14. Aster

FOURTEEN

ASTER

The barest rays of morning light illuminated the bedroom window as I pressed my ear to the door and listened. My heart was a riot in my chest.

Memories of last night lingered like a bad, blissful dream. That sticky, heavy sense that everything was off, that my world no longer rotated the same way, the truth that nothing was going to be the same.

Before dawn, I’d woken drenched in sweat from a nightmare.

In fear.

In those old chains that wanted to drag me back to conformity.

As the day had broken on the snow-covered Earth, I’d come to the quick realization I couldn’t remain that girl. Not anymore. The hardest part was I didn’t want to hurt anyone on the road to finding my destination.

I didn’t want to hurt Logan, and I didn’t want him to hurt me in return.

I’d only secured that as an impossible feat by letting him touch me last night, proven by the last words he’d spoken before he’d strode out the door.

Now, I had no clue what to do. Every step I took seemed to lead me to a greater mistake.

Closer and closer to the man I should be running the opposite direction from.

Silence echoed back from within the apartment, and I carefully turned the knob, cracked the door, and peered out into the hall.

You know, all courageous like.

All was clear.

Inhaling a steeling breath, I tiptoed out, my footsteps quieted as I edged down the hall toward the main room.

I paused at the end of it. There was no sound other than the whooshing of the flames in the fireplace.

But I didn’t need him making a sound to know he was there.

Awareness hummed in the air. A dense aura that held a life-beat. A pulse of possession.

I peeked around the corner.

Every cell in my body was drawn that way when I found him sitting at the small, round table in the nook on the right side of the kitchen.

He sat facing out, thumbing through his phone with a cup of coffee sitting in front of him.

The man was angled back in the chair, and he had an ankle hooked over the opposite knee, wearing another one of those fitted suits that made him look like a king.

My stomach stirred in hunger. My eyes raced to take in every inch.

His black hair was effortlessly styled, his scruff trimmed, that decadent scent coming off him in waves. Though this morning there was a small scab on his bottom lip and newfound violence in his posture.

It looked so damn good on him that it sent a tremor sailing down my spine and shivering out to my fingertips.

I wanted to touch.

He looked up when he felt me there.

“Are you hiding from me, Little Star?”

His words struck through the years. A reminder of who we’d always had to be.

I fumbled out from around the corner.

His eyes skimmed down my body as if he were remembering the view last night. It didn’t seem to matter that I’d pulled on a pair of pink sweats and a loose fitted, long-sleeved white tee and the thickest, fluffiest socks I’d ever worn.

He still looked at me like I stood there completely bare.

His gaze molten, the smirk that kissed his gorgeous mouth illicit.

“I think it’s time you stopped hiding, Aster.” He took a casual sip of his coffee.

I eased farther out, hoping my knees didn’t knock. “Is it?”

He gazed at me from over the top of his coffee cup. Severity flashed. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Am I afraid of how much it hurts to be around you? Am I afraid that this is a terrible idea? Am I afraid of what’s to come? Yes. But am I afraid of you, Logan?” My head barely shook. “No.”

Maybe I should be. Maybe I should be terrified of it all. But it was with him where I’d always felt safest.

I looked anywhere but at him as he stared me down as if he were searing holes into the places where my secrets lie.

“Coffee?” Warily, I glanced at him.

Not even that was safe.

Because my belly flipped and my stupid heart fluttered.

The man was dangerous to my sanity.

“Of course. Let me get?—”

“I have it.” I made a beeline for the pot that was on the opposite side of the island, and I busied myself with pouring it into a mug that was already set out.

Two of them.

My stupid fluttering heart went and panged.

He’d set one out for me and one for Gretchen.

This hard, dangerous man with this soft side that made me melt.

I peeked back at him, wondering if he were the same. If the years hadn’t hardened him.

If there was any part of the boy left who I’d fallen in love with.

I poured in some creamer and fiddled with the spoon, procrastinating as I hovered by the island.

He pointed at the chair across from him. “Sit.”

I hesitated for one second more before I shuffled across the floor and sank onto the chair. Taking a sip of my coffee, I studied the man I was still trying to recognize.

“Do you sleep in that suit?” Okay, so it wasn’t of the utmost importance, but I had to ask, and it seemed like a pretty good distraction from what was bristling between us.

A bolt of amusement rocked from his mouth, then he sat farther back so he could track my movements, that smirk turning wicked. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Did he have to toy with me?

Clearly, he did.

Relished it.

The way his eyes traced the redness that flushed up my chest to my cheeks when that thought sent my mind tumbling right back where I kept trying to keep it from going.

“But I guess that would only be fair considering I know exactly what you wear when you’re sleeping.” A taunt and a tease.

“I think I should pass.”

He sat forward. “I think you are afraid.”

My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip, and I wrapped my hands around the steaming mug. “Yes.”

He pressed forward. “I would never hurt you.”

I looked up and met his stare head on. “You already have.”

Lines of regret cut into his hard, chiseled face. So gorgeous. Too much.

“Aster…”

I tried to look down. To look away. But he still surrounded me. If I listened closely enough, I could hear the fierce rhythm of his heart, the way it’d once woven with mine, the man a ghost that would forever beat in my blood.

And here he was, alive and real and ruining me all over again.

He inhaled a heavy breath. “I think we need to discuss some things.”

Unease squeezed my ribs. I peeked at him. “We probably should.”

He took a sip of his coffee, every edge of him intense. The question left him like the topple of stones. “You want to leave Jarek? Permanently?”

Fidgeting, I inhaled a shaky breath. “You know I do.”

“And what will your father think about this?”

There was bitterness there. My father the root of it all.

The evil.

The injustice.

Although Logan had fed right into it.

I gulped around the knot laced tightly in my throat. “Like I told you, I spoke with my father yesterday, and he’s giving me thirty days.”

I watched the way every muscle in his body flexed.

“And what do you plan to do with thirty days, Aster?” The question was icy.

“My father thinks I need time. Time to myself. Time away. A vacation .” I left out the defective promise I had made. “He agreed, and he promised Jarek would stand down and leave both of us alone until then. He thinks it will teach Jarek a lesson for being so reckless.”

Hatred burned across Logan’s flesh, and I could almost feel the throbbing of the cut on his mouth. My chin lifted farther, my attention on his wound. “But it won’t, will it?”

Logan sat back, malice in his posture. “I doubt there’s any lesson that prick could learn.”

“I’m not going back to him, Logan. I just…” I paused, looked away, tried to gather my thoughts before they came rushing out on a flood of words. “I need the time to find a way to prove to my father that Jarek has become disloyal. That he is wrong for the family. Wrong for me.”

A blister of rage bludgeoned the air.

And here we already were, right at the heart of it.

“Yet, you agreed to marry him.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.

As if I had a choice.

I bit back the words I wanted to spit.

Tremors ripped beneath the floor, and I had to plant my hands on the table to steady myself. To keep my chair from vibrating with the shame. The hurt. The pain. The anger.

All of it swept into a snarl of regret.

I couldn’t look at him when I admitted, “Yes.”

“So why leave, Aster? It seems to me it turned out exactly how you planned it.” Disgust twisted his voice.

Clearly, he was having second thoughts about what had happened last night. About the promise he’d made when he’d walked out the door.

There were too many things I couldn’t say. Too many things that couldn’t be taken back. Too many things that would destroy him now.

A fist slammed down on the table, and I sucked in a shocked breath. I squeezed my eyes shut as I fought the impact of his fury.

“Why?” It cracked through the room.

Guttural.

Grieved.

A single tear streaked free.

It wasn’t of fear.

It wasn’t of weakness.

It wasn’t of anything but the loss that neither of us could take back.

Every secret I could never give him.

I lifted my face because there was no use hiding from him. Not when he was there, potent and powerful. Angel and beast.

“Because there is only so much one person can take.”

I wondered if he had any idea I’d taken it for him.

Based on his expression, I believed, no. He’d just been a reckless fool.

Greed had infested and taken control. Clouded who I’d once believed him to be.

Something moved through his being.

Something barely held.

Something barely contained.

“Has he hurt you?” Logan’s question was almost emotionless.

Almost.

Except his green eyes turned a deadly shade of black.

A flashfire of visions banged through my mind.

Pain. Blood. Shattered on the floor at his feet.

Begging.

Begging.

The knot in my throat throbbed, blocking off the truth that ached to become his.

I wanted to look away. To drop my gaze.

But I just sat there, shackled by this rage, by this lure, by the past that had caught up to Logan and me so quickly, neither of us knew how to stand in it.

The eye of the storm.

Right here.

Right now.

And there I sat, staring at the face of my glorious, dark defender.

My beautiful, sweet boy who’d loved me like loving someone was simple.

His chair suddenly scraped across the floor and, one second later, he had me torn from mine with my back pinned against the wall, so fast I could barely process the action.

Then everything stilled.

The only movement was my pulse that screamed through my veins and the savagery that radiated from his body.

Air wheezed from his lungs, and every muscle in his powerful body vibrated as he pressed closer.

He reached out to take me by the jaw so he could tip my face up to meet the vengeance in his. His hand was shaking. Shaking and shaking.

“Tell me, Aster.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter?” It was venom.

“I’m already leaving him.”

Logan had one hand pressed to the wall to hold himself up. With the other, he scratched his fingertips along the edge of my face, as if he had the urge to claw his way in. His head tipped to the side and the violent words cut into the dense air. “I told you last night. I will kill him, Little Star. I will.”

Agony lanced through my being and ripped me wide open.

“You don’t want that kind of war.”

“It might be the only thing we can find.”

“The only thing I want is my freedom.”

“Yet you gave yourself to me.”

He’d always been my heart’s direction. I wasn’t sure there was anywhere else I could have gone.

Still, I needed to play it off like the only reason I was here was because of the bet. Like this twisted fate hadn’t drawn us together.

Magnets.

Gravity.

“Only because it bought me time. Because he’ll honor the bet,” I forced out.

The curl of Logan’s smile with his split lip was full of ire. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

I tried to hold back the welling of emotion. The moisture that burned. But I couldn’t. Couldn’t.

Not when for the first time in seven years, I felt it.

Hope.

Beauty beneath the betrayal.

And I found it in the man staring back at me.

Logan’s trembling thumb traced my cheek. “He can’t have you back.”

The words cracked.

Everything sizzled.

The man was a short-circuit to my mind.

“Thirty days,” I forced out. It was a reminder of our deal. It was all I had to give. I might get free of Jarek, but I’d never be free of my name.

That old possession burned through those stony, green eyes.

“Thirty days.” When he whispered it, I knew it was a lie.

“I’ll find the proof you need, Aster. I’ll find it and set you free.”

My smile was sad.

Because that’s where he was wrong. Because my heart, it would always, always belong to a man I couldn’t keep.

“Aster.” His breath turned needy.

Hypnotic.

He dropped his forehead to mine.

My lips parted, held by those eyes that looked at me with distrust and devotion.

I was sure it was the exact same way I looked at him.

I jolted when I heard the rustling come padding into the room.

Gretchen came up short when she saw me pinned beneath Logan. I squirmed to get free. Logan didn’t budge.

“Oh.”

She was wearing a bunch of pink curlers in her hair and a matching muumuu and slippers. She’d even taken the time to smear thick, pink lipstick onto her lips.

“Well, it seems I’m interrupting.”

Logan exhaled a heavy breath before he tore himself away.

I didn’t mean to whimper.

Impossible.

Not when I felt the vacancy like a blade cutting through flesh.

He pasted on a grin and straightened his suit jacket. “You’re not interrupting anything, Gretchen. It’s fine. Coffee is ready.”

I ran my hands up the sleeves of my shirt like it could chase away the chills that rushed in to take the place of his heated presence.

Gretchen’s gaze narrowed. “Sure looked like I was interrupting something to me.”

She shuffled into the kitchen. “But hey, what does an old, senile lady know? Not worth much but cleaning up the messes made during the things I was not interrupting.”

She went to wiping up the counter that didn’t need to be cleaned.

Logan grunted. “We were only having a discussion.”

“Huh, that’s weird, I wasn’t aware you could get pregnant from having a discussion.”

I nearly choked.

Disbelief filled Logan’s laugh. “Clearly, you are either senile or blind, Gretchen. Tell me you haven’t forgotten the act, or are you actually having trouble seeing that we are fully clothed?”

He gestured at himself.

“Don’t think I couldn’t tell you were about to take that thing out of your pants.” She waved at his tented crotch. That time there was no stopping it.

A bolt of laughter busted free of my mouth.

It wasn’t funny.

Not funny at all.

But I couldn’t help it.

Logan rolled his eyes in affectionate annoyance. “Only in your dreams, Gretchen.”

She huffed. “Hardly, young man.”

He chuckled, then he straightened out his jacket. “I need to go.”

Then he moved back toward me, like it was his right, his duty.

His fingers found my chin. “Are you okay?”

The words clotted in my throat because I wasn’t sure I ever really would be.

Still, I nodded.

“Okay. I’ll see you later.”

Then he strode out without looking back, leaving me there gaping behind his retreating form. I didn’t realize I was staring at where he’d disappeared until Gretchen’s voice broke through the disorder. “Lord a’mercy, he really was about to take it out.”

I whirled back around, tried to tamp all the emotions back into place. “He was joking.”

Laughing, she poured herself a cup of coffee. “Um, that boy is joking about every minute of his life. Right up until the minute you walked into it.”

At that, she eyed me suspiciously.

I wrung my fingers. “I guess I bring out the worst in him.”

“The worst?” She hummed like it was absurd. “The harsh? The truth? The real? All that pain he’s got buried so deep he has the whole world charmed into thinking it doesn’t exist? Sure. You might bring all those things out in him. But what I’m sure it’s not is the worst .”