So I said, “Okay.”
He swept his thumb from my mouth to the flesh under my cheek and pressed in lightly.
Then he went on.
“I held you down for that,” he continued to explain. “I held you down, coverin’ that ink. You were not faceless *, Millie. You could never be that and you fuckin’ know it. Even if you forgot, what came after woulda told you that shit couldn’t be true.”
“What came after wasn’t much healthier,” I shared hesitantly.
He moved back an inch and tilted his head slightly. “Yeah? You think?”
What?
He didn’t?
“Of course,” I said quietly. “You were there. You have to think the same thing too.”
“Three weeks ago when I didn’t have it all, maybe. Now. Fuck no.”
“It wasn’t healthy, Logan.”
“I couldn’t get enough of you, Millie.”
I drew in a sharp breath.
“Couldn’t get you outta my head. Didn’t rest until I found a new reason to get in your space. Found those reasons, got in your space. If I didn’t give a fuck about you, I wouldn’t have followed you for forty-five fuckin’ minutes, from the second I laid eyes on you at Bill’s rally, and found my shot to get in your face. If you didn’t mean shit to me, I’da seen you and put you out of my head. I didn’t. I got in your face. You kissed me. I fucked you. And I kept comin’ back for more.”
Okay.
Damn.
Okay.
Shit.
That made sense.
“And you,” he continued. “If you didn’t give a shit about me, you moved on, you would not have seen me buyin’ a burrito and come lookin’ for me. You woulda heard what I said, felt what that meant, and went on with your life. You didn’t. You found me. You kissed me. You took my cock. And even with how I took that from you, when I kept comin’ back for more, you kept takin’ it. You didn’t want it, you know you made that clear, I woulda been gone. You did not make that clear. You entered that fucked-up game we were playin’ because you needed what you got, unhealthy or not. Just like me when it comes to you, you’d take what you could get.”
You’d take what you could get.
I would. With Logan, I would.
Until the day I died.
I tried to turn my face away, to get some sort of privacy to process his words, but he put pressure on to keep my focus on him.
“I need you to get off me, Logan,” I whispered.
“You did wrong,” he replied.
I stared up at him.
“You did wrong and only hindsight makes that clear. No way in fuck, baby, no way in fuck you shoulda made the decision you made to end us all on your own. You shoulda told me.”
My heart started hammering with a different kind of panic and my words were still whispers when I said, “But you told me you got it.”
“You were twenty-one, way too fuckin’ young to have what we had, feel what that meant, know we had a lot of life before us, and have enough of it under your belt to make the right choice. I remember bein’ twenty-four and feelin’ you put an end to us so I can go back there and know where you were at and why you did what you did. But it still was wrong.”
“Please, Logan—”
“You should have told me.”
I shut my mouth and pressed my lips together so they wouldn’t quiver.
He slid his thumb back to them, gentle this time, and rested the pad against my lips.
“You should have told me,” he whispered. “?’Cause now I can’t prove to you you were all I wanted. You were all I needed. You took that shot away from me and it was as important then as it is now that you know that to your bones, Millie. You gave me what you thought I had to have and I’m grateful, so fuckin’ grateful, baby. When you meet Cleo and Zadie, you’ll get just how grateful that is. I love my girls. Fuckin’ love ’em, the lights of my life. But it’s the goddamned, motherfuckin’ truth that I would have had all I needed. I would have had everything if all I had in life was you. And you took away my shot to show you that. You also took away any shot I had of helpin’ you through gettin’ the knowledge we couldn’t have a family and buildin’ a new dream together and that cuts just as deep. You made those decisions on your own without sharing with me. And that was wrong.”
When you meet Cleo and Zadie.
My voice was trembling when I demanded, “You have to get off me.”
He put pressure on my head.
“You are not gettin’ me,” he growled.
I thought he had all my attention but the way he said that, I found myself giving him more.
“This is not me layin’ the guilt on you,” he carried on. “This is not me plantin’ more shit in your head to fuck with it. I told you I got it, I get it. Back then, twenty-four, knowin’ how bad you wanted kids, knowin’ how bad we both wanted to build a family, findin’ out it was me who’d take that from you, I love you so goddamned much, I couldn’t bear it. I wouldn’t be able to live with that burden for a lifetime with you. And I woulda done everything I could to make myself a man unworthy of you, make sure you knew it. It’d kill me. But I’d live life dead inside knowin’ I gave that to you.”
His face got close again and I held my breath.
“So I get it. I get what you did for me ’cause back then I’d do the same. And you gave me what you thought I needed and I’m grateful, Millie. But outta that over the years we both got somethin’ else. We’re not young and stupid and so caught up in love we’re blind. We got life under our belts and we know better now. So, what I’m sayin’ is, in future, learn from what we lost and don’t ever do shit like that again.”
In future.
Was he saying...??
“In future?” I choked.
“In future,” he stated plainly.
“I...?you...?we...” I shook my head in his hands. “Are you saying we should start up where we left off?”
His comeback was instant.
“Did it ever end for you?”
My body jerked under him and my fingers formed fists on the bed at my sides.