Exposed (Madame X, #2)(62)
“More stories, more half truths, more lies.” I stare at the concrete under my feet. “More of my weakness. More of all the things I’ve always known.”
Logan is silent for a very long time, the cigarette pinched between forefinger and thumb, lazy tendrils of smoke curling up around his face. “But I was right.”
“Do not mince words, Logan. Not to spare my feelings.” I take the cigarette from him, inhale, watch the cherry glow brighter. Hand it back. “Or your own, for that matter.”
He just blinks at me, takes one last drag, and with a violent flick of his hand sends the butt flying a dozen feet into the street, where it lands with an explosion of sparks. “Did you f*ck him?”
I can barely manage a whisper. “Short answer . . . yes.”
A silence, short and brutal. “Fuck. I knew it.” He rises, paces away, tugs his hair free of the ponytail with a jerk, and shakes it out, spears his fingers through the wavy blond locks. Looks at me from ten feet away. “What’s the long answer?”
“I hate myself for it. I knew it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t change him. It wouldn’t change me. It wouldn’t bring answers. But . . . I’m weak, Logan. He mixes me up. I . . . don’t even know how to explain it. But this time . . . I felt . . . empty. I realized if he does care at all, he just can’t show it. Or he has a very bizarre way of showing it. I don’t know. I’m no closer to knowing anything about myself or my past than when I left here, and now . . .”
“And now what, Isabel?”
“You, and me. How can you look at me?”
He touches my chin with a finger. I didn’t know he was there in front of me, so absorbed in myself am I. “Why do you think I let you leave in the first place? Why do you think I wouldn’t let us actually have sex?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s bullshit, because you do.” He sits beside me again. “I told you why.”
I think back. “You said that there couldn’t be a beginning to you and me until there was end to Caleb and me.”
“Right.” A pause. “And? Was that the end?”
“I don’t know. I know you’re hoping for a decisive answer here, but . . . I can’t give it to you. It was an end to his hold on me, physically. But emotionally? I don’t know. There are still so many questions I need the answers to. I—I’m tangled up, still, Logan. He knows things, but he’s not telling me. You were also right about that. But I don’t know why he’s keeping things from me. What is there to be so secretive about? I just . . . I need to know more. And until I do, until I feel complete, I won’t ever be totally free of Caleb.”
“Can’t fault you for that, I guess.”
“And I don’t know if this means anything to you, but . . . I didn’t f*ck him. He f*cked me, and I let him. It’s the way it’s always been. I was complicit, I have to be honest about that. I allowed it, the way I’ve always allowed it. In the moment, when he’s there, I just . . . I lose myself. I lose myself.” I want to take his hand, but I am afraid to; I suffer a moment of bravery, slide my fingers under his. “Where does this leave us, Logan?”
He threads our fingers together. “I’m hurt. I’m upset. I mean, I knew it was going to happen, which is why I held us back. But it still sucks.” He stands up, leads me inside. “I just need some time, you know? Put some space between you and him and . . . you and me.”
I’m in no state to think about him and me. I can barely function. My mind is whirling like an orbital model of our galaxy, a million thoughts each spinning and all of them revolving in complicated, heliocentric patterns around the twin suns of Logan and Caleb. They are both supermassive entities, each possessing their own gravitational pulls on me.
Or maybe Caleb is a black hole, sucking in light and matter and all things in inexorable destruction, and Logan is a sun, giving life, giving heat, permitting growth.
Logan leads me to his living room, nudges me toward the couch. I sit. He lets out Cocoa, who welcomes me with exuberant puppy kisses and then lies on the floor and watches us. Logan vanishes into the kitchen and returns with two open bottles of beer and a half-empty bottle of Jameson. “A caveat, before we start drinking: This doesn’t fix anything. But sometimes you need to just get hammered and not worry about the f*cked-up mess that is your life. It gives you some space from everything. And I’ve discovered that I do my clearest thinking about problems when I’ve got a wicked hangover. Something about the pounding headache and roiling stomach just makes me more brutally honest with myself.”
He hands me the bottle of whisky and one of the beers.
I just stare at him. “Where are the glasses?”
A laugh. “No glasses for this kind of drinking, sweetheart. Just pull right off the bottle.”
“How much?”
“Two good swallows is about one decent-sized shot. But under the circumstances, I’d say just keep drinking until you can’t handle any more.”
This strikes me as very bad advice. But then, maybe that is the point: to get me very drunk very quickly.
I lift the bottle of whisky to my lips and take a tentative sip. It burns, but not the same way exactly as scotch. It’s easier to drink, actually. I let the burn slide down my throat and breathe past it. And then I do as he suggested: I tilt the bottle up and take one swallow, a second, a third, and then it burns too badly and I’m gasping for oxygen and my throat is on fire. I drain half my beer in an attempt to assuage my protesting throat, after which my head is spinning.