Sacrifice (Heart of a Wounded Hero)

She starts to say something, and then I grab the paper from her and look at it closely. There's something about her writing, and I'm not sure what it is, but I continue to stare at it. "What is it, Logan? If this is a bad idea, I shouldn't have—" she starts and stutters.

I drop the pad of paper on the table and get up, walking to the box that we brought in earlier. I open it and start pulling items from it. When I have what I want, I walk back toward the table and sit down, holding the letters in front of me. I open the one on the top and look at it next to Ella's notepad. "Oh my God. You sent all of those care packages."

Her eyes widen, and she sits back in her seat, shrugging her shoulders as if it's not a big deal. "Yeah, I sent them."

I shake my head, not understanding. "You never signed them. I didn't know. Harper let me believe that she had sent them. Why didn't you tell me?"

It's obvious that she's embarrassed. "It didn't matter who they came from. I just wanted you to have something."

All this time, I’ve thought it was Harper, but looking back at it now, that was so stupid of me. Harper’s always been about herself, but she never denied sending them. If anything, that was probably one of my favorite things about her, the letters where she would talk about Max and send me all of my favorite things. It was if she really truly cared about and missed me.

I look at Ella, seeing her in a different light. I always knew she was a caring person, but I had no idea to what extent. "Tell me something about you that I don't know."

She points at the letters on the table in front of me. "You didn't know that."

I shake my head. "That doesn't count. I had to figure that out on my own. Tell me something else. It seems like you know everything about me and I know nothing about you."

She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms in over her chest. "What do you want to know?"

I almost blurt out everything because that's the truth. I do want to know everything about her. She's like a mystery to me. She's been right under my nose this whole entire time. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

She laughs and shakes her head. "No."

"What's so funny?" I ask her.

She stares at me, but I refuse to back down. "I don't know. Men don't really think about me like that."

It's my turn to laugh this time. "I don't believe that for a minute."

She looks hurt that I'm laughing. "I'm serious, Logan. I'm not the type that men usually go for."

I could tell her how wrong she is, that some men like me find her extremely attractive. I lean toward her. "You've had boyfriends though before, right?"

She shrugs and turns her head to look out the window. Her face is flushed. "No, not really. I would call it more of a hookup, really, but I regret even that."

She seems lost in thought, and I wave my hand in front of her face. "Why, Ella, why would you say that?"

"Because men only want one thing, and the men I've dated have not been very good at that."

I weigh her answer, trying to think exactly what she means. And then it hits me. "Are you telling me you've never had an orgasm before?"

"Logan," she gasps, surprised by the turn in the conversation. I know I shouldn't have asked her that, but I couldn't stop myself. And now it's like I'm dying to know the answer. "Tell me."

Finally, she looks at me. "No, Logan, I've never had an orgasm. Satisfied now? I know something about you, and you know something about me."

I look her straight in the eye, thinking things I never should be thinking. "Yeah, I'm satisfied for now."

Chapter 6

Ella

For two days, I try to avoid my growing feelings for Logan. I took him to therapy one of those days, and I don’t want to admit it, but the more time I spend with him, the more I like him.

The third day, I can tell that he is starting to go a little stir crazy. I hear his cell phone ring, and I watch from the table where I’m working on my laptop. He picks his phone off the coffee table and looks at the caller ID and then silences it and lays it back down. For a second, I wonder if it's Harper calling him.

When the house phone rings and he makes no move to pick it up, I get up and go and answer it. "Hello?" I say.

"Who is this?" The gruff reply comes over the line.