Exposed (Madame X, #2)(49)

I cannot move, breathe, or feel, much less speak. I try to nod, try to seem like I am giving him an affirmation. But it ends up a sniffle and a wobble of my head. My eyes are squeezed shut and my head is ducked, and I am clutching myself, arms wrapped around my middle.

“You watched, and you were curious.” His voice is a murmur in my ear. “You saw him do things to that other girl that he didn’t do with you, and you were curious.”

I nod. I owe him truth, even embarrassing, disgusting, mortifying truth.

Logan continues baring the secrets I cannot say. “You didn’t . . . want those things. But you were curious. And Caleb is a perceptive motherf*cker. He can read people as easily as you read books. So he saw that. Saw your curiosity. And he’s a manipulative bastard, so he used it against you. Used your curiosity as an excuse to force those things on you and make you feel like maybe you asked for it. That maybe you did want it, and just didn’t know how to say it. Like maybe it was you all along, and not him.”

I am choking. Oxygen is not reaching my brain. Thoughts are like moths fluttering in kamikaze circles around a burning-hot lightbulb. How does he know? How do these men see so clearly into me? Do my thoughts and desires and emotions appear on my forehead in visible form?

I roll away. Logan is at my back, hand on my shoulder, mouth at my ear. “Hey. Talk to me, Is.”

“And say what?” I speak to empty air in front of me rather than facing Logan. “That you’re right? Fine. You’re right. And so was he. I . . . was curious. And part of me did want it. Just . . . not the way he did it. I didn’t want the humiliation. With her, it seemed like it was mutual. Maybe he was teaching her, but there was a two-directionality to the way they interacted, sexually. And . . . god, this is so hard to say out loud, especially to you. But with Caleb and me, it has always seemed . . . one way. Him doing what he wanted to me, and me allowing it. I wanted that—I don’t know how to put it. I wanted that feeling of being an active participant and not just a . . . a receptacle for his needs. And all I got for my curiosity was to be used yet another way.”

“What did you feel with us? You and me, just now?”

“There is an us. There always has been. I’ve always felt like with you, that you see me. You . . . you both see me, and see me. The emphasis on both words is important. You care about what I want. You care about who I am.”

“Caleb doesn’t.”

I have to let a silence hang until I can force the words out. “I don’t know if that’s true. I think he just cares about me being the version of me he wants me to be. The version he created, rather than the version I am becoming.”

Lips touch my spine between my shoulder blades. “And I care about you, who you were and who you are and who you’re becoming. All of you.”

“I know.”

His hand tugs at my arm, and I roll to my back. He’s levered over me, staring down at me with too-bright eyes. Knowing eyes. A gaze full of understanding and compassion and hurt and love. Yes, love. I see it there, though neither of us will speak of it outright. “But for all that, there’s still something there between you and Caleb, something you can’t deny and can’t ignore. And I can’t have you until you’ve seen that through.”

“I hate how right you are, so much of the time,” I say.

“Me too,” he says.

“I don’t know what it is, between Caleb and me. I wish I did, so I could be done with it.”

“Me too,” he says again. “But until there’s an end between you and Caleb, there can’t be a beginning between you and me.”

The silence quavering between us then is rife with pain. This hurts. Worse than anything I’ve ever felt, this hurts. My throat closes, and my eyes sting. It’s hard to breathe for the weight of pain in my chest. For the weight of the good-bye swinging like a thousand-pound pendulum between us.

I have nothing else to say. No more words. I leave Logan’s bed and his room, and I take a shower. I take my time, scrubbing every inch of my body carefully. I don’t want to. Even now, I want his scent on me. I want to be marked by him on the outside the way he’s marked me on the inside.

My dress has been laid neatly on the bed, along with my undergarments, and my shoes are on the floor near them. Logan is nowhere to be seen. I dress carefully, smoothing the worst of the wrinkles out of the dress as best I can. My hair is still wet, because Logan doesn’t own a hair dryer, and my hair is thick. I braid it and tie off the end. Slip on my shoes.

And yet, when I look in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in Logan’s closet, I see only Isabel. Despite the familiar clothes, I do not see Madame X. I see me. I see a person. A woman becoming her own individual. I inhale deeply, run my hands over the bell curve of my hips, exhale, and then go in search of Logan.

I find him in his backyard, pacing in troubled circles, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer. Cocoa lies on the ground near the door, chin on her paws, watching him, thick brown tail thumping the flagstones.

He halts, and his eyes rake over me. “You are so beautiful, Isabel.”

“You’ve already seen me in this dress, Logan,” I point out.

He shrugs. “Doesn’t make you any less gorgeous than the first time I saw you in it.”

I try another breath, but my lungs don’t seem to want to inflate all the way. “I should go.”