She could feel the moment things turned. The moment she went from cold disengagement to allowing her emotions to show. Or perhaps it was less about allowing her emotions out and more about no longer being able to contain them.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she threw at him, wanting to bite back every word but unable to do so. ‘I did let someone close. Once. And they walked away from me.’
Yet even as she said it, it occurred to Kat that she was comparing Logan to Kirk, when really there was no question which was the man and which had merely been a boy pretending to be a man.
Still, it shocked her when Logan’s face twisted into a look of disdain.
‘You hang everything on a four-year-old girl. But she didn’t walk away from you. She didn’t even have a choice in the matter.’
He thought this was about Carrie?
But, then, of course he would, because he didn’t know any different.
Kat shook her head. Inside it felt as though she was breaking. Shattering into a million tiny fragments. And every single one of them shredded her like a million tiny paper cuts as they went.
‘Do you really think I’m that shallow?’
‘No,’ he answered simply. ‘I don’t think that’s who you are at all. Not deep down. But it’s what you’ve told me.’
Sorrow scraped inside her, paring away at her. Keeping away from him had been the right thing to do because now, face to face with him, she could feel her resolve crumbling away. As if it was no more substantial than a badly baked gingerbread man—like the kind Jamie had said Logan had made.
She should ask him to leave. But she couldn’t.
‘It’s part of what I’ve told you, Logan,’ she confessed. ‘But it isn’t everything.’
‘Then what is?’
‘What does it matter?’ she cried. Frustration and grief worked their way up, as though they could suddenly see an outlet and refused to be contained any longer. ‘We agreed to fun, nothing more. But now Jamie is caught up in the middle of things, and we can’t offer him what he wants. More than that, what he wants is impossible.’
‘No one can predict the future,’ he said scornfully, and she couldn’t tell if he was angry or just unimpressed.
She reminded herself that she didn’t care. And then Logan spoke again.
‘But what is it that’s so impossible, Kat? I can’t imagine how losing Carrie must have hurt. When I think about Jamie...it just doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘No.’ Sadness threatened to engulf her, and she was afraid she wasn’t going to be able to hold it at bay. ‘It doesn’t.’
‘But you can’t keep running away from every chance at a connection because of that one terrible experience.’
And at that moment she felt something else charge her. A little of her old fierceness. It occurred to her that Logan was deliberately provoking her. Trying to help her get past her own memories. But that didn’t make sense.
‘I do not run away,’ she bit out hotly.
‘You do. You veil it in self-sacrifice, but it’s still running away.’
‘My God, you’re so smug. You don’t know everything.’
‘Is that so? Then enlighten me.’
‘And say what?’ she demanded.
‘Tell me why you’re so frightened of opening up to anyone. What is it that makes keeps this barrier between you and anybody else? I know Carrie is a part of it, but what’s the rest of it?’
She was teetering. She could hear the words piling up in her head. Logan knew it, too. Perhaps he’d even understood it in her before she had. But that only made him all the more dangerous to her.
‘You have to trust someone, sometime, Kat. Why not me, and why not here?’
She wavered a moment longer, memories of Carrie and of Jamie interweaving. Images of Logan that she would probably hold onto for the rest of her life. And then other, less pleasant images of Kirk.