Rhythm of My Heart

Eve poured herself another glass of juice and drank it down.

“We looked everywhere, Tiny.” Everywhere. And doing it without the paparazzi noticing had been impossible.

“I headed over here at first light.” The phone call in the middle of the night had proved fruitless—and had scared the living shit out of Bree. She’d hung up on him when he’d told her why Eve had run.

Eve placed the bottle back in the fridge, closed it and walked over to the sink. She didn’t turn to look at him, and she didn’t respond to his words.

“Your sister tried to run me over as she left the house to get you.” He almost snorted at the memory. She’d been climbing into her car as he’d approached, and when she saw him, she’d gunned the engine and reversed out of her garage so fast, Zachary had been forced to jump clear of her bumper. “She very nearly succeeded.”

Eve washed her glass and set it on the stand to dry.

“Anthony wasn’t quite as aggressive. He just ordered my ass off his property and told me never to blacken it again.”

She stared out the window, then stepped back, shaking her head in disgust, obviously noticing the crowd that had gathered outside: news vans, photographers and reporters holding mics. They’d followed him here the second time around.

Maybe one day she’d get used to it. He hoped to God she would, because if she stayed with him, she’d be hounded by them continually.

“I left. But only because I knew you’d be in good hands. And only long enough to get back to the hotel and call off the search. Then I came back.” With Brayden and Jake, at Luke’s insistence. “To get you.”

But neither Bree nor Anthony would let him anywhere near the front door, and he’d been forced to sit in the car with the bodyguards, biding his time. Forced to ignore the constant knocking on the window from the story- hungry reporters who’d followed him here. Forced to drive around the block a hundred times over.

A few hours later, after Anthony had gone to work and Bree was playing with Hannah in the yard, pretending the media wasn’t shadowing her house, Zachary had approached her again.

He’d hadn’t see her fist coming. It had slammed into his eye before he’d realized she’d thrown a punch. The second fist had landed on his nose, and the third in his stomach.

Apparently Bree had lied when she’d threatened to kill him slowly if he ever hurt Eve. There was nothing slow about the speed of her car or her punches.

Only he’d never meant to hurt Eve, hadn’t done it intentionally, and it had taken some fast talking to prove as much to Bree. “I had to convince your sister I wasn’t here to hurt you again. Had to swear on my brothers’ lives. She wouldn’t let me near you.” As the press had taken great delight in showing the world, over and over again.

Hannah giggled every time a news report showed Bree giving him a bloody nose.

“Where is my sister?” Eve asked. She sounded so…detached.

“She left. About thirty minutes ago. Took Hannah to a swimming lesson.” Christ, he wished Eve would turn around, acknowledge him.

“And left you alone with me? Interesting. Did she leave a bowl as well?”

“A bowl?”

“In case you throw up at the sight of me. I’d hate for you to dirty Bree’s floor.”

Her barb hurt worse then Bree’s punches. Way worse. “I guess I deserved that.”

Eve shrugged. “Whatever. Could you leave, please? Tell Delilah and Devine I’ll see them in Adelaide tomorrow night.”

“I can’t. They’re already in Adelaide.” Or they were on the plane at any rate.

“Then you’d better hurry up and go join the band. It won’t do for Jonah to be split up from Speed.”

Jesus, he couldn’t stand the iciness in her demeanor. It made him crazy. “Were you ever going to tell me, Eve? Ever going to show me your scars voluntarily? Or were you just going to let me go on believing the only part of you that had been injured was your chest?”

“Go away, Zachary. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to discuss my scars, and let me be perfectly clear, I sure as hell do not want to discuss my scars with you.”

“Ah, so it’s fine for you to put me on the spot. Fine for you to ask the questions I don’t want to answer. But God forbid you should have to tackle the difficult ones.”

“Fuck you, Zachary.”

“No, Eve. Fuck you. For keeping that from me. For holding back such a vital piece of information about yourself. You fucking stripped me bare. Made me come clean with every sordid detail of my past.” His face burned, the anger and the rage erupting to the surface. “Oh, I’m sorry, Zachary,” he mimicked. “It’s none of my business seeing inside your head, Zachary. I shouldn’t have brought that up, Zachary. But damn it, you went there anyway. Wherever it was, you just zoned right in and fucking demanded answers. Demanded the truth.”

He was shouting and had to force himself to modulate his voice. Not for Eve though. There was no way was he sharing this with every fucking news reporter in Australia. “What gives you the right to look into my life, to expose my soul and then refuse to expose yours in return?”

“Oh, so it’s my fault? I’m the one to blame? That’s rich, Pace. Just fucking priceless. You profess to love me, profess to have waited your whole life to meet me, and when you finally do meet me, when you finally get to see the real me, the real Eve Andrews, not the mask I show the world, you can’t fucking handle it.” She grabbed the closest thing to her, a plastic container sitting on the drying rack by the sink and flung it at him, hard.

The Tupperware hurtled through the air, hit him on the head and dropped to the ground.

He winced. Fuck! How could plastic hurt so much?

“Pick it up, Zachary. Hold it in front of you, so the next time the sight of my face makes you want to be sick, you’ll be prepared.” She turned to glare at him, hands on her hips, eyes blazing.

The scars on her face stood out, pink against her red cheeks. He couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t tear his gaze away.

“I’m hideous. I know. Grotesque. Repulsive. A freak, a monster. An abomination.” She counted the words off on her fingers. “I’ve been called them all. Doesn’t matter how many treatments I’ve had to make the scars less obvious, I still can’t hide them. Can’t avoid them. So don’t be shy. Add your descriptions to the list. Believe me, the name-calling hurts a lot less than watching the man I love close his eyes so he won’t have to tolerate the sight of me.”

“You think I reacted like I did because I find you repulsive?” He moved on instinct, hadn’t even realized he’d left the support of the doorframe until his hands were wrapped around her arms. “You think I think you’re…a… monster?” The very description made him want to be sick.

“I don’t think. I know.” She pulled her arms back, tried to yank them from his grip, but he refused to let go. Hell, he was never letting go of her again.

She howled in frustration, yanked harder and then gave up, panting. “When the man who’s just fucked you senseless reels at the sight of you, it’s a dead giveaway.”

Zachary saw red. “Okay, we are going to get one thing straight. You’re going to stop fighting me, stop yelling at me, and you’re going to listen.”

She didn’t stop, just kept thrashing her arms, trying to get free.

In sheer desperation, Zachary marched her backward to the fridge, pinned her against it and held her in place with his own body, his flush against hers.

“I don’t think you’re a freak, a monster, an abomination or any of those other…foul words you used to describe yourself. I don’t think it now, and I didn’t think it last night. You are not grotesque and you are not repulsive. But if you think I could have seen your real face for the first time and not reacted, then you badly misjudged me.”

“I did not misj—”

He pushed his body against her harder, squashing her chest. She needed only enough air to breathe, not to talk. Because if she spoke, if she argued, she wouldn’t hear him, and damn it, he needed her to hear him.

“I did not close my eyes because I found you…grotesque. Not even close. I closed them because I was