Page 58 of King of Ruin

She let out a slow breath, the tension draining from her shoulders.

"Logan..."

Shaking her head, she reached down and peeled his arms from around her waist before turning to face him.

"When are you going to stop acting like a child?" she muttered, a faint frown settling on her face as she lightly pushed his hands away.

The words sounded more helpless than reproachful.

Logan only laughed.

His smile spread from ear to ear with the same carefree brightness she remembered from the very first time they'd met. His dark eyes sparkled with unmistakable happiness, tiny lines crinkling at their corners as he looked at her as though simply seeing her had made his entire day. There wasn't an ounce of pretense in his expression, no hidden agenda or expectation—only pure, uncomplicated joy.

He had always been like that.

Playful.

Optimistic.

Endlessly sincere.

Every time Elise looked at him, she found herself silently hoping life would never take that light away from him.

It warmed a corner of her heart she rarely allowed anyone to reach.

There had been a time when she'd believed every connection to her biological family had ended the day she was abandoned on the side of a Manhattan street because her parents had decided they didn't want a daughter.

If Kevin and Grace hadn't found her that day...

If they hadn't searched desperately for her parents before eventually adopting the little girl no one wanted...

Her life could have become something unimaginably different.

She might have grown up drifting from one orphanage to another.

Or fallen into the countless dangers that lurked within a city as enormous as Manhattan.

For years, she'd convinced herself that chapter of her life was over.

Then Logan had appeared.

After discovering he had an older sister, he'd stubbornly searched for her until he finally found her, and from that day onward, he'd refused to disappear from her life. No matter how many times she turned him away or insisted there was no reason for them to have a relationship, he always came back wearing that same bright smile, acting as though her rejection had merely been a minor inconvenience.

Eventually, she'd stopped trying to push him away.

Not because she'd forgiven the people who had abandoned her.

She never would.

But Logan had never been the one who made that choice. He'd simply been an innocent boy who wanted to know the sister he'd only recently learned existed.

She still loved Kevin and Grace with all her heart. They were her parents in every way that truly mattered.

But somehow...

Without her even realizing it...

Logan had quietly become family too.