Dirty Ties

Logan’s vibrating presence heated my back, the intensity of his gaze dripping down my spine. I shivered, hating him, hating how much I was attracted to him. Which was salt in the deepest wound. The pain rose to the surface, pressing beneath my skin, trying to escape.

“We need to talk.” His voice pushed me into a quiet place, the eye of the storm.

I turned slowly to face him and gave him the eye contact we’d shared last night. I put all my backbone in it, let him see that I was hurting but not ruined. “I don’t want to talk…or do anything with you. Can you handle that?”

His eyes closed. When they opened, I pulled back my arm and swung with every ounce of my strength. My fist landed across his cheek, and his face flew to the side.

He could’ve dodged it. I realized that as he looked back at me, his jaw loose and posture stooped, as if waiting for another punch.

So I hit him again. Same spot on his cheek. My fist throbbed, and not surprising, that second punch didn’t make me feel any better than the first.

Resignation dulled his eyes, and his arms hung at his sides. Arms that had braced me against a wall and pinned me to a bed. Arms I had wanted so desperately to hold me to sleep last night.

My throat ached, my composure wavering, made worse by the threat standing in the bathroom doorway, watching us.

I brushed my sweaty hands over my dress and pivoted toward the exit. Fixing my hair as I walked, I was confident in my outward appearance by the time I stepped into the corridor.

Strong, even strides carried me to the elevator. I held my chin up and my face relaxed when I reached the ground floor lobby. But when my heels hit the sidewalk and the cool wind brushed my face, the trembling started, in my legs, my hands, my lips.

Stepping into the heavy flow of foot traffic, I removed the phone from my bra and dialed Collin. Voice-mail answered. I hung up and dialed again. Voice-mail. Goddammit!

I let the pedestrians lead me away from Trenchant as I dialed and texted Collin over and over, watching the sidewalk blur beneath my feet. I really didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.

Hindsight was a brutal bitch, and I wasn’t just thinking about last night. If only I’d had the foresight to tell our parents to go fuck themselves the day I completed grad school, before I’d signed a marriage contract, before I’d been sucked into their dirty affairs.

What would it be like to have a mom to talk to, who would listen with understanding and love? Who wouldn’t judge me for the mistakes I’d made or the hurt I felt? Who would never have forced me into a hopeless situation?

But I had Collin.

If he would answer his damned phone. I dialed again. Voice-mail.

I trudged on for blocks, aimlessly walking. Surrounded by people. Alone in my head.

And my head was stuck on Logan. I ran over all of his expressions and reactions from last night to now. I knew I was seeing things that weren’t there, and I tried to parse the facts from the bias, but I kept coming back to the look on his face when I hit him.

It was possible that he regretted betraying me.

Not that it changed anything.

I stopped at a crosswalk and dialed again.

Finally, Collin picked up, his voice rushed. “Where are you?”

I glanced up at the street sign. “Corner of Michigan and Ontario. Where are you? Why weren’t you answering?”

“Okay, I see you. Turn around.”

I did, just as the limo pulled up beside me. The door swung open, and Collin jumped out, his arms open and his eyes wide with worry. He knew.

“Your dad called you.”

He caught me in a hug and lifted me on my toes, cracking my tightly restrained emotions. “Yeah. He told me everything.”

Probably not everything, but I’d rehash it when I was ready. Right now I just needed… I looped my arms around his slender shoulders and held tight. God, this was what I needed. The power of a hug. It invited me to let go.

My spine buckled, my breath slipped from my lungs, and my eyes closed, trapping the rising moisture. “Is Seth in the car?”

He shook his head. “Just us.”

And the tears escaped, hot and silent, down my cheeks. His hand on the back of my head, his arm supporting my back, Collin’s embrace bore my pain.

18

Logan

What was the price of revenge? What would I pay to exact atonement for all the wrongs done to me and others like me? When my hands were stained with blood and I dumped my first kill into the incinerator, I thought I knew what it cost me.

Standing beneath the cover of an awning eight blocks from Trenchant Tower, I watched Collin Anderson hold his wife across the street. That was when I felt the real price constricting my chest and siphoning my air. It was too much.