Affection billowed from my spirit.
There was no chance of stopping it.
“Ah, I see who’s lost,” Salem teased.
“I’ll be right back.” I waved my phone a little and stood from the chair so I could dip out of the bar to hear him. Or maybe I just wanted the privacy.
To confess to him what I could feel simmering all around.
This feeling that had bloomed. Or maybe it’d been seeded long ago, and these women had only fed and nourished it so it could grow.
“Hey,” I rushed, my tone a little too excited when I finally stepped outside into the frigid cold and answered his call.
“Aster, where are you?” Panic steeled the sharp cut of Logan’s voice.
Confusion knitted my brow. “I’m at O’Malley’s with everyone. What’s wrong?”
Ferocity radiated from Logan’s being, palpable through the phone. Dread slithered down my spine, as cold as the snow that fell from gray, heavy clouds.
“Just stay put. I’m coming to get you.”
I paced a couple steps down the sidewalk. My head was bowed in worry as I whispered, “What happened?”
Then the air froze in my lungs when I felt the ice-cold hand clamp around the back of my neck. Jarek squeezed tight, his voice a callus that scuffed in my ear. “Hang up the phone, Aster.”
My hand shook.
Fear clouded my vision.
“Aster!” Logan shouted. “Do not fucking move. I will be right there.”
“I said to hang up the phone. You should never have forgotten to do what I say. If you remember correctly, when you don’t abide by my commands, it doesn’t end well in your favor.”
Horror skated across my skin in a slow slide of awareness. It spun with hatred and hurt and this rising determination.
A culmination of who I wanted to be.
Or maybe it was just who I had always been, and I was finally setting her free.
The one thing I knew for certain was I hated him.
I hated him.
The women’s belief from inside filled me up like a fortress of fire.
Magnified the love that Logan had been pouring into me.
The truth that the fight was worth it.
I was worth it.
I’d known I was done with Jarek the morning I’d last spoken to him, but that was the moment I accepted I was finished with it all.
Jarek gripped me by the collar of my jacket and dragged me the few short steps down the sidewalk to an alleyway that broke between the two buildings. He shoved me into it.
I stumbled on the pitted, coarse pavement, trying to get my bearings.
My senses.