Walk Through Fire (Chaos, #4)(69)

“Stop moving,” I demanded.

“Millie—”

He was getting closer.

And I hit wall.

I slithered along it, shouting, “Don’t get near me!”

“Goddammit, Millie—”

“I can’t have children!” I shrieked.

Logan froze.

I did too.

All of me.

Except my mouth.

“There, Logan! There! You have it all!” I screamed. “I’m infertile. Barren. No go. No way. Never. And I knew you wouldn’t let me go. You’d never let me go. And you wanted kids so bad.” I shook my head, not even feeling the tears filling my eyes. “So f*cking bad. You wanted to build a family. A big, fat, loud, crazy, wonderful family. I couldn’t give you that. I could never give you that. And you were mine. You were my Logan. You had to have it all. You were mine.” My voice cracked and I didn’t hear it, didn’t even feel it. I was beyond feeling anything but the need to get this done and go. “It was my job to make sure you had it all. It was my job to make sure you had everything. But you wouldn’t let me go. You’d never let me go. So I made you let me go so you could have it all!”

My throat was burning. My eyes were leaking.

But I saw the look on his face.

Ravaged.

Wasted.

That wasn’t giving him it all.

That was killing it.

And that wasn’t my job.

I’d failed.

Failed again.

So I had to escape.

And thus I ran.

Ripping viciously through unseen hands that tried to grab me, I got to the door of my car, hand on the handle, but I didn’t get it open.

Suddenly, I was pressed to the door, Logan’s hard body pushing in behind me, his arms like steel bands clamping around me.

“Let me go!” I shrieked.

He didn’t let me go.

He shoved his face in the side of my neck.

“Let me go! Let me go!” I jerked unsuccessfully in his arms. “Let me go, go, go!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Quiet.

So quiet.

But each word was a new wound.

I stilled in his arms.

“You wouldn’t let me go,” I whispered.

“No.” His arms tightened. “No, Millie. I would never let you go.”

I again pushed against his hold.

“Now you need to let me go,” I kept whispering.

He didn’t let me go.

He held me so tight I felt the air leaking out of my lungs.

Then he moved, violently, brutally. He took one arm from around me, drew it back, and slammed his fist into the steel at the side of my car, making a dent, his face coming out of my neck.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he roared.

My body went still but my soul shattered.

“High, brother.”

I heard this like it was from far away.

Tack.

“You are not in this,” High growled.

“Get your woman inside,” Tack said quietly. “It’s cold and starting to snow.”

I stood still.

So did High.

For a nanosecond.

Then he moved me from the car.

For the next however long I did not know I had very little recollection of anything that happened except in that first moment, me arching my back so hard my feet left the ground as High kept hold of me and turned us toward the Compound while I screeched, “No!”

Faintly, I remember struggling. Clawing. Screaming. Kicking. Pushing. Getting loose when he got me back in the Compound and seeing all the brothers of Chaos fanned out in the common room, sentries for Logan, soldiers of their brother, fencing me in.

I made a frantic choice, running toward the blond guy to get through him. I failed. He got hold of me and dragged me right back to Logan.

Logan again took control and I fought it but eventually found myself behind the closed door in his room and it went on.

Me fighting him. Fighting him like I was fighting for my life.

And Logan defending himself against my attacks, doing it gently, doing it in a way he wouldn’t hurt me and helped me not hurt himself, and doing it continuing to contain me as he murmured over and over again, soothingly, “Calm,” and, “Relax, baby,” and, “Stop it, beautiful.”

At my end, reaching it somehow on the bed with Logan, I grunted as I gave one final, colossal buck to pull out of the ironclad hold of his arms, attempting to jerk my legs away from the heavy weight of his clamped to mine.

Then I went slack.

When I did, he slid his hand in my hair.

“That’s it, Millie,” he whispered to the top of my head. “Settle. It’s over, darlin’. It’s done.”

“Are Cleo and Zadie beautiful?” I asked his throat in an uncontrolled utterance because even if I already knew, I still had to know, and felt his fingers bunch my hair reflexively.

“They are,” he rumbled. “So, so beautiful, baby.”

“I gave you them,” I told him, fading, finally f*cking fading.

“You did, Millie,” he agreed softly.

“I gave you them. I gave you that Daddy they call you that warms you to your bones.”

He pulled me deeper into his arms, shifting into me, taking me to my back, smothering me with his weight and heat, drowning me with his scent, but he said nothing.