Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

4. Aster

FOUR

ASTER

At seven a.m., I’d already been pacing the lobby floor for half an hour.

It wasn’t as if I’d gotten any sleep.

I’d tossed in the shadows of the hotel room, the hours ticking by as the howl of winter had raked at the windows and sent shapes crawling over the walls.

I’d been pinned to the bed by shackles of fear and bonds of regret.

Grief and loss so thick I’d drifted on it, three inches below the surface, where reality was a blur of indistinguishable colors and dark waters churned in my soul.

A millennium of demons, and a lifetime of ghosts.

Phantoms that had held on through the years, refusing to let me free of their oppressive weight.

I’d carried them for so long, my spirit drawn toward a destiny that could never be mine, I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised that one day Logan and I would end up here.

Should never have been shocked that our paths would collide.

Least surprising was that seeing him again had hurt almost as badly as the day I had to watch him walk away.

The day I’d told the greatest lie. One that had cracked me apart, cleaved me into a thousand pieces, half of them belonging to the man and the other to what had been forever lost.

I turned and paced the other direction, ignoring the stares I got considering I still wore that slinky black dress, my hair disheveled, my eyes wild.

It made my heart ache that most days the assumptions they were making right then didn’t feel that far off.

But I couldn’t allow that to cause me concern.

Under Logan’s pain and venom last night, beneath the wrath that blazed in his eyes, the menacing recklessness that promised he would do anything to see it through, I’d come to the swift, heartbreaking conclusion that I had to return to Jarek.

My taking off last night had only landed Logan and me in a bed we couldn’t sleep in.

A trouble he wouldn’t survive, and that was an outcome I wouldn’t survive, either.

My only option was getting to the airport so I could climb back onto that private jet we’d arrived on yesterday and pray we could pretend none of this happened. Pray Jarek wouldn’t rage and hunger for revenge.

Pray Logan wouldn’t be so foolish to set out to do what he’d promised was his intention last night.

To destroy Jarek.

Sorrow spread over me like an oil slick when I thought of the gunshot that I’d heard when I’d been fleeing. How it’d been Logan I’d been concerned for and not Jarek. How I’d had to press that lie from my mouth when Logan had demanded to know how I’d feel if Jarek were gone.

I guessed I’d become the perfector of lies, though I had to remember that sometimes a lie was a gesture of compassion.

The powerful engine of the flashy car that roared into the hotel drive might have turned heads, but I figured I still would have felt the shift in the air even if he hadn’t made a sound. The way my chest tightened and my heartbeats flew.

It was the same way I’d felt like I was falling into a fathomless sea of torment when I’d begun to descend those stairs last night.

As if the ground no longer existed below me.

From the moment I’d met Logan Lawson, he’d made it difficult to stand on my own two feet. The ground quaking below, the shockwaves that swept through my body a flood, knocking me from sense and safety.

Steeling myself to the impact of the man, I pasted on that facade as I strode out the door and into the glacial cold of the snowy mountain morning. Vapor streamed from the tailpipes of Logan’s car, and I nearly stumbled a step when he pushed to standing from the driver’s side.

He was so intimidatingly beautiful he made me fumble.

Heart and soul.

My stomach a fist of old, old want.

Malachite eyes found me through the icy air, unreadable, hardened stones that glinted cold. He wore a fitted suit and a smirk on his face.

“Good morning, darling.” It was pure condescension as he rounded the front of his car.

The ground shifted again, cracks that raced out ahead of him.

The man a tornado that had torn up my world.

“I pray you slept well.” His gaze raked me like razors. I wondered if he’d still relish in my torment if he’d borne witness to every distressed sob that’d left my throat last night.

“I’ve had better nights.” I attempted to keep my voice even.

“I’m sure you have.” His mouth was near my ear when he murmured the innuendo, a carrot dangled to drag me back into the past.

Too bad my heart still remained there.

He set his hand on the small of my back to guide me to his car. Even though I wore the thick coat, I might as well have been bare.

Flesh to flesh.

I tried to suppress the shiver and sank down into the warmth of the heated leather seats. I was slapped in the face by his aura, the cab a dangerous concoction of corruption and clove.

There was no turning away from his shape as he moved back around the front of the car and slipped into the seat next to me.

Everything amplified.

Multiplied.

His scent that mixed with a tinge of something sweet.

Attraction flashed.

Skimmed my flesh.

Something so alive it couldn’t be killed no matter how badly it needed to be.

Logan glanced my way. In that bare beat, I swore I saw a million things.

Regret.

Sadness.

Pain.

But it hardened so fast I had to have been imagining it. Searching for something that just wasn’t there.

He put the car into drive, and the tires squealed as he hit the street.

Everything was bated, stilled and slowed and coiled as he blew down the road toward the airport on the outskirts of the small city.

I did my best to take it in. To remember this place where Logan had found sanctuary. At least, I hoped he had because the venom that poured from his body as he took sharp turns and gunned the accelerator made me think he’d found no peace.

That maybe he’d spent the entire night tossing, too.

Redemption Hills was quaint, quiet, and beautiful. A million miles away from what I knew.

It was strange how Los Angeles always shouted so loud, how it never slept, how the night cried out and day was a constant crush of people and sounds.

It should be impossible to feel alone in the thick of it, but it’s what I’d found.

My reality a lifetime of loneliness.

Of faked smiles and forged pleasantries.

They were my only weapons. Weapons that had kept me alive.

I wondered if I’d ever recognized it as distinctly as I did right then.

The stark opposition.

How when I was with Logan, I felt consumed.

I felt like I was being burned alive as I sat in the seat next to him.

Each breath.

Each movement.

Each stolen glance.

Well, the thieving was all on me.

As hard as I tried not to look at him, I kept peering that way. At the chiseled cut of his cheekbone, the rugged set of his jaw, and the strong profile of his brow. His sharp nose and his full, plush lips.

The way he looked feral as he drove, a sleek beast, a panther that was pure stealth as he hunted.

The man was art in the seat, one hand on the wheel while the other tapped out a controlled dance on his thigh.

Questions burned on my tongue. I wanted to ask him so much. About his life and how he was and if he’d found love—even if it’d drive a stake through my heart.

I wanted to ask him if it’d been worth it.

I stole another peek.

My spirit twisted.

I supposed it had. The proof was in the wealth and the arrogance.

Greed and power his only friends.

It’s what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To prove something? Have it all? No caution to what it would destroy when he did.

The game he’d played last night confirmed he’d become the man I’d worried he would all along. Those sorts of tables were as crooked as they came. Illegal. Dangerous. The highest stakes cast because the men who sat at them got off on the risk.

If I were the one making bets, Jarek had at least one thing right—Logan had most likely stacked that game. He’d never exactly played fair, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

His mind was too sharp. Quick to add and calculate. He’d arrived at a sum before anyone else had the time to process the cards they’d been dealt.

Flashes of memories flooded my brain, the way he’d yank me into a deserted room.

“What are you doing?” My breaths were short, and my pulse sped.

His hands were in my hair. “I need to kiss you.”

“Someone will see us.”

“Don’t worry, they’re distracted.”

I clutched his shirt. “What did you do?”

Green eyes gazed down at me. “I fell in love with you.”

His mouth crushed against mine.

Sheer obliteration.

I clung tight to him like I might not ever have to let him go.

“None of it matters. None of it but you,” he murmured against my lips.

“Then take me away from here.”

His hold tightened on my face. “One day, Aster. One day.”

I was shocked out of the memory when the calloused word broke through the daze.

“Don’t.”

His big hands flexed on the wheel, both wrapped around the leather as if it were the only way to keep them tamed.

“Don’t what?” I fumbled and blinked.

He shot me a glare. “Don’t look at me like you have the right to know. Like you have the right to look inside me.”

Tears burned my eyes.

“Are you happy?” God, I had to be a masochist. Why would I ask him that? Give him the pain that was woven in the question?

He laughed out the darkest sound. “I have everything I need, Aster.”

Sorrow pinched my face, the sword he’d swung meant to kill. Still, I gave him more of my truth. “That makes me glad.”

He scoffed. “Don’t sit there and pretend like you care.”

I did. I did.

Way too much.

We whizzed by the sign that said the airport was a mile away, and I looked at my fingers that were clenched on my lap, dread coming up as quickly as our destination. “What are you going to do now?”

Speculation tightened his expression. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Please, let it go, Logan. Jarek isn’t the same person he was then.”

I hated that it came out an appeal, the words a thin plea, but this might be my only chance.

“He was an arrogant prick who underneath was nothing but a pussy. Doesn’t seem to me like much has changed.”

Except for his title.

His power.

The fact that Jarek had never let go of what Logan had done that night.

If there was one person Jarek wanted to destroy, it was Logan Lawson.

I was terrified it might already be too late now that Jarek had discovered where Logan was.

My head spun with worry as Logan came up quick on the small airport. My breaths shallowed out, alarm filling me like the swilling of a coming storm.

He skidded to a stop at the curb. I sat there in the silence for a moment, trying to formulate what to say. How to make this right. I had so little. I squeezed the door handle. “Please…just…be careful.”

“Not my style.”

I looked at him. “Please.”

Disturbed confusion knitted his brow. As if part of him wanted to trust me and the other wanted to kick me from his car. “Maybe it’s time someone stopped giving him a pass.”

With a lump in my throat, I pushed open the door and started to stand, but I paused halfway out. I peered at the man as if I might be able to claw my way through the debris and make it back to him. “I knew you once.”

Sadness flashed through his expression. “Yeah. I thought I knew you, too.”

Then it was gone, and he was grinding his teeth as he faced forward in clear dismissal.

I climbed the rest of the way to the sidewalk, hesitating for a second before I let the door shut between us. It’d barely clicked before he was peeling out from the curb and roaring away, the tail of his black Maserati fishtailing before he disappeared in the distance.

I watched him go.

It was like the cutting of a fresh wound.

This agony a blister that would never heal.

The bet had only exacerbated it. Left it raw and throbbing.

When the sound of the engine finally faded, I forced myself to turn and walk through the automatic doors that led into the airport. Fighting the dread, I headed toward the wing that housed the private hangars at the far-left side of the building.

I stumbled to a stop when the wall of windows came into view.

A fuel tanker was being moved away, and there was an empty spot where our chartered jet had sat last night.

Disbelief burned through my system. That asshole had… left me.

Logan was right. He was a pussy.

My teeth gritted. A crush of despair and a slur of insolence.

Hatred and disgust.

What was I going to do? I had sixty dollars, a phone charger, and a tube of lipstick in my clutch.

Jarek saw to it that I had no funds at my disposal. I was given an allowance to shop and play the pretty part of a woman in my position.

Beyond that, I was at his mercy.

Which meant I would have to call my father, swallow what little pride I had left, and make up some vapid story about how I’d gotten to this ski destination and become stranded.

Ask him for a way to get home.

So, so long ago I’d lost any semblance of what home might mean.

Because there was no sanctuary there. No respite. No comfort.

Swallowing it down, I moved for the ticket counter so I could inquire if there were any available flights, my hand shaking as I fumbled into my clutch to get my phone.

Only it rang the second I pulled it out.

My stomach soured when I saw his name on the screen. A burst of spite filled me to full.

“Jarek.” I wished his name didn’t tremble when I said it.

“You answered.” His voice was a sneer.

Barely controlled hatred whipped through my chest like a windstorm. I tried to keep it subdued. To act like the dutiful wife I was supposed to be.

“You thought I wouldn’t?”

He scoffed. “I thought you might be busy.”

Anger broke through a fissure. One that’d been forming for years. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t play coy, Aster. Don’t act like last night didn’t play out exactly how you intended it.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“Or was it planned all along?” he pressed. “Make me look like a fool? Cheat me?”

Ire escaped my lungs, scraping up my throat in a clap of disbelief, resentment thick in the hiss of the words. “You think I set that up?”

I heard the clanking of ice in a glass. It wasn’t even eight, and I knew he was drunk. “Maybe not, but I know you wanted it. Did you enjoy fucking him? You are just a whore, after all, aren’t you?”

Pain lanced through my spirit, wrapped in a bow of malevolence. The horror he’d wielded. The sorrow he’d inflicted. And I’d had no choice but to go along with it.

Moisture burned like poison at the backs of my eyes.

Tears that welled from the loss.

The injustice.

The loneliness.

“You are the one who all but sold me.”

He laughed a disgusting sound. One that crawled over me like chills of revulsion. “You’re mine to sell, no?”

Bile ran the length of my throat, and I finally cracked. “Fuck you.”

Before I let him get in another word, I ended the call, and I clutched the phone in my hand like smashing it could grind the last seven years into dust. Short clips of air jutted my shoulders, and waves of dizziness spun my head.

What had I done?

I was supposed to go crawling back to Jarek to smooth things out for Logan, and I’d likely made it worse.

Stifling the meltdown, I forced myself to look up at the monitors, at the departing flights for the day, because I had to get it together.

They bleared over, the times and destinations morphing into lines of nothingness.

My phone buzzed, and I managed to read the text through the blur. One from my father.

Papa

Where are you? I was informed you did not arrive home on Jarek’s plane this morning.

I should make something up. Ask him to get me home. Crawl back on my hands and knees to Jarek and bargain my soul.

But I was frozen.

Unable to do it.

There had to be a better way.

There had to be.

I swallowed down the fear. Everything that had bound me my entire life.

What had kept me small and broken.

What had shaped me into a person I didn’t want to recognize.

What had chained me to a life I hated.

I let my fingers tap out a response. One I knew was a gauntlet. One that made Logan’s recklessness of last night look like child’s play.

Me

It seems your underboss has lost me in a bet.

Then I turned and ran out of the airport.