she didn’t know if she could.

“I’ll try, Seb.”

“I’ll have to take that for now.”

He held her hand as he
led
her to the couch. Eden noticed that Joachim had cleared up the
take-out
from the night before and she felt a pang of guilt at having dismissed him so easily. Sebastian would also have to explain what his problem was with Joachim, besides basic jealousy.

“The day you told me about the attack, I could hardly function after I left you. All I could think about was those men hurting you, touching you. We hadn’t even slept together yet, but all I could see was red. The thought of another man touching you, and hurting you at that…you have no idea what that did to me. I had to do something about it. When you told me the names of the men, I started digging around. Eden, did you ever ask yourself why Joachim didn’t take you to the police that night? Or why your parents didn’t report it after you came home?”

It was something she had asked herself, but over the years, she had decided it was one more issue she had to let go. “No, I mean, I told you already. Joachim thought I would get in trouble for the drugs in my system and the underage drinking, and my parents…well, I guess they didn’t really believe it had been a real attack. Dr. Shepherd asked me the same question when I first started seeing him.”

“But Joachim saw you, he saw them attacking you—he was a witness and could have given a statement about it clearly being an attempted rape. Why didn’t he do that?”

“I don’t know, Seb! What does this have to do with the files?” Eden didn’t want to rehash that night again with him.

“Joachim started working for his father his
senior
year.”

“I know, he told me. That’s how he found out about my dad’s financial problems.”

“Not just that, he
suddenly
had access to deals both your father and his were making with various companies. You said you knew those boys growing up. Didn’t you ever wonder what their parents did?”

“No, they were just more
trust-fund
kids. I didn’t care.” Sebastian looked at her now with such tenderness she almost started crying, “What’s this all about, Seb. Please, please tell me.”

“Taylor Productions, Tine Securities, Elin &
Young
Construction. That’s what this is about.”

Eden flinched as he said the names she knew so well.

“All businesses that either your father or Gerome Benedict had pending contracts with that year. Big contracts, Eden. Contracts that people were willing to protect. More than other things.”

Eden stared at him before shaking her head. She must have misunderstood. She couldn’t believe what he was telling her.

“Joachim knew about those deals and knew it would be bad for his father and yours. That’s why he never took you to the police that night, that’s why your parents tried to sweep the whole thing under the table. How could they do business with men whose sons were being accused of drugging and attacking you? But your suicide attempt clearly got tongues wagging and the deals fell through anyway. Hence why your father holds you responsible for his current financial state. Those deals would have elevated his company to the next level.”

“But I saw those files—you have contracts, or are making them at least, with those companies. You’re no different than my parents!”

“Yes, I am. I asked for a few clients I know to recommend me to the right people in their industry and then pitched to them to act as their new
security
firm. They accepted my bids and I gained access to their business and private lives that otherwise would have been impossible. In so doing, I’ve acquired sufficient information to ruin them. Slowly. Painfully. Completely.”

Eden put her head in her hands. Sebastian did have a revenge plan that involved her, but it wasn’t revenge for him. It was for her. If Sebastian was telling the truth, and she couldn’t see why he wouldn’t be, everything her father said had been true. He had lost potential business-saving deals because of what happened to her and now he felt that she owed him by ensuring the merger went through with Gerome Benedict. Joachim had known all along. She thought back to that night, asking Joachim when the police were going to arrive and him telling her that people had seen her drinking and acting high—no one would believe her that her drink was spiked. She had trusted him implicitly.

So much of her breakdown had been about the fact that no one believed her, that she still had to go to class and see those boys, that her parents seemed more mad at her than anyone else. Joachim had known all that. She had spent the last few years working in therapy to recover from the fear she thought was irrational—that no one would truly protect her if she needed it. And she
realized
how rational that fear really was. She wasn’t crazy. The people she trusted the most had betrayed her in the most brutal way.

“But my parents…how could my parents do this to me? I’m their daughter!” Eden looked at Sebastian now, wishing he could make it all go away, that he could provide her with an explanation that made all this pain disappear.

He tried to wipe away the tears that were streaming down her face. “Your father’s business is sinking, Eden. He’s gotten himself involved in some pretty dodgy business. There are
rumors
of indictments for some underhanded dealings he’s done. Benedict is clearly trying to help him out, but it might be too late. Your father has been dodging the accusations for a long time.”

“Indictments? You mean he could go to
jail
?” Eden couldn’t even entertain the thought of her father going to
jail
. What would her mother do? Even though she could never forgive them for betraying her, they were still her parents.

“I don’t know enough yet, Eden. I wanted to get a better picture before I told you. That’s why I let you go that night. I didn’t have enough to bring to you. I couldn’t tell you that the people you trusted the most in the world had hurt you without being sure of the facts. But I should never have let you go.”

Sebastian pulled her toward him. One hand wrapped itself around her hair while the other one stroked her cheek. He kissed her
finally
, his lips soft against hers. She leaned into it, feeling as if they were kissing for the first time. The time apart had been so painful for Eden, the thought of Sebastian never kissing her again had been too much to bear. She could hardly believe he was here holding her again.

“Don’t ever do that again, Eden. Don’t run from me.” Sebastian pulled back slightly, looking her in the eyes. He face was hard and she knew she had hurt him too by not trusting him. “The past week has been hell for me.” Eden
suddenly
realized
that for the first time since she had met Sebastian, he didn’t look his smooth, sophisticated self. He clearly hadn’t shaved that day and his white shirt, usually ironed and starched, was wrinkled and limp.

Eden touched his face, rubbing the stubble with her fingertips. “For me too, Sebastian. I could hardly breathe without you. I won’t run again if you promise to stop
keeping
me in the dark.” She leaned in to kiss him again, wanting him to never stop touching her, but he held her back.

“Joachim…what did he want? Did you…”

Eden
realized
how it must have looked, especially after she had told Sebastian about Joachim’s confession about wanting to marry her. Just the thought of one of his ex-girlfriends being in his
apartment
made her feel sick to her stomach. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that Sebastian hadn’t turned to anyone else for comfort in the past week. She couldn’t imagine how he must have felt about Joachim being here, especially after what he knew about him.

“Oh God, Seb, I know how it looks. I’m so sorry. I haven’t been…coping.” Eden couldn’t think of a better word. Her mind thought back to how she had felt standing on the edge of the sidewalk, how close those dark thoughts had been to making her do something dangerous. “I wasn’t doing well and I texted him. He came over and saw that I was a wreck. We ate Chinese food and he put me to bed when I fell asleep watching a movie. It was totally innocent. I didn’t have anyone else to call. Mara’s so wrapped up with Enzo and the wedding, I couldn’t face her, and Joachim’s been so worried about me.” She
realized
how ridiculous that sounded in retrospect, but at the time, it’s what she thought.

“He put you to bed?” Sebastian asked, and Eden saw his fist clenching.

“It wasn’t like that. He didn’t touch me like that. I promise, completely innocent.”

Sebastian laughed sarcastically. “Innocent? Joachim Benedict is far from innocent. You can’t see him anymore, Eden. Even disregarding the fact that he lied to you, betrayed you, I can’t have you seeing a man that is actively trying to get you to marry him. I won’t allow it.”

Eden was tempted to argue with him. The words he used— “can’t,” “allow,” they made her feel like a child. But behind the words, the intention was good and she agreed with him. Joachim’s betrayal was unforgivable.

She nodded. “I know. I won’t.” She looked up at him, wishing she could make the past week disappear, all the pain and doubt she had felt. “How did you know he was here?”

It was Sebastian’s turn to put his head in his hands, releasing his hold on her. “God, Eden, you have no idea what I’ve been through. Once I put all the details together of what your parents and Joachim had done, I was livid. I knew you needed space, but I couldn’t give it to you. I made my driver wait outside your
apartment
to give me updates when you left and returned from work, wanting to make sure you were alright. He said you looked particularly upset yesterday morning. I waited for you after work to make sure you were okay and then when you got home and I saw Joachim arrive…I couldn’t see straight. It took every ounce of control not to barge up here once I saw the lights go out and it was clear he wasn’t leaving. I sat there all night, waiting. When I saw his smug face returning to your
apartment
with breakfast, I couldn’t help myself. I’d assumed you’d moved on, but I thought you at least should know what he had done. That’s why I texted you.”