AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She glared at him. “Don’t…don’t talk to me about any of this like we’re besties or something. I only stayed to help clean up because I want to be a good employee, not because I wanted to hang out with my brother’s murderer and share my feelings, okay?”
His expression fell blank. But he opened his mouth to respond.
She didn’t think she could handle hearing his voice, so she pushed past him. “And I only let you near my finger because the sight of blood makes me pass out. So can we please not talk?”
“Okay.” His voice was defensive as he lifted his hands, showing his surrender. “Okay, I get it. No talking.”
But with his hands in the air and his palms facing her way, the un-cuffed sleeves of his shirt sagged down, exposing his wrists…and the multitude of scars slashed over his veins.
He’d cut himself. A lot. Had probably even tried to commit—
Her mouth fell open as she gasped, unable to take her eyes off his ruined flesh, unable to believe the pampered, got-everything-his-rich-heart-desired lawyer’s son had actually tried to kill himself.
It took him a second to realize what she was ogling, but when he caught her expression, his face drained of color and he yanked his hands down, burrowing his mangled wrists against his waist and out of sight. But those scars continued to blaze through her mind’s eye as clearly as if she was still looking at them.
He backed up from her, looking more afraid of her than she’d ever been of him.
When he whirled away and staggered from the closet, Paige remained frozen, staring at the spot where he’d exposed what might possibly be his deepest, darkest secret.
Seeing him looking all depressed on her dorm room floor might’ve stirred the tiniest bit of empathy in her. Knowing he’d cried at the grief meeting had been unsettling. But this…this blew her away.
For the first time in three years, she actually felt completely aware of another person—outside her family—hurting. Suffering.
Logan Xander had definitely suffered.
She plopped down hard onto the box she’d been sitting on before…and promptly fell through, landing in a pile of plastic and Styrofoam.
Chapter Eleven
PAIGE HAD NO IDEA how long she sat in the supply closet of The Squeeze among scattered and squashed cups, staring dazed at the doorway where Logan had disappeared. Could’ve been twenty seconds or twenty minutes; her brain was too dazed to keep track of time.
But seriously, what was she supposed to make of this new development?
Logan Xander was no longer just a name
to her, the name of the evil being who’d taken away her brother. He was a person with feelings, lots of feelings. Reserved and moody, hard-working and keeping to himself, he wasn’t anything like she had assumed he’d be. He seemed more like a guy who’d made a horrible mistake and was constantly struggling to make some kind of amends. Full of an inner strength and sturdy determination she wished she could have.
And he had beautiful, sad, blue eyes.
A sound from the front of the store jolted her out of her rambling thoughts. Blinking, she glanced around her and scrambled to her feet. After setting the broken cardboard box and stacks of cups back to rights, she hurried into the main area, certain Logan couldn’t be lingering around.
From the way he’d lit out of the supply closet, she would’ve thought he had escaped the building without even bothering to punch his time card. Wondering if it might be a burglar, she snatched up a broom and crept down the hall. After peeking around the corner, she stopped short.
Logan had already finished cleaning the meat slicer of doom and was wiping down all the countertops. Keeping his back to her as he scrubbed with a vengeance, he said, “Go ahead and go. We’re pretty much done here. I’ll lock up.”
She shook her head in disbelief. By the tense set of his shoulders, she could only imagine how strongly braced he was, ready for her to mention his scars.
She didn’t think she could, though. She knew why he’d done it. He was sorry for Trace’s death. Really sorry. He wasn’t all oops-my-bad kind of sorry or I’m-only-sorry-I-got-caught; he was filled with bone-deep regret.
How was she supposed to configure this into her brain and slot it in with the anger and hatred she’d always felt for him? “Th-thanks for wrapping my thumb.” She pushed out the words awkwardly, feeling lame because she couldn’t summon the courage to outright apologize for her behavior.
He paused in his scrubbing, glancing over his shoulder at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
It was more than she could handle. Their gazes met, and an awareness she wanted to deny rocked through her; she gasped and whirled away. Her attraction to him was the straw that broke it all. Hurrying down the hall, she cradled her stomach and silently punched her time card before fleeing back to her dorm building through the dark evening.
Every muscle in her body ached by the time she reached Grammar Hall. Temples throbbing, she unlocked the front door, ready to collapse onto her bed and bawl, when she entered madness.
Startled by the yelling and things flying by her head, she instantly ducked and wrapped her arms over her face.
