My heart does a suicide run against my rib cage and smashes into it hard, nearly compressing itself flat. “I...what? But you –”
“Don’t want you around? Can’t stand you? Won’t ever forgive you?” Every word is a bullet fired from the cruel gun of his mouth.
Every one is punctuated by another step closer, while those penetrating eyes hold me in place until I can’t even run from the pain. “Except you’re wrong. I’ve been running away, and I won’t do it anymore. And I won’t let you, either.”
I shake my head. My pulse going so fast I’m almost dizzy, and I curl a hand against my throat as if I can force it to calm. “I don’t understand. I’m not running.”
“Bull. You ran from me today.” He’s so quiet, so calm, but that charged energy is everywhere, latent and bursting. “You’ve been running from confronting this thing between us.”
“I’ve been running because you chased me away!” I flare hotly, then tense, bracing for the blowback of his temper.
Instead he only sits down on the bench next to me, leans forward, and rests his elbows on his knees, a heavy sigh drifting off him.
He’s not quite close enough to touch, but he smells like sea salt and male musk and I don’t think it’s just my pulse making me dizzy. He laces his hands together – so coarse, the ridges between his knuckles rivet me, my brain everywhere, bouncing around trying to find something stable to latch on to.
But I’m left free-floating, and completely unprepared for this conversation that’s been five years in the making.
“I did chase you,” he admits quietly. “Because you saw me for what I really am, and I couldn’t stand disappointing you.”
My mouth works incoherently. How? I want to ask. That word, and so many more. Questions like, What are you saying? That I mattered that much to you...that you cared that much what I thought of you?
And Jesus, if you cared so much, how could you be so cruel?
“Landon...”
He exhales heavily, lowering his eyes, his jaw tightening as he stares at his hands. “I know. I’m not starting this the right way. I’m coming at it sideways. But if you’ll just let me talk, let me get my thoughts out...then I’ll answer anything you want to know.”
I nod feebly. That, I can do. Maybe by the time he’s done talking I can figure out my thoughts and feelings and form words more coherent than “Okay.”
Still, he says nothing for what feels like forever.
I just see him gathering himself, and part of me wants to reach out to touch him, to say it’s okay, but I can’t. I’m afraid if I touch him I’ll break whatever this fragile moment is, this bubble in time when suddenly we’re teenagers again, sitting out under these stringy bright glitter-bulb stars, and he doesn’t hate me.
And he’ll actually talk to me. And look at me. And instead of forcing me away with the pure vibrant force of his anger, we'll find an understanding.
Finally, with a deep exhale that lifts his shoulders heavily, he says, “You shouldn’t have read my journal. But I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did, either. That day years ago, Reb...” His brows draw into a thunderhead. He lifts his clasped hands to press his thumbs against the insides of his eye sockets. “It was too fucking much. I’d just found out what my father was really up to with Crown. Bad shit. Dirty, underhanded black market deals. I don’t know if he was actually involved in the drugs and trafficking, or if he just looked the other way, but it was bad. It cost him everything in the end. His family. His life. His honor.”
My blood chills. I remember Micah Strauss. He’d always had an easy smile on his big square shoulders. He was always kind to me, Steve, and my parents. Never someone I’d label evil.
My jaw hangs open. “Mr. Strauss? Dirty? You're sure?”
Stupid question, but it still falls out. Of course I already know if there was any doubt, Landon wouldn't be the tortured man he's become.
“Yeah. And I was so fucking angry. Angry with him for betraying us. Pissed with myself for not seeing it sooner, and finding some way to save him. There’s part of me that wants to believe he was just a good man who fell in with the wrong people so he'd keep making money for his family. Another part of me curses his fucking name for ever being so vile. I don’t know if I love him or hate him, I just know he’s not here for me to figure it out, and I’m still fucking livid over it – and pissed at myself for not finding out who pulled the trigger.” He lifts haunted, haggard eyes to me.
“I wrote that the same day you read it. And my emotions were a fucking wreck, and you got the brunt of it. But it wasn’t your fault, Reb. Nothing was your fault, really, from then till now.”
I swallow the knot in my throat. This hurts to hear, but I need it. I need it so much. “Then why...? Why did it take you so long to say...?”
“You know why,” he responds grimly. “My father was murdered. Killed. And you’re the only person who knows what I intend to do about it. What was I supposed to say to you after that? You always followed me around with stars in your eyes. Didn’t want to see them go out when you saw me for the monster I am.”
I suck in a breath, focused on one heavy word among many.
Intend, Landon said. Not intended.
So, he hasn’t done it. Not yet. He hasn’t murdered anyone.
But he might.
I shake my head quickly. “You're not a monster,” I manage to choke out.
God, why is this breaking my heart? Why do I want to cry, pull him close, kiss him until he sees that he’s still the same Landon, and I still see that boy with bright blue brilliant stars he gave me reflected in my eyes?
“I ran today because you wanted me to go, Landon. Not because I didn’t want to stay.”
He looks at me with such a desperate, dark-eyed stare that it seems he might say something else – something I painfully need to hear – but instead he continues flatly, “You don’t think I’m a monster? What if I told you the only reason I’m still on this job with Milah is for a chance to sniff out what’s going on at Crown Security and with Dallas? That I don’t give a damn for her and I just want to destroy that fucked up company from the inside-out? Because it ruined my father...”
He’s incandescent, hushed and rough-edged words, leaning in closer to me. Nearly overwhelming me with his presence. “What if I told you, when I find the man who killed my father, I’m going to snap his neck with my own two hands?”
I’m trembling.
Trembling, again, but I lift my chin. Desperately trying to make my shaking, rioting body calm when every last part of me rebels. There’s a small, frightened, animal part of me that’s screaming to run before the predator eviscerates me – but there’s a dark needy twisted part of me wanting to be eviscerated.
One thing you learn writing romance is that part of the appeal in dangerous men is the thrill of flirting with that sharp edge. Knowing he wants you, needs you, loves you too much to ever cut you, but the danger’s there nonetheless.
There’s a reason attraction is terrifying, and fear can be arousing.
The very same reason I made Landon into Logan, and put way too much of myself into those passion stained pages.
It's like a chemistry experiment. Landon ticking every box. Right here. Right now.
I’m scared of him in delicious ways, but hurting for him, too. Aching like I didn't know I could.
“I’m still not afraid of you,” I whisper, and manage a wry smile. “Sorry. Still a starry-eyed idiot, I guess. I don’t see a monster. I see a man faced with complex choices and a lot of pain, and I don’t think you have murder in you.”
“And if I do?” he demands. His eyes crackle, cold and demanding, mysteries and intent and just enough fierceness to steal the breath from my lungs for the hundredth time today.
“Then you do,” I answer, wondering what it means. That if he killed the man who killed his father...I’d see it as a righteous act of vengeance, distasteful as it might be. Not sheer monstrosity.