“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 theworst.”
FIFTEEN
LOGAN
The door rattled shutbehind me, and I stormed to the elevator like there was no air left in the building, and I had two minutes to escape.
Sounded about right.
Because if I stayed in that apartment with her for one second longer, my lungs were going to fail.
Thirty fucking days.
Bullshit.
I knew as I rode the elevator down, with the way everything twitched and my spirit screamed, there would be no letting her go.
Whatever it took.
I’d been a fool last time, but I’d been a kid.
A fucking kid who didn’t have a clue.
She might have betrayed me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t read what was written underneath, that I couldn’t see all the secrets that writhed in the depths of those fire-agate eyes.
A fire she kept raging like a fortress.
The girl shrouded in old pain.
I wanted to reach into her soul and rip them out.
It only made it ten-thousand-times worse after what I’d walked in on last night.
After what I’d given in to.
I wasn’t sure what the hell else I would have been expected to do, though.
After what had gone down outside Absolution, I’d been compelled to check.
It’d made me sick to think that bastard might have weaseled his way back to her and manipulated her into leaving.
Or worse.
The piece of shit was lurking in this city, that was for sure. Scum hiding in the shadows. Waiting for the opportune time to steal back what had never been his to take.
My car rumbled to life when I pushed the ignition button. The leather was cold, and the air was icy. I blasted the heater to compensate, and I pulled out of the garage and headed toward the mountains.
I took to the two-lane road that the last time I traveled it, I’d had no idea what was waiting for me. How my life would change in a split.
No warning.
And I was determined to find out why.
How the fuck Jarek Urso had ended up there.
Thirty minutes later, I was pressing the button at the security gate outside Haille Manchief’s home. It beeped and the voice came through. “Ah, Mr. Lawson.”
“Oz,” I said back.