One month.

“Twenty questions, hey?”

The smile that lit up her face was the only answer I needed.

“I want to go and get a hot chocolate first. Do you want anything?”

“Coffee. Aunt Carole knows how I like it.”

I watched her closely as she weaved her way through the crowd, completely oblivious to the sideways glances she was receiving from every single guy in the room. As she stood at the counter, she gazed back at me over her shoulder. Innocence and sex appeal oozed off her in a terrifyingly intense wave. One minute she seemed like she was flirting, the next she was reserved and hiding behind a wall. She was pure confusion, and I felt like I was getting whiplash trying to keep up with her.

Every single plan I had was completely fucking up, and it was all due to me not being able to reign in my insecurities. I was obsessively attracted to this girl, but mostly she intrigued me. My ultimate fear was that my secret could be her biggest downfall, yet here I was coming up with stupid ideas and scenarios to try and have her in my life.

Once our order was ready she floated through the room and slid back into the booth opposite me, sliding my steaming hot cappuccino toward me.

“How do you know Chris?” she asked quietly.

Fuck.

How could I possibly answer this? I hesitated over my response before finally looking at her through concerned eyes.

“He is the cousin of someone I went to college with. He is an asshole, and you don’t need to have anything to do with him. Please promise me that no matter what you will say no to anything he says to you, if he ever approaches you again. I don’t think he will, but just in case.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I warned him that it would be in his best interest to stay away from you.”

“You did it again.”

I didn’t understand what she was implying. My brow furrowed as I looked at her over my mug. “Did what?” I finally asked.

“You saved me again.”

My heart twisted at her words. If only they were true. Those words were the most obvious lie in the world, but she would never know that. I couldn’t get into a conversation like this without freaking the fuck out. It was either leave her here for the likes of Chris who I knew would be lurking around somewhere, or quickly change where this conversation was headed.

We were here for a reason.

Twenty fucking questions.

“What’s your favorite food?”

“Excuse me?”

“Twenty questions Eden. What’s your favorite food?”

“Oh, um as you have gathered from the Facebook stalking you had done I do love pizza, but also home cooked spaghetti.”

Noted.

“How old are you?” She continued with the game.

“I’m twenty-six. Birthday is August 15^th,” I admitted with a smile and then continued with my next question. “Where are you from?”

“New Jersey. My parents are out of town though. I don’t come back so when I said I would be here for six weeks they had already had their trip to Australia booked and couldn’t back out.”

Her voice dropped low as she spoke. “Do you do this with all the people you hire?”

“What’s that?” I questioned, not exactly sure where she was going with this.

“Ask them to spend a month with you, take them out for coffee. It seems by Josh’s reaction the other day, you barely leave the office.”

“I can hand on heart say you are the only woman who I’ve asked to spend a month with, and it’s quite alarming how quickly you are learning things about me.”

“I’m just observant.” She smiled and lifted her mug to her lips, a perfect sigh escaping as she took a large sip of hot chocolate.

Eden being observant frightened me.

Her eyes lifted from mine and looked over my shoulder. “Why is your aunt staring at us like that? Actually why are all the staff staring at us?”

I twisted in my seat and sure enough Aunt Carole stood behind the counter flanked with two other ladies, all eyes latched onto Eden and me. As soon as they saw that they had been busted, they all of a sudden got busy and rushed off to different corners of the diner.

“You are the first girl I’ve brought here. You are officially the talk of Joe’s Place.”

“Do I want to be the talk of Joe’s Place?”

“You have no choice babe.”

She lifted the mug back to her lips to hide her smile behind the porcelain. I took a moment to admire her in silence. Her gaze faded away as a distant thought overtook her. It seemed to drag her away from reality right before me. My thoughts battled with each other, and I didn’t know whether to pull her back or let her succumb to her memories. Eden Rivers was the most tightly shut book I had ever encountered. I wanted to rip open the cover, disband the spine, and tear the pages of her story into a million pieces. More than anything I wanted to help her write new words, on perfectly crisp untouched paper, and to come up with the perfect title, for the perfect story.

Ky: Will I be seeing you tonight at Josh’s?

Eden: I’ll be the girl in the red jacket.

For two days Ky and I had been talking nonstop via text message. He was out of town on business so this was how it had to be. He did warn me that even though he wasn’t in town, he was still going to get his months’ worth of me. It was now routine for me to wake to a text and fall asleep after sending him a goodnight text.

Our twenty questions had continued during these text message conversations. In the past two days I had found out that his favorite color was green, he was a night owl, he didn’t like anything pineapple, and that he had a strong aversion to horror films.

His text messages were the only thing making me stay. Just today I had packed up my suitcase and lifted my phone from the bed to call the airline all because of a text message that simply read: Where’s your boyfriend now?

You would think that I’d tell someone, that I’d call the police but my fucked up head simply told me to ignore it because if I ignored it, it wasn’t really happening. Yep, I had officially lost my mind.

Instead I had opened my laptop and worked until my eyes felt like they were falling out of my head. I had set up the bed as my office space with my laptop and countless photos I had printed out of potential locations which I would be visiting in the next couple of days. My work and Ky’s text messages were the only thing that was making me stay and as long as I had those I knew that I’d be semi okay.

I was still trying to get my head around that Ky, who had come into my life so abruptly, was quickly becoming a safety I depended on; he was the one who saved me from the grips of Chris countless times yet he had asked me for nothing in return. I was choosing to ignore the intrigue that was being ignited within my closed off body when I thought of Ky Crawford. The spark that would twist and turn within my body with a simple touch of his hand was getting harder to ignore. This was so foreign to me.

But now as I stood in front of the mirror and ran my hands over my body, straightening the non-existent creases in my top, I smiled at the girl looking back at me. It was a real, legitimate smile, and that exhilarated me. I think I’d just flirted with Ky Crawford. I had mentioned the red jacket that I knew he liked? I swept subtle pink blush over my cheeks, swiped my lashes with midnight black mascara, and dabbed my lips with red lip gloss, then I found myself ready to head off to dinner at Josh’s.

The moment I stepped out of the cab in front of City Towers, my head tilted back and I took in the fifteen-story apartment building. The vast building glistened with lights that shimmered against the dark cold night sky. It was spectacular and more than inviting.

When I arrived on the thirteenth floor, music hit my ears, and it was coming from behind the door of apartment 13A. Loud bass thumping through my body destroyed the thought of a quiet dinner. I had my closed fist up to knock, when the door suddenly burst open and Ashlyn stormed out and rushed down the hall, her steps filled with brutal determination as her face twisted in anger. Her sobs hung in the air. As quickly as she appeared, she disappeared into 13C with a slam of the door behind her. I turned back and looked at Josh’s apartment just as he rushed out, his head moving back and forth as he looked up and down the empty hall before his eyes finally landed on me.