Finding Eden (A Sign of Love Novel)(119)

He laughed. "My feelings? Where do I even start?" He shook his head back and forth slowly. "How can you not be disgusted by me? Did you see where I came from?" He started laughing a raspy laugh that died and turned into a grimace. "Holy f*ck. Did you see what I have running through my veins, Eden? Did you see? What was that thing? Was it even human?"
"Calder . . ." I said under my breath, my heart pinching so tightly I brought my hand to my chest.
Calder propped himself up on his elbows behind him, lowering his chin, and glancing at my stomach before he focused on my face. "That baby in your belly, that baby has the same blood coursing through it as that thing in that house today. We both do. How does that make you feel? You've always been so pure, and I've always been so dirty. Hector was right. I am Satan's spawn. No f*cking wonder." His face was deeply pained.
I tossed the pillow to the side and walked on my knees to where he lay at the end of the bed. I took his face in my hands, gripping tightly, and looked into his eyes. "You listen to me, Calder Raynes," I said, my lips tight. "You are nothing like the man we met today. I don't care whether his blood runs through your veins or not, I don't care that his DNA created you. That does not define your heart. And all that tells me is that even someone disgusting and evil and lewd can do something beautiful. That ghastly, horrifying human, even him, he did something wonderful for this world. He created you. And. You. Are. Good." I let go of his face and leaned back on my heels.
Grief passed over his face. "No. I'm bad. I am evil. Everyone sees it. Hector saw it. My parents saw it—they tried to burn me, Eden." His voice choked on the last word. "Oh God, they tried to burn me."
I sucked back a sob, moving to him so quickly I didn't even make a conscious choice to do it. Suddenly my arms were around him and I was cradling him to me, his head between my breasts, my cheek resting on the top of his head. It was the first time he'd mentioned his parents. Even in that beautiful Bed of Healing, he hadn't been ready to go there, had skirted around the topic. Even after three years, and despite the alcohol in his system, when he looked up at me, the devastation and heartbreak were clear in his deep brown eyes. He didn't shed a tear, but I did, remembering the horror of that moment. I held him now because I couldn't then. I cried for him. I cried for the agony I knew lived in his heart because of the ultimate betrayal of that one moment in time, a moment that left him feeling scarred and unlovable. Thrown away, sacrificed in a way that still made him bleed inside.
"Sometimes," he whispered, "I feel like even though the fire didn't touch me, it burned me all the same. I feel like it melted my skin away and that the world is looking at my raw, charred insides. It feels that way, Eden. And now I know that it wasn't even the first time I was burned. I felt raw again today. That's how I felt, standing there before my father being told he sold me. He sold me when I was three years old."
I squeezed him with all my might, wishing I could open myself up and pour my love straight into his heart, that I could tear my own skin off and give it to him to wrap around his wounds.
"I see only goodness," I whispered. "I see only beauty."
"I thought I might just drive off tonight and never come back," he said. I tensed. "Just so you would never be able to love me again. So you'd go on without me and forget I ever existed."
I paused. "Obviously you didn't follow through with that plan." He must know that is my greatest fear. And a complete impossibility.
"No," he said. "I'd never do that. Never." He shook his head against my chest as if the statement itself was ridiculous. And it was.