Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

17. Logan

SEVENTEEN

LOGAN

I handed off my credit card to the server to pay the ridiculously expensive bill for the dinner Aster had barely eaten. The girl hadn’t cast me a glance while she’d picked at her food, while I’d sat there like my guts were getting chewed up and Aster was the one who was going to spit them out.

Thirty days.

Thirty fucking days.

And she had every intention of leaving me.

I wasn’t sure what had come over me. I didn’t plan this dinner with the intention of pulling the stunt that I had.

I’d just wanted the show.

To send a clear message to Jarek that we were not deterred. That we were not afraid.

Then I’d pushed it to a place I shouldn’t have let it go.

The possession that had wound through my being. The urge to hold her that had twitched through my fingers.

I blamed it on that dress.

The all-consuming need I’d had to touch her in front of him. To prove to him that he could never have her again.

Or maybe I’d just been trying to prove it to her.

Maybe prove it to myself.

No doubt, I was playing with fire. I knew it. Risking everything. But I’d known it the moment I’d made that wager.

All in.

So yeah, it’d pissed me off when Aster had reminded me that she wasn’t.

Standing, I moved to her side. “Let’s go.”

Aster stood, and I helped her into her coat. I did my damned best not to lean in and inhale the flesh behind her ear. Not to press my nose into the curls that I was dying to take in my fist.

This girl was going to wreck me.

She’d done it before so I wasn’t quite sure why I’d convinced myself she wouldn’t do it again.

Still, I allowed myself to pull her hair free of the coat, being the gentleman that I was, my nose just brushing into the fall.

Hyacinth and magnolia leaves.

I pressed my hand to the sweet spot low on her back and guided her out into the frigid cold night where I stood there with her like she was mine as the valet pulled my car into the rounded drive.

He hopped out, and I tipped him then helped Aster into the passenger seat. The car was low, and she had to slide in, and the slit of her dress opened to reveal the delicious expanse of her upper thigh.

My mouth watered.

She looked up at me like she’d physically felt the smack of lust.

I touched her exposed knee. “Aren’t you the perfect tease.”

I couldn’t hold it back.

The anger that bottled in my stomach and spread out to infect my chest where it became a lash from my tongue.

She was leaving me.

She was leaving me.

Pain made a thousand stab wounds in her expression.

In the barest flash of time, she stared at me with a torment so deep I wondered if she could meet me at mine.

My spirit screamed.

Then she ripped her attention away, taking the oxygen from the air when she did.

The atmosphere darkened, clouded and dimmed, and her breaths turned short and uneven.

Fuck.

I was such a prick, but I felt myself unraveling.

Losing control.

Aster Rose was driving me to the point of insanity.

The whole goddamn problem was I didn’t know how to stop myself when it came to her.

She didn’t budge when I shut the door, didn’t move when I rounded the front of my car to the door that remained open. I went to slide in, only I got snagged on a rush of scalding hatred that blistered through the frozen air.

I looked up to catch the figure staring out from behind a drape in a window four stories up.

I cracked him the biggest grin.

Jarek looked like he wanted to bust through the glass to get to me.

Fucker.

I hoped he did.

I slipped onto the heated seat, shifted into gear, and gunned the accelerator. My Maserati skidded out of the drive and onto the main road.

Aster stared out the passenger window, so still it would be easy to miss the way every cell in her body oozed with hurt.

I didn’t.

I could feel it.

Sense it.

The way I’d always been able to do.

The knot in her throat. The way her shoulders hitched. The emotion that wept even though she tried to hold it like a secret.

Regret tightened my chest.

I was pretty sure my faulty plan had been too much for her.

I was thinking right then it’d been too much for me, too.

It took all of a minute to get back to my building. I punched the button to the gate and whipped my car into my reserved parking spot. I hadn’t even gotten it into park when Aster tossed open the door and fumbled out, slamming the door shut behind her.

I killed the engine and jumped out.

She was a fiery flame that flew across the garage.

“Aster.” I shouted it over the top of the car.

She kept going.

“Aster. Come on. Talk to me.”

She spun around, her bag clutched to her chest like it were a shield. “Come on? Come on? Screw you, Logan Lawson.” Agony convulsed in her throat. “You want to hurt me? Is that what all of this is about? Payback? Fine, you hurt me. You embarrassed me. You made me feel like a whore. The way all of them have always done. You win.”

She whirled back around and ran for the elevator. Her heels clacked frantically against the concrete.

“Aster.” I scrambled to catch up to her. “Would you wait?”

“No. Just leave me alone. I’ll get my things and go. I’ll figure this out on my own because I can’t do this. I can’t do this and clearly, you can’t, either.”

It was a rambled cry that hitched helplessly from her throat as she whirled back around.

It was right before her heel slipped on a patch of ice that had formed three feet in front of the elevator door.

My heart seized. “Aster!”

She yelped and tried to right herself, but she only sent herself hurtling the other direction, her arms flailing as her feet fully slipped out from underneath her.

She toppled backward.

I was running but I was too far away. I wasn’t even close to getting there before she landed hard on her left side. The air knocked from her lungs on a huge oomph when she slammed against the concrete.

When I made it to her, I dropped to my knees. “Aster, oh my god, Aster.”

I was over her, searching her face that was as pale as the concrete beneath her.

Every cell in her body was locked.

Her breaths and her blood and her tongue.

“Aster. Are you hurt? Tell me where you’re hurt, baby.”

Then a jagged, pained cry erupted from her chest. Her mouth split open, and her eyes pressed tight as tears streamed down her face.

“Aster. Fuck, are you okay?”

Another cry burst from her. She curled onto her side like she could protect herself from it all.

“Aster.”

“Leave me alone. Please.” She wept it, folding in on herself where she lay on the frozen, freezing concrete.

Carefully, I scooped her up. “I can’t.”

“Please,” she gasped and choked. “Leave me alone.”

I held her against my chest. “I already told you I take good care of what’s mine.”

“I’m not yours. I’m not. I’m not.” Each word was obliterated pain. Her mouth was open with a sob when she buried her face in my shirt. “I’m not.”

I tightened my hold, lifted her higher, and pressed my lips to her temple. “You’re wrong. You have always been.”

She burrowed her face deeper into my jacket.

Aster wept.

My heart cracked in half.

“I’ve got you,” I promised as I carried her to the elevator door. I managed to punch in the code, and thank fuck, it was already right there, the doors opening with a gush of warmth.

Aster shivered when we stepped inside, and I held her as the elevator whisked us to the top floor. My arms tightened around her as I carried her to the door and let us into my apartment.

It was dark inside except for the fire and the single light over the sink where Gretchen was doing dishes. She spun around. Her eyes widened and worry filled her face. “Oh, dear lord. What happened now? You are some kinda mess, aren’t you, sweet girl?”

She started our direction.

“I’ve got her.” I sent Gretchen a look that made her stop in her tracks. I continued across the floor.

Gretchen hesitated. I knew firsthand it went completely against her nature not to help.

“You let me know if you need me. I’ll be right here.”

“I know, Gretchen. I’ve got this. Just go to bed,” I instructed as I carried Aster the rest of the way into my room.

She continued to tremble and shake, her head burrowed so deep in my jacket I got the reckless sense that she might be able to build a home there.

That right there was where I was going to get destroyed.

I was the sucker in this fool’s game.

But it didn’t matter. It didn’t fucking matter. Nothing did except for her.

It was dim within my room, a chill in the air, winter pressing at the windows. I set Aster on the edge of my bed. “Sit right there.”

I moved for the fireplace and flicked the switch. Flames leapt to life. I wound out of my jacket as I made my way back to the woman watching me through the flames.

Wary.

Hurt.

But her breaks? They were bone deep. Wounds I couldn’t see but knew without question were there.

Her shoulders slumped but that fierce bravery she’d always worn fired from her eyes.

I believed her wholeheartedly.

She would find a way to do this on her own. Walk away if it meant her freedom. If it meant mine.

If it meant we wouldn’t have to hurt each other all over again.

Staring at her, I knew it was already far too late for that.

The first time I’d seen her, I’d known I’d never set my eyes on anything more beautiful.

The girl was better than any flower or rainbow or piece of priceless art hanging in a museum.

Aster Rose was my poetry.

Kneeling in front of her, I tried to keep my shit together. “Tell me if you’re hurt.”

Aster’s voice was thin. “I think you already know the answer to that.”

My ribs clamped around my heart because this pain had little to do with her fall. Still, I searched her, eyes racing as I hunted for any injury. Her coat was wet, and her dress was ripped on the left side. I lifted the tattered fabric a fraction. Aster flinched, and I cringed when I saw the trickle of blood above her knee.

Pushing to standing, I stretched out my hand. “Come here.”

Aster wavered, her attention dipping toward the ground, her profile so goddamn gorgeous I had to stop myself from leaning down so I could run my lips along the length of her defined jaw.

“Please, let me help you.”

Agate eyes met mine. A burn of hope and a glimmer of dejection.

She set her hand in mine.

Energy lapped, a warm buzz that eclipsed reason and sight.

I pulled her to standing. She winced again.

“I’m sorry that I upset you.”

“It’s not even that.” Her head barely shook.

It was everything.

Everything that felt insurmountable.

Old wounds and a new trauma that somehow felt unavoidable.

And still, something I would hold.

I took her chin between my fingers and tipped up her face.

So she would see.

So she would understand.

“I regret every instance I have ever hurt you.”

At my confession, her expression deepened.

I let my fingertips flutter down the length of her neck as I rounded her, and I grasped her coat so I could slip it down her trembling arms. I tossed it to my bed before I reached out and gathered the bulk of her hair and tucked it over her shoulder.

I inhaled.

Hyacinth and magnolia leaves.

A new beginning.

A fresh start.

Aster shivered.

Everything slowed, and I swore I was tripping into a dream.

When my fingers found the top of the zipper, Aster’s spirit stormed the room.

“Why does it have to hurt so bad?” It was a breath of agony.

I angled down so my mouth was at her ear. “It hurts because we didn’t end up where we were supposed to. Because there has been a piece missing in each of us. An ache that can never be filled.”

Old wounds throbbed and moaned in the bare space that separated us.

My mouth found the cap of her shoulder and ran the length to the back of her neck. A kiss that really didn’t exist.

Chills flashed across her skin as I slowly dragged her zipper down.

It sparked like shocks in the night.

The fabric slipped off her shoulders, and I let it go so the dress pooled at her feet.

Aster was frozen, like she was terrified to move, though her entire body was vibrating so violently I was afraid with one wrong brush, she would burst into flames.

She stood facing away in her underwear, the fire illuminating her curves, her perfect shape, the piece of my heart that had gone missing. An outline that had crusted over with that unrelenting pain.

“I want to hate you,” I murmured at the nape of her neck. “I want to hate you, Aster. But I remember it…it didn’t matter what you said, I read what was in your eyes.”

Coming around to her front, I let my eyes roam her body.

Her small, round breasts.

Her flat, quivering belly.

The contour of her full hips.

The fear I’d felt when she’d fallen slammed me anew when I saw the huge welt on her upper thigh, red and abraded with the promise of turning black and blue. Blood oozed from the abrasion in the middle of it, and a tiny rivulet had run down and was smeared near the top of her knee on the outer edge.

“I’m sorry I caused you to fall. This was my fault.”

My fault for being a dick.

“Wait right there.”

I moved into the bathroom, grabbed a bandage, and dampened a cloth under hot water. I snagged a T-shirt from the closet before I strode back into the sorrow-addled room that fizzed with something else.

The girl the gravity in the space.

An orbit.

An obligation.

A destination never meant to be.

I climbed down onto my knees in front of her.

An illogical offering.

I pressed the cloth to the wounded flesh.

She whimpered, then swallowed and held onto my shoulders as I wrapped my left hand around the back of her leg so I could properly clean it.

“I’m sorry.” The grunt of an apology scraped my throat like dull razors.

I glanced up to catch Aster staring down at me.

In confusion.

In regret.

In that old, magical awe that had once made me believe that I could be the type of man who could deserve the kind of girl I’d once believed her to be.

It was the same look that’d had me on my knees then, too.

“What are you sorry for, Logan?” I didn’t know if it was rejection or a plea.

Hesitation held the words before they left me like a twisted admission. “That nothing turned out the way it was supposed to. That I didn’t fight harder. I promise that won’t happen this time.”

The last was gravel. The coarse scraping of determination that infiltrated body and mind.

Her eyes dropped closed for the barest moment, and she sucked for cleansing air before she opened them again. Torment rained down, a misery that flooded a drought-stricken desert.

“Would you have changed it if you could have? If you knew it then, would you have stopped it? If you could go back and know everything, would you still have done it?”

Vulnerability trembled through the words.

The woman laying herself bare and asking me to do the same.

A rock got lodged in my throat.

Buying time, I focused on cleaning the dried blood from her abrasion and the line down to her knee. Meticulously, I applied the bandage, my movements careful.

Then I stood, keeping my eyes on her face as I eased my T-shirt over her head and dragged it over her beautiful body.

Then I fisted the hem in my hand and jerked her my direction.

Aster gasped as she jolted forward, and her fingers drove into my dress shirt like she might never let go.

My mouth found that sweet spot at her jaw, right where it curved up to meet the lobe of her ear. “I would go back and change everything. Losing you. Losing Nathan. I was blind. A fool.”

Grief clamped around my heart.

“Was it worth it?” she pressed, like she didn’t know how to believe me.

“You already know it wasn’t. I would have given up everything. I would have burned the world down to get to you.”

“Why didn’t you?” The question trembled from her mouth.

My hand found her face, my thumb tracing the angle of her cheek. “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.”

Those eyes found me in the whispering night. “I thought you said I’ve always belonged to you?”

It was a challenge.

My hands slipped low, gliding down her sides and molding to her hips. I yanked her so close every inch of her was pressed against me. “Is that what I should have done? Taken what was mine?”

One hand curled into her hip while the other slipped up her spine until I had a fistful of her hair. I angled her head to the side, and my lips grazed the length of her jaw.

Inhaling her sweet, exotic scent.

Potent.

Powerful in a way I shouldn’t let it be.

But she had always been my weakness.

She looked up at me with torment in those agate eyes. She barely shook her head. “I was already ash.”

There was a confession in it.

It didn’t matter.

I already would have been too late.

Rage tightened my chest, and I struggled to draw her close, to erase all distance.

Every mistake.

Every wound that had been inflicted.

“Tell me what happened while I was gone.”

When the only objective I’d had was finding my way back to her, when I’d found her, and in one moment, my world had been decimated.

“I hate you, Logan Lawson, and I don’t want to ever see you again.”

Her fingers sank beyond my shirt, burrowing into soul and flesh. “I can’t.”

My arms wrapped around her. Tight. Like I could forever lock her to me.

Aster whimpered, pressed her face to my shirt, and exhaled. A ragged breath of surrender.

Moonlight streamed into the bedroom.

My little, fallen star.

One that’d burned out.

Slipped through my fingers.

I swayed her, danced with the girl that used to be mine.

Thirty days.

We stayed like that, in the silence for the longest time, before I whispered, “Was it real?”

She pressed her lips to my sternum, like it was her spirit’s way to my thrashing heart. “It was the only real thing I’ve ever known.”

So, I held her the way I used to do. Under the cover of night. In a place where no one knew.

She let me as our souls shifted.

As we sank deeper.

Against my chest and under my skin.

As a promise changed.

Time passed, minutes, hours, I didn’t know. But Aster sagged, and she let me hold her weight.

Her burden.

She drifted, like for the first time in years, her trouble had gone light.

So, I took it.

I swept her from her feet and into my arms. She sighed as she curled hers around my neck, and I carried her out into the sleeping house and into her room where I laid her in the center of her bed.

Agate eyes fluttered open. A murmuring of affection. A haunting of old hope. It was dimmed by the years of cruelty that had separated us.

She stretched out her hand. “Stay.”

I hesitated, then I kicked off my shoes and undressed down to my briefs and undershirt.

She lay on her side, her head on her pillow, and she stared at me through the shadows.

She sighed when I climbed in and laid beside her.

Reaching out, I brushed the hair from her face. I leaned in and pressed my lips to her forehead, her temple, her chin.

Then I spread my hand across the side of her face as I pressed my wandering lips over the soft curve of her mouth. They barely moved.

It was the softest caress.

A promise.

An oath.

The truth.

“You’re mine.”