Gideon and Eva Fight, Reconcile, Eat Lasagna: Entwined with You Chapter 5

Previously, Sylvia Day/Eva reminded us that Eva totally and completely 1000000% has a life outside of Gideon by parading around her minor characters in one action-packed chapter. By “action-packed” I of course can only mean that nothing at all happened and scenes like, “I ate a massive pasta lunch with Will and then went to the gym!” took up the majority of the chapter.

You win the world if you remember who the fuck Will is without looking at last week’s post.

Chapter 4

Eva’s just shown up at Gideon’s apartment (you know, the one next door to her own that will totally and completely 10000000000000& convince the police that NOTHING SUSPICIOUS IS GOING ON HERE), and Gideon immediately showcases his own bizarre and twisted version of a lateral thinking puzzle.

“Let’s make you comfortable, angel. You won’t need these heels until you’re ready for me to fuck you.”
My core clenched with anticipation. “What if I’m ready now?”
“You’re not. You’ll know when the time comes.”
As Gideon removed my shoes, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “Will I? How?”

Or, in a version written by Paul Sloane,

Eva’s just gone over to Gideon’s house to see him. They’ve had a short and complicated history including an incident where Gideon murdered Eva’s abusive step-brother who had been stalking Eva. This has only strengthened their True Love. Eva thinks she’s ready to have sex with Gideon now, but Gideon tells her she’s not. How will Eva know when she’s ready?

[Matthew says: Ariel, you haven’t even let us know if Gideon is “normal”. How the hell can we figure this out now?] Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you wait a week to find out the answer.

He glanced up at me with those intensely blue eyes. He was nearly on his knees, taking my shoes off, yet he was undeniably in command of himself and of me. “I’ll be pushing my cock inside you.”

To be fair it makes about as much sense as those answers usually do. But come on, Gideon. There has to be an answer that makes more sense than, “You’ll know you’re ready because I’ll already be inside you.” It completely begs the question. Imagine if you were like, “Mom, how will I know when you’ll be ready to take me to the store,” and her answer was, “You’ll know I’m ready because we’ll already be at the store.” 

Eva realizes that Gideon isn’t treating this new apartment like a temporary thing. In fact, he’s re-created a mixture of his place and Eva’s, and she’s loving it. [Matthew says: Where does Gideon find all these psychotic interior designers?] She discovers that he actually moved into this place during the events of the previous book when Cary was in the hospital (after being attacked by Evil Step-brother Nathan). Guess Eva was super oblivious to her neighbours or any activity happening in her building.

We say this a lot here, but if this was a horror movie, that would be pretty fucking terrifying. He moves in next door, Eva’s got no idea, he basically replicates a mixture of her apartment and his, puts photos of her up everywhere, watches her when she doesn’t know he’s there. It never ceases to amaze me how easy it would be for Sylvia Day to quickly edit these books into a horror series. Or a traditional Lifetime movie.

I’ve read a lot of odd conversations in this series which morph into an argument in the blink of an eye for no discernible reason, but this one is particularly perplexing. I’ve carefully assembled the sequence of events leading up to it in list-form for your convenience and sanity.

1. Eva has brought some towels over to Gideon, wrongly assuming he wouldn’t have towels or something.

2. Gideon asks what Eva’s intentions were by bringing him towels. “To help us dry off after a shower.” would have been too predictable of a response, so instead Eva explains that she wants Gideon to think sexy thoughts about her.

3. If you missed the chance to win the world by correctly remembering who Will was without looking at last week’s post, you also have the opportunity to win the world if you don’t barf at this next bit.

Eva asks if Gideon thinks about her when he masturbates, to which he responds that now that he’s met her he never masturbates because “I don’t have a drop to waste if I’m going to keep up with you.” Because apparently his cum is the source of his stamina. Men’s magazines everywhere, take note. [Matthew says: ROMANCE TIPS FOR MEN: Instead of a clichéd gift like flowers or chocolates, tell that special lady in your life, “ALL OF MY JIZZ IS FOR YOU.”]

4. Eva says Gideon always makes her sound like a nymphomaniac. This surprises me because they both make each other sound like that all the time, and this has never seemed to be an issue before.

Again, if you failed to win the world the other times it was offered as prize during this post, here’s yet another chance. If you can fight those waves of nausea when you read this, it’s yours for the taking.

“You like sex, angel,” he purred. “Nothing wrong with that. You’re greedy and insatiable, and I love it. I love knowing that once I get inside you, you’re going to suck me dry. Then you’ll want to do it again.”

Dear God Gideon, stop talking about your cum this way. Your man!facts are all kinds of gross and wrong. It’s time for some good old fashioned myth busting.

The amount of interest a woman has in sex does not correlate to how much of your cum she sucks from your body. It certainly matters that she is interested in sex with you, consent is all kinds of good, but it’s not like suddenly a wall goes up in her vagina which prevents her from (apologies) sucking you dry if she’s less in the mood than the night before or even blatantly saying “no”. Our vaginas are not weird vacuums that have various settings depending on our moods.

There are no sources to back up my statement, because to my knowledge this is not actually something that has ever been contended despite all the strange and bizarre facts that have been made up about women and their anatomy in Society.

Anyway, Eva gets really really fucking mad. Not because Gideon is gross, but because…well, fuck me I have no idea why.

I felt my face heat. “For your information, I didn’t get off even once while we were apart. Never even got the urge because we weren’t together.”
He leaned into the counter, resting one elbow on the cool black granite. “Hmm.”
“I like fucking you because you’re you, not because I’m a cock-hungry slut. If you don’t like it, grow a gut or stop showering or something.” I slid off the stool. “Or just say no, Gideon.”
I marched into the living room, trying to get away from the unsettled feeling I’d had all day.

First let me ask, what unsettled feeling? We’ve been with Eva all day, but between giving us boring information about minor characters she couldn’t tell us about this “feeling.” Sorry to everyone here who also reads our House of Night posts and is sick to death of reading about these fucking “feelings” already. Sure, she said she felt slightly sad because she had to pretend she was broken up with Gideon while talking to her friends about their relationships, but that doesn’t seem to be what she’s referring to here at all. [Matthew says: …why does he have to stop showering? That… that solves zero of these problems?]

Gideon and Eva have already long established that they’re insatiable when it comes to each other. I didn’t get the sense that Gideon was at all implying otherwise here, and I am never on Gideon’s side, so you can trust me as an objective bystander here. Man, it seems like I’m paying more attention to the relationship than the actual people in this relationship.

But then a second later everything is fine after Gideon cuddles Eva a little, so who even cares I guess?

Gideon wrapped my hair around his fist and tugged my head back. His gaze on my face was soft and serious. “You’re not upset about our incredible sex life. It’s something else.”
Sighing, I admitted, “I don’t know what it is. I’m just … off.”

Not even the author can figure out what to make the problems be anymore.

Gideon asks Eva to move in with him as soon as everything is hunky dory (so that could be never in my humble opinion.) Eva thinks of a few concerns she has about this but the main one is Cary.

I jumped to the biggest issue for me, though. “What about Cary?”
“The penthouse has an attached guest apartment.”

I love that Cary is basically going to be like their grown son that never moves out of his parents’ place. I’m sure he will absolutely love their lack of confidence in his autonomy. I also wonder if they’ll have to set down a strict no orgies during the week rule.

Eva then mentions the girl’s night out she has planned for the weekend. I’m not even going to comment on how often and quickly the conversation shifts abruptly. We’re all used to it by now.

He was suddenly all business when he said, “I’ll make the arrangements—car, driver, and security. If you stick with a circuit of my clubs, your security will stay in the car. You want to branch out, he’s going in with you.”
Blinking in surprise, I said, “Okay.”

This is how misogyny gets so normalized. After awhile you just start blinking and saying okay because why fight it? You’re just used to it by now.

You know what, though? I’d love to see the scene where the security guy is like, “Ladies, this dance club was NOT on the circuit. I’m going in!” Guns a-blazing and all. [Matthew says: Guns a-blazing? Ariel, we finished Walking Disaster.]

Eva then reveals she’s going to be seeing her ex-boyfriend Brett when he’s in town. Gideon is like, “I’m so sad, but it’s okay because this is all my fault anyway :(.” Completely not a manipulative guilt-trip or anything.

I struggled out of his hold. “What are you saying?”
“That I have no right to leave you and hurt you—for whatever reason—then expect you to forget how that felt and forgive me overnight.”
“You killed a man for me!”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he snapped. “My love for you is not an obligation.” [Matthew says: Just his cum.]

The whole killing a man for her thing should be more of a cause for concern than a reason to forgive Gideon overnight, but this series has really pushed the fact that Nathan was definitely planning on killing Eva and this was in her best interest, so whatever. I’m going to let this slide for now because I don’t have the energy.

I guess it’s nice that Gideon doesn’t have a meltdown over this and understands that he really hurt Eva even though he did everything for her protection, but Eva doesn’t actually want to see Brett, nor does it make any sense for her to go. Okay, I’m being selfish, I really don’t want to read the scene where she goes and Brett inevitably makes a move, and says, “WHAA you mean you really did mean we can only be friends?”

The rest of the chapter passes uneventfully with a series of nice moments between Eva and Gideon – listening to music, having a lasagne dinner, watching tv. I’m not buying it, y’all. I’m sure we’ll have more hilariously stupid drama next chapter. I don’t have to build a complex statistical model to predict that one.