Fighting Fate (Granton University #1)(14)

Would Logan have made the more interesting sounds or would he have made the disgusting ones?

She slammed her eyes closed, commanding herself to never wonder that again.

If only he wasn’t so attractive, though. If only Trace had permanently disfigured him or disabled him before he’d been killed. Logan Xander didn’t deserve looks that made him in any way appealing, that made her want to stroke him when he looked sad.

Monsters weren’t supposed to come in pretty packages.

But even with his hair buzzed so close to his perfectly shaped skull, his facial features were utterly compelling. And his body? Sweet Lord. There was no way to deny he had a nice body, all tall and sleek and graceful. Like Channing Tatum hot.

She groaned to herself and wrapped an arm over her closed eyes, hoping to dispel the image of him sitting on the floor by Mariah’s bed a few nights before. He’d looked so vulnerable, so touchable. Lost and alone. Why did she always feel compelled to comfort tortured souls? She wanted Logan Xander to be tortured, to stay tortured.

For the rest of his life.

When she finally fell into a troubled sleep, she dreamed of him. He sat on the floor by her bed and looked up at her with troubled eyes that begged her to help him.

Coerced by a force she couldn’t control, she reached out to touch his face. His skin was warm. Real.

A pleasant heat traveled up her arm and stirred an achy tightness in her chest.

When she gasped awake, dawn was barely beginning to filter in through the closed window blinds. Tess and Bailey lay sprawled on their beds. From her pile on the floor, Paige wept silently, horrified by the direction of her dream.

Feeling as if she’d just betrayed her brother, she folded Bailey and Tess’s blankets and dragged her own back to her room.

Mariah’s visitor had left, so Paige quickly gathered her shower supplies and spent the next half hour bawling under a scorching hot stream, trying to scrub the disturbing images in her sleep from her very soul.





Chapter Seven


LOGAN SHOWED UP half an hour early to his Tuesday night meeting. The group’s counselor had already arrived and was setting the last folding chair in the center of the room to form a complete circle.

Samantha grinned when she saw him. “There’s my helper. Early as usual.”

He waved a brief hello. “Hey, Sam. Want me to set up the refreshment table?”

She snorted. “Have I ever turned down your offer of help before? I think we’ll only need one though. They’re having a movie night in the stadium, which will probably lower our turnout.”

Logan nodded and got to work. He found a long table folded in a nearby closet. He lugged it into the Crimson Room and pulled open the legs, and situated it where Sam wanted it to go. Setting the paper bag he’d brought on top, he unloaded the baked goods inside.

“Mmm.” Sam paused by him to breathe in the aroma. “Did you bring something from The Squeeze again?”

He nodded. “I just came from work. Gus was going to throw the blueberry muffins out, and they’re only a day old.”

His boss didn’t believe in letting anything go stale. Gus refreshed his small stock of pastries daily. Logan often made a complete meal from the free castoffs, which was helpful during those times when his grocery fund was exhausted.

“Bless him.” Sam snatched a muffin and moaned as she chewed.

Logan watched her, amused by the exaggerated way she let her eyes roll into the back of her head. As the leader of the group, she was the only non-student. He didn’t think she could be much older than thirty, but he could detect a sprinkling of gray in her dark hair, probably from the stress of losing her husband two years before, which left her raising two young sons by herself, working a full time job, and still slotting in a couple hours each week to lead this group.

He came early to help her set up as much as he was able.

“Is there anything else you need me to do?” he asked.

“Nope.” Sam picked up a napkin and dabbed her mouth. “I think we’re good to go.”

Not the answer he wanted to hear. He preferred to stay busy. With nothing to do, his mind tended to wander, and it never strayed toward good memories. Not anymore.

Though he wasn’t a fan of idle conversation, he forced a tense smile and asked, “How are the boys?”

Thankfully, Samantha loved to talk about her children. She went off onto an entertaining tangent about the latest potty training adventures with her youngest. “The kid’s almost four years old,” she said, completely exasperated. “At this rate, I swear, he’s going to graduate from college in diapers.”

The image actually induced an amused grin to quirk one side of Logan’s mouth.

When another girl arrived, Sam stole one more muffin and meandered to the circle to greet her while Logan lingered by the refreshment table, helping set food out whenever someone brought more in.

Just about everyone who arrived called a friendly greeting to him. He waved an acknowledgement back but didn’t engage anyone in conversation. It was nice they all knew him as Logan—not Dave—but he purposely kept himself a step removed from the other members of the group, mainly because he was a fraud.

He felt guilty he hadn’t shared a personal story the way everyone else had shared theirs. Then again, he didn’t have a story of loss to share, so that was never going to happen anyway.