No!
No!
No!
My world started spinning on an entirely new axis.
There she was, on the floor, with a number of opened and unopened white plastic bags surrounding her.
Fuck!
I froze.
I couldn’t breathe.
I gasped and choked.
No. No. No.
I looked at her again.
Fuck!
Sometimes you know something’s coming.
You feel it. In the air. In your gut.
You don’t sleep at night. The voice in your head is warning you, but there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
That’s how I’d felt since the day I met Elle.
The problem was—my warning bells were all wrong.
“Elle?” I’m not even sure how I managed to say her name.
Alarmed, she jumped and realizing someone was downstairs, she scurried to close the bags.
“Elle,” I repeated.
Slowly, she turned. “Logan, what are you doing here?”
My heart stopped. My pulse faded. Shock was all I felt. “You knew?” My words came out in stuttered syllables. “You were part of it all along?” My voice held disbelief.
Elle shook her head. “No. It’s not what you think.”
The small bags of cocaine were all around her and the floor was covered in some kind of white crystals.
What did she mean it wasn’t what I thought?
I wasn’t fucking blind.
The cocaine had been transported in an endless amount of some kind of white crystals—into her boutique, and opened by her hands.
She was so fucked.
Suddenly, my head roared with the pain and anger of her deceit. I looked at her, my heart now as hard as steel.
“Shit!” I yelled. “Fuck!” I yelled louder.
“Logan, let me explain.” She was crying, stepping toward me.
I put my hand out. “Don’t come near me.” The pitch of my voice rose with each word.
There was no way I could stand to have her touch me.
Looking frantic, she kept walking. “You have to listen to me.”
Anger ripped through me. I kicked a chair and it sailed across the basement floor.
She came to a halt.
This was all too much.
I walked up the stairs. I walked back down. I walked back up again before settling on the down. Anger and rage and a terrible fear that I couldn’t help her now consumed me.
She was standing there like a deer in headlights.
Did she have any idea what being here right now meant?
I knew she didn’t. She didn’t know that right now, right this moment, she was in jeopardy of being put away for the rest of her life. And sure as shit, she didn’t know I would be the one to do it.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I couldn’t look at her or those green eyes.
Where was the invisible trail of magic?
What were we to her?
Nothing?
In the darkness, every emotion I’d ever felt for Elle settled in the pit of my stomach, and like the sun’s rays, it lit me up from the inside and radiated throughout my entire body.
“Logan, listen to me. Let me explain.”
Disbelief beat in my heart. I couldn’t listen to her. I couldn’t even hear her voice. I couldn’t stand her or myself right now. I had to get out of here.
In a sudden burst, I opened my eyes and ran up the stairs.
“Wait,” she called, chasing after me.
Her voice made me turn but I didn’t stop. I saw the crushed look in her eyes, the one that matched mine, but still I kept going. With a harsh pull, I yanked the door open and flew right out of it. My feet hit the pavement. My ragged breathing was sucking in the cool air. The sky was dark, but I felt darker.
What the fuck had just happened?
Unable to contain my emotions, I screamed into the night, “Fuckkkk!” and thrust my hands toward the boutique window. When my eyes landed on it, she was there—standing in the window, watching me with fear—no, not fear, terror—in her eyes.
My cell started to ring and I pulled it from my pocket. The screen flashed, Blanchet.
This couldn’t be happening.
But it was.
When life gets you by the balls, it really gets you.
Five seconds.
I had a choice to make—my father or Elle.
And I had five seconds to do it.
Now how fucking fair was that?
Our eyes locked.
For an endless moment I thought this wasn’t happening. A shroud of dishonesty didn’t surround her. I hadn’t opened myself up to her only to be crushed. But then her guilt presented itself. Sparked through the window. Burned my skin. Sunk its way into my bones. Corroded everything we’d had.
As if she felt it too, she covered her mouth and her nose with her hands pressed together. I was too far away to see for certain, but I was pretty sure she was trembling.
Neither of us looked away.
My gut twisted into a thousand knots.
She had me.
She had me like no one ever had.
She had me hanging on every word.
She had me jumping through hoops.
She could have had me any way she wanted me.
Did she even know what she was doing to me right now? The way she was breaking me down, making me rethink everything?
In her eyes, I could see the panic, hear the pleading, smell the fear.
My resolve was being held together by a tattered string about ready to snap. Unable to look at her for fear it would, I turned around, and with a sharp intake of breath, I answered the call.
After all, I’d only ever had one choice.
ELLE
My heart.
My racing heart dropped into my stomach.
My heart.
It was here and then it was gone.
I could still see it, though. Slick muscle tissue that pounded faster and faster while held in the palms of his hands.
He had the ability to crush it right here and now.
Crush me.
Did he even realize that?
My fingers splayed across the window. My eyes pleaded. My body begged. Words were leaving my lips, but I knew he couldn’t hear them.
Still, I spoke them.
“Logan, I love you. I would never hurt you. I didn’t know what Michael had planned. I just found out two days ago. I wanted to tell you. I reached out to you to tell you what Michael asked me to do. But you didn’t want me. Why are you here? Why are you acting like this? Why won’t you listen to me? Why?”
I was babbling.
Spilling everything I could. Begging him to listen with every ounce of my being.
He placed his hands on his lean hips.
Dropped his head.
Lifted his chin.
Looked at me.
Looked away.
I was still babbling.
Then, as if he could hear me through the glass, he tucked his phone in his pocket and took a step toward me. Then another. And another still. He didn’t stop until his hands splayed against the window right where mine were.
Mirror images of each other.
His stare locked on mine and we spoke to each other in a way we never had.
Deep.
Heartfelt.
True.
Not words.
Emotions.
Emotions that seemed to seep out of his eyes and into mine. Emotions that, if I was reading him right, mimicked my own.
Could that be?
After a moment, or two, or maybe three, he slowly removed his hands from the glass and the connection was lost. When he started to walk away, I knew I had read him wrong.
Like a rag doll, I collapsed to the floor on my knees. Burying my face in my hands, I cried for everything in my life I’d lost, for what I was doing, for who I was—the weak, pathetic girl my father had always known me to be.
“I am listening,” he said in that low, husky voice that did something to my insides.