Logan (Wild Boys After Dark, #1)(41)
“What was that in the restaurant, Stella? Were you just f*cking another guy? Because you told me that wasn’t who you were.” His voice was dead calm, but his words cut like a knife.
“No. I swear, Logan. I felt everything you felt.”
Logan fell into silence again, his jaw working over her words.
“Don’t you see? I let myself pretend. I got carried away with my feelings for you and the safety I’ve been feeling, and I let myself hope. Hope is a dangerous thing. I allowed myself to forget who I was, what my life was really like. There were times today when I felt normal.”
She scoffed at her stupidity. “Normal. Like I could live in that friendly little town and not fear for my life. Like I could be friends with people like Willow and Bridgette and maybe one day have a family of my own.”
She pressed her fist to the pain in her chest, which was burning hotter with every admission.
“I can’t do those things, Logan. Kutcher will get out of jail and he’ll track me down. And this time he’ll probably kill me.” Trembling began in her limbs. She choked on her admission. “He…He stabbed me, Logan. Twice. He’s not going to quit. He’s going to hunt me down until I’m out of his way, and you of all people don’t deserve to live like this. You’re a good, honest, kind, loving man. You deserve a woman whose life isn’t f*cked up beyond repair. A woman who knows that in two days she’ll still be alive and able to live a normal life.”
He rose to his feet. When he tilted his chin in her direction, his features turned to stone. “You don’t need to have hope, Stella. Hope’s for people who can’t do a damn thing to make their life better. All you need is to have faith in me.” He took a step toward his bedroom, then stopped and spoke with his back to her.
“I’m having dinner with my family tomorrow night. You’re coming with me. It’s not a request or an option. It’s what you’re doing so I can keep you safe. You don’t have to let me love you. You don’t even have to like me. But I’m seeing this through. I’m keeping you safe. Once we know Kutcher’s remaining behind bars, you’ll get your life back. Whatever life you choose.”
He disappeared into his bedroom. Dinner with his family? He was having dinner with his family and she was supposed to go with him? What about Kutcher? What if Kanets didn’t talk? What if Kutcher hired someone to hurt her instead of doing it himself? No, she couldn’t even let herself think about that now. It was one thing to facilitate drug sales while he was in jail, but another to hire someone to kill her.
She really was losing her mind.
And now she’d lost Logan, too.
Chapter Fifteen
I SHOULDN’T HAVE touched her.
I shouldn’t have made love to her in the bathroom.
Logan had berated himself all night after checking in with Marco and the guys down at the police station and learning that Kanets had caved. That’s what Logan had counted on. Now it was up to the system to do the right thing, keep Kutcher behind bars while they investigate and eventually find him guilty and extend his sentence. As much as Logan wanted to blow through the doors of the station and demand that they finish what he started, he knew better. It was time to wait it out and keep Stella safe. They had to be in the city tonight for dinner with his family, but he didn’t want Stella there any longer than necessary. He debated skipping dinner, but after his father died, he’d promised himself he’d never blow off a night with his mother for anything. Logan always kept his promises.
After a shitty night, he and Stella had managed to be cordial this morning, navigating the tension that stilted their small talk over breakfast. He loved her so damn much he ached all over. Being in the same room with her was torture. She looked as distraught as he felt, and he’d had to escape to the porch just to have enough oxygen to breathe. He returned phone calls to distract himself from the trouble between them, and he went over his notes on Kutcher again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Logan never missed things.
But now, hours later, after piddling around in the yard to kill time and chopping more wood than he could ever need, he missed the hell out of Stella. He missed her laugh, the sound of her voice, the feel of her fingers in his.
Shadows crept over his back as the afternoon sun dipped below the tree line. Logan brought the ax down hard, splitting the slab of wood right down the center with a loud crack. His body glistened with the effort. He set up another log and stood back, planting his legs into the earth and swinging the ax for the hundredth time that afternoon. It had yet to touch the frustration coiled in every one of his muscles.
He glanced at the cabin and considered apologizing to Stella for taking things too far last night in the restaurant, but hadn’t he given her a chance to back out? He hadn’t been too full of lust to forget that, but he had obviously been too full of love to misconstrue what last night meant to her, despite what she’d claimed. He’d been making love; she’d been f*cking.
He swung the ax again, and the sound of splitting wood echoed in the forest, mirroring the shattering of his heart. He didn’t believe she’d been just f*cking. She’d said she felt everything he’d felt, and he wanted to believe that. But why would she tear them apart? Why was she trying to protect him? He didn’t need protecting. He needed her.
He wiped his sweaty hands on his fatigues and set his boots solidly on the ground again, unable to shake the feeling that none of this shit felt right. It hadn’t felt like she was just f*cking him last night, no matter what words they’d used, where, or how they’d come together. He wasn’t so messed up that he could have misread her, was he?