Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

EDEN

"Mum." I put out a hand to her, but she waved me off and stepped back.

She screwed her eyes shut. "Tell me I'm putting two and two together and getting eight. Because there is no way what I think is happening is actually happening. No way ."

She nodded and opened her eyes. Looked from me to Brock and back again.

"Paula —" Brock started.

She raised her hands in front of her, palms facing him. "I don't want to hear it from you, Brock. Eden, what's going on? Why are you both in here looking messy and stinking of sex?"

"Um." How the hell was I supposed to answer a question like that? There was no point in lying to her, but was she ready to hear the truth? I half hoped Brock would let it out, but he didn't. She needed to hear this from me. She'd never believe it from him anyway. Whatever he said, she'd want me to confirm or deny.

"Brock and I…" I started slowly. "We have a physical relationship. It may become something deeper."

She turned on him. "You're fucking my daughter?" she screeched. "I should have known not to leave you alone with her! Of course you'd take advantage of her. She's missing me and the stability of our family life. I was probably out the door for five minutes when you made a move on her." She curled her hands like they were claws, ready to scratch his eyes out.

"Mum, this is recent," I said quickly, firmly. Hoping like hell she'd listen to me. "We've been getting closer for a while now."

I hadn't realised how close until this conversation. We'd fallen into a pattern like married people, but now we were adding sex into the equation. I always cared about him, but at some point, it had developed into something different. A romantic relationship, not a platonic or even paternal one.

She barely glanced at me. All of her fury was directed at him. "This ends immediately . You will not lay another hand on my daughter. Eden can come and live with me and John."

"I'm twenty-seven," I argued. "I get to decide where I live and who I live with. And who I sleep with."

She looked sickened. She still didn't glance at me. "You were her stepfather. Can you not see how wrong this is? It's absolutely disgusting. I want you out of my daughter's life."

Up until now, Brock hadn't said anything. He'd stood, stony faced and listened to her ranting. Now, all he said was, "No."

"What do you mean no?" she shrieked. "She's my daughter. You're my ex-husband. How could you possibly think a relationship with her would be okay? What the hell is going through your mind if you believe that?" She shook her head, causing hair to work loose from her dark, messy bun.

"You need help, Brock Edwards." She pointed a finger at him, the tip almost touching his nose. "You need professional help. The kind they give to sexual predators."

He batted her finger away. "I don't need help, Paula. If you see anything wrong with this, you might be the one who needs therapy. Eden and I are consenting adults. We're not related by blood. If we want to fuck each other, we will."

Mum flinched at the word fuck. "You can't be serious." Now she looked at me, disbelief in eyes that were the same colour as mine. "Eden? Tell him. He won't listen to me, but he'll listen to you. Tell him you two cannot be in a relationship together. You were his stepdaughter. He's older than you. He's preying on you. You need to move out of there and get away from him."

She looked absolutely desperate.

"I don't want to get away from him," I said softly. "I care about him. I like him and I like the way he makes me feel."

"What about those nice hockey boys?" she asked. "Couldn't you choose one of them?"

"I'm seeing them too," I said. "And their head coach." I might as well throw in all the details at this point. The situation couldn't get any worse. She could deal with everything, or not. That was up to her.

She shook her head and stepped back towards the door. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. You sound like a whore."

I resisted the strong urge to slap her, both for the word and her tone of voice. I knew she'd judge me, but this was vicious.

"They don't pay me, Mum," I said coldly. "I fuck them because I want to. Just like you fucked John while you were married to Brock. Did it cross your mind how Brock might feel about you cheating on him? How I might feel about you betraying our…family, as you call it? Who was the whore then?"

Her face paled. "How dare you say that to me? I'm your mother." After a moment she added, "This is his influence, isn't it?" She turned back to Brock. "You put these thoughts in her head. You've ruined my sweet daughter."

He actually smiled. "I'm doing my best. She seems to enjoy me ruining her."

Mum looked disgusted to the point she might be physically ill. "You're a repulsive excuse for a man. You never gave a shit about me or our marriage. I don't know why you cared that I cheated on you."

"I didn't care." Brock shrugged one shoulder. "Except that you were a hypocrite. You always accused me of emotionally cheating on you. Because I cared about another woman more than I cared about you. At least I was honest with you about that."

"I shouldn't have married you," she said. "You're the most emotionally unavailable person I've ever met."

"I'm very emotionally available, to the right woman." He turned his face to look right at me.

Mum looked like she'd been slapped across the face. "Eden? You never let yourself fall all the way in love with me because you were already in love…with Eden?" She looked completely disbelieving.

"Why wouldn't I fall in love with Eden?" Brock asked evenly. "She's beautiful, smart, sweet, giving. Everything you're not. And yes, she was always the one I was in love with. I married you so I could be closer to her. Now you're out of the picture, she's in my bed."

Mum's eyes swivelled back and forth between us, like she'd never seen us before. Like standing in front of her were two strangers, not her daughter and her ex-husband.

She took another step towards the door. "How could you do this to me? Both of you. You married me so you could be with my daughter. All the time we were together, you wanted her. Did you sleep together while we were married?"

"Mum, no!" I replied immediately. "I would never have done that to you. Neither would Brock. He made a commitment."

"He made a legal commitment, but his heart was never with me," she said bitterly. The look in her eyes was one I'd never seen before. She looked at me with resentment, as though I was the one who destroyed her marriage.

"I didn't even know he felt that way about me until recently," I said.

Once again, she looked disbelieving. I doubted she'd trust another word that came out of either of our mouths. If I said the sky was blue in the middle of the day, she'd assume it wasn't.

"Eden is right," Brock said. "I didn't tell her anything until a couple of weeks ago. When I got tired of keeping my distance and giving her time to realise what was right under her nose. When I decided to claim what was mine."

Mum shook her head. "You must have known how he felt about you," she hissed at me. "What did you do to make him feel that way about you? He was my husband. You had no right to make him look at you. You are a whore."

There was that urge to slap her again, but in the mood she was in, she'd probably have me arrested for assault.

I took a deep breath. "I did absolutely nothing. I was living with you because that was what you wanted me to do. You were the one who moved him in with us before we moved into the place we live in now. You were the one who brought him into our lives. I was busy chasing boys like Mitch and Jagger. Remember my nice hockey boys? Guys like that. Not men like Brock, or even Kage."

She met Kage once or twice before. I remembered now that she flirted with him. Right in front of her present fiancé. John hadn't looked impressed. Kage either, but that didn't deter her. Once a cheater, always a cheater. I felt sorry for John if he actually did marry her, only to have her do to him what she did to Brock. Regardless of Brock's feelings towards me, he had made a commitment to their marriage and he would have held to that if she had. Even if it made him unhappy.

"You must have done something," she insisted. "Married men don't just pine after girls for no reason."

"You pined after John," Brock pointed out. "So much so you apparently couldn't resist taking your clothes off and accidentally falling onto his cock. Something neither Eden or I would have done while I was married to you. Eden did nothing. Nothing except being herself. Something you wouldn't know anything about, because I don't think you've been your true, authentic self a day in your life."

He tilted his head to one side, then the other. "You've had so much work done, I don't know what you actually look like." He straightened his head. "I know this though. It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside. On the inside, you're a massive bitch."

She raised her hand to slap him, but he grabbed her wrist and held it tight enough to make her wince.

"If you lay a hand on me, it's the last fucking thing you do," he growled. "Same goes for you touching Eden. If she still wants to see you after this, that's up to her. But you will be respectful or you can stay the hell away from my woman."

Mum jerked her wrist back away from him. "She is not your woman. She's my daughter. You don't get to tell me how to behave towards her. You're nothing more than a predator. I should go to the police and report you."

Brock barked a laugh. "What for? Eden was an adult when we first met. She's an adult now. If going out with someone younger than you is a crime, then they better arrest half the men on the planet. Including John. Although, arresting him might be a favour to him. He'd be away from you. Right now, the only crime he’s committed is having bad taste in women." Brock looked at her like he was repulsed by everything about her.

I couldn't blame him, right now I was feeling sick to my stomach at the things she was saying. If she wasn't careful, I was going to vomit on her shoes. I might not even feel bad about it.

"Marrying you was the biggest mistake I've ever made," Mum said coldly.

"I thought the biggest mistake was having me," I said. She was starting to make me feel like it. I'd done absolutely nothing wrong and she'd blamed me for everything anyway. She was the one who married a man who didn't love her enough. She was the one who turned her back on that marriage and cheated. She was the one who left. She was the one who made me feel like everyone else in my life might leave, to the point where I was scared to get close to anyone.

She turned icy eyes to me. "That was my second biggest mistake."

She turned on her high heels, pushed out of the door and left the shop, the bells tinkling merrily in her wake.