Page 105 of Damián

“Hey, no fighting. The download is done.” I remove the USB and pass it to Björn. “Anything else we need from here?” I ask him.

“Nope, but speaking of maturing…”

“Logan?” I groan, and Björn nods. “How much info do you want me to share with him?”

“Tell him everything. Just keep the Hallmark feelings and the dating talk to yourselves. Oh, and give this to Alexios.” I open my fanny pack and pull out the lipstick USB Oliver gave me. “Tell him the info we need is on the entire list.”

“The entire associates and shell companies list?” Björn asks, taking it. I nod. “Wow, not-so-fake boyfriend knows how to work fast.”

“Yes, he does.” I can’t help but smile.

“Aww, are you proud of your not-so-fake boyfriend?” Leif bats his eyelashes at the camera.

“Okay, enough. We gotta leave before the guards notice someone was ever inside here.”

CHAPTER 12

OLIVER

Zara’s living room is always OCD clean, but today the place is such a mess that it looks like a tornado tore right through it.

Right now, we are basically camping on her white rug, buried under a sea of printed shipping manifests, thousands of color-coded sticky notes, pictures, papers, and her laptop.

Let’s just say Sherlock Holmes would be impressed as hell if he saw the level of connections, deductions, and information we have in here.

I step over a stack of port schedules, pacing from the windows to the velvet couch and back again. I haven’t slept more than ten hours in the last three and a half days; my eyes are burning, and my blood feels like it’s made of Red Bull.

I want to scream.

But unfortunately, my lack of sleep has nothing to do with the logistical nightmare we’re trying to pull off.

Nope.

It comes from the fact that every time I close my eyes, my stupid brain decides to replay Damián’s sexy voice saying three lovely words… “I fucked up.”

…Yep. Those freaking three words have been echoing in my skull, slicing through my chest and killing me slowly from the inside out for eighty-freakin’-four hours!

The way he kissed me in my bathroom, the way we touched, waking up completely tangled up in him… it all made me believe we had shared something real.

And it was incredible… at least for me.

It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever felt, and the happiest I’ve ever been. And of course, like the absolute naive idiot that I am, I thought he felt it too.

But I guess this is just who Damián is.

He’s so magnetic that he makes everyone around him feel like the most important, most desired person in the world.

Hell, he even warned me.

He told me outright that he doesn’t do relationships and can’t stand commitment, and I was just too blinded by the thrill of finally having someone interested in me to remember that this was always supposed to be fake.

And not to sound insanely self-deprecating, but… I don’t get it.

I don’t get why I’m so hard to love.

I mean, despite everything in my life, I am a good man; I always do my best to help others however I can, I have a purpose in life, and I have the best friend anyone can ask for… but besides her, I’m never loved, I’m never wanted.

I’m never chosen.