Logan (Carolina Reapers 4)

“You have to hear me out—”

“No,” I cut him off, my hand on the passenger side door of the cab. “It’s a yes or no question.”

Devastation, pure and raw churned in his dark eyes. “Yes.”

A choked sob cracked from somewhere deep inside me. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me. Trust me enough to love you wholly. After everything I confessed to you, gave to you.”

Logan flinched, and tears streamed down my cheeks as I turned my back on him and sunk into the cab.

I didn’t dare look back as I told the cab where to take me.

Twenty minutes later, I’d shut the door behind me, and everything I’d held back poured out of me.

I cried for my own stupidity.

I cried for the fact he didn’t trust me enough to tell me.

Cried for every shattered piece of my heart.

I’d trusted him.

And he’d lied.

Repeatedly. To my face.

God, I was an idiot.

I tossed my purse on the kitchen island, kicking my shoes off near my front door. I padded barefoot into my room, ready to dive into my PJs and never come out.

But a package on my bed stopped me cold.

Baby, now or later, it will be the same. Logan’s words echoed in my head as I stared at the present he’d brought me before dinner.

So little time had passed between pure bliss and ultimate agony. Why could love do that to a person? Make them whole and then just as easily rip them to fucking pieces?

I sank onto my bed and pulled the package into my lap. I shredded the paper in angry, desperate motions until I found an envelope lying atop…

A jersey.

A Reaper jersey with the name Ward printed across the back.

The breath left my lungs, fast and tight and painful as I rubbed the fabric between my fingers.

I peeled open the envelope, but closed it and tossed it and the jersey onto my dresser across from my bed. It didn’t matter what he’d written. Didn’t matter that he’d left this here.

He’d lied to me.

After I’d bared every inch of my soul to him.

And he couldn’t be bothered to tell me the truth.

Couldn’t trust me enough to not turn into his ex and use him or lose him.

I forgot about the pajamas and instead fell back onto my bed, shutting my eyes against the brutal reality I now lived in.

The one that proved I’d fallen in love again, only to uncover a liar possessed my heart.

“You haven’t read this?” Quinn said, leaning against my kitchen island where the jersey and unopened letter now sat.

I shook my head from the couch in my living room, my knees tucked up to my chest.

“Why the hell not?”

I glared at her. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I was too busy feeling my heart being ripped out. Or the fact that whatever is in that letter came a few months too late.”

“Delaney,” Quinn sighed, heading over to me. She sank onto the couch next to me, handing me a steaming hot mug of tea.

I took the offering, sipping the hot liquid. The smooth mint flavor helped ease the ache behind my eyes from crying so much.

“You need to read it.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But what if it explains everything?” She eyed me. “You’re being stubborn.”

“You are not taking his side.”

She shrugged. “You know I love you, right?” she asked.

I nodded.

“And because of that fact, I know he loves you too.”

A fresh wave of pain curled over my body.

“He does,” she insisted at my silence. “I saw it. That man was crazy over you long before you opened up to him.”

I hissed. “And that’s the worst of it, Quinn.”

She pressed her lips into a line, waiting.

“I did open up to him. I let go of my issues. Let go of the parts of me that have always told me not to trust my heart with another person. I told him everything—every ugly, dark part of my past. I hung my shame and trauma out to dry. I put it behind me and let myself love him.” I sucked in a breath, my heart racing. “And he. Didn’t. Tell. Me.”

“You were beyond open about your stigma of celebrity athletes, Delaney,” she challenged. “Why would he risk losing you?”

I shook my head. “That’s no excuse for lying to me.” I sighed. “Maybe, in the beginning, when we were still getting to know each other. Sure, he didn’t owe me a damn thing. But after? After I’d laid my soul bare to him? After I told him I loved him? After he admitted he loved me? Any one of those moments he should’ve come clean.” The memory of the night formed in my mind, how he had said there were things I didn’t know about him, and I’d told him I knew enough.

I acknowledged my role in deterring him that night, accepted it. And sure, at dinner, when he’d been so damn uncomfortable I’d tried to ease that strain by telling him not to tell me until he was ready. But it didn’t change anything. Didn’t change that he couldn’t trust me enough to not walk out on him. He should’ve known better. He should’ve known me better.