Exposed (Madame X, #2)(64)

The sun is bright. Blinding. Shining in my eyes as I sit at a table. I can feel the wood under my hands, rough, thick-grain wood, deep cracks and grooves, yet polished smooth by ages of wear. There is a groove under the index finger of my right hand, and I run my fingernail back and forth in it. I’ve done this a million times. Sat here, rubbing a fingernail in this groove, waiting. I smell . . . the sea. Brine. Ocean waves crash somewhere far away. A seagull caws, another answers.

Silhouetted by the sun is a woman, tall, willowy. Long black hair hanging loose down nearly to her waist. Her hips sway to music only she can hear as she stands at the counter, doing something. She is making a sandwich. Spreading grape jelly, thickly. Peanut butter, with lots of peanuts in it. Cuts it in half diagonally, sets it in front of me. On a white porcelain plate traced around the rim with delicate blue flowers.

She leans down, and the sun is blocked out by her body, allowing me to see her. I see her smile, spreading across her face like sunrise. Her eyes twinkle. “Coma, mi amor.” Her voice is music.

She touches her lips to my cheek, and I smell garlic and perfume.

“. . . Isabel? Isabel!” Logan’s voice filters through to my awareness.

“My . . . my mother used to make me these sandwiches. When I was a girl. I think. I just . . . I saw her. I was sitting at a table. It was by the ocean, I think. That’s all—that’s all I remember. But I could . . . feel it.”

Logan is at a loss for words, but I don’t need his words. He wraps an arm around me, tugs me close. “I’m here, baby.”

It’s all I need. There is nothing he can say, nothing to be said.

His heartbeat is a steady thump, a reassuring soft drumming under my ear. I have no idea what time it is, and I don’t care. The world is spinning, and I feel disconnected from it. As if I could fly away at any moment, cast loose by centrifugal force.

“At Caleb’s . . . I had a dream. A memory, I think. M’not sure. A car crash. But only maybe. All I knew was that I was hurt, and it was raining, and I was cold, and it was dark. So much pain . . . I was alone. But then he was there, but it felt like I’d seen him before. And it wasn’t a mugging. That’s what he always told me. A mugging gone wrong. But that’s not what happened. It’s not. He lied to me. But why? Why lie about that?”

“Because maybe the truth of what happened is something he doesn’t want you to know.”

That makes far too much sense. And it makes my heart hurt. What could Caleb be hiding? There are simply too many possibilities, and I’m too dizzy to sort through them all.

I still have half a sandwich in my hand. I set it aside. I feel a cold canine nose nudge my hand, and I open my eyes to see a pair of Cocoas, blurred and overlapping, staring up at me hopefully. I barely manage to knock the remnant of my sandwich—just a small corner—on the floor at her feet.

She doesn’t pounce on it, though, but rather looks at Logan pleadingly. “You’re not supposed to have people food, but I guess it’s okay this once.” He scratches her affectionately behind her ear. “Go ahead, girl.”

Cocoa devours it in one bite, licks her lips, and then returns to her place on the rug near the doorway between the living room and the hallway. Her tail taps the floor rhythmically—thump, thump, thump, thump.

“I like Cocoa. She’s a good doggy.”

A laugh from Logan. “I know. She’s my girl.”

“I thought I was your girl,” I say, sounding a bit too petulant for even my own taste.

“Are you for real jealous of my dog right now, Isabel?” Logan asks, a laugh in his voice.

“No. Shut up.” I can’t hide the smile in my voice or on my face. Don’t try.

The silence between us then is easy. I am content to let the world spin around me and beneath me, to lie against Logan and listen to his heart beating under my ear, and not think about Caleb or the lies or the mysteries or myself or anything.

“I have a confession to make,” Logan says.

I wobble my head on his chest, a gesture meant to be a negative, but which ends up being more of a sloppy flopping of my head. “I can’t handle anything serious right now.”

“Nothing like that. It’s just that I had an ulterior motive behind getting you drunk.”

I twist and gaze up at him, but I have to shut one eye so there’s only one of him. “Oh really? And what would that be?”

“So I’d be less tempted by you. I won’t take advantage of you when you’re wasted, especially not when you’re as vulnerable as you are right now.”

“That isn’t what I expected you to say.”

“I know.” He rubs my arm. “I want it to be right. When it happens with us, I want it to be right. And you’re just not there yet.”

I shake my head. “No. I wish I were, but I’m not. He has answers I need, and until I get them, he has a hold on me I just can’t break. It’s not fair to you.”

“Life isn’t fair,” Logan says. “It never has been and never will be. If it were, my best friend wouldn’t have died, and I wouldn’t have gone to prison. If life were fair, Caleb would have gotten arrested instead of me, and you wouldn’t have amnesia. If life was fair, we’d be able to be together and there wouldn’t be anything standing in the way.”