Memories like ours lived with you forever, and I’d managed to numb them out. Now, with Logan back, they hit full force. “Sculpt, you gave me my dream. I ... I can’t even find words to tell you what that did for me after ...” I closed my eyes and felt him stiffen. “But I can’t.” The words were soft, and I didn’t even know if he heard me.
Kat cleared her throat, and it took him a second before he moved away and turned to Kat and said, “Matt reserved a table for you both near the stage.” Then he looked at me again. “Stay and hear me sing, Eme.” He paused briefly as if waiting for a response from me, then turned and strode down the hall, and disappeared around the corner.
“Shit. What was that?” Kat said.
I needed escape. Fast. With tequila in my blood and my head filled with Ping-Pong balls smashing around, I was a mess. I had to get out of here. Away from him and what he could do to me.
“Kat. I have to go.”
Kat took my hands in hers. “You’re emotionally fucked up. I get it, and this is my fault. If I’d known they were here, I’d have never suggested we come. I didn’t even know the whole band was in town. Come on. Let’s go before they rock the stage.”
Logan playing the guitar and singing was the last thing I wanted to see. I knew what he could do to me with his voice. He could wrap me up inside him with a pretty little bow and then with one pull unravel me into his arms. “You stay. Hang with Matt, calm him down. I’ll grab a cab.” Since we’d decided to stay at the condo tonight, which we usually did on our nights out, it was only a ten-minute cab ride.
“No way. I’m coming with you.”
I squeezed her hands. “Kat. You’re my bestie, I love you, but I need some time ... Sculpt ...” Fuck. How did I say that I just wanted to be alone?
“Let me call Deck. He can take you to the condo and hang with you for a while.”
“Kat. No.” Deck wasn’t a babysitter. Jesus, the guy had been part of the most elite task force for counter terrorism.
Her eyes narrowed, and I tried my best to give her a half-smile. She nodded. “You want to be alone and don’t want anyone pestering you.” I nodded. God, she knew me too well. “Fine, but I don’t like it. And text me as soon as you get home.”
“Tell Georgie I’m sorry. I’ll see her tomorrow for brunch.”
“Georgie hasn’t even left her place yet. She texted me ten minutes ago, said Deck stopped in to check in on her.” Kat lowered her voice. “Her words, Emily, ‘Deck needs a fucking army of red ants shoved up his ass.’ Then she told me she had to go change her outfit. I swear Deck should just fuck her and get it out of both their systems.”
I liked Deck, but I suspected he was the type who needed complete control and Georgie ... Georgie letting a guy like Deck tell her what to do ... well, that was an explosive overload.
We weaved our way through the crowd. I had just ducked under a guy’s arm when I heard him speak into the microphone.
I sucked in air, closed my eyes, and stopped dead. I knew without looking it was his voice. It made my pulse leap and my stomach drop as if I was in a free fall. It felt like his words were drawing across my skin.
Logan.
I slowly turned and saw him on stage.
I was locked on him.
His presence was captivating. He dominated as if nothing could touch him up there. He was sexy with his half-smile and messy hair yet still dangerous and unapproachable.
God, he was confident, always had been, and now looking up at him on stage I realized that this was where he belonged. Not in the ring beating his opponent to a bloody pulp, but up there with a guitar slung over his shoulder.
I knew why this band without even singing a single note would hit the big time. Him. Logan. His magnificence on stage drew you to him. That ease in his stance, how he held the microphone as if he was holding a woman in his arms.
Jealousy bit a chunk out of me as I thought of Logan with another woman. It was a lead weight in my stomach, and I never wanted to picture him with his arm slung over a girl again.
As he spoke to the crowd, I was mesmerized ... lost to the sound of his voice that trickled down my spine and heated my entire body. If felt like he was next to me, his breath wafting over my ear, his hand pressed to the small of my back. Oh God, he was in me.
“Damn, he looks smoking. Matt told me they’ve been touring small-time gigs for almost a year and just got noticed by some manager who’s taking them on,” Kat said.
Yeah, they were going to be big. I’d known that since the day I first heard Logan sing. And listening to him sing tonight would undo me like it had before.
Did he think he was absolved because he let me go? Because he gave up his tour money? Because he did it to protect me? Because he was a victim of Raul too?
Yes. God, yes. He did deserve forgiveness, but I couldn’t forget the image of him looking so cold and heartless at me. Was that inside him? Was there a part of him that could walk away if someone held a gun to my head?
I remembered him staring at me, expressionless, as I fell to my knees after being whipped. He watched it happen. He let it happen.
But Logan had saved me. Logically I knew that, but finding that trust again ... it was like reaching for an apple too high up in the tree.
Logan said something to the crowd, and then he laughed. It was the most magical sight. Logan rarely laughed, but when he did it was captivating. I couldn’t look away from his bright smile, his sexy bedroom eyes. I swear I could hear the women in the bar moan, and I was among them.
I was about to uproot my feet and stop gawking at the man who made my body ignite when he found me.
He found me with his eyes and didn’t let go. He was still talking to the crowd, but his eyes remained on me. His smile was gone, and even from a hundred feet away I noticed his hand tighten on the microphone.