AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Logan’s head jerks up, his eyes narrowing as he shifts to block off whatever he was looking at in the small box I can see open on the dresser behind him.
“Sorry,” I rush to say. “I’m not trying to intrude, but I just…”
I shrug, intensely uncomfortable and a little confused over how I’m supposed to end that sentence when I’m not even sure what I’m doing here. And of course Logan doesn’t help. He just stares at me until I finally untangle my emotions a little.
“I wanted to thank you. For, you know, what you did with Frank.”
His face shutters. “You shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I did the same thing to you once,” he says, his gaze flitting down to my throat for a moment.
I instinctively touch it.
“You did,” I acknowledge, running my fingers over the skin there. “But it was different.”
It truly was. He has so much control, so much precision, that he gripped my throat tightly but never with enough pressure to cut off my air or even leave bruises. That’s completely different from the way he slammed my father against the wall, squeezing so tightly that Frank’s face turned purple.
Hemeantto hurt Frank, which only drives home the fact that he chose not to hurt me that night, in spite of his anger.
Because if he’d wanted to, he could have. Easily.
A shiver runs through me at the reminder of how much raw power Logan has at his fingertips, but it’s not exactly a shiver of fear. I drop my hand from my throat and lift my chin.
“Maybe it makes me a monster for being glad you did that to my father,” I say. “But I am.”
Logan stares at me, and the moment stretches out with the same unbearable tension I felt on the car ride home. Just before it snaps, he looks away, his fingers brushing the contents of the small box behind him. “You’renot a monster.”
My breath hitches. This man is so damn hard to read, like he operates on a different level than the rest of us, so it’s probably insane to feel like I’m starting to understand him.
But I do.
He put the faintest emphasis on “you’re,” and I’d bet my life on the fact that he thinks he’s the one who’s the monster here.
I clench my hands to keep from touching my throat again. A few weeks ago, I would have agreed in a heartbeat, but now I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling him that he’s not.
My reaction is pure instinct. For some reason, I want to comfort him the way I felt comforted and supported by his rage back at Frank’s house. But I also don’t want to lie, and if I’m honest with myself, I’m not entirely sure whether I do still think he’s a monster or not.
I’m also not sure whether I care.
“Can you tell me why you did it?” I ask instead of going there. “Why did you get so mad?”
He jerks his head up, looking away from whatever he’s fucking with in his box to stare at me with eyes that blaze with cold fire. “That man doesn’t fucking deserve you.”
My eyes go wide, and his immediately shutter again.
He looks away. “I have things to do.”
It’s obvious he wants me to leave, but even though my heart races and the surge of adrenaline that hits me practically screams it’s a bad idea, I step into his room instead. “I appreciate that you…”
I almost say “care,” but that feels too raw. Or maybe I just don’t want to hear him deny it.
So instead, I clear my throat and go with, “I appreciate what you did. That’s all I wanted to say.”
I fully expect him to rage at me or coldly kick me out, but instead, he turns away. Closing up the little box he’s been fucking with, with stiff, precise movements as he haltingly says, “I didn’t like seeing your father dismiss you like that. He hurt you. Hurt your sister. And he doesn’t care. It’s not okay.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “No, it’s not.”
