And now he doesn’t even want to be near you.
It had been six weeks since that night. Since she’d shown Zeke parts of her she’d never shown anyone. For a few hours, she hadn’t held onto that mask. She hadn’t pretended that she could do it all on her own. That she didn’t need anyone. She’d relied on him, just for a little bit.
And he hadn’t let her down. He hadn’t run screaming.
Well, you didn’t exactly show him the dark bits. He’d run then.
Didn’t matter what she’d shown him in the end. He’d still left.
You told him to go, idiot.
And he’d told her that she was his. And then he’d barely said two words to her since. Which had just pissed her off.
Fuck. Totally messed up. She told him to go, yet she got angry when he did what she said. This was yet another reason for her to stay away from men. All men. They messed with her head and she didn’t need to get any more messed up than she already was.
She forced herself to concentrate on the problem at hand. She’d spent the last twenty minutes sitting in her car, trying to call Keira. But she’d never picked up. Which had left Eden with two choices. Leave or enter the scary-looking bar to find Keira. Of course, she’d chosen option two. Lucky for her, there were no steps and the door was nice and wide.
Who knew a biker’s bar would be disability accessible?
She stared at the name of the bar. Reaper’s. It seemed fitting.
This was where Keira worked? Was she here tonight? Was she all right?
Shit. This is exactly why she tried not to make attachments. So she didn’t have to worry over people. That was the reason she’d tried to keep her distance from the women who lived at Sanctuary. Not that she’d really managed that.
She adored those women. But none of them really knew her. Even her brothers didn’t know everything.
They didn’t know how damaged she was. If they did then they’d want to fix her.
And that could never happen.
Because Eden didn’t want to be fixed. She deserved to be broken.
Still, for some stupid idiotic reason she’d let herself get close to Keira. It was sentimental, really. She’d met Keira in the hospital. She’d made ties to the other girl before she’d figured out that it was safer not to let people close.
The message she’d left on Eden’s phone earlier played over in her mind.
Eden, I’m so sorry. I’m scared. . .please. . .
Then the message had been cut off. Please what? Please help me?
After trying to call her back only to get a dead signal, Eden had come here to Reaper’s Bar, where Keira told her that she worked.
If she wasn’t here then Eden wasn’t sure what to do. She had no idea where the other woman lived. She wasn’t sure if Keira was truly in trouble or if this was a ploy to get Eden to give her more money.
She rolled her chair into the middle of the big, dimly-lit room. By now, everyone had stopped what they were doing to stare at her.
She pulled her shield around her like a cloak. She shouldn’t have reconnected with Keira. She needed to remember that it was easier not to get attached, not to feel. If you didn’t care then you couldn’t get hurt. You couldn’t lose people.
Uh-huh and how is that working out for you?
It didn’t mean that she didn’t love her family. She’d lay down her life for them. But then, that was kind of the point, right? She’d risk anything for them. Because of her love for them, but also because she didn’t care that much
about what happened to her. You actually had to value something in order to care about it.
She paused in the middle of the room and looked around at the mix of people. Most of the men wore black jackets. They ranged in age from what she guessed was around twenty to seventy. Hmm, that was a surprise. As she looked, she couldn’t see many that might be underage.
Didn’t mean anything.