Finding Eden(68)

"Just Coke," he said, looking embarrassed as if that was some sort of crime. I smiled at him.

"What'd the detective want?" he asked, his jaw tensing.

I studied him. I ran one fingertip over his dark eyebrows, one by one. "Just more questions about Clive's role in the council—what I experienced of him in the main lodge," I said in answer to his question. "You don't have to dislike Detective Lowe. He's actually very nice."

Calder's jaw ticked once, but he didn't deny disliking the detective. He took a deep breath and studied my face. I met his eyes. "I just worry," he started. "Sometimes I think maybe you wonder . . . or maybe you will wonder—"

"Then ask me," I said softly. "All you ever have to do is ask me."

Vulnerability skated over his expression. "Do you ever wonder what it'd be like to be with another man? A man you could start fresh with? A man who could give you more than me? A man who's better than me?"

"No. No man can give me more than you. No man is better than you," I said without hesitation.

He smiled a baffled, crooked smile full of hope and my heart lurched in my chest. A flash of him as a little boy looking up at me after I'd put a butterscotch candy in his hand raced through my mind, and all the love and tenderness I felt for him filled my chest so full I ached with it.

His face went serious. "I don't even have a name, Eden. No one's even come forward to claim me. No one ever even reported me missing."

"Oh, Calder," I said. "Is that why?" He'd seemed so quiet lately, lost in his own head, and he'd leave the room each time the police came by, and now I knew why. The news they were bringing was never about him. "There must be an explanation," I said.

He shrugged.

"The police said they'd help you and Xander get the necessary paperwork to get IDs."

"Yeah, but it won't really be me. It will be who Hector made me. If I'm Calder Raynes, I'll always be a slave, a water bearer." He said the last two words with disgust lacing his voice.

I wasn't sure what to think about that. I had loved him then, and I loved him now. His name—any title someone else gave him—would never, ever change that. It didn't alter who he was under his skin. And we didn't even know for sure that he had been abducted anyway. "Calder," I started hesitantly, "is it possible that Hector was just talking jibberish? At the end you have to admit, he was crazy," I finished quietly.

He shook his head. "Mother Willa—"

"We can't put a whole lot of stock in what she said, either."

Calder pulled that full bottom lip between his teeth and sucked on it for a minute. "Maybe. But my family, Eden, you have to admit, I didn't look anything like any of them, not in coloring, not in features."

I looked behind him, trying to picture his mom and dad. I couldn't create a clear picture of their faces in my mind. But I remembered making note of the fact that he didn't look like his family many times in Temple as I watched him interacting with them. "That's not definitive proof of anything either though," I finally said.

He let out a frustrated breath and it was then I realized he didn't want to believe they were his real parents. He didn't want to believe his own mom and dad could have ever done what they did to him at the end. He was looking for hope. He was picturing someone else out there who loved him and would fight to the death for him. I smoothed my thumbs over his cheekbones again, looking in his hurt-filled eyes. "I love you, Butterscotch," I said, feeling the emotion of the statement well up in my throat.

His eyes met mine and filled with warmth. "I love you, too."

He looked away. "This whole situation, it's making me someone I don't like. I feel like we're trapped, caged again for the second time in our lives." Frustration washed over his expression. "I can't work, I can't take care of you. I haven't painted. I can't even wake up in the same bed as you. And now I don't even have a home to bring you back to once all this clears."

"We'll find a new home together."

His eyes warmed. "I know." He sighed. "I just feel . . . stripped bare, I guess," he said, smiling a smile lacking humor and raising his eyebrows.

I studied him for another minute, my eyes drinking in the striking male beauty of his face, the depth of emotion and sensitivity behind his eyes. I'd never get tired of looking at him. Loving him would never cease being my greatest pleasure in life. "I've always liked you stripped bare," I said, smiling a cheeky smile at him and trying to get him to smile back. It worked. I went serious. "You've always been most beautiful when you're stripped bare," I said, meaning that in every single way. "You, just you, with nothing else, no job, no house, no money, nothing. Stripped bare. You will always be enough for me. You will always be my dream come true, my destiny."