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Logan sighed and propped himself against the edge of the desk, where he hadn’t turned up anything. “Not much actual chasing. We spent a lot of time combing through his notes and trying to connect bits of information there to anything in the outside world that might explain what he was looking into and who he might have pissed off, but we didn’t get very far with any of that. Or with what I was able to scrape from the hospital records during his time working there. His trinket box getting stolen along with your car was the first major development in a while.”
I folded my arms over my chest with a fresh jab of frustration. “You didn’t even know I had that box of his. You didn’t talk to me aboutanyof this, or we could have been figuring out the mystery years sooner.”
Logan’s jaw twitched, and he clenched it. “We’ve already talked about this. You know why I didn’t want to drag you into this mess. I’m still not totally happy about having you involvednow, I just know there’s no way we could keep you out after what you’ve seen.”
“Well, I’m glad you figured out at least that much,” I muttered. “You wanted to keep me safe. You were afraid I’d be in danger. Right. Butyou’vebeen putting yourself in so much danger without even having all the information you could have had if you’d talked to me.”
“I was already prepared for the danger,” Logan said. “I told you. We’d been getting deep into fixing problems for people before I ever stumbled on your dad’s notes.”
“You were prepared to deal withmurderersback in high school?”
He paused and lowered his gaze before meeting my eyes again. “The first time we had to kill someone in self-defense—because they were trying to killus—was around the middle of our junior year. There was a freshman whose family was getting hassled by people with gang connections, and we stepped in to resolve the situation… and it turned bloody. Dexter had to…” He trailed off, the anguish plain on his face.
My throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is,” Logan said. “We’d already been getting into some scary stuff, so I’d already started keeping my distance from you, but that was when I knew there was no way I could pursue any kind of relationship with you. Or anyone else. Hell, I’ve barely maintained any kind of relationship with mydadsince things got serious for the Vigil. I know how much it bugs him that I’ve shut him out so much, but I don’t want him getting hurt either—and can you even imagine how he’d react if he knew what I’ve been doing?”
His head drooped, and every particle in my body cried out to go to him, to put my arms around him. He hadn’t let himself turn to anyone except the two friends in the same mess with him for years now.
But I held myself still. “Maybe he’d understand. You’ve never tried, have you? You never tried with me until you didn’t have a choice. But this was aboutmydad. I had a right to know—to decide how much danger I wanted to get into.”
“You wouldn’t have understood how dark it could get. Not if I just told you.”
“You don’t know that,” I retorted. “And what about you? Getting into fights and all that—it’s even worse for you than it would be for me because of the transplant. If you took a bad blow to the wrong place, that could trigger a rejection, couldn’t it?”
I hadn’t meant to bring up his liver transplant. Logan’s hand fell to his abdomen where I knew the surgery scar marked his skin, and his expression hardened even more than before. He’d always hated anyone bringing up his possible weaknesses, even before he’d gotten into the hazardous activities he’d taken up with the Vigil.
“That doesn’t matter,” he snapped.
“How can you say that?” I demanded. “It matters to me—it matters to your dad. I’m sure it matters to Slade and Dexter too. Itshouldmatter to you.”
Logan fixed me with a firm stare, but his gaze had gone more haunted than angry. “It matters, but not like that. I—I could have died back when I got sick. If someone else hadn’t died at the right time for me to get that transplant, Iwouldhave died when I was seven years old. I’ve gotten fourteen more years on top of that already. I don’t know why I got those years and someone else didn’t. But I’m doing my best to make something good out of them, to help people who need it—to make sure that second chance means something.”
His words wrenched at me. I’d had no idea he saw his recovery that way—as if he needed to prove something to justify the transplant he’d received.
I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I stepped toward him, and Logan caught me in his arms. Before I could decide whether I actually wanted to go this far, he’d captured my mouth with his.
His sharply masculine scent washed over me. We melded together as if we’d never been meant to do anything other than this. A twinge ran through my gut at the memory of how close I’d gotten to hooking up with Beckett just a couple of nights ago, but I’d been honest with both him and Logan about where I stood. And kissing Logan right now felt nothing but right, like coming home after a long journey away.
It could have been like this all along. But after the things he’d said, I found that the last bits of resentment in me had faded away. He’d been carrying this huge burden, so much more than I’d had any clue about, and he hadn’t wanted to turn toanyone. It wasn’t about me but about his fear of anyone he cared about getting hurt because of the decisions he’d made. I didn’t know how to stay angry with him about that.
Logan drew back just far enough to rest his forehead against mine, his head bowed over me. He raised his hand to my cheek. “I feel so guilty,” he murmured hoarsely. “I’ve tried to protect you for so long, and now you’re in so deep I don’t know if I can… but part of me ishappythat you’re in this mess with me. I’m so fucking sorry, Maddie.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he was apologizing for, but I hugged him tightly all the same. “We’re here now, whatever happened before—and I’m happy I understand now too. I’ll be standing right beside you, no matter what we find out.”
He let out a strangled sound, and his lips crashed into mine again. I clutched his shirt for dear life, caught up in the maelstrom of sensation—broken by the chime of Logan’s phone.
He pulled away with a ragged inhalation and fumbled his phone out of his pocket. At the sight of the text on the screen, his eyes widened.
“Dex says someone’s just headed up the stairs,” he whispered. “He doesn’t know what floor she’s going to, but she could be coming here. We’ve got to get out before she makes it to this floor, just in case.”
My pulse skittered. My gaze darted around the room, but we hadn’t left any sign of our presence.
Logan pushed open the door and set it to lock once it closed again. We hustled out into the hallway. As we set off toward the stairwell, he grasped my hand. “Just act like we had a totally legitimate reason to be up here.”
I slowed my pace to a stroll despite my impulse to race to the stairwell. That would definitely look suspicious. We ambled along, forcing smiles onto our faces that I hoped passed as reasonably relaxed.
We were just ten feet from the stairwell when the door opened and a woman in a trim business suit strode out, her heels tapping on the tile floor. Her gaze drifted over us without stopping, and she brushed by without a word.
