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CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX
Madelyn
Logan froze for all of a second before he marched right into the aisle between the bookshelves, his eyes flashing with fury. As Slade hastily tucked himself back into his slacks, I fumbled to yank up my pants, a blush scorching my cheeks.
“What the fuck do the two of you think you’re doing?” Logan spat out, stopping just a few feet from where we stood. He managed to keep his voice low despite its harshness, but his hands had clenched at his sides.
My first impulse was to say, “This isn’t what it looks like,” but it was exactly what it looked like. Why should I claim it wasn’t? What Slade and I had decided to do had nothing to do with Logan. Nothing at all. He had no reason to be pissed off. If no part of his life was any of my business, then me hooking up with his friend sure as hell wasn’t any of his.
So I raised my chin and glared right back at him. “I think it’s pretty obvious.”
“Really? Running off into a violent gang’s bar wasn’t enough—now you’re fucking in public—in the goddamn university library? When did either of you get so stupid and reckless?”
“There wasn’t anything stupid about it,” I retorted, straining to keep my voice quiet too. The last thing we needed was the rest of the library’s patrons noticing our argument. “We were enjoying ourselves. Sorry that’s so hard for you to wrap your head around.”
Logan threw his hands in the air. “Enjoying yourselves? What do you think would have happened to you if you’d gotten caught? You could have been expelled—they could have arrested you for indecent exposure.” His furious whispers were becoming tauter with every sentence.
“We didn’t get caught,” I said. “No one came anywhere near us, and if they had, we’d have stopped. The only one who’s having any problem with what we did isyou.”
Logan chuckled darkly and spun toward Slade, who’d stepped up beside me to slip his hand around my elbow. “And what were you trying to prove with this stunt, huh?”
Slade narrowed his eyes at him, tension humming through his stance. Logan might have been his best friend, but he wasn’t any happier about being confronted like this than I was.
“It wasn’t a stunt,” he said, keeping his voice equally low. “We’re into each other; she deserves someone who’ll treat her right.”
“Oh, and fucking her in the middle of the library is ‘treating her right’ now?”
Slade cocked his head, a little of his usual flippant attitude coming back into his pose. “Are you mad that we did something risky, or are you just angry because I hooked up with Maddie?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Logan growled. “I don’t give a shit what you do as long as you keep it in your pants in the middle of the goddamn university.”
“Maddie’s right,” Slade replied. “We knew what we were doing. The only people around who had any chance of catching us by surprise were you and Dexter, and somehow I thought someone I consider afriendwouldn’t be pissing all over me. So it seems to me like there’s something more going on. Not that you have any right to be jealous after the way you’ve acted around her.”
“I’m notjealous,” Logan sputtered. “For fuck’s sake—”
“You’re something,” I interrupted. “Maybe it’s just an asshole, but at this point, I don’t really care. You’ve spent the past two years—and most of the year before that too—pretending I don’t even exist. What makes you think you have the right to question what I do now? It’s got nothing to do with you.”
An angry flush spread across Logan’s face, but it took him a moment before he could continue his tirade. “You took my best friend and convinced him to risk his entire career for a quickie.”
Slade made a noise in the back of his throat and offered a small smirk. “Actually, bro, I think I did most of the convincing. Don’t downplay my excellent seductive skills here.”
“I thought you were a little smarter than to let your dick steer the way,” Logan snapped at him.
Slade just shrugged, a gesture I could tell pissed Logan off even more. “I’d say this decision was made with both heads, above and below, and it’s not one I’d take back, no matter how much you rant about it.”
Logan let out an inarticulate growl and yanked his attention to me again. “And you. What happened to Madelyn Silver, devoted student with all those ambitions? Since when did you become such a slut?”
He hurled the last vicious word at me with such vehemence that I reeled back a step as if he’d punched me.
Had he really called me that? Logan Brooks, my junior-high champion against bullies, a guy who’d probably slept with more girls than he could remember the names of, was throwing a slur at me as if my worth was based on who I had sex with?
Fuck that.
My own rage bubbled up inside me too fast for me to hold it back. And maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe it was time Logan got an equal dose of his own medicine. At least I could make my accusations without resorting to slander.
“Don’t youdarecall me horrible names and act like I’m some kind of evil seductress,” I said, unable to stop my voice from rising regardless of the room around us. I jabbed my finger toward him. “At least I’m not going to fuck someone and then erase them from my life like they weren’t worth more than a speck of dirt. At least I don’t toss the people who care about me aside and then act like they’re the problem when they call me on it.”
Logan’s jaw dropped. He looked like he was grappling for words, but I barreled onward before he could get anything out.
