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I figured another couple years of helping clients with “problem” horses—more like problem clients who didn’t understand their horses—and with the reselling of the abused horses to good homes I’d be able to buy my own farm. I loved living here with Kat, but I wanted my own place. I think in a way I needed it. I’d been latching onto Matt and Kat for too long, and I wanted a career and to be able to support myself.
The footsteps stopped beside me.
My eyes hit boots. Black leather with ankle mouldings—motorcycle boots that were hidden partially by faded jeans on a pair of long, lean legs.
My eyes went up and up then—
My world stopped.
Oh God, I’d worked so hard at burying the emotions, the pain, the hurt, and most of all the fear, and suddenly it was all back. Months of therapy obliterated.
I couldn’t breathe.
Trapped within tightened lungs, suffocating with the shattering, mind-blowing knowledge of who was right next to me. It was like I had never left.
Logan.
Oh. My. God.
No. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
Logan.
Then he crouched, inches away from me.
My heart rate tripled its speed, and the saliva in my mouth vanished as my past slapped me in the face. Emotions swarmed, attacking me from all directions.
I wanted to run and hide, maybe even cower. This was the man who caused me to hide a knife beneath my mattress for the last two years.
He looked different yet the same somehow. Harder—scarier, definitely. He had a scar running the length of his chin, the place where I used to run my finger across to trace his dimple.
“Mouse.”
I stiffened. No one had called me that since him. Hearing his voice … him calling me that again—
“Emily.” His voice was barely a whisper, as if he had trouble saying my name.
Logan was still breathtaking, but now even more so, and it unsettled me that I thought that. His hair was a little longer, falling just below his ears in relaxed, soft waves, still messy and multilayered. The scruff on his face was new, and—This man had torn my heart out. God, he made me his sex slave.
Suddenly I was wishing Havoc would trample him, so I could run away.
Logan stood and reached out his hand. My eyes hit his right arm that was now covered in tattoos from his elbow up to beneath his T-shirt. He’d only had his left arm inked before.
Shuffling back on my ass, I scrambled to my feet. In my awkward rush I fell backward and tripped over my riding helmet.
He reached again for me.
“No. Don’t.” I held out my hands while I managed to gain my balance. Logan touching me again … no. I couldn’t yet register that he was here, in front of me, after two years. Three things crossed my mind. Run like hell. Beat on him, or leap into his arms and kiss him.
I did none of the above.
Logan ignored me and took my arm and pulled me back toward him before I had the chance to escape. I landed with my palms resting on his chest and my gaze hitting his neck. His corded muscles contracted, and his Adam’s apple moved up then down as he swallowed.
Logan. I was in his arms. The guy who wrapped me up in his heart then destroyed it.
The guy I tried to forget. No, damn it, I did forget him. I lived every single day for two years without him. I lived. I suffered, and I breathed. Then I fought my way back and won.
Ironic that he was the one who ended up giving me the tools to repair from the very fear he had instilled in me.
His hand reached up to cup my cheek, and I turned my head away. Despite my lies to myself, I never forgot him.
“Mouse.”
A sob wrenched from my throat as he called me by my nickname.
I tried to wiggle out of his grasp, but his fingers dug into my arms. He wasn’t letting go, and despite Logan being leaner than when I knew him, he was strong as hell. My mind was reeling with fear, anger and despair. I had to get my shit together. I needed to. I didn’t get this far only to get torn apart again.
Pushing up against the wall of his chest I prepared myself for meeting his eyes and grit my teeth. “Don’t call me that.”
“Emily.” His voice was soft and gentle.
My instinct was to hurt him anyway I could. To push him to the ground and have Havoc stomp all over him with her hooves.
Maybe love couldn’t be forgotten. But maybe, just maybe it could be smothered by hate.
He ignored my steady push on his chest and stroked my hair like he used to do when I lay in his arms. “You hurt?”
“Like you give a shit.” I saw him flinch and was glad.
“Eme. Please.”
My stomach bottomed out. Jesus, it was that voice. That tone. It was like a punch to the gut. “Let me go, Logan.” I shouldn’t have said his real name; I knew it. Damn it, I remembered. Not the bad, but the warm protective man that sang to me. Who picked me up every morning to take me to work. Riding on his motorcycle, my arms around him, feeling so in love—
I pushed on his chest again and the instant he let me go, I immediately took three steps back.
Distance. I may be a little older and have developed backbone but the moment I laid eyes on him again, that began to break away, and I felt him.
“No. You have no right to be here.”
His eyes narrowed when I took another step back. “We need to talk.”
I heard Havoc begin to paw the ground; it was a loud pounding that matched my beating heart. The swarm of heat that shifted across my body was intoxicating. Logan had made me feel real before he betrayed me, and yes, after it was a different kind of real. A raw and eye-opening real of what a man could do to you.
