His chest heaved as he stared down at me, more than a glimmer of triumph in his eyes.
I huffed and pushed past him, darting back out onto the safety of the street.
He caught up with me, and I felt his question without him having to voice it.
“So there’s attraction between us,” I said quietly, feeling vulnerable and, for some strange reason, lonely. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Oh, it means something,” he disagreed, and I could hear that damned determination in his voice, along with not a small hint of cockiness. “You told me yourself, babe. You don’t light up for just anyone… and you become a blaze whenever I put my hands on you.”
“I really don’t like you right now.”
Logan grinned. “That’s okay. As long as you love me, nothing else matters.”
“You are so arrogant,” I huffed. “Have you always been this arrogant?”
“Don’t confuse arrogance with confidence.”
I made a face and stomped ahead, grumbling under my breath at the way his long legs easily caught up with me.
I didn’t shake him the whole way back to our building, and as I put my key in the lock of my flat, he pressed his chest into my back, his lips whispering across my ear. “I’m looking forward to repeating the best sex I’ve ever had.”
My breath caught at his confession, my body screaming to give in to him. Instead I turned the key and shoved inside my flat, slamming the door behind me so I didn’t have to look him in the eye and show him how much I still wanted him.
CHAPTER 20
“You really should think about giving me a key.”
I stared balefully at Maia as she stood on my doorstep the next morning. “I don’t give keys to traitors.”
She grinned sheepishly. “Can you blame me for helping a guy out?”
“Yes. Yes, I can.”
Rolling her eyes at me, Maia disregarded my glare and swept past me into my flat. “Do you have any cereal? Dad and I have run out.”
“I’m making scrambled eggs if you want some,” I grumbled, shutting the door and following in her wake.
She glanced up from the now-open fridge door as I wandered into the kitchen. “Did you say something about eggs?”
“I’m making them. Do you want any?”
“See, you can’t stay mad at me for long.”
“Oh, I’m still mad – just not mad enough to see you go without breakfast.”
“Then that’s not really that mad.” She shuffled up onto one of my kitchen stools. “You look kind of tired.”
I looked a fright. I’d barely gotten any sleep. Again! I’d managed to fall asleep at around five o’clock in the morning out of sheer exhaustion, and then Maia had banged on my door four hours later. “It’s Saturday. Shouldn’t you be sleeping in, like every other teenager in the country?”
She bit her lip, the cockiness she was picking up from dear old Dad suddenly disappearing. “I couldn’t sleep. I was worried about you.”
I immediately stopped pretending to be annoyed at her. “Maia, you don’t need to worry about me, sweetheart. I can take care of myself.”
“But can you?”
I slid onto the stool beside her. “What does that mean?”
As she stared at me with those violet eyes of hers, I realized that they were so similar to her father’s and yet so different. There was a tinge of darkness in her eyes, but they hadn’t yet grown the hardness that Logan’s had. It was a hardness that melted whenever someone made him laugh, and I shook off the disturbing realization that although his laughter was rare, it was less so with me.
Maia sighed wearily, the gesture so much older than her years. “I know you care about Dad. I just don’t know why you’re making this so hard for him.”
“There are things you don’t know, Maia.” I didn’t want to tell her that Logan had hurt me. I didn’t want her to ever think badly of him.
“I’m not stupid. I know he’s not perfect,” she insisted. “If he hurt your feelings, then I know he’s sorry.”
“Maia, please…” I buried my head in my hands, suddenly feeling the urge to cry. “I can’t talk about this with you.”
There was silence, and for an awful moment I feared I’d hurt her feelings.
“Grace…”
At the tightness in her voice, I lifted my head to look at her. The tinge of darkness in her eyes had spread until there was a whole lot of black in among the violet. An unwelcome shiver rippled over me in reaction.
“Do you remember when I first got here and you asked me what I’d been through?”
Mostly Logan and I got Maia the same way every day – funny, sarcastic, and warm. But there were days when she’d brood alone in her room or cry for no good reason at all. I chalked it up to being a teenager and the drastic change of direction her life had taken. I chalked it up to the fact that her mother had abandoned her.
I’d been waiting for Maia to open up about it.
Now I wasn’t so sure I could handle the truth.
“I know you’re worried about what happened to me when I lived with my mum.”
I nodded again, a choking sensation developing in my throat.
Maia stared me straight in the eyes, her own glistening. “It wasn’t good, Grace. But it wasn’t as bad as you think. Mostly she just wasn’t there for me. For ages it didn’t matter because she was my mum, and when you’re wee, you love your mum no matter what.”