I sag, my breath leaving me. I burn, and I want to weep. “I don’t know. He’s not here.”
He lets silence hang for a moment. “You’ve walked away from me for him twice now, Isabel. I don’t hold it against you. I understand your position as well as anyone can, I think. But . . . until I’m sure you won’t walk away from me for him a third time, or a fourth, I just . . . I can’t commit all the way. I want you. But I don’t want to share you.”
“You’re not sharing me, Logan. And—” I break off, summon strength from anger. “But you can do all those other things with me, touch me in a way no one ever has, do things with me that I’ve never done before. But you can’t have sex with me?”
He just looks at me. There is sadness in his blue eyes. “Yes, Isabel. I can make you come with my fingers and my mouth. I can touch you, and kiss you . . . I can do all those things. And if you walk away from me, I’ll survive it. I’ll have those memories, for good or ill; I’ll never forget this time with you, whatever happens next.” He pauses to think. “If you were just some girl I was passing time with, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But you . . . you mean something to me, Isabel. If it were just about sexual attraction, I’d be inside you right now. I want that so bad I can fucking taste it. I can feel us, Isabel. But I just—I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if we have sex, it won’t just be having sex. When we do that, it will mean . . . everything. For both of us. And when we do that, I know I won’t be able to quit you, and I won’t be able to let you walk away, and I won’t survive it if you walk away from me.”
“I won’t walk away.”
His eyes blaze. “You can’t say that. You and Caleb have unfinished business. You know it, I know it, and he knows it. And you can’t promise me that if you come face-to-face with him again, you’ll choose me instead of him.”
“Logan—” I say, but I stop because I’m choking. “Damn it, Logan.”
“Say I’m wrong, Isabel.” He touches my chin and I have to look at him. His indigo gaze is the most tortured thing I’ve ever seen. I believe him when he says this is the hardest thing he’s ever done. I see the pain in his eyes. “Sex means something, honey. It does. People pretend like it doesn’t. People pretend like they can just fuck a thousand different people and none of it ever means anything, that it’s just doing what feels good. But if you find that one person who resonates with the music of your soul, when you find that one person whose very presence takes up all the spaces in your heart and makes your soul sing, makes your body feel more alive and beautiful and loved than you’ve ever felt, you realize that sex does mean something. I’m guilty of cheapening it just like everybody else. But I know better. If sex were meaningless, if it were just hormones and fluids and pheromones and a few minutes of pleasure, it wouldn’t hurt when we get cheated on. But it does hurt, because it does mean something. When Leanne cheated on me, it broke something inside me. I tried with Billie, but the longer things went, the more I realized that I was shut off, and that I’d never invested in her, or in any idea of an us between her and me. It was casual sex, just with one person over a long period of time. But it was still empty and meaningless and didn’t fill anything inside me, didn’t resonate. I thought Leanne and I resonated, and she proved me wrong.”
“We resonate, Logan.” My voice cracks at the end.
“I know we do. So powerfully that it makes a joke out of what I thought I felt with Leanne. But I know the power of that now. I know how badly it can wreck me when it—if it goes wrong.”
“So you don’t trust me.”
“Isabel, it’s not that simple. This isn’t a normal situation.”
“I don’t even know what to say.” I’m hurt. I’m angry. And I’m also all too aware how right he is. And that makes me all the more angry. “I need a minute.”
I slide out of the bed, achingly aware that I’m naked, and he’s naked, and I feel the ghosts of his touch on my skin. I can’t help glancing at him as I find the shirt he left for me. He’s still hard, thick, rigid, painfully erect, the outline of his shaft visible against the sheet. Instead of reaching for him like so much of me wants to do, I tug the shirt on. I almost moan at the slide of the downy fabric over my skin, at the smell of Logan on the cotton.
“I’m not leaving,” I tell him. “I’m going in your backyard. I just . . . I need time.”
“Whatever you need.”
“I need you, Logan,” I say, before I have a chance to think better of it.
He leans his head back against the headboard. “Jesus, Isabel.” A smile. “You look good in my shirt.”
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s just a line from a country song.”
His eyes rake over me. My nipples are hard, poking at the fabric. The hem comes to midthigh, and when I reach up to brush my hair back out of my eyes and pull it into a ponytail, the edge rides up and bares my core.