Crush(64)

Then again, if I really thought about it, more than likely Tommy had killed Elle’s sister and wanted me to spend my time chasing something that wasn’t there. He wanted me to lose my mind thinking about Elle with Michael and wonder if he might do to her what he’d done to his wife. That was much more his game than the fact that a woman had stolen his heart and he wanted to avenge her death. No, he knew that was more my thing.

Regardless, I needed to get back inside to talk to him. See what I could find out about this Priest, but Miles couldn’t make it happen. I guess Tommy had spent a good two days in the clinic, and the explanation that it was a self-inflicted injury wasn’t holding up well with the higher-ups.

The only lead Miles had on where the Priest was located was where the drug deals were taking place, and that turned out to be a dead end. The cokehead Miles had found pointed out three buildings on the waterfront where the deals might have gone down. They all looked alike. No specific location could be identified. Absolutely no f*cking help at all.

I wanted more. I wanted to know who the Priest was because (A), if I provided that information, Blanchet would remove my father’s name from all of her files, and (B), now this was personal and I just f*cking wanted to know.

The problem was that he was a ghost. The Priest was known on the street, but no one knew his true identity or where to find him.

It was early Saturday morning and Elle was trying really hard to make sure I stayed off the streets, so she’d asked me to help her do a few things before she opened the boutique. The ulterior motive was clear, but I didn’t care; I liked helping her and just being with her made me feel better. Besides, I’d already decided it was time to ask Declan and Miles for more help in finding the Priest.

As I glanced at her, I couldn’t help but feel she, too, had been preoccupied over the past two weeks. I could sense something more was on her mind that she wasn’t telling me. I took the last rung of the ladder and turned to her. “Well?” I asked, vowing to get to the heart of what was eating at her this weekend.

She raised a brow and pointed to the ladder behind me. “Do that again, will you?”

I laughed and for shits and giggles, played along and turned back. My cell vibrated in my pocket and I ignored it. The fun between us had all but been zapped with Killian’s death, but maybe this was the start of something even more. The flirtatious, sexy side I knew she had somewhere deep inside her was blossoming. And I really wanted to nurture what was emerging. Up on one rung, I twisted around. “You want me to go up and down the ladder so you can stare at my ass, don’t you?” I said coyly.

She flushed.

“Well?”

She stepped closer. “It is a great view from down here.”

Overjoyed, I yanked her to me and gently pulled her mouth to mine. “Answer me.”

Her body melded to mine instantly. “What was the question?” she asked, a little breathless.

Lip on lip, a gentle brush meant to be a small kiss. “You know what it was. Say yes,” I murmured with our mouths pressed together.

“Yes, I’ll go.” Her voice was low and I felt uncertainty in her tone.

I pulled back. Looked at her. Knew something was there. Waiting until tonight to talk about it sounded great in theory, but I couldn’t. “Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere?”

Elle took a deep breath and stepped off the ladder.

I followed.

She was wearing tight black skinny jeans, a gray sleeveless top, and a pair of boots. She looked sexy as f*ck. “Logan,” she said quietly. “There’s something about myself I should have told you before we let things get so serious. But we went from zero to sixty and I never found the right time.”

My brow creased. “Okay.”

She drew in another breath.

My cell vibrated again, but I was too busy trying to untwist the knot that just formed in my gut to even think about answering it. “Hey, just tell me, because right now I’m thinking all kinds of weird shit, like maybe you have a husband out there and you want to go back to him.”

She shook her head and the corners of her mouth tugged up slightly.

“Phew, okay then, anything else I can handle.”

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. I can’t get pregnant.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I wasn’t sure what the correct response to that was. An “I’m pregnant” might have shocked the shit out of me, but an “I can’t get pregnant”? I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“Let me explain,” she added.

Good, because I was standing there dumbfounded.

She seemed a little lost, and the breath she sucked in tore at me.

“Take your time, Elle. I’m here when you’re ready.”

She blew out the breath she was holding. “Okay, I’m ready.”

I stepped a little closer.

She stopped me from getting too close. “When I was fifteen, my mother started to go into renal failure and needed a kidney transplant. My sister and I were both matches, but my sister was the better match. The surgery was scheduled, but the night before my sister swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and had to have her stomach pumped. Because of this she was no longer a viable donor, and I took her place. During the surgery there was a complication. Once I was closed up my vitals weren’t recovering. The doctors discovered I was hemorrhaging internally and the surgeon had to go back in.”