“Tell me all the things you want to do to me,” I plead, pressing my lips against his. It’s a mere brush of our mouths, but I feel his fingers dig into the fleshy globes of my butt. “Tell me, Logan. I want to know it all. I want to look inside you and see what you’re hiding.” I don’t know where the words come from, but they’re a plea for more.
“Why aren’t you running?” he asks, his voice pained. The expression on his handsome, rugged face is filled with confusion at what I can possibly see in him. How can I possibly want to stay here? I’ve lost my mind, but I shrug it off.
“I can’t run. You made it clear,” I tell him. “Also, you’re the only one who’s ever truly wanted me. You . . . understand my mind, the darkness that seems to live there on a daily basis.”
“Is this about the fantasies you confessed online?”
I nod.
“And you want that with me?” he questions incredulously.
“I trust you, more than anyone else I know in my life. Why can’t you see that you’re not truly bad? You’re just broken, and you’re living with guilt.”
Logan stares at me for a long time, and I’m sure he’s about to throw me on the bed and tell me to leave him alone, but he doesn’t. He turns, settling me on the mattress before he heads toward the door.
“Wait! Where are you going?” I ask, my chest tightening at the thought of him locking me in here again without anyone to talk to. I can only imagine he’s lonely, living up here with nothing but trees for company.
“I need time to think.”
“And you’re just leaving me in here?” My question is filled with a plea that’s clear and evident. My heart thuds against my ribs. It’s painful, but I ignore the ache. I want to run to him and ask him not to leave me, but I don’t. I’m not going to beg him if he’s made up his mind.
“For now.” He shuts the door behind him with a thud, and I sit and stare at the wooden object for a long while after he leaves.
When the door finally opens again after a few hours, I can only tell because the sky has changed color. Logan saunters in with a tray filled with food. A plate of lasagna with salad on the side. He’s also included a bowl of what looks like chocolate cupcakes that have been cut into smaller pieces.
“I thought you’d be hungry,” he tells me with a grin. “Earlier,” he starts, “I was caught off guard by your words. I didn’t expect you to say something like that.”
“I . . . I wasn’t expecting what I said either,” I tell him honestly. It’s true. I was so shocked by my pleas that I sat for a long while, reconsidering what I said.
“Did you mean it?” he asks, sounding like a little boy scared of what I could say. He is lonely. I notice it in his gaze when he looks at me right now. A man so strong, so powerful, yet he’s as broken as I am. I guess nobody can overcome loneliness. And not everyone is what you’re expecting from a mere glance.
“I did.” I nod the words no longer a lie. I’m not here to try to force him to let me go. If he needs me here to keep me safe, I’m going to trust him just like he’s trusting me with his confessions.
“I’m not sure about this.” He sounds lost to the thoughts that must be dancing in his mind. “I’m not gentle. I’m not a fucking sweet and loving man,” he tells me earnestly, and I can’t help but smile. “There are things that . . . I haven’t told you.”
My heart stills at his words, but I don’t back down. “Then tell me now.”
He pins me with a pained glare, one filled with so much agony it steals the breath from my lungs. I want to hold him. I want to wrap my arms around him and keep all those pieces of him together. To stop him from falling to tiny fragments at my feet. But I don’t move. I wait, holding my breath, watching the way his eyes burn with the past demons he’s fighting.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he tells me. “To be a man with a woman by his side.” The truth spills from his lips like a cool drink of water. As if quenching my thirst, he continues, “I’ve been taught to be cold, brutal, savage.”
“But that’s not who you are deep down,” I insist. I can see he’s at war with himself from the way his shoulders tense to the way his jaw ticks as he grinds his teeth together.
“The thing is,” he tells me, a wry tilt of his lips making his face darken even though it’s an attempt at a smile. “I’ve always thought I was broken. Cursed by something. And when I look back at my childhood, I realize I am. My father is not a good man. He never was. But all I know, I learned from him.”
“Did he . . .? I mean . . . was he . . .?”
“Did he abuse me?” he questions, and I nod. “No. Never. He was . . . oblivious to me until I turned eighteen and had to meet my future bride.” Logan pins me with a stare. It was the day he saw me for the first time.
“Something must have happened after you walked out that day at my birthday party,” I voice my theory, and he nods. I’m right. “He did something, said something to you.” My chest tightens when Logan sighs and pushes away from me. He stalks toward the window, leaving me shivering from the cold he’s left behind.
He keeps his back to me as he stares out at the now-fading light. The large frame of him blocks out most of the view, but I don’t go to him. I realize he needs to come to terms with whatever he’s going to tell me.
“We went home. He didn’t speak to me at all. The moment I stepped foot inside the house, he left me to head to his office. He ignored me for the rest of the day until I finally built up the courage to go to him. It was only when I got to his library, which I was never allowed to enter, that I heard him speaking.”
He’s quiet for a long while, so I ask, “What did he say?”
“I don’t know who he was talking to, but I know it was a woman. I heard her voice. She was the one who told him I’m broken. I’d never heard her voice before, she was a stranger to me, yet she knew me inside out. As if she’d shoved her hand into my gut and touched my soul.”
“I don’t understand.” I fold my arms across my chest as the chill seeps through my clothes, taking root in the marrow of my bones.
“It all sounds so far-fetched,” Logan says as he chuckles. “But she said I would always crave darkness. That I was born with it, but only when I turned eighteen would I truly know what it means. My birthday was the day before; she didn’t realize she was warning him a day late.”
16
Logan
I recall every moment of that night. The woman who sounded like a witch sending out a curse into the world for me chilled me to the bone. She was there for a reason, and I never learned who she was. My father never told me about it, and I never asked. I wanted to, but I knew he wouldn’t offer me the truth.
“What do you mean?” Dad’s voice is cold, filled with ice, and drenched in poison. I’ve heard him angry before, but this is something else. I can’t see his face, but I can certainly picture how it’s screwed up with anger.