23. Aster

TWENTY-THREE

ASTER

What was I doing? What was I doing?

I couldn’t stop shaking as I scrubbed my face with cold water in my bathroom.

Every choice I made seemed to bring me closer to disaster. But I couldn’t stop. Not when I was with Logan. Not when he was bringing it all to the surface.

The loss.

The grief.

The fear.

The hope.

The love I had to stop from raging on inside me.

Choking over a sob, I turned off the faucet and rubbed my face with a hand towel until it was almost raw, as if I could wash away every scar. Blot out every stain.

Or maybe find some way to bear a different name.

I suppressed a wail of agony that bubbled up in the towel.

Or maybe it was a war cry.

Tonight...tonight the shackles were too heavy and the only thing I wanted was to break free of them.

I dropped the towel and stared at my reflection in the dusky mirror.

My cheeks were red.

My lips swollen and bruised.

But my eyes were too wide. Too wild. Gone to a place where I shouldn’t have let myself go.

To him.

I felt shattered.

Broken into a million pieces.

Pieces that I was never going to mend or reclaim because every touch he stole belonged to him.

Tears blurred my sight, and I stepped away and forced myself to focus on pulling on the night slip and a pair of new underwear considering mine were tattered on his floor. I was a fool to think covering myself would shield me from the hope that kept trying to sprout.

It was dangerous.

Dangerous to my heart.

Dangerous to the man that I loved.

But how could I stop it when he touched me that way? When he held me that way? When he looked at me as if I were a treasure?

I froze when I felt the shift in the air, the intensity that lapped, the energy a cloud that hazed common sense.

Logan appeared as if he’d been summoned. Vapor that’d become whole.

He towered behind me in the doorway of the bathroom, the man staring at me through the mirror where I faced away.

He wore the same expression I needed to hide from.

Feral, savage possession.

Bridled violence to be unleashed at any moment.

A veil of protection shimmering around him to reach out and cover me.

He took a step forward.

Warmth skated through the cold air. It curled down my spine like an illicit embrace.

Wrong. It was so wrong. So wrong that I moaned when he stepped even closer. He reached out, pulled my hair aside, and pressed his mouth to the spot where my shoulder met my neck.

“Do you think you can hide from me, Aster?”

He reached around to touch the star that dangled between my breasts.

“I think I should run from you. Before something happens we can’t take back. Before it’s too late.”

“It was too late the moment you stepped foot in that basement.”

“Logan.”

Big hands banded around my waist, and he slowly turned me, his gaze fierce and unrelenting.

The scariest part was he already knew who he was dealing with. He wasn’t going into this blind.

“You are worth it.” His words were a crack in the dense air.

And I realized it then…he didn’t care. He didn’t care about the cost.

He would pay it all, but that was a consequence I would never survive.

Expression hard, he hoisted me up. A tiny peep of reserve whisked from my lips.

Still, I wrapped my legs around him with a breath of surrender, the same way as I did with my arms, the same way as my face pressed to his pulse that thudded and boomed.

I tried one more time. “We shouldn’t do this.”

His arms tightened around me. “My rules, Aster. My rules.”

I clung to him as he carried me out of the guest room and through the apartment. He didn’t slow until he was kicking his bedroom door shut and carrying me to his massive bed. He pulled the covers down and laid me in the middle.

My spirit clutched as he loomed over me at the side of his bed.

The man was so gorgeous he made it difficult to breathe. His profile sharp, every chiseled line powerful. Cut in stone. Harsh and hard.

But then he smiled. He smiled soft and slow as he reached out and fluttered his fingers along the curves of my face, and I could see all the way down to the boy who’d once dreamed so free.

“There. Right where you belong,” he murmured.

I couldn’t do anything but take his hand and press it to my cheek. “I always wished that.”

“It was always the truth, Aster. We were always supposed to be together. We just got lost along the way. I mean, come on, look at me…” He stretched out his arms and cracked a giant smirk at that. He still was without a shirt, his chest wide and shoulders muscled, his waist trim and his abdomen packed with rippling strength. “Have you seen me? Like you could forget all of this.”

His tease filled the air and sweet amusement had me biting down on my bottom lip, a lightness taking hold as he gazed down on me like he was looking at eternity.

“I never forgot.”

His smile slowed, and he unbuttoned his pants and let them drop to the ground. He kicked them free of his ankles. He stood there in nothing but a pair of black underwear, and I swore, it had me blushing like the teenage girl I’d been when he’d first touched me.

Redness heated my cheeks, and I buried my face in the pillow, but not far enough that I couldn’t peek out with one eye.

“You are so beautiful,” I mumbled because I didn’t know how not to give him that.

He climbed onto the bed and slipped under the covers. He pulled me against him, tucked my head to his chest, and gently stroked his fingers through my hair.

I was a fool for feeling so content.

Thirty days.

Thirty days.

I hated my life was a trap.

He shifted so he could press his mouth to the crown of my head.

“I missed you.” He issued the words for the first time.

They flooded through my bloodstream like liquid.

Molten warmth.

Profound and sad and the bitter, ugly truth.

I curled in closer, and I whispered my lips across his ribs. “I missed you, too. So much.”

And after this, I was only going to miss him more.

His arm tightened farther, and he pulled me so close I was almost draped across his chest. I could see the torment carved in the lines of his face when I peeked that direction.

“Tell me what it’s been like.” His brow twisted when he asked it.

I winced. “You don’t want to go there.”

“Maybe that is exactly where we should go, Aster. Maybe it’s time.”

“And what if it hurts too much?”

What if it destroyed us? What if it sent Logan to a place he could never come back from?

He pulled my leg over his waist. Every muscle in his body twitched. Bristling with strength. Flexing with greed.

He reached out and threaded his fingers through my hair, and he tipped my chin back with his thumb. “And what if we can’t move on until we do?”

I hesitated for a moment, looking at this man who watched me as if it didn’t matter what’d happened.

A promise that he’d hold it.

The grief and the pain.

I thought maybe he was wondering if it were possible I could hold his, too.

“Do you want to know what it was like, Logan?”

It was torment.

It was sickness.

It was chains.

It was floating through a vast nothingness that had no end.

But I could boil it down to one thing.

“It was lonely. It was living through an emptiness so deep and dark. A hollow vacancy that went on forever.”

A sound of commiseration puffed from his nose as he held the side of my face. “Meaningless.”

I dipped my head in a slight nod.

Malachite eyes roamed my face, though in the darkness, they’d come alive, the gold incandescent.

“What was it like for you?” I was scared to ask it. The times I’d wondered where he’d gone and what he’d done. If he’d ever looked back. If it was worth it.

“The same but different. Focused on what didn’t matter. The money. The gambling.” He hesitated for a beat before he grated, “I fucked about anything that walked…”

I cringed with his forwardness, but he was right, I needed this, too.

His honesty when we’d had none of it.

His thumb brushed back and forth beneath my chin. “I was looking for a feeling, Aster. For one person who could spark that feeling inside me…even if it were only a mere fraction of what I’d felt with you.” He wavered, his thick throat bobbing when he swallowed. His fingers sank deeper into my hair. “And it’s not like there was anything wrong with any of them, nothing except none of them were you.”

My heart squeezed in pain, the words shards when I pressed them from my lips, “While I lay beneath Jarek numb, wishing I could just disappear.”

“I hate him.” Rage howled through his body. Barely contained.

“So do I.”

Logan ran his fingers from my shoulder and down my arm. Chills lifted, sweet, sweet dread. His hurt so thick. His voice was gravel when he spoke. “I can’t believe you don’t have his children.”

Tears sprang in my eyes, and my throat tingled with the emotion that wanted to flood out. I fought to suppress it, to hold it in, giving him at least a piece of our truth. “Our housekeeper…she has a daughter who is a nurse practitioner. I meet her in a parking lot every three months, and she gives me a shot.”

“Jarek doesn’t know.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but there were a million of them in his eyes.

Still, I choked over the idea. “No, Logan. He would…”

I trailed off, unable to express it.

Agony screamed through my body. Fists, boots, the grip of a gun.

Each blow came harder than the last, powerful enough to shatter bone, to shatter courage, to shatter sanity.

A cry tore free, torment and pain, torment and pain. I rocked, tried to hold myself, to protect.

The vile voice whispered like it could be a balm in my ear. “Don’t cry, Aster. This is what was meant to be. You’ll see. You’ll see.”

“I will never allow it, Logan. I will never put a child in the same position my father put me and my sister in. I will die first.”

Shifting, Logan rolled us until I was on my back, and he was hovering over me. He planted his elbows on either side of my head to prop himself up, his wide chest shuddering.

Anguish.

Affliction.

Grief.

It was so heavy.

So absolute.

A chasm that was broken between us, where our hopes had fallen through and were smashed at the bottom.

I could barely handle the way his voice broke in sorrow when he asked, “Is that why? Is that why you did it?”

Green eyes roved over me as if they were searching for something to believe in when they’d lost all faith.

“Yes.” It was the scrap of a sound that I pressed from my tongue. Sometimes a lie was nothing but compassion.

Logan recoiled like I’d driven a blade through his ribs. Misery wracked through my being.

Then his forehead dropped to mine on a pained gasp, and he was mumbling, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again.

Agony cleaved through my spirit.

I tried to hold it. To keep it from cutting both of us in two.

“We were born into those lives,” I managed.

“And I was supposed to take you from it. Together, we were supposed to find better lives.”

In the dimness, my fingertips found the tattoo inscribed on his side. I didn’t need to see it to know where it was, to remember what he’d written on himself like a brand.

“Who bought them, Logan?” My voice warbled with the question, as if maybe I could understand. My promise to my father had never been a real intention. But somehow, after everything, I needed to know.

The twin stones.

The reigning crown jewel.

Two stones that perfectly matched, their settings made of clasps that interconnected and made one matching stone. Each hung from rhodium necklaces.

Necklaces that had been passed down from my grandfather to my father.

Necklaces that fools had fought over for generations.

Necklaces that set together were said to be worth thirty million dollars, even though they could never be sold at auction. Their existence was a rumor that had been true, only sought by thieves and cheats and swindlers.

Necklaces that had cost us everything.

GREED.

Logan was the last known to have them in his possession.

He froze for the barest moment, the only movement the sticky awareness that skimmed the surface of his skin.

He averted his gaze when he grated, “You know I can’t tell you that.”

Tears blurred and burned.

I didn’t know why it hurt so bad.

“When?” Sadness poured out.

Logan hesitated, warred, his teeth gritting when he forced out, “After I came for you. It was the only thing I had left.”

“I did. I burned it all to the fucking ground, Aster, and you already know what happened when I got there. You were no longer mine.”

“Your brother died the night you left me.” It rushed out on a breath of sorrow. I didn’t know the details.

It was the same night I’d barely survived myself.

Logan and I strewn across the earth.

Separated.

Cleaved in two.

His entire being wept. Obliterated pain reverberated through the low hung words when he rasped, “That night cost me everything.”

“I hate it…I hate what this life has caused.”

And I wanted to drown. Slip away and disappear. But Logan gathered me up in his arms and pressed a kiss to my mouth.

“Don’t look back, Aster. Not right now. There are too many things between us we can’t undo, and we have to focus on what we can change.”

I worked to swallow the sorrow. I’d lived in the chains of agony for so long. Now they rattled. Clanged and clashed.

“What is the one thing that would turn your father against Jarek?” he pressed.

My father considered Jarek the son he’d never had. Dethroning him would take the greatest disloyalty.

I blinked through the hopelessness that wanted to enfold. “I’d need to prove he was stealing from him or keeping something from him that would hurt the family.”

“And you believe he is?”

“I don’t believe he’s ever been truly loyal.” My eyes fluttered over the intensity that rippled over Logan’s face. “There’s always been something there, Logan, something at odds with my family.”

“I won’t stop until I find out what that is.” Logan paused, lost in thought. “That night, I think Jarek set me up. I’ve always believed the whole thing was a setup.”

Hope blazed, burned against the helplessness. “I never believed you were the one responsible, Logan. He knew…I know he knew about us. He knew I was going to leave. But it will always be your word against Jarek’s, and you know whose side my father is going to take. He truly thinks him a son.”

“I will find a way.”

“My sister is trying.” I hadn’t told him about it. I hadn’t been sure what I could trust him with.

Logan frowned.

My tongue swept out to wet my dried lips. “There’s a safe in Jarek’s office at our house. I don’t think he knew I saw that there’s a fake bottom when he was slipping something in one time, and he always seems more secretive and on edge when he opens it. My gut tells me if there’s something to find, we’ll find it in there.”

“Let me do it.” He nearly flew off the bed.

I grabbed onto him like there might be a chance I would never have to let him go. “No, Logan, you can’t go back there. It’s a miracle my father agreed to this at all. If he catches wind of you digging into family matters…”

“He wants me dead.” It almost sounded as if he were trying to make a joke, as if he hadn’t stolen something that many fools had fallen for.

“The real miracle is you’re not.”

I wasn’t laughing at all, my voice taking on a grim tone.

There was sorrow there. A confession. I didn’t mean for Logan to see it, but I knew he did. The way his expression shifted and changed and took on new understanding.

He brushed his fingers through my hair.

Softly.

Gently.

An apology.

It was also riddled with an aching question. “When you first came here, you told me I’d left you without a choice.”

His eyes roved over me as if he could sift out the answer.

My mind spun back to that day.

Weeping. Weeping. So much pain. My hand grasping at my father’s. “Anything. Anything, Papa. Just promise me you’ll spare him. Promise me, and I’ll do what you demand.”

“Maybe that statement was wrong, Logan…because I had a choice, but there was no other choice I could make.” The admission clotted in my throat, emotion so thick I could hardly speak.

Logan tightened his hold, confusion and dread rushing from the words. “You told me once that we have to take the chance when it’s presented to us and refuse the heartache when it’s demanded of us.”

I traced my fingertips over the thunder of his heart. Over the proof of life that beat at a constant, steady drum. The soft words tried to stick to my tongue when I let them go. “I did, Logan. I refused the heartache.”

Because living in a world where he didn’t exist had never been an option I was willing to entertain.

“Aster…”

“Please, Logan. Leave it at that. I can’t do this. Not yet.”

Logan pressed his forehead back to mine, his breaths drawn in pain. “You’re never going back there, Aster.”

“I know you want me to stay?—”

“Do you want to stay? With me?” He cut me off.

“Logan.” It was torture.

“Do you?” he demanded.

Tears slipped from the edges of my eyes and into my hair. “I’ve never wanted to be anywhere but by your side.”

“Little Star.” Logan’s thumb ran the angle of my cheek.

“But I would never put you in the position?—”

That time when he cut me off, he cut me off with a kiss. An earth-shattering kiss that rattled me to the core.

One that sank down deep into my bones.

Flooded cells and infiltrated marrow.

He kept himself propped on his hands and knees while he dipped down to capture my mouth, as his tongue stroked and his lips possessed.

He left a foot of space between us everywhere else.

My spirit wept in the middle of it.

Called out to his.

Begged for a way.

My hips did the same, jutting from the bed in a bid to meet with him.

He splayed his hand over my heart. Tension bound the air. A fierce intensity that refused to let me go. As if he’d called me there, and now that I’d arrived, neither of us could escape this connection that had haunted us since the day we’d met.

“Say it, Aster. Say it.”

It didn’t take a lot for the truth to scrape between my lips. “I’m yours.”

Always.

Forever.

For just a little bit of time.

And still, it wasn’t enough.

For a moment more, he kissed me, soft and slow, tender in this domination.

Then he heaved out a sigh of restraint before he slumped down onto the mattress on his side.

The man sent me a gentle smile when he pulled me against him, and he wrapped me in his arms so we were nose-to-nose, breath-to-breath.

I settled down to rest my head against the banging that rioted in his chest. My fingertips fluttered over the rest, exploring the divots and lines and dense, corded muscle. “Happy birthday, Logan.”

He pressed his mouth to my temple. “Is it wrong if it feels almost as good?”

“No.”

Because any day he was holding me? It was.