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One With You Chapter 7:
My hand shook as I poured freshly brewed coffee into three mugs. I couldn’t tell if that was because I was so pissed off or because I was afraid. Certainly, I was both. Being a cop’s daughter, I understood the unwritten rules followed by those who worked behind the blue wall of law enforcement. And after everything Gideon and I had been through regarding Nathan’s death, I was doubly on my guard now.
“Everything Gideon and I had been through regarding Nathan’s death” is of course referring to the fact that Gideon murdered Nathan and he and Eva (and one of their security guards) covered it up. It was really hard on them.
The detectives make (sinister?) small-talk with Eva while she waits for Arash (their attorney) to arrive. Gideon shows up with him. The cops are like, “Good thing you’re here too, Gideon! Anne Lucas is pressing charges against you too.” Ug, this woman. Just trolling the lives of our heroes.
The book skips ahead as though Sylvia Day is fully aware that we’re all in on the fact that these “charges” pose no real threat to Gideon and Eva.
“How are you fixing this?” my husband challenged, looking daggers at his friend over the rim of his wineglass.
“Fixing your fuck-up?” Arash asked, his brown eyes bright with silent laughter. “You both provided Anne Lucas the ammunition for this by going to her place of employment on two separate occasions. You’re damned lucky she embellished her story with a little assault accusation against Eva. If she’d just stuck with the truth, she’d have you both by the throats.”
Damn it, Anne, you had one job!
Eva realizes that she underestimated Anne and should have listened to Gideon when he advised her not to confront her. I mean, Gideon also confronted her at her office (seriously, have these people no respect for working hours?) so he’s not exactly innocent here either, though.
Arash is going to file a counterclaim of harassment and get protection for Gideon, Eva and Cary. Protect Cary at all costs, Arash! Without him, who else will make calls on Eva’s behalf?
Arash agrees to stay for dinner and probably promptly regrets it:
Arash looked at me and shook his head, even as he turned to dig Gideon’s phone out of the suit jacket on the bar stool. “How you put up with him, I will never know.”
“He’s great in bed,” I quipped, “and he’s not surly there, so …”
Gideon yanked me into his side and bit my earlobe. My nipples tightened into hard points. He growled almost inaudibly against my neck, though I doubted he cared if Arash heard.
Terrible hosts. Emily Post is turning in her grave.
Later that night, Eva and Gideon talk about, what else, Eva and Gideon. Gideon observes that Eva enjoys having friends over for dinner. What a strange and unique aspect of Eva’s personality. Suddenly Gideon is pissy!
Gideon heaved a sigh of frustration, then focused on me with the laserlike precision that had exposed every secret I’d had. “If there weren’t anyone else on earth, just you and me, I’d be okay with that. But that wouldn’t be enough for you.”
I personally need a lot of alone time and my husband is one of the few people I can be around constantly without needing a break, but I don’t think I’d be happy if we were the only two people left on earth either. I could never run an Oreo factory on my own; I wouldn’t even know where to begin!
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Mostly, though, this is a weird way to make that point. Why are we focussed on a ridiculous hypothetical scenario? Why not just come right out and say that Gideon barely wants to see other people and that Eva wouldn’t be happy with that because that’s actually the real problem at hand.
“I sat back, startled. His mind was a labyrinth I would never map. “You would be okay with just me and no one else—indefinitely? No competitors to squash? No global domination to plan?” I snorted. “You’d be bored out of your mind.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That’s what I know.”
“What about you?” he challenged. “How would you manage with no friends to invite over and no one else’s life to meddle in?”
Why is he acting like it’s so weird Eva enjoys being involved in her friend’s lives? Even Gideon has a group of friends! In Gideon’s defence, though, I actually don’t think this is coming from an entirely creepy, abusive place. I think it’s that he struggles so hard to connect to other people that he can’t understand why Eva needs to be as social as she allegedly is. He works really hard to be cool with that throughout the book, so I actually give him props for that. It’s hard, though, because this scene reads as pretty creepy.
“He gave me a patient look. “Would I be enough for you, if there were no one else?”
“There is no one else.”
“Eva. Answer the question.”
I had no idea where he was coming from, but that only made it easier for me to answer him. “You fascinate the fuck out of me, you know that? You’re never boring. A lifetime alone with you wouldn’t be long enough to figure you out.”
“Could you be happy?”
“Having you all to myself ? That would be heaven.” My mouth curved. “I have a Tarzan fantasy. You Tarzan, me Jane.”
So that’s the end of the conversation. Eva just tells Gideon she has a fantasy of him being Tarzan, a virgin, and her being a sexually experienced Jane who needs to teach him the ways of woman and man.
Then Gideon gifts Eva with a fancy present, and the whole fight is forgotten. I think if they were the only two people on earth they would both be bored to death because they wouldn’t have as many external things to argue about. Gideon would probably start getting jealous of intimate objects that Eva touched just so they’d have something to bicker over.
They have sex as that is the only direction this could have gone. It is so intense and beautiful and wonderful:
“Tilting his head, Gideon brushed his lips over mine. “Crossfire,” he murmured.
Crossfire was my safeword, what I said to him when I was overwhelmed and needed him to stop whatever he was doing. When he said the word to me, he was overwhelmed, too, but he didn’t want me to stop. For Gideon, Crossfire conveyed a connection deeper than love.”
My husband’s mind was blown by this. He didn’t know that that was the main reason this series was called Crossfire. I was furious he hadn’t been paying careful attention to each and every precious moment in these books that Matthew and I halfheartedly recap. We fought passionately and then he gifted me with fancy jewels and we plotted against our many enemies!
The chapter ends with Gideon confirming they’re going away on their honeymoon for a month. Good thing Eva doesn’t have a job!