Chapter 100

#Chapter 100 – Edgar 3s Evelyn I stare out the window at the back of my kitchen, watching warily as my boys chat with their grandmother by the pool. I can see Victor standing at his back door, likewise surveying the scene.

We’re both figuring out our next moves.

Sighing, I turn my attention back to the breakfast dishes in the sink. So much has changed in the past few hours – an absolute whirlwind. Victor was supposed to be gone – off with Amelia on his tropical honeymoon, and I was supposed to return to my little cottage today, alone with my boys.

I was supposed to be planning my new life.

Instead, Victor is still here, Amelia is gone, and suddenly there’s a whole new group of people living with him – throwing a new wrench into the situation, into my life.

I scrub harder in my frustration. Why can’t things ever turn to be easier, rather than harder and more complicated?

Hardest to grasp is the idea that Victor is, bizarrely, single now. He and Amelia had been so closely tied in my mind, in the nation’s mind, that to think of him without her is…bizarre. The media had gone into a frenzy with it – so much so that I can’t even read my favorite gossip apps or watch television.

Victor’s rejection of Amelia is on every site, app, and channel. Some journalists have taken Amelia’s side, marking Victor as a cruel, overly-demanding Alpha who has ruthlessly rejected the angelic model.

Others dig more deeply into Amelia’s own dark side, revealing her cruelty towards Victor’s children and suggesting that his actions protect his pack from what is, essentially, a wicked stepmother jealous of the attention he pays his boys.

I can’t help but side with those ones, just a little bit. Even when I do my best to be unbiased, I still hear the screams of my children locked in that cabinet. They were ultimately unharmed, of course, but they were so scared – so unnecessary an act –

I grit my teeth, throwing the scrub brush in the sink so that it clatters on the metal. God damnit. I’ve been replaying that memory in my mind every fifteen minutes, it feels like, completely haunted by it and unable to let it go.

I’ll never forgive her for her actions, but damnit, I wish I could find a way to wipe it from my mind. I can’t live with the stress of reliving it over and over again.

I cover my eyes with my hand, leaning against the counter, trying hard to think of something else.

But my mind turns towards my own face, splashed across the television and my phone. It’s not a leading story, but some clever journalists have begun to speculate that I’ve had something to do with Victor’s rejection of Amelia. That he’s rejected her, on some level, to make space in his life for this blast from his past, the mother of his children.

They’ve even uncovered and begun to speculate about the fact that I’ve been living on Victor’s property, in what they’ve been calling his “doll house” – a name that’s rife with the suggestion that I’m just his plaything…

God, I think, gritting my teeth. Thank god they don’t know about the night of his Hunt –

I’m swarmed with memories, then – of Victor grabbing me, pulling me to him, his mouth hot on mine –

of falling to the floor, of his weight on top of me, of the way my neck arched and my mouth fell open at the precise moment I felt him enter me –

I jump up, pulling myself up straight, shaking my head, refusing to let my thoughts go there.

God damnit. It’s all just way too complicated.

Behind me, I hear my front door creek open. I turn, welcoming any distraction, but hoping that it’s a good one.

“Anyone home?” Edgar calls. When his eyes find me in the kitchen, his face lights up.

I return the look, skipping over to him and throwing my arms around his neck. “Hey!” I say, kissing him lightly on the mouth. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me close and deepening our kiss.

I let him, for a moment, and then pull away, smiling up into his face. “We missed you,” I say.

He laughs and loosens his grip on me, allowing me to take a step away so that he can see me better.

“Sounds like I missed some real fireworks,” he says, looking me up and down.

“You have no idea,” I say, rolling my eyes and taking his hand. I lead him over to the couch, where we sit. “It was a very stressful couple of days.”

“I can imagine,” he responds, eyebrows raised. “Are you guys all okay? You and the boys, I mean?”

I shrug, looking down at the floor. Edgar, as one of Victor’s top Betas, has been briefed on the events of the wedding, so there’s no real need to fill him in on the details of Amelia’s actions, Victor’s rejection, the aftermath. But I can tell he wants my perspective, and frankly, I just don’t have the energy for it.

“We’re fine,” I say, picking at the trim of the couch. “Or, we will be, soon enough. When it all blows over.”

Edgar nods kindly at me, sensing my mood and letting it all pass. We’ll talk about it more completely sometime later. Sometime soon. Just…not when it’s so fresh.

He leans back into the cushions of the couch and smiles at me. “When you were gone, I did some research.”

“Really?” I say, perking up and smiling at him. “What kind of research?”

“Well,” he pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would – we didn’t expect you and the boys back until today, at least, but…” He hands his phone to me. “I found some…

places.”

I take the phone, studying it, my face breaking out into a big smile. Edgar has used a real estate website to save a couple of homes, a couple of possibilities for us, for our future.

I look him in the face, beaming. “This is so great,” I say, laughing a little, and then turning my eyes back to the phone and swiping through the selections. “Do you have a favorite?”

“Well, I don’t know your tastes, precisely,” he says, “so I wanted to go broad with the selection. But I do have a special place in my heart for this one…”

Looking at the phone upside down, he swipes until a small yellow house comes onto the screen. I bring it closer to my face, studying the wide white porch out front, the gingerbread trim in the gables.

“There’s a pear tree in the front yard,” he says softly, “I thought you’d like that. And plenty of room in the back for the boys, and for…Archie, if you’re taking him…”

“We can’t leave Archie behind,” I murmur, swiping through the listing and looking at the quaint kitchen, the large and sunny living room, the layout of the bedrooms upstairs. I smirk, and then raise my eyes to his. “Three bedrooms?”

He gives me a shy smile and shrugs. “Room for each of the boys to have their own, or…room to grow.”

I bite my lip, considering him. “The boys will never want separate bedrooms. We’ll have to find some other way to fill the space.”

His grin widens and then he leans forward, burying his hand in my hair as he pulls me in for a kiss. I return it, letting the happy emotions of this moment fill my mind – wipe out all the memories of the stressful weekend, of everything that’s happened in the past forty-eight hours.

Edgar shifts his position, leveling his body so that he leans over me, putting his other hand on my lower back to pull me forward so that I’m laying flat on the sofa and he’s above me. As our kiss deepens, he gently rests his body on top of mine so that we’re flush, pressed against each other.

I slide a hand down his back, raising my leg so that my calf brushes against his thigh on the way to wrap around his waist. I smile, flicking my tongue against his lips, and he lets out a soft moan.

“Evelyn,” he whispers, “God, I just want to –“

But then, we hear the back door creak open, the sound of four small feet pattering through the kitchen.

Edgar sighs and lifts himself off of me, giving me a heady stare.

“Raincheck?” He says, disappointed, but turning a happy face towards the boys as they run into the room.

“Absolutely,” I murmur, still looking at him.

And I mean it, in that moment. But also, I can’t help glancing at the kitchen floor, remembering a different kiss, a different moment, in which I wouldn’t have been able to stop kissing if I’d tried.