Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

I am drowning in an ocean of darkness. The sky is the sea, dark masses of roiling clouds like waves, spreading in every direction and weighing heavily on me like the titanic bulk of Homer's wine-dark seas. I lie on my back on the rooftop, leftover heat from the previous day still leaching out of the rough concrete and into my skin through the thin fabric of my dress.

I sense a presence as I wake up, but I don't open my eyes. Perhaps you found me. There are only so many places I can be. I feel you sit beside me, and your finger touches my hair, smooths it off my forehead.

But then I smell cinnamon, and cigarettes.

I crack my eyes open, and it isn't you.

"Logan." I whisper it, surprised. "How are you here?"

"Bribes, distraction, it wasn't hard." He shrugs. "You weren't in your apartment. I don't know. I just felt... pulled up here. Like I knew I'd find you up here."

"You shouldn't be here."

He fits a cigarette to his mouth, cups his hands around it, and I hear a scrape and a click. Flame bursts orange, briefly, and then the smell of cigarette smoke is pungent and acrid. His cheeks go concave, his chest expands, and then he blows out a white plume from his nostrils. "No, I shouldn't."

"Then why are you?" I sit up, and I'm self-conscious of that fact that my dress is dirty and wrinkled and has hiked up to nearly my hips, baring far more of me than is proper.

"I had to talk to you."

"What is there to say?"

Your eyes flick shamelessly over me. A breeze kicks up, and my nipples harden, my skin pebbles. Perhaps it isn't the wind so much as Logan, though. His eyes, that strange and vivid blue, his proximity, his sudden and unexpected and inexplicable presence on this rooftop, in my life.

"There's a lot I could say, actually." His eyes, certainly speak volumes.

"Then say it," I say, and it is a challenge.

Smoke curls up from the cigarette between his fingers. "Caleb, he's not who you think he is."

"This is not the first time you've said that," I say. "And you know, do you? Who he really is?"

"Certain things, yes." He takes a long drag on the cigarette, holds it in, blows it out through his nose again.

"You sneaked in here to tell me Caleb's secrets?"

He shakes his head, almost angrily, blond hair waving around his shoulders. "No, I didn't," he confesses. "You made the wrong choice. You should have stayed with me. We could have had something amazing."

"There was never a choice, Logan." It feels a little like a lie.

"Yes, there was." Another long inhalation, exhaling smoke through nostrils like a dragon. "Whatever. Not gonna argue with you about that. What I came here to tell you was that I did some digging."

"What do you mean, digging?" I need something to do with my hands, somewhere to look that isn't Logan.

"I looked around for information on you." He says it quietly, flicking his thumb across the butt of the cigarette, ash dropping away and scattering in the breeze.

"Did you find anything?" I almost don't want to ask.

I pluck the lighter from his hand, and it is warm from his palm. Translucent green plastic, a centimeter or two of liquid sloshing at the bottom. Black tab, silver wheel, and a mouth for the flame. I roll my thumb over the wheel, creating sparks. Do it again while pressing down on the black tab, watch flame spurt to life. The pack of cigarettes is on the rooftop by the toe of his boot. He sits cross-legged beside me, shamelessly, openly eyeing my body, my cleavage, my thighs, the black sliver of silk over my core. I reach over, take the pack of cigarettes. He watches me, but does nothing. I withdraw one of the cylinders and fit the tan, speckled end to my lips, as I watched him do. Spark flame, touch the flame tip to the end of the cigarette. When smoke rises, I inhale.

"You're going to cough your brains out," Logan warns.

Smoke fills my lungs, too much, too hot, thick and burning. I hack and hack and hack, eyes watering.

"Why do you do this?" I ask.

He shrugs. "Habit, one I can't quite quit. Not that I've really tried, though, I guess." He takes a drag. "Try pulling it into your mouth first, and then inhaling. Or just don't inhale. It's a shitty habit, absolutely horrible for you. I feel a responsibility to tell you that you shouldn't start smoking."

He doesn't try to stop me, though, doesn't take the cigarette from me. Just watches as I do as he suggested, and though I still cough, it's not as bad as the first time. I become dizzy, faint; it is a heady feeling, and I think I understand the attraction of this habit.

"What did you find out, Logan?" I ask, after a few minutes of silence.

He doesn't answer right away. Not for more long minutes of thick, tense silence, smoke rising in a thin curl, an occasional drag for him, for me. I let the silence hang, let it weigh as heavily as the clouds.

I like smoking. It gives me something to do to fill the silence, the taut space between my words and his.

"Information is power." He stabs out his cigarette with a short, angry twist of his wrist. "I want to blackmail you with this, what I found out. Not tell you unless you come with me. But then I'd be no better than Caleb."

I digest what he's insinuating. "You think Caleb knows who I am and isn't telling me?"

"I think he knows more than he's told you, yes." He stands up, unfolding his lean frame, and strides away from me across the rooftop, stopping to put his hands on the waist-high wall separating him from the tumble into space. "Do you remember that day in my house, in the hallway? When I got back from walking Cocoa?"

I swallow hard. "Yes, Logan. I remember."

This is the second time he's brought this up. I remember it all too well. It recurs, a dream, a fantasy, memories assaulting me as I bathe, as I try to sleep, lost details of hands and mouths when I wake up.

To get away from the renewal of the memory, I look up. At the sky. Dark with clouds, hazed with smog and light pollution.

I wish I could see the stars. I wonder what they look like, how I would feel looking up and seeing sky full of scintillating diamond points of light.

His words echo in my soul, throb in my ear, and I am pulled back down by the ache of need in his voice. "You were naked. Every inch of your fucking incredible skin, bare for me. I had you in my arms. I had you, X. I had my hands on you, had you on my lips, on my tongue. But I let you go. I... made you walk away." He turns, glances at me. As if he can smell me, as if he can see what lies beneath the fabric of my dress. "I don't think you'll ever understand how much that cost me, to walk away from you. How much self-control that took."

I shake all over. "Logan, I—"

He turns away, resumes staring out at the skyline, speaks over me. "I am. haunted by that. I had you, and I let you go. I'm not haunted by the fact that you're gone, though, that I let you get away. It's more the fact that I still know it was the right thing to do. As much as I hate it, as much as it hurts... you aren't ready for me."

"That again? What does that mean, Logan?" I stand up now, tug the hem of the dress down. Seven strides, and I'm standing a few feet behind him. "I thought you said you found something out about me."

He shakes his head. "It doesn't mean anything. Never mind."

Logan reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, pulls out a square of folded paper. Holds it, stares at it. The wind plucks at the paper, fluttering the corners, as if it wants to rip it away, keep it from me, whatever is written there. He pivots so he faces me. Steps closer. I stop breathing. I tingle all over. My skin remembers the feel of his skin, the taste of his tongue. I shouldn't. That is not the choice I made. But... I can't forget it. And deep down, I don't want to.

"X, when I said there's so much I could say? I don't know how to say it all. I want to take you away, again. Run off with you, make you mine. But that wouldn't be enough for me. I'm a proud man, X. I want you to choose me. And... I think you will, someday."

He presses his body against mine, and I feel every inch of him, hard, taut, warm. My breasts flatten against his chest, my hips bump against his. Something in me throbs, aches. Recognizes him, feels pulled by him. I forget everything, in these moments, except how utterly stolen away and carried off into the wild wind I feel, with him.

The paper crinkles against my bicep as he grips me, a hand on my arm, a palm to my cheek.

No... don't ; I try to form the words.

" Don't, Logan ," I whisper, but maybe the words are only a breath, only a sigh, only the minuscule brush of my eyelashes fluttering against my cheek, the sweep of lips against lips.

He does.

He kisses me,

and kisses me,

and kisses me.

And I don't stop him. My traitorous body wants to writhe and meld to his, wants to wrap itself around him. My hands sneak up to his hair, bury in the blond waves, and my throat utters a sigh, and maybe a moan, a feverish, desperate sound.

It is but a moment that we kiss, a single moment.

A fortieth of an hour.

But it is one in which I feel utterly changed, as if some too-loose skin draped over my skeleton is snatched away and my true form is revealed, as if his touch as if his kiss as if his very presence can make me more truly me .

I want to weep.

I want to sag against him and beg him to keep kissing me until I cannot bear any longer the soft and tender intensity.

He backs away, wiping his wrist across his mouth, chest heaving as if desperately battling some inner demon. "Here." He hands me the square of folded paper. "It's your real name."

I feel struck by lightning, wired, surging with too much of everything, too much heat, too much fear, too much doubt, too much need.

He puts a hand to the half wall, as if supporting himself, as if about to leap over and fly away.

"Logan..." I don't have anything else I can say.

"You have to decide if you want to know," he says. "Because once you know... you can't take it back. Once you start questioning, there's no stopping it."

"I have to know now, don't I?" I ask, almost angry at him. "You posed the question, and now I have to have the answer."

"True." He lets out a breath, moves to walk past me, but stops a breath and a touch away. His indigo eyes meet mine. "You can come with me. We can leave New York." He glances up at the cloud-shrouded sky. "I can take you somewhere far away, and show you the stars."

Could he have heard that wish? Can he see into my mind, read my thoughts? Sometimes I wonder if he can.

"But... you won't." He wipes a thumb across my lips. "Not yet, anyway."

He almost seems about to kiss me again, and I'm not entirely sure I would survive another stolen kiss, another breathless moment far too close to a man who seems to see far too much of me.

"If you ask the questions, X... you can't shy away from the answers when you find them."

I don't watch him leave. I can't. I won't.

I don't dare.

A long, long, painful silence, stretching like a rubber band about to snap. When I'm sure I'm alone, I finally look away from the skyline, from the dark shapes of skyscrapers and apartment blocks, away from the clouds and the dim distant lights. The rooftop is empty once more, but for me and the ghost of Logan's kiss.

I unfold the square of paper.

My cigarette smolders on the white rocks beside me, forgotten.

There on the wrinkled, off-white scrap of paper is a scrawl of messy male handwriting, in all slanting capital letters.

The letters form a name.

My name.

If I could prevent myself from reading it, I almost would. But I don't.

Logan has given me my name.

I both love him for it, and hate him for it.