Before I Ever Met You

“It’s okay,” he says. “I get it.”


“Do you really?” I retort and I realize this is the closest that either of us have gotten to talking about the elephant in the room.

He shoots me a sharp look, his brows furrowed. “Yeah, I think I do.”

“And that’s all you have to say about it?”

He looks away, swallows thickly. A faint tic appears on his firmly-set jaw.

“You can’t blame me,” I go on. “How I feel about you. What you did.”

“No, I can’t,” he says.

I growl in frustration, wanting to just address the damn thing and have it over with, be done with it. “Why did you do it?”

Silence. Eventually he says, “Do what?” His voice is hollow.

“Why did you do to my sister what Erik did to me?”

“It’s hardly the same,” he says.

“It hurt Juliet didn’t it? Then it’s the same.”

More silence. He breathes in, breathes out. My nerves are prickling, head to toe, waiting, wanting, dying for a reason not to hate him anymore.

“The truth hurts, Freckles,” he says with some finality.

“That’s all you’ve got?”

He glances at me, his eyes shining in the dark. “You do know I loved your sister.”

“How could I ever believe that?” I ask incredulously, feeling the need to get up and walk away.

“Because I’m telling you I did,” he says.

“Actions speak louder than words!”

“I know,” his tone is getting harder, an edge that could part hair. “And short of you being witness to our marriage, you’re not going to understand. You won’t allow yourself.”

I shake my head, my cheeks turning hot. “You cheated on her. You had an affair. She told me this. She told everyone this. This is why everyone hates you.”

“And why you hate me,” he says simply. In the light of the moon, his eyes look dull.

“You want me to hate you!” I cry out, now getting to my feet.

“Maybe I do,” he says, staring up at me with venom. “Would it make you feel better to know why?”

“Because you have a guilty fucking conscious!” I yell, throwing my arms out. One hits the tarp, spilling water onto the path. I don’t know why I’m so angry, and I know this is the last place we should be having it out, but everything I’ve kept buried is boiling to the top and spilling out of my mouth.

“I do have a guilty conscious,” he fires back. “But not for the reason you think.”

We stare at each other for a few beats. The world is reduced to a dark, bittersweet syrup. It’s him and me. Whatever desolation I felt moments before has been replaced with the acute feeling that there’s nothing beyond this, beyond us. Like the world has moved chess pieces to get us to this moment. My blood hums.

“Then what is the reason?” I manage to ask, my voice sounding so small, so wrecked.

His gaze never wavers from mine. Whatever he’s trying to say, he’s saying it with his eyes. They burn, like fire, like a primal element, a basic need I’m just discovering in myself.

“I don’t think you’re ready to hear it,” he says.

And then I snap out of it. Push through the syrup, find my clarity. The man is a joke. He may have saved my life, he may have told me things I wanted to hear, but the fact remains that he cheated on my sister and he’s too much of a chicken-shit to even own up to it. He’s just trying to get me to run around in circles instead of looking the truth in the eye. I did that with Erik. I’m not going to do that with him.

“Fuck you,” I tell him and turn on my heel, stomping off into the forest, heading up, up, up the slippery path, branches and leaves slapping at my bare legs.

“Where the hell are you going?” I hear him yell from behind me, but the moon is lighting up the path clearly and soon I’m running, tears welling in my eyes, running away from everything I’m feeling.

I know I’m overtired, I know I’ve been through a lot, I know my body is hurting from the day and that I’m more than lucky to be alive. And I know that I owe Logan. But everything is coming to a head and I don’t know how to deal with it. The way he was with Juliet, the way Juliet was with me, the humiliation with Erik.

The deep-seated need I have to believe that Logan is a good guy, to trust him, to put my faith in him. I think I want that more than anything, even though that scares me because I don’t know what good could come of it. And then to have him be nothing more than another Erik at the most basic level.

Serves me right for even having feelings for him to begin with.

“Stop!” I hear Logan yell from behind me, and with my blurred vision I’m swerving, stumbling into trees and boulders, the ground slipping beneath my feet. I head toward the foliage to stop my fall.

Suddenly a strong hand is wrapped around my elbow, literally pulling me back mid-step.

“Don’t. Move. Another. Fucking. Step.”

Logan’s hot breath is at my neck.

“Let go of me,” I seethe, my teeth nearly grinding together.

My body stiffens.

His grip tightens.

“One step and you’d go right over the edge of the cliff. They’d be scraping your body off the rocks in the morning.”

The gravity in his tone is leveling. And yet, some rebellious, stubborn part of me wants to test his theory.

I move.

He yanks me back.

“That’s it,” he growls.

Before I can even protest, he’s picking me up like I weigh nothing more than a feather and carrying me back to the campsite. His arms are like fucking tree trunks wrapped across my chest.

Naturally, I fight against him. I’m angry. I don’t want to go sailing off cliffs but I don’t want to be in this makeshift campsite with him either, and I obviously don’t want to be manhandled like he’s an actual Neanderthal.

It doesn’t do me much good. He sits back down where we were before, his back against the cliff, the dead fire at our feet.

But he doesn’t let go of me. I’m held against him tight, my back against his hard chest, my ass pressed against his crotch. I can feel his breaths coming in and out, his heart pounding against my spine. He’s breathing hard against my ear; my head is back against his collarbone.

“This is ridiculous,” I tell him, my words caught in my throat.

“Agreed,” he says gruffly, his voice causing the skin on my neck to prickle. “But I’m not going to let you march out into that jungle just because you’re pissed at me.”

“I won’t go.” I try and move again but he holds on tighter.

“Easy, Freckles,” he murmurs, his lips dangerously close to my ear.

“Ronnie,” I manage to blurt out. “It’s not Freckles, it’s not Veronica, it’s Ronnie.”

“I know,” he says, his arms not loosening. “And I’ll call you what everyone else doesn’t.”