by Cari Quinn
“Tell me what you want.”
She tilted her head and raised a brow.
“No. I’m not playing this game anymore. Do I look like I’m the guy that plays charades?”
She snatched the sweater and went over to their pail of products and sprayed the stain treater on it herself then tossed it in the pile.
He moved to the doorway, conscious of the fact that he was still in his boxer briefs and she was trying to get away from him. “You’re going to have to talk to me eventually. I understand you’re grieving for Nic.”
Her eyes went hot with anger.
“But you know what, I can’t bend over backwards anymore. I can’t watch you walk through this place like a ghost.” He took a paperback off the bedside table. “Picking up the same fucking books to read again and again.”
She snatched the book from him and put it back down on the table.
“I come up here to bed and you go downstairs. I go downstairs and you change your mind and come up here. I’m right here, goddammit. You can’t ignore me anymore.”
Isabella skirted around him, flinching when her arm brushed against his belly.
He caught her arm. “I miss you so goddamn much I can’t breathe around it. You may have wanted to die with Nic, but you didn’t. You’re still here with me. You survived. She wouldn’t want you to punish yourself about it.”
She swung around and pushed him back.
“C’mon. Yell at me. Scream at me.” He stepped closer to her until he was less than an inch from her. “If you had died…” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “If you had died and Nic had lived, would you expect her to do this? Would you expect her to cut off Adam?”
She fisted her hands and the healing pink of her flesh crinkled a bit, but held. She was healing on the outside. He was so glad to see that part. But he knew under the skin were more scars and open wounds than ever.
“Would Adam have survived this?”
Her eyes swam as she stumbled back. He let her go this time. She flew down the stairs and out the front door.
He fisted his fingers in his hair then jerked his running clothes out of his bottom drawer. He pulled them on and unearthed his running shoes. When he got down the stairs, Fiona was pawing at the door and pacing.
“Easy, girl.”
She barked at him until he opened the door and then she took off like bullet down the incline to the docks. Logan followed the dog to make sure that Izzy was safe. She was hugging herself tight looking out at the water.
The urge to run, to leave everything behind, crawled up his spine, but he forced himself to do the bare minimum in stretches and took off at a jog. The rocky running paths made him keep his pacing slow, which was probably a good thing. It had been awhile since he’d actually run on uneven ground. He could do five miles on the treadmill in his sleep, but the rugged terrain of the woods was a bit harder to navigate.
It was tough on his knees and shins, but he breathed through the pain. When he got down to the turnoff for the main access road, he turned around and headed back. Sweat dripped off his legs, his arms, hell, even his knees were dripping.
His shirt was molded to his chest and his shorts were going to need to be wrung out, but his brain was blissfully empty. At least for a moment. Maybe he could get her to listen to him for a few minutes so he could apologize.
His anger got the better of him. Stewing in frustration day in and day out was fucking his head up. Patience was a virtue for a goddamn reason. He slowed to a walk as he climbed the incline to the house.
She was pacing the length of the kitchen when he walked in. Tears tracked her cheeks and her hands were shaking as she came at him. Logan took a step back, then forward as he saw that it was fear in her eyes, not anger.
“Hey.” He brushed his thumbs over her cheeks and cupped her face.
She twisted her fingers into his shirt.
“I’m sweaty as hell, not sure you—” He cut off as she curled her arms around him and plastered herself to his chest.
“Don’t go.”
His heart stuttered and he went stone still. He was afraid to breathe. Was it his imagination, or had she finally spoken?
She pressed her mouth into his neck. “Don’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He drew a tentative hand down her hair. “I told you I was in this for the long haul.”
“I couldn’t see you,” she whispered, her voice rusty with disuse. “I can always see you.”
He frowned. He thought back to her daily activities and realized that she may not have talked to him, but she always knew where he was. He thought she had stuck close to the house simply because she was nervous being away, but a few pieces started to come together.
When he went to the rec lodge, she always took Fiona out and she’d walk by the wide open doors. Never stop, but she’d always walk by.
He just assumed it was one of her random strolls with Fiona.
Instead she’d been checking up on him.
“Izzy.” She tightened her grip on his shirt. He eased her back. “Baby, nothing is going to happen to me.”
“You don’t know that. We’ve been so arrogant. So stupid.” Her topaz eyes filled up and spilled over with tears. “We deserved it, not them.”
He hauled her up against his chest and wrapped her up tight. “No. No one deserves what Aimee’s been doing.”
She sniffled into his shirt. “We baited her. All we cared about was making sure we had a normal life. I pushed you for it.” Her words came out in a stumbling rush. “I didn’t believe you when you told me just how ruthless she could be.”
God, was that what she thought? This was what kept her so tightly wound and separate from him?
He took a step back and drew her into the living room to a couch and sat down next to her. Afraid to say anything that would send her back into her shell, he took a deep breath.
She looked down at her hands and traced the slight color change from the skin that had been burned to the skin that had only been singed.
He covered her hands. “Isabella, this is what she does. Even if we had done everything right. Even if we had three guards on you at all times, she would have played the same game.”
“I was so cocky that night.” Her eyes were wide and blind with memories. “Running through the paths between The Barn and the main stage. I made Sarah insane. I believed we were invincible.”
He pushed back a hank of her hair and gathered all of his patience. These were the pieces he hadn’t had from that night. The parts he hadn’t wanted to ask.
“I’d given her the slip so many times that weekend. Not on purpose, just because I was careless. I didn’t believe we were actually in danger. If I’d only been a little more careful—”
“No.” He cupped her face and shook her until she saw him. He watched the fog of the past drain from her eyes. “I know Sarah kept you safe. No matter what. She made sure you were fine, even if you gave her the runaround. She told me she went with you into the bookstore.”
“We were laughing. I was so excited because we’d announced our engagement. You sang that song to me.” A dark laugh slipped between her words. “I’d never been happier in my life.” Her eyes went glassy with memory again before she closed them. “I wanted to change my shirt?” Her brow furrowed. “Yeah, I was drenched from jumping around at the show. But I know The Barn is always about twenty degrees hotter than the main stage show, so I brought a change of clothes. I told Nic to go get the tickets and I ducked behind the counter to swap my shirt. If I’d have gotten the tickets instead.” Her eyes fluttered open, tears tracking down from the corners. “If only I’d been the one to get the tickets.”
The sob in her chest bubbled out into outright tears. The same tears he’d heard every night at the hospital.
He held onto her this time. She let him. She actually burrowed into his chest and the sounds she made wrecked him. His Izzy didn’t cry. This was the hiccupping kind of crying that stole breath. It hollowe
d him out with the need to stop it, even though he knew she needed every one of the tears scalding through his shirt.
All he could do was hold on. As the tempest subsided, he knew her busted ribs must be screaming because his back certainly was. But he would’ve ended up in traction before he’d have let her go.
He eased back into the corner of the couch and she sighed before inching up to put her cheek against his chest. She’d cried herself out. Her fingers anchored into his shirt as if he’d leave again.
He understood guilt—he’d been dragging around a bucket of it sloshing near the rim himself—but this was more.
This was the kind of pain he couldn’t take for her.
But he’d stand for her and hold her when she needed it.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Izzy, mine. I’m not going anywhere.”
Twenty-Three
She woke, her head muzzy. Her mouth tasted like a vodka hangover. Familiar arms held her tight, and the chest that had been her rock for what felt like forever was finally under her once more. The foundation that she’d been eroding with silence each day.
She hadn’t meant to scream and cry all over him.
She’d been doing so well. The days blended together, but they had been tranquil. Reading and quiet with a side of Fiona love.
She’d thought that would be enough.
Until he’d snapped.
Until he’d left.
He’d been there every single day without fail since the accident. Even when she’d hated him and wanted to drown in the pain that threatened to submerge her every day, he’d been there.
Probably watching to see if she’d crack. But she didn’t—at least not on the outside.
When she’d gotten back to the house, the laundry basket had still been upstairs. She went to the recreation lodge and the billiard tables had been occupied by two teenage girls. The weight room had been empty.
The Escalade still in the driveway.
No Logan.
A million things had run through her mind, all of them awful or bloody. But then he’d walked in with that endorphin look she remembered. He loved to run. She knew that, but he’d only used the treadmill since...that day at her store.
Missing Nic and Adam had nothing on the pure panic and fear that had taken hold of her.
And here he was, holding her tight, even in sleep. She was afraid to look up at him, but she knew when he was sleeping. The rhythm and cadence of his breathing evened. He didn’t snore, but his breathing changed.
That sound had lulled her to sleep many nights. She hadn’t realized that she’d missed it so damn much. Sleeping in a bed with him had been torture. Her body’s instinct was to gravitate toward him. To burrow under the arm that always ended up pinning her to the mattress each morning, the weight of him as regular as the sunrise.
She’d been punishing him, punishing herself for needing him.
She shifted against him and he gathered her higher, her name a rumble in his chest. His spicy sandalwood scent was muted with woods and the river’s freshness. Running had always seemed to cleanse him. He always came back looking like he’d taken a swim in his clothes, but there was a light in his eyes.
Like he’d outrun some part of the day that had been sticking to him.
That had been her today.
She’d been the one he’d needed to run away from.
Her side twinged with the effort, but she moved higher until her mouth brushed against the scruffy line of his neck and the fullness of his beard. Her heart was raging in her chest, drumming in her head, but she’d brushed a kiss over his neck.
The world didn’t fall.
Lightning didn’t strike.
She inched higher to his lips. The pad of her finger hovered over his full bottom lip with the trio of freckles that bled through. She curled her ugly fingers away from him. All she could see was the discolored pigment that had become her new skin.
The reminder of the fire.
She reached until her ribs ached and the stubborn stitches at her side pulled. Until she could touch his lips with hers.
He dragged in a breath and the even rise and fall of his chest turned to utter stillness. He opened his eyes and the familiar bottle green was reassuring. She brushed against the fullness, tasting him, relearning the textures that made up his lips and the soft yet prickly hair of his beard.
She watched him as she moved to his top lip. The soft grumble in his chest as she traced the divot with her tongue and drew on it until her teeth grazed over it.
“Just your mouth,” she said against his lips.
He nodded and laced his fingers at the small of her back.
She sipped from him, lured him to participate. When his tongue stroked hers, she closed her eyes and fell. Their kisses were exploratory and gentle. Languid and learning until they weren’t. Until she nipped too hard and he sucked her tongue in that way he had.
Where memories crashed into the new.
He brought his hands up to her hair and moved her head where he needed, where he knew she liked it. Until he owned her breath and stole her sighs. Until she shook over him and her nails bit into his neck.
She twisted and the angle sent agony climbing up her side.
He knew it instantly. “What do you need?”
Breathe.
She sucked in a short breath and let it out, then a longer one until the pain ebbed and the quick wash of sweat cooled above her lip and along her forehead.
With shaky hands, she slowly backed up until she could sit on the edge of the couch. She stared at the swirl pattern in the pine floors until the throbbing pain subsided. “I’m okay. I just turned wrong.”
“I—” He cut himself off with a groan. “Can I touch you?”
She didn’t look up again. Afraid to see what was going on in his too expressive face, she took the coward’s way out and simply nodded. He stroked the length of her back with such gentleness that the tears started up again.
Not grief for Nic or the limbo that Adam was living in. But for them. For how long it had been since he felt like he could touch her without asking. She’d done that. Erected a wall so high that she couldn’t even see him anymore.
She turned into him and rested her cheek against his shoulder. His arm came around her back, careful to stay away from her ribs.
“I’m sorry.”
He brushed a kiss to her temple. “You were right to blame me.”
“No, I don’t just blame you.” She finally raised her gaze to his. “It’s both of us.”
His brows lowered. “You think we don’t deserve to be happy?”
“I think we got greedy and selfish.”
He leaned away from her and grasped her shoulders. “Listen to me, and listen carefully. I can take a good chunk of the blame for bringing this woman into our lives. I was callous and I didn’t take Aimee’s feelings into consideration when I broke things off. That part is on me. But she’s off the reservation at this point. She would have found a reason to come at us no matter what we did.”
She shook her head. If she hadn’t been greedy and brought him into their lives, maybe things would have been different. She clutched her fingers together. The need to touch him was so strong.
So many years alone and then he’d been there with his overwhelming personality and all that love. Safety wasn’t a word in their vocabulary.
And they paid for it.
Nichole paid for it.
And Adam.
And the families that had lost people in the blast.
All because she’d wanted this man.
She drew back but his hold was firm. He didn’t hurt her, but he wasn’t letting go.
“No more running, Iz. Talk to me. I can see you shutting down.” His face was stony, his eyes grooved with stress and exhaustion.
“Don’t you understand? It’s all because I wanted you too much. That I was blind to everything but having you. I’ve never had this before. This all-consuming love. How is it any less
destructive than hers?”
“God, no.” The horror on his face made her gut twist.
“I gave up everything for you, Logan. My independence, my friends, my business—nothing was more important than being with you.”
He finally let her go and stood. “Is that what you think of us? The sacrifices we made for each other were from a place of obsession?”
A flicker of something dark and ugly made her hunch her shoulders in. “Weren’t they?”
“No. It was because I love you.” His voice was harsh. “What we had—have—was the first pure thing I’ve had since I was a kid. It’s precious.” His jaw muscle flexed. “At least I thought it was.”
Instinct propelled her up and out of her seat, but not quickly enough to catch him as he flew out the back door, the sound of dying leaves crunching in his wake.
Twenty-Four
Logan tripped and slid his way down the hill to the path that looped around the house and out to the rec lodge. His skin was clammy with the emotional seesaw he’d been on. First surprise, then understanding, then the first stirrings of passion, only to end it with a blinding anger he still couldn’t find his way through.
The months that they’d slogged through to find time to see each other in between his work and hers, the nights he’d spent in her arms, the days he’d looked forward to with hope—all of that had been condensed down to an unhealthy obsession in her eyes.
He stalked around the rec room, his abdominal muscles quivering with each seething breath. Maybe some of it was too focused, but only because he knew how rare this thing was between them. That he couldn’t let it go because his life would be empty without her.
And it was reciprocated.
The ultimate difference was that Isabella had felt it too. In every touch, every gesture, every moment—he’d known it.
That explosion had destroyed more than her store. More than the lives lost in the devastation. It had twisted her view on what they had until it was just as disturbing as Aimee’s actions.
Fucked up didn’t even cover that.
He needed to smash something. Anything that could take away the hate and anger. Even thousands of miles away from Aimee and she still destroyed everything in his life.