Exposed (Madame X, #2)(21)

You are on the far side, behind Len, the driver.

The window slides down, and your dark eyes fix on me. “Get in, X. Now.”

“How about you let her decide what she wants, Caleb?” Logan asks, not relinquishing his hold on me.

“This is none of your business,” you say. “And get your hands off her.”

“I will if she tells me to.”

“Would you like to go back to prison, Mr. Ryder?” you ask, your voice far too quiet. “I can arrange that, if you wish.”

Logan tenses. Clearly that threat holds weight.

I feel like a bone being fought over by two dogs. I dislike it intensely. “Stop. Both of you. Just . . . stop.” I turn to you. “How did you find me, Caleb?” I ask.

“You are mine. I will always be able to find you.”

“She’s not yours, *,” Logan growls. “She’s hers.”

And then Len is out of the car, tall, wide, eyes soulless and roiling with death. A pistol emerges from beneath Len’s blazer, black and big and frightening. The barrel touches Logan’s head.

“Back away. Now.” Len’s voice is colder than ice, flat, emotionless.

“Fuck you. You won’t shoot me in broad daylight.” His hands tighten on my arms to the point of pain.

“Think again,” Len says. He pulls back the top portion of the pistol, snick-click. “I sure as shit will. I haven’t forgotten, Ryder.”

I remember the penthouse, my bath, Len being bound and gagged at gunpoint. I see murder in Len’s eyes, and I know Logan could die in a split second. Between one breath and the next.

“Let go, Logan,” I whisper. “Don’t do this. I will not see you hurt over me.”

“You have a choice,” he says. His eyes find mine, pleading. “You have a choice. In this, in your name. In your future.”

“I am her future,” you say. Not to me, but to Logan. “Just as I am her past, and her present. And you are none of those. You are a distraction.”

“Let him shoot me. I don’t f*cking care, X. Make the choice for you.”

I feel strangled. Choked by choice.

I look at Logan, and his eyes blaze with fury, melt with . . . some emotion I do not understand, soft and potent and boiling and razor sharp, all at once, all over me, for me, directed at me. His blond hair is long, so long now, wavy and curled at the ends, hanging past his shoulders, blond curls drifting over his eyes. I see his scars, two round holes in his right shoulder, white thin lines on his forearm and right bicep, and I know there’s another round puckered scar low on his right side, just beneath his ribs, and I see his tattoos covering his upper arms in a jumble of images; I see all this in a tableau, a frozen vignette, his indigo eyes and blond hair and scars and tattoos and work-roughened hands and his square jaw and high cheekbones and expressive lips that have kissed me and never demanded more, never claimed more, needing more, wanting more, but waiting until I was ready to give it. Will I ever be ready? Will I ever be free to choose him? Am I capable of it?

I do not know.

I pull away from him, for him. I cannot allow him to be hurt because of me.

He is already hurt for me, though. That is written in his eyes, and it in turn strikes my heart like a knife.

I pull away, and this is like déjà vu. Logan before me, you behind me, waiting. The car. Len. My heartache and my sorrow and my confusion. I want him, but I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my vision of the future with him. Do I trust him? I don’t know.

You, behind me, in the Maybach. You haven’t gotten out. Your eyes are darkness incarnate. Unknowable. Inscrutable. You are perfect, as you are always perfect, untouchable, carved out of living marble.

Len opens the door with one hand, gun held low in the other, out of sight. You do not reach for me. You aren’t even looking at me. You are staring at Logan, but I do not know what you are thinking. What you are feeling.

I know what Logan is thinking and feeling, because he wears his emotions on his face, he does not care what anyone sees, what anyone thinks.

He is. He just is.

But I am in motion, and a body in motion stays in motion. I cannot stop this. I cannot flee to Logan, not now. Perhaps not ever. He is too good for me, too true, too much.

He is too real.

And I . . . ?

I am a ghost.

A ghost named Isabel.





SIX


You are silent for a long time, and I watch you as you sit in imperturbable stolidity, perhaps deciding what to say, what not to say. I don’t know. I have never been able to read you.

“X—” Your voice is carefully even, precisely modulated.

“Logan found out my name.”

“He thinks so, does he?” You sound cocksure, careless.

“The story he tells makes sense,” I say.

“And? What is your new name then?” You are dismissive.

“Isabel Maria de la Vega Navarro.” I glance at you as I say it. “A Spanish name.”

You are silent a moment and again I do not know how to interpret your silence. “So you’re Isabel now?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t know. Not anything.”

“You do know, though. You know who you are.” You slide across the seat, and I notice that there are dark circles under your eyes, and that your cheeks and chin are unshaven, dark with day-old stubble. “You are Madame X. I am Caleb Indigo—” You start.