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Suddenly, I’m struck with a panic, the thought of him leaving seizing me by the throat. The same way it did a few weeks ago. I’ve tried to keep these feelings buried, tried to forget about what happened. I can’t let them come back, especially now. I give a little cough, which does nothing to help.
“You okay?” Logan looks over from his side of the couch, concerned.
I nod, although I’m about as far from okay as is humanly possible.
He yawns and stretches up his arms. “Well, I’m knackered. And you must be too. What do you say we have an early night? I’m sure there’ll be loads for us to sort tomorrow once Frederic gets in.”
As he gets up from the couch, I want to run after him, to beg him to tell me that nothing will change, that he had nothing to do with Lucy’s death. But I sit there, stone still, until he reaches the bedroom door.
“Coming?” he asks.
I follow him into our bedroom, the sight of the dark sea through our floor-to-ceiling windows for once doing nothing to improve my mood. Logan’s already stripping off his shirt and tossing it in the hamper. As he turns toward me, my eyes travel to his neck, flashing over the Scots Gaelic text inked across his clavicle.Chan eil tuil air nach tig traoghadh. I’d asked him what it meant the first time I’d seen him shirtless, less than a week after we met at Frangipani. “It’s an old proverb,” he murmured in my ear as I traced my fingers over the raised flesh. “There isn’t a flood that will not subside.” And I thought then that it all made sense.I had made it through the worst.
But now, as my eyes skirt over that same tattoo, coldness rushes in. It’s not the words themselves, it’s what’s missing from the naked skin above them. The chain is still looped around his neck, but it’s naked of the ring he vowed to keep attached to it only a few days ago.
The words escape before I can stop them. “Logan, where’s your ring?”
He looks down at his chest as if he’s been shot. When he raiseshis eyes to me, they’re filled with guilt. I take a step back, grasping on to our dresser to steady myself, bracing for his admission.
“Ah, Cass, I’m so sorry.”
“Logan,” I say, silently begging him to stop.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“You don’t…”
“Doug convinced me to put on that bloody neon paint when we got to the Full Moon Party.”
Huh?My heart is beating so hard that it feels like it’s going to escape from my chest. What the hell is he talking about?
“I should have just said no. I mean it’s a stupid thing to do. But you know Doug when he’s pissed—you saw him last night. He was in rare form. So I did it. I took off my shirt and drew some stupid designs on my chest. The chain must have come unclasped, and the ring must have fallen off somehow. When I got home, I found the chain wrapped up in my shirt, but no ring.”
I stand there, not sure I understand what he’s saying.
He rushes over to me, cupping my elbows in his hand, his dark blue eyes inches from mine. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t need to be dealing with this, especially not tonight. But it was an accident, I promise. It’ll be somewhere on the beach. I’ll get someone to help me search. We’ll find it.”
Tears prick the backs of my eyes, and before I can stop myself, they fall, one by one.
“Oh, love. I’ll find it, I promise.”
Logan pulls me into a hug, and I sob against his chest as I process everything: finding Lucy, then the ring, suspecting Logan was somehow involved, and now hating myself for ever thinking he was capable of that.I’mthe one who should be sorry.
But there’s one more thing I need to know. I push away from his chest.
“So you never saw Lucy last night, right? Before she…you know.”
His forehead crinkles in confusion. “Did I see Lucy?” he repeats. “I—I don’t think so. But I don’t know what she looked like. You said she was tiny and had curly brown hair, right?” I nod, and he pulls his top teeth over his lower lip, thinking. “No, I don’t remember seeing her. Why?”
I breathe an enormous sigh of relief. “No reason,” I say, my voice almost giddy. I’ll give the ring back to him tomorrow or the day after. I’ll tell him that I found it somewhere on the beach. He doesn’t ever need to know.
Because Lucy must have picked up Logan’s ring when she was at the party. Maybe she was trying to find who it belonged to so she could return it. Or maybe she stole it. I realize I have no idea what kind of person she may have been. Either way, she must have had it in her hand or somewhere on her when she went swimming later that night. She could have dropped it as she drowned. That’s how it landed in the sand. It all makes sense.
As the tension washes out of me, exhaustion floods in. I almost collapse in Logan’s arms.
“Hey there. I think it’s time we got you to bed.” In one swoop, he picks me up, carrying me like a baby over to my side of the bed. Once I’m under the sheet, he bends down, kissing me gently on the forehead. “Forever us two,” he says.
“Forever us two,” I murmur, already closing my eyes.
