“Are you alright?” he said softly, an indecipherable emotion dancing behind his eyes.
She nodded shakily and reached for him again, but he held firm.
“Lacy, I’m serious—are you okay?” A flicker of w
orry clouded across his face as he stared searchingly into her eyes. “I think maybe you have a concussion.”
“I think you might be right,” she mumbled. “But I’m okay.” All of a sudden, that panic he was suppressing settled over her in a frantic haze. “Logan—I didn’t mean to come here. This morning, I got all these emails. And I thought...I thought he was you!”
“I know,” he said soothingly, finally pulling her in for that embrace she so desired. His eyes flickered behind them, checking on Peter’s status, before narrowing with the deepest kind of loathing. “A little tip,” he said scathingly, “the next time you use someone’s email address to lure their girlfriend to a secret rendezvous, be sure you delete the emails when you’re done.” He gave the man another kick, then turned back to Lacy. “I saw every single one. Tried calling you immediately, but your phone was dead. Tried calling the hotel, but then my phone died.” He laughed humorlessly. “In the end, I just grabbed a taxi and came right here.”
“Thank goodness you did.” Lacy glanced behind him, then buried her face in his jacket with a little shudder. Concussion or not, she had the terrible feeling that she was going to remember every second of what happened in that hotel room until the day she died. “I can’t even...”
Her voice trailed off as she gripped onto him once more. One hand wound around her lower back, as the other stroked back her hair. His lips came down to her ear, whispering mindless words of comfort as he rocked her back and forth. It was the exact sort of meditation she had been craving. The kind where she could close her eyes, relax her body, and know for certain that no matter what happened next, the was undeniably, unequivocally safe.
At least, that’s how she felt until Logan said those next fateful words...
“Lacy?” She leaned back to gaze up at him, confused by the sudden look of fear dancing across his face. “Where did he get those pictures?”
A wave of nausea ripped through her, as she turned her head towards the bedroom. It was an automatic gesture, but one that seemed to cut him to the core. He followed her gaze, visibly shaken, then knelt calmly to the floor and took Peter’s face in his hands. The man reached for a knife and lunged. Logan kicked the weapon out of his hands, accidentally kicking the man’s head. Her attacker slumped as his eyes fluttered shut.
Only after he was confident their assailant was unconscious, did he take Lacy by the hand, and walk them purposely back to the bedroom. They paused a moment outside the cracked door, then Lacy nodded slowly, and they both walked inside.
It was a strange feeling. Like going back to the set of a horror movie after the cast and crew had already finished and gone away. The memory of it remained. The look of it remained. But it was different somehow. Empty. Diminished.
Except that it was all fresh and new in Logan’s eyes.
He stared up at the window in complete disbelief—freezing with the same expression that Lacy must have had on her own face. His eyes widened slightly, especially when they saw some of the closest and most sexualized shots, but a second later, he cleared his face of all emotion.
“I’ll take these down,” he said quietly. “You call the police.”
“You can’t. It’s evidence.”
“I’ll take the naked ones then.”
“Fair enough.”
Lacy nodded quickly, but found herself unable to move. The smell of incense and caviar washed over her, and instead of going towards the phone, she found herself backing away.
Logan caught her a second before she could reach the door.
“Sweetheart.”
Something about the way he said the word broke through her dark trance. She stopped shaking and lifted her chin to meet his eyes. They were waiting there with a comforting smile.
“It’s all over now. I promise.” His lips brushed against her forehead with the lightest, sweetest kiss. “It’s all over.”
One final shudder ran through Lacy’s body, before she nodded with a shaky sigh.
He was right. It was over. It was time to go home.
Chapter 29
It might have been time to go home, but that didn’t mean that either Lacy or Logan was going to be leaving police custody any time soon. For the first time in her entire life, Lacy walked into the City of Cleveland Police Department, not as a gloating warrior—bringing in her prize—but as a victim. A scared, shaken victim still clinging to the arms of her boyfriend.
Instead of stopping at the front counter to chat over coffee with the receptionist, she was led to one of the rooms in the back hallway—one of the rooms she’d always subconsciously assumed were reserved for people who had committed a crime. She was separated from Logan almost immediately. She declined both drinks that were offered to her, and was then gently interrogated by officers who were polite, but not exactly friendly.
Of course, they got a lot more comforting once they realized what was going on.