by Maisey Yates
Someone grabbed his arm, to stop him and speak to him, most likely. He pulled away from them and kept walking.
The floor was moving again. And he had to get out. He had to get away.
Suddenly she was in front of him, her face serious. She put her hand on his cheek, and instantly he felt her calm seeping into him.
He jerked back as if she’d hit him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I have to go,” he said. “I’m done here. This is done.”
He moved through the people, all of whom were staring. And he just didn’t give a damn. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think.
He pushed open the double doors that separated the ballroom from the lobby, and tore his tie off, wrenched his collar open, a button popping off and rolling across the marble floor.
“Logan!” she called after him, her high heels clicking on the floor.
“I said…” He stopped and turned, his entire chest seizing up, holding tight to the feelings she’d poured into him earlier, trying to keep them from escaping because after this, they wouldn’t be there at all, she wouldn’t be there. “…this is done.”
“Have you called your driver? I’m ready to leave if you are.”
“No, Addison,” he said, his throat clamping down hard, trying to keep him from speaking. “We’re done.”
“What?”
“We. Are. Done.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You said yourself, only a half hour ago, that you knew I wasn’t going to marry you, so don’t stand there looking doe-eyed and shocked.”
“Logan,” she said, her voice a fierce whisper. “I know that it was never going to be that, but we’re not done. This isn’t done.”
He charged forward, his body shaking with adrenaline, with need. He wanted to pull her against him. To kiss her. Stake a claim on her that could never be undone.
He wouldn’t let himself, but he kept moving forward. She backed up, her eyes wide. With fear. Fear of him. Good. She should be afraid of him. She should never have let him touch her the way she did.
She should want to run.
Because he was dangerous to her. Not to her body. He would never hurt her exquisite, beautiful body. But her soul—and she had a soul—that he would destroy.
He would tear pieces off to fuel his own existence, until he consumed it all. Left her with nothing. It cost her to be with him. And it was something he’d been ignoring. And it was something he could no longer allow to go on.
Her back hit the wall and he pressed his hands against it, caging her, her scent, her warmth, teasing him, taunting him with what he couldn’t have.
He slipped his hand around her neck, felt her pulse flutter beneath his thumb. Steady. Real. Strong.
He had taken the life of a woman before. Felt it drain from her beneath his hands. He would be damned if he did the same to Addison. Even if it wouldn’t be a physical death, it would be a death. And she’d been through enough.
He had no right to have his hands on her like this even now, and yet he found himself savoring the moment. The smooth texture of her skin. The evidence of her life. Evidence he hadn’t destroyed her entirely.
He moved his thumb across her pulse. Just one more beat. Two more. Then he would release her.
She just stood still, her eyes wide, filling with tears. What a bastard he was, to touch her now. To draw strength from her now.
“I don’t want you anymore,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw, his hand tightening on her.
“You’re a liar,” she whispered, a teat sliding down her cheek.
“Don’t,” he bit out. “Don’t shed any tears for me.”
Another tear escaped, defiant. Angry. “I will shed tears for whoever and whatever I want, Logan Black. I won’t hold them in to make you comfortable. To make anyone comfortable. I belong to myself,” she ground out, jerking away from his hold. “Not to you. Not to my father. Not to my brother and not to the Treffen empire. I am my own. And I will weep when I damn well please, and laugh when I see fit. I will not be who they want me to be, or who or what you want me to be.”
“You don’t have to be,” he said, stepping away. “Because I’m not your problem anymore. I will have your things sent to the address of your choosing.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why are you doing this? So you can go back to being alone? So you can go back to sleeping on the floor, unable to look out a window? I don’t understand, Logan.”
“That’s the beautiful thing, Addison. I am no longer your problem. You don’t have to understand.”
“You never left the island,” she said, shaking her head. “And now that you feel like you have? You’re desperately swimming back to the shore. And I want to know why.”
You never left the island.
“I was playing a game with you. Playing at being someone else. At being a man who could have something…No one else left, Addison. Why the hell should I? Answer that question.”
“Because you aren’t dead,” she shouted, the words echoing in the empty corridor. “You’re breathing. Your heart is beating. Have some respect for that. You said you were selfish. You said you would always choose yourself, but you’re choosing to be a corpse. And that’s not the same thing.”
“I’m selfish,” he said. “And the fact that you’ve seemed to convince yourself otherwise is just another reason you should walk away. I would drain you until there was nothing left, and cast you aside. I can’t love you. I can’t give to you. Being with me will be your ruin.”
“That’s my choice to make.”
“No, it’s mine.”
He turned and started to walk away.
“Logan…please,” she said, her words broken.
He turned to her, a past plea mingling with hers. Salt in the open wound that was festering in his chest. An infection that was killing him, as surely as Kelly’s had killed her.
Logan, please.
She’d begged him. Begged him to make her pain end because it was the only fix for the situation they were in. A situation he had put them in.
She’d begged for death at his hands. But before he’d ever touched her, he had sentenced her. Everyone on the boat.
He looked into Addison’s eyes and he saw…caring. For him. For a monster.
He turned away again.
“Coward,” Addison said. “You aren’t afraid of what you can’t give. You’re afraid of what being with me will force you to do. You’re afraid to move on.”
“Maybe you’re just afraid to accept the fact that the novelty of fucking a virgin has worn off for me,” he spat.
He could hear her sharp, indrawn breath. The sob that followed.
He hated himself. He had hated himself for four years. But this was a new low. A new depth to it. But if he stayed, it would be worse. For her. For him.
He walked away. Out of the building and into the cold. And even though it nearly killed him, he never once looked back.
Addison stood in the empty lobby of one of Logan’s biggest hotels, her hands shaking. Her entire body shaking.
Yes, she’d known he didn’t love her back. That it wasn’t going to last forever. She had. She really had. She’d known it would end.
But not today. She hadn’t been ready for it to end today.
Or tomorrow.
And she knew that cycle would go on and on, because there would never be a good day to lose him.
The man who’d helped her find her strength. The man who’d helped her find herself. The man who was sinking into the darkness and wouldn’t let anyone pull him out.
She heard doors open behind her, and saw her brother, his fiancée, Katy, at his side. “What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “He…left. And, um…I think I need a place to stay for a little while. Until I…get it together. And…figure out when I’m going back to school and things.”
Katy frowned. “Are you okay?”
Addison shook her head.
“No. But…what else is new?”
Katy grabbed her and put her arm around her shoulders, squeezing tight. “You can come stay with us.”
Addison laughed. “Austin’s been avoiding that.”
“And I regret it now,” he said, his lips thin, his expression grim.
“Don’t, Austin,” she said, starting to shiver now, in spite of the warmth of Katy’s arm. “We both have way too many things we regret that we didn’t even do. So don’t waste time regretting any of my romantic choices. He was my mistake to make.” Even as she spoke the words, she didn’t believe he was a mistake.
How could she regret him? Even while her insides felt as if they’d been torn into bloody shreds, how could she regret him?
Because of him, she was strong enough to handle this. To handle the pain he was meting out. Ironic. But she’d stepped into this storm of her own free will. She’d opened up her chest and invited the lighting and thunder in.
But instead of making her crumble, she was standing. She was hurting, but she was standing.
She wasn’t just hurting, she was bleeding out. Feeling it with every bit of herself. But there was freedom in it. In this unmitigated pain. Because it was real. She was real. There was no artifice left, nothing in place to protect her. The cost of freedom. Of authenticity.
It was worth it. All the pain. Everything. He had been worth it.
Austin swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I wish we didn’t have to go through crap like that, but I guess we all do.”
“I know I did,” Katy said. “Because you were an ass to me.”
“For your own good.”
“Bleah,” she said, then looked at Addison. “It’s about him. It’s not about you.”
“I know,” Addison said. “But that’s what’s so sad.”
“Yeah,” Katy said, sighing heavily. “I know that feeling.”
“Why am I not surprised my brother put you through crap?”
“How did this become about me?” Austin asked.
“Because, darling,” Katy said, “your general dickheadedness that time you broke up with me is part of the beautiful tapestry of our relationship.”
Addison tried to laugh, but it didn’t really work.
“Let’s go,” Austin said. “No point in hanging around. I’ll have your things collected.”
“He’s sending them.”
“Then I will happily send the address to the hotel,” Austin said, sounding more homicidal than happy. “We’ll get through this, Addison. All of it.”
Addison managed a slight smile. “I know.”
Though she wondered if, for her, getting through this meant accepting that this pain had become a part of who she was.
Just as Logan had become a part of her.
Because as she’d changed, she’d formed in a way that allowed him to fit perfectly into her life. Into who she was. She was only sorry he hadn’t done the same.
Chapter Sixteen
Logan punched the bag in the middle of the room, his muscles screaming, blood dripping from his knuckles, splattering onto the bag, rolling down his forearms.
He didn’t care. He didn’t care at all.
He’d been in here for hours. Sit-ups, pull-ups, rope climbing. Trying to burn through the pain. Trying to make his body hurt more than his heart. Until sweat ran down his face, giving him the feeling of tears without getting the satisfaction of shedding any.
He’d cried every last tear he’d ever had on an island far off the coast of South America. And none since. Not since the night Kelly died. No since the night he’d helped her die.
The night he’d killed her.
It always came back to that.
Logan, please.
To that moment. The last person who’d come on board with him, dying instead of surviving.
“Fuck,” he said, dropping to his knees. She was supposed to survive. She’d made it to shore with him. His redemption. She’d been his redemption and then…he’d taken his own salvation when she begged.
But there was no glory in it. In fulfilling her final request. It had left him with nothing but an empty hole in his chest. It had left him alone. It had changed everything in him.
“It should have been me,” he said. “It should have been!” He shouted the last part and it echoed off the walls. But there was no answer to it. There never had been.
You never left the island.
No. He hadn’t. How the hell could he? They hadn’t left. His friends, the crew, Kelly. Lost to the accident and he remained. How did that work? He hadn’t been worth it. He had never done anything to deserve to escape the fate everyone else had suffered. Not before and not since. He leaned forward, his forehead resting on the carpet, his breathing hard, uneven.
He was alone.
Except for Addison. Addison had reached into the darkness. Addison had touched him. Addison had tried to save him.
But he didn’t deserve her. She was a part of a life he couldn’t have. She made him forget.
He couldn’t forget, because if he did…if he did it was as if they never existed. He had to live in those moments, exist in them always because they could never do anything else.
Some would call that being a martyr, but he wasn’t dying for a cause. He was dying for his own sins. Again and again.
Losing Addison was a fresh death. He deserved it.
And more.
He could never make amends.
You never left the island.
And he never could. He never could.
He closed his eyes, and all he could see was a hand reaching through the dark. A hand he couldn’t take. No matter how much he wanted to.
He gritted his teeth against a new wave of pain as it washed over him.
He’d imagined he’d left all feeling behind on that island. He’d come home and been nothing more than a shell. Hadn’t wanted anything. Not comfort. Not the touch of a woman.
But it was all back now.
And he knew, beyond anything, that he loved Addison Treffen. That she was the only thing on this earth that could save him. A man who didn’t deserve to be saved. A wretch who deserved nothing more than death.
But if he went to her, it would damn her. If he put his sin on her, he might keep his head above water for a while, but he’d drown her.
You’re not dead.
He wasn’t dead.
He sucked in a breath and rolled onto his back, gasping, spots in front of his vision. Pain washed through him, pain in his body. Pain in his soul. Rooting him to earth.
Death was a release from pain. The dead didn’t hurt. And he was entirely, utterly filled with unrelenting pain.
He wasn’t dead.
And he loved Addison.
She’d stripped him of it all, his control, his fear. The man he was, the man he’d been. She made him new. With her, he’d found something different entirely. Something elemental and real. First in a physical way, and then…and then emotionally.
She’d set him free. Free of the prison that was his body. Free of the prison that was his mind.
Free of the island. Finally.
He pushed himself into a sitting position. He wasn’t dead. And maybe…there was no point in him being alive if he didn’t actually live.
*
Addison traipsed through her brother’s empty penthouse with a package of Skittles in her hand. She couldn’t even enjoy them. Because they were marred.
Marred by her sadness. Marred because of Logan.
Bastard. He’d broken her heart and her love of Skittles. Some things could be forgiven, but this wasn’t one of them.
Three days. She’d been here for three days. Without any contact with Logan. She’d heard from Nora again—just that she wanted to set up a time when they could go and meet Louise to speak to her about Harlow. Which was good because they needed to make progress on that front, since the police were not helping and her family seemed to have bought in to the whole “off finding herself and multiple
orgasms” thing.
Maybe because that was what people expected of privileged girls in their early twenties, but Addison knew better than that. Harlow wasn’t that inconsiderate, and she wasn’t that flippant about her choices.
Harlow was potentially in serious danger, and Addison was worrying about the state of her heart. Which was possibly terrible and selfish of her. But she couldn’t help it. She’d fallen in loved for the first time, had her whole world rocked, discovered sex and desire, and a layer of darkness that she’d never conceived could be in someone.
And a level of strength and grim determination to survive she’d never known was possible.
She’d wanted to save him. She’d ended up saving herself.
The Addison who hid behind everyone else, everyone else’s dreams and accomplishments, the names and reputations of others, was gone. The Addison who lived to make other people comfortable didn’t exist anymore.
The Addison who would have been horrified by today’s headline—calling her a social climber, attaching herself to one of New York’s biggest businessmen to try and reclaim her reputation—was gone.
She’d come out the other side different. Changed.
But dammit, she’d wanted to save him. And he wouldn’t let her.
Before she realized what she was doing, she cocked her arm back and threw the bag of Skittles across the room, hitting a shiny black vase up on a clear glass table. It fell and shattered, black splinters spraying over the hard floor.
“Argh!” she screamed.
She was just in ruining-everything mode. Except no, she hadn’t ruined what she and Logan shared. He had. He had, the bastard, and she hadn’t even gotten a chance to tell him that she loved him.
What good would it have done?
He would know. He would know that someone loved him. That someone knew everything and wanted him, no matter what. That there was a place for him in her heart. Every broken piece of him.
She took a deep breath, pressure building in her.
She had to tell him. Even if it humiliated her. Even if he turned her away. She had to tell him.
