Page 59 of Scoring Eden

It’s muffled by the distance between us, but I’d know it anywhere.

Like a missile, I launch through the door and storm down the stairs. Panic whooshes in my ears like thunder so loud that I almost miss the clicking sounds coming from outside.

Fuck, I recognize that noise.

It’s the shuttering of camera lenses.

Daylight blinds me as I barrel through the side door, dozens of blurry shapes snaking around as I search desperately to find the one that most resembles my son.

So many men, some with tripods, others with long straps suspended around their neck, gather on the dying grass. A wake of vultures squawking at a tiny, trembling cub hunched in the center of them all.

Macon.

He’s frozen, halfway between our apartment building and my car. Even twenty feet away and with still-blurry vision, I can see the quaking of his knees and the way his fingers puncture the palms of his hands.

“Get away from him!” I scream and tear into a sprint.

Lights flash like bolts of lightning. Grown men yell, telling Macon to look in their direction, asking questions they have no business asking a boy of only ten years, their voices as jarring as the howls of coyotes.

“Macon!”

He spins toward my voice, his face breaking in relief the moment he sees me. I catch him in my arms and wrench him behind my back.

I can’t believe these men are grown fucking adults who believe it’s okay to frighten a child just to profit off of it. How do they get away with shit like this? How is it even legal?

“Get off my property!”

They don’t, of course. People like them don’t care how much distress they cause, not if there’s a paycheck waiting for them at the end. They’re bounty hunters, scavengers, the lowest of lowlifes, content to use their one life on this earth to feed from the souls of others.

I knew this from the night of the party. But it’s one thing when their cameras are pointed at me and another thing entirely for them to point them at my son.

Fuck, oh fuck, I’ve gotta get him out of here.

But the door to the apartment feels miles away. Even as I edge us backward, keeping Macon behind me, it doesn’t feel like we’re getting any closer. He shakes against me, whimpers escaping him with each step we take, loud enough to hear above the shouts of the paparazzi who just. Won’t. Shut. Up.

“Eden, is he your son?”

“Does Alex know?”

“What does he think about you being a mother?”

“How do you think Alex will deal with the responsibility of being a stepfather?”

If I were wearing shoes, I’d take one off and throw it at them. Violence has always been Aspen’s thing more than mine, but I’m filled with such vitriol that I wish I was carrying a weapon. I could gut one of these bitches right now and not feel an ounce of remorse.

No one comes for my son.

“Don’t you dare come near him again. He is a child!”

Some asshole with overinflated confidence and zero humanity pushes to the front of the crowd with his camera drawn like a weapon. “Was he a teen pregnancy?”

“Fuck you.”

Come on, just a few more steps.

Whatever threat they can read in my eyes must be enough to keep them from getting closer, so I take advantage of the smidgen of room they’ve given us to throw us the last few feet to the door.

Thank God I didn’t close it behind me when I bolted out here.