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After I caught my breath I took off my soaking wet breeches and shirt then dried myself off and slipped on jeans without even searching for underwear. I had no doubt Logan would come after me. My running would not deter him from finishing what he started. I grabbed my pink T-shirt from my bed and pulled it over my head just as the door swung open.
Logan stood in the doorway with his hands braced on either side. He looked determined and impenetrable. Water droplets fell off the tips of his hair, and his T-shirt was plastered to his broad, hard chest. There was no softness in his eyes; he was hard and determined with glistening moisture clinging to his skin.
He stole my breath away, and for a moment I couldn’t move. It was his authority that made my body hyperaware. It was like this basic need in me begging to be fulfilled.
“Maybe I’m like him. Because I’d have killed, murdered … I would’ve done it all if he’d sold you. I’d have done those things to get you back. Yes, I watched you being whipped, fondled, dragged away, knowing you were going to be tortured. And yes, my own father held a gun to your head and I had to walk away or risk him killing you, just to make a point.” His hands tightened on the wood frame of the door. “And I’d do it again. Because there was no fuckin’ way he was taking you from me. You get that, Emily? That’s what this is about. I did what had to be done. You survived. And I’m telling you right now, growing up with him, knowing what that shit was like, you wouldn’t have survived being sold, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. So, I did what I had to do, and so did you.”
I sat on the bed, folding my trembling hands in my lap.
A tear slipped from its captivity, and I was furious at it. He didn’t deserve my tears. “I hate what you did to me.”
“You hate what I pretended to be. You hate that I wasn’t your knight in shining armor. You hate that I made you fear me. But don’t run from the truth, Eme. You want to hide behind your Lego blocks and not take the chance at being vulnerable again. But the truth is you’re more vulnerable now, because you are hiding.”
“You made me this way. You made me vulnerable,” I shouted.
“That’s bullshit. You were strong as hell fighting Raul and Alfonzo. Shit, you held a gun to me.” He walked toward me, and his hands ran up my arms then back down again. “Mouse, we can fix this.”
“It’s not just broken, Sculpt. It’s shattered.”
He remained quiet, eyes meeting mine.
He watched me, and I continued to brush away the stupid tears that refused to stop.
“This. Us. It hurts too much.” My words barely slipped from my mouth before he was lifting me up and kissing me. A slow, long kiss moving across my mouth like we’d been melted together.
His hands came on either side of my head as his kiss grew harsher, his tongue slipping inside, his grip on me tightening. It was so fresh and raw, as if both of us had been starved for one another.
I tasted the salt of my tears on my tongue as his mouth took mine in a sweet urgency.
My body responded, remembering the taste of him, the feel of him against my skin, and it wanted more and that terrified me.
“No.” I pushed on his chest, and he backed away.
“Emily.”
A part of me, the side that was completely crazy for this guy, wanted to leap in his arms and devour him. But there was so much crippling anguish inside me. And I suspected him too. At his father, and himself. We were bound to destroy one another more than we were already. “This can’t happen, Sculpt.”
“Try, baby.”
I shook my head back and forth. “I did. I hoped. I tried to believe you were the man I first met. But you snuffed that out every morning, and then when you let me go …”
“I had to be cruel, Eme. I was losing control, and I knew you saw it. You were beginning to have faith in me again. I needed you to leave.”
“Why? Why, damn it. Why didn’t you just come with me then?”
“Fuck.” He ran his hand through his hair and groaned. “Raul … wanted me. He used you to make sure he had me. So, it was imperative I stayed, so he wouldn’t come after you.”
I choked on my sob. I didn’t want to believe him, yet I saw the truth like a flashing beacon in front of me. It was so much easier to bury the past than to have it plastered in front of me. And the reality was … when I looked at Logan it hurt, and I didn’t want hurt anymore.
“I can’t do this.”
“Emily.”
“No. Please. I can’t.”
His eyes darkened for several seconds, and I shifted under his intensity. A tremor of fear slithered through me, and I wrapped my arms around my chest like a shield.
He strode to the door and turned. I recognized the look, because I often had it in my eyes whenever I looked in the mirror—torment. “I won’t walk away from us.”
“Sculpt—”
“You need time—I get that. But I won’t give up.”
“You can’t stay here. I live here and—”
“I own the fuckin’ place, Emily. You’ve been living on my farm for two years.”
Kat found me an hour later sitting on the floor, leaning against the foot of my bed. Shock had settled in, and I felt as if I was buried under a sea of water. Too cold to react, numb and staring but not seeing.
Logan owned the farm. I’d been living here for two years thinking … But the puzzle fit; it made sense—Matt bringing me here instead of the house in the city where the three of us had lived.
It had been their parents’ house before they died in a drinking and driving accident—their father was the driver and the drunk. He smashed into a cement bridge going ninety miles an hour.
