AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sitting beside him, I’d leaned my head on his shoulder. “You could be killed. Doesn’t that bother you?”
His answer was thoughtful, serious. “It’s who I am. Protection, keeping people safe, these things just seem to come out of me. It’s what I feel when I look at you.”
My bottom lip is caught between my teeth. I’d always been so fiercely independent, yet sitting there with him, hearing his sincerity, I would willingly cede my power to his. I never wanted to lose him. I’d wait for him to come back, and I’d let him protect me. I’d vowed this to myself.
Only that isn’t what happened.
Now he’s here. He’s the best of the best, like I always knew he would be, and I’m facing a debt I’ve only one way to repay.
My stomach is churning with the reality of what’s to come, but Logan’s voice pulls me from my thoughts.
“How is your aunt?”
A little start. I hadn’t expected us to go there. “She died shortly after you left,” I say, blinking down.
Logan’s body stiffens at my side, and his warm hand covers my upper arm. “I’m so sorry.”
I listen to the shushing of the waves moving across the sand, the tiny bubbles sizzling in their wake. I think about that day, and what I thought was the most devastating moment of my life. I had no idea it was only the outer bands of the storm moving in to destroy me.
“What happened?” he says gently.
Pushing a strand of hair behind my ear, I see her face in my mind’s eye. Her light brown hair streaked with grey, her kind brown eyes in a lined face. She’d raised my brother and me after our mother died of cancer. We never knew our father.
“She was riding her bike.” I can’t believe how easily the words flow from my mouth. For so long, I couldn’t even think them. “A man driving a truck ran a stop sign and hit her.”
My eyes heat, and before I can resist, I’m in his arms. Strong arms surround me, and my cheek is against his chest. His hand strokes the back of my hair, my neck. He kisses the top of my head, and I melt into him. It’s so incredibly soothing.
“You were alone. You must’ve been devastated.”
My insides cling to him. How does he know what to say? How has he always known? Swallowing the thickness in my throat, I lift my chin, closing my eyes as I inhale.
“I didn’t have time. I found a job… We could stay in her apartment, but I had to prove I could take care of Cam.”
Then the unthinkable happened.
“I wish I’d known.” His arms loosen, and I step back, turning my face into the wind.
“You were training,” I say quietly, remembering those nights when I cried for him. “You couldn’t have come back.”
“Still… I could have done something.”
My eyebrows pull together as I think about this. “What could you have done?”
We start to walk again, and he doesn’t answer right away. He’d been as broke as me back then. We were like gypsies, sneaking and borrowing everything we’d done. Laughing and living on the razor’s edge of being caught at every turn.
“You’re right,” he finally says. “I had nothing and I couldn’t leave. Still… I could have comforted you.”
It’s a sweet sentiment, but as much as my noble warrior would have wanted to help me, he would have been as powerless as I was in the face of that year.
The waves echo in the shelter of the boardwalk, and Logan stops. “Here we are.” A smile is in his voice, but I’m confused. “Don’t you recognize it?”
I’m on the spot, and I’m racking my brain for the right answer. “We spent a lot of time all over this place.”
He catches both my hands. “I saw you for the first time right here. You had your back against that post, and you were reading… something.”
Reaching out, I slide my hand down the weathered wood. “The sun was so bright that day.”
“I was jogging, and there you were.”
