Chapter 12
I put Havoc in her field and was walking back to the house when it started to rain. I heard the motorcycle start up minutes later, and a wave of relief swept over me. I didn’t know where he was going, and I didn’t care as long as it wasn’t here.
The reality was I had no idea who Logan was—the man I fell in love with or the son of a sadistic, ruthless Raul. Was he taking over his father’s business now that he was dead? Maybe he was here to take me back?
Somewhere inside me, I knew that wasn’t true. I’d escaped because of him. He’d managed to get Deck to Mexico to get me out. I’m not sure how or why, but that was how it went down.
When I’d left Logan that night all I knew was that Deck’s men stayed behind. I never asked what happened, and Deck never told me. I had assumed the FBI had gone after Raul when I told them what happened. But why had it taken two years? And why wasn’t Logan arrested if he was with his father?
I leaned over the fence and watched as Havoc galloped across the field toward her herd. The rain teemed down on me, and I closed my eyes, tilted my face to the sky, and let it trickle down my cheeks.
It felt cool after the blazing heat of the day. Within seconds my T-shirt was soaked and my breeches stuck to my thighs like Velcro.
I shook out my wet hair and ran my fingers through it. An image of Logan caressing my head, stroking my hair—
I slammed my palms into the fence and curled them. No. Stop.
I leaned my forehead against the cedar rail while the rain pounded hard onto my back and shoulders.
I’d liked it, his touch. How he was with me. I felt empty without him. Damn it, what was wrong with me?
My therapist had said the thoughts of what happened would fade, that with hard work and reconstructions, I’d stop hearing the girls screams and having nightmares. But she didn’t know everything; she had no idea that I loved the man that brought me into that world. To her he was a stranger who kidnapped me and took me to Mexico to be a sex slave.
Sliding down to the ground, I sat with my knees tucked up under my chin and my arms wrapped around them.
For two years I’d been able to keep Logan locked up inside of me. My therapist and I worked through what I’d witnessed and suffered, and the nightmares did fade. When she began pushing to know more about what I endured from the hands of the “stranger”, that was when I quit therapy. I refused to speak to Kat and Matt about what happened. Kat begged and pleaded with me to talk, but I couldn’t. She knew about Logan and how I felt about him and I wanted to forget, not relive the humiliation.
But eventually they both stopped asking, and I slipped into my void of living. Georgie came by a few times a week, and she was her usual self, no-holds-barred Georgie. She told me about her brother Riot, and we talked about the loss and how Deck had been overprotective of her ever since.
My tears flowed like the rain, slipping down my cheeks as I rocked back and forth, the needles pounding into me. I cried. I don’t know why really. I just did. And it hurt. Seeing Logan tore me open, and I was bleeding, and the thing was I didn’t know how to stop it.
“Mouse.”
I jerked, raising my head. He stood in front of me, soaking wet, water dripping down his face like teardrops.
I stopped rocking. He looked like the man I loved standing there, with his hands tucked in his front jean pockets, a little uncomfortable, maybe unsure of himself. No, Logan was never uncertain.
He stepped closer.
“Emily.” His voice. It was strained and harsh like it was when we ... we were together. He crouched in front of me, the rain having soaked his T-shirt, revealing the dark ink on his skin.
Logan had never left me. He’d always been in me, yet I’d denied it. Fought it because it was wrong. It was abnormal. I had to be crazy to still love this man, and yet ... some fragment of my soul did. I don’t think it would ever be cut out. But I’d keep trying.
He reached for me.
“Stay away.” I punched him in the chest then in the shoulder, my fists like drum sticks hitting him over and over again. “Why are you doing this to me? Just leave.”
He held me by the shoulders, eyes never leaving my face, his expression calm as he let me assault him until I was exhausted. I closed my eyes and fell backward until I was sitting in the wet grass, chest heaving and fists throbbing.
“You done?”
My eyes flew open, and I raised my hand and slapped him across the face. The resounding sound echoed, and the palm of my hand stung like I’d slapped a marble countertop as hard as I could. I didn’t care. I wanted it to hurt. I needed the pain.
I made a strange moan in the back of my throat and went to slap him again, but this time he caught my wrist.
“Once I’ll take. Not twice.”
When I relaxed my arm, Logan let me go. He took off his jacket and tried to wrap it around me, but I pushed him away. His frown lowered and eyes darkened as he relented and threw it over the fence instead. And it was him yielding, because Logan did what he wanted, and if he chose to wrap a friggin’ jacket around me he would.
I stared as the familiar crevices of his chest molded through his tight, wet T-shirt. Get a grip. He let me be tortured. He humiliated me.
I bit the inside of my cheeks until it was so painful that I remembered what I’d suffered with Logan was a billion times more. “You left. I heard the motorcycle—”
“I put it in the garage, out of the rain.”
“Well, I don’t want it in my garage.”
He ignored me. “We need to talk about this.” He reached for my hand; his eyes were downcast and glassy, yet hard.
Emotions I’d hidden away torpedoed to the surface. No. I don’t want this.
I shot for the house, but Logan was a fighter, quick and agile. He ran after me then snagged my hand, swung me back around, and trapped me against a tree trunk.
“You’re ... scared and angry, and you’re entitled.” He stared at me, and I remained frozen, droplets of rain sliding down my cheeks. “Eme, I’m not here to take you away. I’m here to tell you what happened.”
“I was there, remember, I know exactly what went down.”
“No Eme, you don’t.” His eyes narrowed when I went to argue. I kept quiet. With Logan you learned when to pick your battles; this one wasn’t one of them. “Believing the shit you are right now is eating away at you.” How did he know that? “The truth, Mouse. You have to hear the truth. I couldn’t let Deck tell you anything until Raul was dead, it was too risky ... And I wanted to tell you myself.”
I did realize that he helped me get out. It just wasn’t enough to erase everything else.
His arms caged me in as he leaned forward, his chest inches from mine, water droplets glistening on his tanned skin. He leaned closer, and I turned my head to the side. A spark ignited as his breath hit my skin just below my ear. A deep throbbing within me weakened my resolve to beat him with my fists.
“You are not shutting me out like you’ve done everyone else for the last two years.” How did he know that too? His lips were so close to my skin that if I took a deep breath they’d touch. Tears teetered-tottered on the edge of my lids.
“Don’t.” It was me begging, because I couldn’t tell him no any other way.
He tucked my wet hair behind my ear. “Eme, look at me.”
I sucked in air as his hand cupped my chin and brought my head forward to face him. I kept my eyes downcast, afraid to look at him and get lost within the chocolate depths. “Sculpt, you have to let me go.”
“Never ask me to do that.”
I stiffened and tightened my jaw as I ground out. “Nothing you say will make a difference. Not anymore.”
“I’m asking here.”
Logan never asked. If I gave him this would he leave me alone? “Say what you need to then I want you out of my life.”
He drew back, but still I could feel his breath on my face. “Raul—”
I stiffened and blurted out, “The man who had me waterboarded? Who dehumanizes girls? Who held a gun to my head? Are you referring to your f*cking father?”
He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Yes, Emily. Yes. He was my father, but I didn’t choose him just like you didn’t choose your mother.” Okay, point, my mother was unkind and selfish who cared for nothing except her next drink. She didn’t even know what had happened to me, not that she’d care. “Do you think I didn’t want to shoot every single disgusting lowlife in there? Do you think I didn’t want to shove that f*ckin’ gun down my father’s throat and pull the goddamn trigger?” I looked at my feet feeling vulnerable ... fine, I was feeling very vulnerable. Logan was always in control, and right now with his brows lowered, his jaw tight and his voice raised, Logan was losing that control.
“Emily. Please. Look at me.” I did. “Everything that happened gutted me. I trained every morning to try and control the fury that was raging through me. So I didn’t get you killed by screwing everything up. Damn it, Eme. I need you to look at me while I tell you this.” I hadn’t realized I was staring down again. Really, I was trying not to listen. I didn’t want to hear what he was telling me. I’d managed just fine believing what I did, and I couldn’t handle changing it. “I’ve lived two years knowing you hate me.” He shoved away from the tree, from me, and ran his hands through his soaking wet hair. “Tell me. What else was I supposed to do? I did everything I could to save you.”
I lay my head back against the trunk of the tree and closed my eyes feeling sick to my stomach. I was confused and uncertain. His eyes were filled with this destructive blaze of anger that was ... could it be pain? Was it real pain? Or was it a front? More lies.
I shook my head back and forth. No. No. Logan had watched. He’d done nothing. He’d driven me across the country to his father’s compound of hell. Why hadn’t he killed Jacob instead of driving me three days to Mexico? Dave had been his friend, he could’ve helped him. Why hadn’t he just taken me someplace else to escape? He was a fighter; he could’ve fought.
No. Logan was just as guilty as his father.
He walked back toward me and leaned forward, hands braced against the tree on either side of me. He put his finger under my chin and kept it there. “Baby.”
I wanted to run and hide. Forget he was ever here.
“My mother was Raul’s slave for seventeen years.” Oh God. My knees weakened at his words. I hadn’t even thought of Logan’s mother. “She became pregnant with me within a year of her capture. Raul wasn’t happy about it until I was born a boy. Then he made plans for me.”
“The fighting,” I murmured.
He nodded. “My mother tried to protect me from that shit you saw, Eme. But in a place like that, it wasn’t easy. I met Dave, and we both trained since we were five years old for the ring. That’s all we did. I can’t remember much else besides hanging out with Dave and fighting. We did go to school, but no one would talk to us. I imagine that was because of Raul. No one wanted to mess with anything of his.
“Raul had me in my first fight at twelve. I was gangly and hadn’t bulked out, but I was agile and determined.” He paused, and I felt his breath on my skin as he breathed in and out. “I was never part of what you saw in the dining room, Mouse. Never. Raul didn’t care that I wasn’t, because he was focused on me fighting, and he didn’t want girls clouding my focus.
“My mother, she kept me real. She taught me what she remembered of her life, values, morals, what was wrong about my father and the life I grew up in.”
“How old was she?”
“When she was taken?”
I nodded.
“Eighteen.”
I lowered my head, and the rain hit the tip of my nose. God, that must have been terrifying and horrible, and she was there for so long, and here I was moaning about fifteen days.
“My mother had been planning to get us out for years. Finally an opportunity came, and she took it. We escaped.”
I asked the question that I was afraid to ask. “Did you want to leave?”
He closed his eyes for a minute. “It’s all I knew. Despite the stories my mother told me, that place was where I spent sixteen years of my life.” The back of his hand stroked my cheek, and I wanted to lean into it, instead I pulled away. “Still, I hated that place. Every second of it. I fought to stay away from everything else, but I saw what went on there. The girls, the hurt, violence, the drugs.
“My mother and I needed money after we escaped, so I continued the fighting, but I never liked it. I did what had to be done, Emily. That was one thing I learned to survive my father, determination and the will to do what you have to. Giving up doesn’t exist for me.
“That’s how he found me. He tracked fighting circuits, sending his men to look for me. Took him eight years, but word reached him about an undefeated Sculpt, and he showed up at one of my fights.”
“The night I asked you to help me.”
He nodded.
“Is that why you moved up your tour date?”
“Yes. I had to leave. I had to get out of the fighting world, but it was too late. I thought once I refused to fight for him, he’d leave it alone, and he did for a month or so. I should’ve known better. Raul gets what he wants. And he wanted me fighting for him.” He looked up and met my eyes. “I would’ve done it for however long he wanted me to if he’d promised to leave you alone.”
My breath hitched. He couldn’t do this to me. He couldn’t make it better. I wasn’t sure I could handle the truth.
He lowered his head while he ran his hand through his hair. “But you don’t know him. He doesn’t work that way. I knew that. Anyone who knows him does. He finds your weakness and destroys you with it.”
“And I was your weakness.”
“You and my mother. Raul had men on her, if I didn’t show up with you in Mexico, she was to be killed and not just a gunshot to the head. Raul’s kills are long, slow, and agonizing.” That was why he never attempted to take off with me when we drove to Mexico. “Before I saw you, after you were taken by Alfonzo ... I contacted Deck. He was out of the country, but he dropped everything to come back. He told me what I had to do and what needed to go down. Deck managed to get my mother out from under Raul’s men within four days.”
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I let it go when he said that. He continued, “That’s when I had to be really careful with how I treated you. Raul knew my mother was gone from his clutches and all he had was you for leverage. He didn’t trust me, and I had to convince him that I was there because I wanted to fight and ... and that you meant nothing to me except a slave I wanted to f*ck. If he knew how much I cared ... it was the only way to save you. I needed to give Deck time.”
“But why didn’t you tell me? We were alone most of the time. You could have told me, Logan.”
“Answer me this, Emily. If I’d told you all this, would you have feared me? Would you have trembled? Would you have had that look of fear in your eyes?”
I knew the answer. No. I would’ve feared the place and Raul and Alfonzo, but I’d always feel protected by Logan. But none of it really mattered, because I still felt like I’d been ripped apart and was trying to put my pieces back together. “I feel broken.”
His hand slipped into my hair. “We’ll fix this.”
I turned my head to avoid his touch. “Sculpt.” I saw him flinch when I avoided using his real name. “It’s too late. We can’t go back. I can’t. I’m sorry ... God, what you grew up with, what happened to you and your mother ... it’s horrible, unthinkable, but I ... Sculpt, I want to move on with my life, and you’re a reminder of what I want to forget.”
“Mouse—”
“Maybe it is what you had to do. But when I look at you now, I’m not sure who I see, the man I fell in love with or the cold, expressionless man that watched me suffer and made me fear him.” I took a deep breath and said the words I needed to say to save my already damaged heart. “What I’m sure of ... is that I’m better without either one.”
I turned, slipped under his arm, and ran through the raging rain. I heard him shouting my name and curse several times before I reached the house. I went into my room, shut the door and leaned up against it, my chest heaving in and out and my nerves shooting off like the Fourth of July.
After I caught my breath I took off my soaking wet breeches and shirt then dried myself off and slipped on jeans without even searching for underwear. I had no doubt Logan would come after me. My running would not deter him from finishing what he started. I grabbed my pink T-shirt from my bed and pulled it over my head just as the door swung open.
Logan stood in the doorway with his hands braced on either side. He looked determined and impenetrable. Water droplets fell off the tips of his hair, and his T-shirt was plastered to his broad, hard chest. There was no softness in his eyes; he was hard and determined with glistening moisture clinging to his skin.
He stole my breath away, and for a moment I couldn’t move. It was his authority that made my body hyperaware. It was like this basic need in me begging to be fulfilled.
“Maybe I’m like him. Because I’d have killed, murdered ... I would’ve done it all if he’d sold you. I’d have done those things to get you back. Yes, I watched you being whipped, fondled, dragged away, knowing you were going to be tortured. And yes, my own father held a gun to your head and I had to walk away or risk him killing you, just to make a point.” His hands tightened on the wood frame of the door. “And I’d do it again. Because there was no f*ckin’ way he was taking you from me. You get that, Emily? That’s what this is about. I did what had to be done. You survived. And I’m telling you right now, growing up with him, knowing what that shit was like, you wouldn’t have survived being sold, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. So, I did what I had to do, and so did you.”
I sat on the bed, folding my trembling hands in my lap.
A tear slipped from its captivity, and I was furious at it. He didn’t deserve my tears. “I hate what you did to me.”
“You hate what I pretended to be. You hate that I wasn’t your knight in shining armor. You hate that I made you fear me. But don’t run from the truth, Eme. You want to hide behind your Lego blocks and not take the chance at being vulnerable again. But the truth is you’re more vulnerable now, because you are hiding.”
“You made me this way. You made me vulnerable,” I shouted.
“That’s bullshit. You were strong as hell fighting Raul and Alfonzo. Shit, you held a gun to me.” He walked toward me, and his hands ran up my arms then back down again. “Mouse, we can fix this.”
“It’s not just broken, Sculpt. It’s shattered.”
He remained quiet, eyes meeting mine.
He watched me, and I continued to brush away the stupid tears that refused to stop.
“This. Us. It hurts too much.” My words barely slipped from my mouth before he was lifting me up and kissing me. A slow, long kiss moving across my mouth like we’d been melted together.
His hands came on either side of my head as his kiss grew harsher, his tongue slipping inside, his grip on me tightening. It was so fresh and raw, as if both of us had been starved for one another.
I tasted the salt of my tears on my tongue as his mouth took mine in a sweet urgency.
My body responded, remembering the taste of him, the feel of him against my skin, and it wanted more and that terrified me.
“No.” I pushed on his chest, and he backed away.
“Emily.”
A part of me, the side that was completely crazy for this guy, wanted to leap in his arms and devour him. But there was so much crippling anguish inside me. And I suspected him too. At his father, and himself. We were bound to destroy one another more than we were already. “This can’t happen, Sculpt.”
“Try, baby.”
I shook my head back and forth. “I did. I hoped. I tried to believe you were the man I first met. But you snuffed that out every morning, and then when you let me go ...”
“I had to be cruel, Eme. I was losing control, and I knew you saw it. You were beginning to have faith in me again. I needed you to leave.”
“Why? Why, damn it. Why didn’t you just come with me then?”
“F*ck.” He ran his hand through his hair and groaned. “Raul ... wanted me. He used you to make sure he had me. So, it was imperative I stayed, so he wouldn’t come after you.”
I choked on my sob. I didn’t want to believe him, yet I saw the truth like a flashing beacon in front of me. It was so much easier to bury the past than to have it plastered in front of me. And the reality was ... when I looked at Logan it hurt, and I didn’t want hurt anymore.
“I can’t do this.”
“Emily.”
“No. Please. I can’t.”
His eyes darkened for several seconds, and I shifted under his intensity. A tremor of fear slithered through me, and I wrapped my arms around my chest like a shield.
He strode to the door and turned. I recognized the look, because I often had it in my eyes whenever I looked in the mirror—torment. “I won’t walk away from us.”
“Sculpt—”
“You need time—I get that. But I won’t give up.”
“You can’t stay here. I live here and—”
“I own the f*ckin’ place, Emily. You’ve been living on my farm for two years.”