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That still did.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. “More beautiful than you’ve ever been, and you’ve always been very beautiful.”
“You’ve always made me feel that way,” she said. “Even when I didn’t believe it myself. I could look into your eyes and believe it was true.”
He hesitated. Maybe it was unfair, but he needed to say it at least once. “I love you, Ella. I never stopped.”
She opened her mouth to reply. “I —”
He touched two fingers to her lips. “Don’t… don’t say anything yet.” He drew in a breath and pulled the blanket around them, covering their naked bodies. When she was wrapped in the blanket and nestled into the crook of his arm, he continued. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
35
Gabriella was paralyzed. She wanted to move.
Needed to move.
But she was reeling, her mind rejecting everything Logan had just told her about a potential deal with Lyonya Antonov.
“Say something,” Logan said. “Please.”
She shook her head, all the magic of the night gone. “I can’t… You…”
She inhaled a deep breath and got to her feet. She started picking up her clothes, still strewn on the sand from her run to the water.
He stood and pulled on his underwear. “I wanted you to have a choice.”
She spun on him. “Don’t. Don’t even try to make it seem like you were doing me a favor.”
“It wasn’t a favor,” he said, still standing next to the blanket while she tugged on her underwear and bra. “Did you hear what I said? I love you, Ella. I love Leo. I’m scared shitless something terrible is going to happen to you. And for what?”
“For what?” she shouted over the waves rolling onto the beach. “For my job. I know that’s nothing to you, but it’s a hell of a lot to me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
She found her tank top and pulled it over her head, then put on her shorts and stalked back to the blanket. “I knew this was going to happen. I knew it.”
“What? What was going to happen, Ella? Someone was going to give a shit about you? Love you enough to protect you? To do something besides sit around with their thumb up their ass while they plot a run for mayor?”
Ella’s mouth dropped open at the indirect mention of Nathan. “Don’t you dare!”
He exhaled and ran a hand through his still-damp hair. “I’m sorry. You’re right. This isn’t about Nathan. It’s about you. About you and Leo. About keeping you both safe, not just now, while you’re here, but later, when you go back to Chicago, when the trial is over.”
“So you went behind my back,” she said, picking up her sandals. “You went behind my back and fixed everything just the way you wanted it. Just like old times.”
He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“You and Hawk, always swinging your balls, making all the decisions, just like when we were kids,” she said.
“That’s not fair. It might be an accurate description of Hawk — he’d agree — but I’m not Hawk.”
She rolled her eyes. “You were just as bad, Logan. Don’t act like because you were quieter, because you were calmer, you weren’t down for setting everything up just the way you wanted it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“You just expected me to stay. To go along with whatever you and Hawk had planned for the future.” The words poured out of her, twenty years of resentment and frustration, all the things she’d never gotten a chance to say. “You didn’t even ask me what I wanted. You just assumed I’d follow your lead, then you had the nerve to be pissed when I went my own way.”
“Because you never said anything!” he shouted. “No one cared that you went your own way, Ella. We just didn’t expect you to be a coward about it.”
