“What was it like for you?” I was scared to ask it. The times I’d wondered where he’d gone and what he’d done. If he’d ever looked back. If it was worth it.
“The same but different. Focused on what didn’t matter. The money. The gambling.” He hesitated for a beat before he grated, “I fucked about anything that walked…”
I cringed with his forwardness, but he was right, I needed this, too.
His honesty when we’d had none of it.
His thumb brushed back and forth beneath my chin. “I was looking for a feeling, Aster. For one person who could spark that feeling inside me…even if it were only a mere fraction of what I’d felt with you.” He wavered, his thick throat bobbing when he swallowed. His fingers sank deeper into my hair. “And it’s not like there was anything wrong with any of them, nothing except none of them were you.”
My heart squeezed in pain, the words shards when I pressed them from my lips, “While I lay beneath Jarek numb, wishing I could just disappear.”
“I hate him.” Rage howled through his body. Barely contained.
“So do I.”
Logan ran his fingers from my shoulder and down my arm. Chills lifted, sweet, sweet dread. His hurt so thick. His voice was gravel when he spoke. “I can’t believe you don’t have his children.”
Tears sprang in my eyes, and my throat tingled with the emotion that wanted to flood out. I fought to suppress it, to hold it in, giving him at least a piece of our truth. “Our housekeeper…she has a daughter who is a nurse practitioner. I meet her in a parking lot every three months, and she gives me a shot.”
“Jarek doesn’t know.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but there were a million of them in his eyes.
Still, I choked over the idea. “No, Logan. He would…”
I trailed off, unable to express it.
Agony screamed through my body. Fists, boots, the grip of a gun.
Each blow came harder than the last, powerful enough to shatter bone, to shatter courage, to shatter sanity.
A cry tore free, torment and pain, torment and pain. I rocked, tried to hold myself, to protect.
The vile voice whispered like it could be a balm in my ear. “Don’t cry, Aster. This is what was meant to be. You’ll see. You’ll see.”
“I will never allow it, Logan. I will never put a child in the same position my father put me and my sister in. I will die first.”
Shifting, Logan rolled us until I was on my back, and he was hovering over me. He planted his elbows on either side of my head to prop himself up, his wide chest shuddering.
Anguish.
Affliction.
Grief.
It was so heavy.
So absolute.
A chasm that was broken between us, where our hopes had fallen through and were smashed at the bottom.
I could barely handle the way his voice broke in sorrow when he asked, “Is that why? Is that why you did it?”
Green eyes roved over me as if they were searching for something to believe in when they’d lost all faith.
“Yes.” It was the scrap of a sound that I pressed from my tongue. Sometimes a lie was nothing but compassion.
Logan recoiled like I’d driven a blade through his ribs. Misery wracked through my being.
Then his forehead dropped to mine on a pained gasp, and he was mumbling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again.