“Logan, it’s too early for a booty call. You’re lucky I was going to the bathroom or no one would have heard you.”
I smirk at her and present the cardboard tray with the three coffee cups in it.
“I come bearing gifts.”
She takes one of the coffees and I hand her a bag.
“Got you a muffin too.”
“In that case, please come in, just keep the moaning and grunting down. I’m going back to sleep.”
“No promises.”
She grumbles as she walks away, and it sounds like she’s saying, damn horny people.
The room is still dark, thanks to the blackout curtains Skye is so found of. I put the coffee tray and a pastry bag on the night table and sit on the side of the bed. I can barely make out the small shape of her body under the blankets. My fingers are less patient than me and find their way to Skye’s face, brushing the hair over her shoulder. Skin on skin, but for the thin strap of her tank top. She’s warm, and my fingers are cold from just having come inside. Skye stirs and looks at me, groggy from sleep still. Her eyes blink open a few times, fighting to stay open and losing the battle. A smile appears next and tells me she’s awake. She sighs a content sound when my hand drifts under the covers and slides down her back and grabs a handful of that ass I’m obsessed with.
“Logan.”
My name is but a whisper.
“You’re done with work? What time is it?”
The bed shifts, but it's not Skye who’s moving. For a confused second, I wonder if River somehow snuck in the bed and I missed it, or maybe she got a dog overnight and didn’t tell me. But the form lying behind Skye in the dark room is much larger than River. Or a dog.
My brain fights my eyes for what it's seeing. My brain is screaming no, no, no, not Skye. Not again. My eyes confirm what my brain is trying to run from. I jump out of the bed and turn the lights on, blinking several times as I adjust to the sudden brightness. My heart stops. My brain can no longer deny what my eyes see. But my heart? My heart feels as if it just exploded into a million pieces.
My heart is no more.
Both of them are holding their hands over their eyes, momentarily blinded by the lights. Skye is looking at me with confusion in her eyes. But I can’t look at her. All I can see is Bruno in bed with her. He’s frozen in place.
“Logan?”
Her voice reaches me as if coming from miles away. Miles is what I feel between us. Ten seconds ago, the closeness we shared was the most important thing in my life. Now, there’s an abyss in the three feet of space between us.
Bruno’s eyes are fixed on me as he gets out of the bed dressed only in boxers. Skye’s face blanches when she looks over her shoulder and her eyes widen in surprise. My hand opens and clenches next to my gun. Bruno looks away when he picks his clothes off the floor and then gets dressed, avoiding eye contact.
The look of surprise on Skye’s face turns into horror.
“No, no, no. This is not what it looks like. Nothing happened. I swear.”
She’s one hell of an actress.
I can’t move. If I move a muscle, I’ll do something I’ll regret for the rest of my life. I’m in uniform still. I could barely wait for my shift to end to come and see her. As much as I want to beat the living shit out of Bruno, I already know I won’t. So I stand here, my eyes going from one to the other. So much for good intentions. Like my father always said, good intentions will only get you fucked. In the ass. Hard and dry.
Skye gets up on her knees now and reaches out. She is speaking, I know she is because I can see her lips moving, but I’m not registering anything she’s saying. This cannot be happening again. Old memories come rushing back. Amanda and my father. But this, this is so much worse than finding Amanda and my father fucking in my bed. I never loved Amanda. It was easy to walk away.
But this?
How can I stay?
How can I walk away?
Skye turns to Bruno. He’s zipping his pants.
“Say something! Tell him what happened. Tell him why you’re here!”
But Bruno just shakes his head.
“I can’t.”
He looks terrified, and that makes it even worse than it already is. Little wimpy son of a bitch can’t even stand up for himself and say anything at all. Fucking coward.
She looks him up and down.
“What happened? What happened to your clothes? Why did you take them off?”
“I got hot. You were too warm.”
Wrong fucking thing to say, pal!
I take two steps forward, and even though he’s on the other side of the queen-sized bed, he flinches. His arms go up and over his head in a defensive manner and he turns his back halfway. It makes me hesitate, but it’s the crisscrossing of scars on his back, thin pink lines paler than his skin, that stop me.
This is the kind of reaction I’ve seen on victims of abuse and domestic violence. The scars are forgotten in my anger. He’s a big fucking grown man and has to have a good twenty pounds of muscle on me. Even if he sucks at fighting, a guy his size should be able to hold his own.
But that reaction alone is what saves his ass, and mine too, for that matter, because I’d be in a world of trouble if I gave this guy the beating I want.
My attention is back on Skye and her pajama pants and tank top. The same tank top she was wearing the day I pulled her over. I refocus my anger on her. Bruno may have been a willing participant, but he owes me no loyalty. She’s the one I’m dating. She’s my girlfriend, and she’s the one who claimed there has never been anything sexual between her and Bruno, but she was lying before and she’s lying now. Her sister herself had said they were fuck buddies, and even if nothing happened today, it’s obvious in the way they’re so comfortable with each other, in the way she shared her bed with him, that something is going on between them.
Maybe he’s cheating on his out-of-town girlfriend. He’s always around during the week, but every weekend, he goes away to meet this mysterious person. That’s what Skye always says. But he was supposed to be away today, and he’s here. So something happened. Maybe the girlfriend found out he’s cheating and kicked him out, or maybe they could not get together and he went back to his old fuck buddy—my girlfriend.
Either way, I’m done.
This is done.
Skye is done.
It’s all going to hell in a fucking hand basket because there’s no way I’ll go along with whatever Skye’s saying. I can’t believe a word coming out that pretty mouth, and fuck me if I still don’t want to kiss her! I have to get out of here.
“Just tell him. Tell him the truth.”
Skye’s crying and yelling at Bruno to tell me that nothing happened. He shakes his head and doesn’t even look at her. Fucking asshole is not man enough to either own up to what he did or lie for his so-called best friend.
I take two steps back and Skye tries to come to me. I raise my hands and she stops. I turn and see River by the door. I don’t know how long she’s been there. Watching. She doesn’t say a word. I guess she had no idea her sister had a guy in her bed or she wouldn’t have let me in. River’s eyes look as startled as mine probably did when I first realized there was someone in the bed with Skye.
Bruno finally finds a pair and speaks up.
“I’m leaving, and you two can talk.”
He looks at Skye and shakes his head, a plea in the way he looks at her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I can’t. I just can’t. And you promised. You promised me.”
It’s just too much.
Too much.
Too much all over again, too much.
“Don’t fucking bother. I’m the one leaving.”
I look at Skye then. I don’t know if I’m trying to memorize her face or completely forget it. Because I know. I just know I’ll never look at her again.
I will never speak to her or hear her voice again.
I will never kiss her mouth, taste her skin, or feel her bo
dy trembling under mine.
I will never hear her giggle when I tickle her or hear her laugh when she finds something to be funny.
I will never see that smile again.
I will never love anyone else again.
Never.
Again.
I leave, the three of them watching me. Skye’s calling my name between sobs. Bruno’s frozen in place.
There’s no going back.
Chapter Fifty-Three
He left.
He just left.
Logan just left me.
The door closing behind him without a sound speaks louder than banging it would.
I can barely see through my tears.
“What just happened?” I ask no one.
There’s no answer. Immense silence fills the space where Logan stood before.
My legs give out and I drop to my knees, bracing myself as if it could contain the pain inside. How can there be so much silence when my heart is shattering to pieces?
Heartbreak should have a sound.
A ripping.
A crash.
A wail.
But there’s nothing. Not even the sounds of my own sobs or ragged breaths reach my ears. It’s just me and the empty space Logan left behind.
A hand covers my shoulder. Bruno. I shake it off and wipe my face with trembling hands, the anger at him halting the tears. I can’t look at him.
“Leave.”
I feel him hesitate before his feet disappear through my bedroom door. More emptiness.
River kneels next to me and rubs my back, and the touch anchors me. All I want to do is run and escape this pain ripping my chest open and clawing at me. But there’s no escape. Wherever I go, I’ll take my broken heart with me.
Why wouldn’t he listen to me? You know why, a voice in my head tells me.
“Skye?”
I hear my name as if she’s calling me from far, far away and not kneeling right next to me.
“What happened?”
“He left. Logan left me.”
River pulls me into her arms. She asks no more questions and just holds me. Her kindness breaks the last barrier and the tears come back unbidden. I cry until there’s nothing left. I cry until I’m numb inside and my eyes are swollen shut.
Crumpled tissues litter the floor around me like clumps of snow, a sad witness to my agony.
River pulls me to my feet and guides me back to my bed. Like a puppet, I comply with her ministrations. My body aches. My head is pounding. I don’t know how long I’ve been on the floor. It could have been minutes or hours.
My mind is trapped in a loop, a bad movie playing again and again. Logan’s pained face and hurtful words on repeat. I’m both the villain and the victim, stuck in a role I didn’t choose to play.
I’m vaguely aware of River pulling the covers around me. She turns the light off and the room drops into darkness. I curl myself into the smallest version of me possible, as if I could dispel the pain by hiding from it. The bed dips as she sits next to me, her fingers running through my hair like Mom did when we were kids and didn’t feel good. River rubs my back and tells me to sleep. Exhaustion takes over and I feel myself drifting off into welcoming nothingness.
Everything will be better when I wake up, she says.
She lied.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“Fuck.”
My head is ringing and pounding. I struggle to open my eyes. The first thing I’m aware of is the dry and bitter taste in my mouth. Then the memory of what happened this morning. The first thing I see when I actually manage to open my eyes is the nearly empty bottle of Brora. The twenty-six-year-old single malt whiskey I stole from my father when I saw him with Amanda. Stealing his prized fifteen-hundred-dollar bottle soothed some of the anger I felt then, even if it embarrassed me later on. It’s only fitting that I drain that bottle to celebrate the occasion. Stole it because of one cheater. Drank it because of another.
The ringing and pounding is outside my head now. What the fuck?
The banging on the door and the bell ringing shatters the contented numbness my friend Brora put me under. If there’s one positive thing I can say about my father, it’s that the bastard knows how to pick his whiskey. I drank enough to pass out and yet I suffer none of the side effects of a hangover. Maybe I’m still drunk. I get up and walk to the door.
“Calm the fuck down. If the house isn’t on fire, stop this fucking racket!”
The silence that follows my harsh words makes me hesitate. It had better not be Skye. Or that fucker, Bruno. I’m off the clock now, and this is my property. He won’t leave it in one piece.
I yank the door open and River is on the other side, arms crossed over her chest and a furious expression on her face. I look over her head, hoping to see Skye even though I just told myself I don’t want to see her. Anger at myself is renewed tenfold. Even after she cheated on me, I’m hoping to see her. What the fuck is wrong with me?
River walks right in and shoulders me out of the way. I stumble back a step.
“By all means, come in. It’s not like I’m pissed off or anything.”
Sarcasm does not faze River one bit. She invented the damn thing.
“What do you want?”
There are limits to my patience, and the excellent scotch I drank may have extended it, but my anger is burning through it at light speed.
“I want to know what happened.”
“What? Skye didn’t tell you?”
Saying her name hurts, and I raise my voice to cover the pain.
“Don’t you raise your voice at me! I’m not one of your perps or whatever the hell you call them. I want to know what happened.”
Her voice softens with the last few words.
I run a hand through my hair and realize I’m still in uniform. But no belt and no gun. Where the fuck is it?
I look around the room and find it on the floor next to the empty bottle.
“What happened is that your sister cheated on me with her fuck buddy, Bruno.”
River snorts. She actually snorts at me.
“Skye would never cheat on you. And Bruno was never her fuck buddy. I just liked to say that to get under her skin.”
“Well, you must be psychic then, because that’s exactly what he is.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Yes, I am. But that does not change the fact I caught them in bed this morning.”
She blanches.
“What?”
All the anger evaporates, and what is left is an emptiness so vast it feels as if I’m free falling into an abyss. Didn’t she see him nearly naked? Maybe she came after he was dressed.
“I saw them, River.”
My voice is shaky, my eyes burn, and there’s a boulder in my throat.
“I saw them,” I whisper as if the hushed words could somehow diminish the pain of saying them.
She’s shaking her head as if denying it would make it less true.
“I don’t know what you saw, but what I do know is Skye loves you. She’s crazy in love with you, and she would never, could never do that. She doesn’t have it in her to cheat on someone. She never even cheated on board games or a test in school.”
“He was in her bed, and all he had on was his boxers.” Saying this, having the images come back to my mind, pushes the boulder in my throat down into my chest and it weighs a thousand pounds. My heart squeezes under its pressure.
“It’s not possible.”
“Did she send you here? To try to convince me to forgive her and take her back?”
“No, she didn’t. She doesn’t know I’m here. She cried until she passed out from exhaustion.”
I flinch at her words. Why is it that knowing that Skye is suffering hurts me more than my own pain? Because you love her, you idiot.
“Talk to your sister. I’m not the one in the wrong here. I know what I saw. And he didn’t deny it.”
I walk back to the door and open it wide, a clear sign that t
his conversation is over.
River’s shoulders drop, and she shuffles to the door and steps out. She turns and pleads.
“Just hear her out.”
“I don’t think I can.”
I close the door and lock it. The symbolism does not escape me.
Chapter Fifty-Five
I wake up with a start. You know that feeling when you wake up and think you’re late for work or school? That’s how I come to, wondering which day and what time it is. But the blissful moment of confusion evaporates with the first memory of what happened. Pain squeezes my chest. Can heartbreak cause a heart attack? I step out of my bed on unstable feet and pull open the curtains.
I don’t know how long I slept, but the sun is low in the sky. Last night’s snow glints in the late afternoon light in big piles on the side of the road. The street is clear and life goes on outside the window.
Did I sleep the entire day?
Did all of it really happen?
My eyes fall to the small trash can in the corner. It’s full to the top with crumpled and balled-up tissues. If pain could be measured on a scale of tissue boxes, how many boxes would I need to measure mine? I grab my phone from the night table and check it. No messages, no missed calls. I didn’t expect to hear from Logan, but Bruno’s silence annoys me. He still has nothing to say. After all the years we’ve been friends and all the secrets I’ve kept for him, all he had to do was say a single word and Logan would believe me, but he didn’t. He refused. And I couldn’t break my promise to him, not even to right a wrong, not even for Logan. My loyalty to both of them wars inside me. I’m angry at Bruno for not coming clean. I’m angry at myself for not speaking up. But above all, I’m angry at Logan for believing what he thinks he saw instead of me.
The voice of doubt rears its ugly little head again. It had been a long time since the little monster made itself known, but she’s here now. Loud and clear.
He never really loved you. What did you expect?
You don’t deserve him. You picked Bruno over Logan. What kind of love is that you claim to have?
Because of Logan Page 22