He went back out to the porch and hauled in the bags and set them by the stairs. He tossed the dog bed near the back door. He had a feeling Fiona wasn’t the sleep on the floor kind of dog for bedtime.
Now all that was left was Isabella. He went back to the Escalade and opened the rear passenger door. She was reclined slightly in the big back seat, her head tucked into the small space between the seat and side of the car. The dome light cast a shadow to her lashes making them seem even longer. Her skin was achingly fragile. The glass cuts had faded to little silvery scratches along her cheeks and eyebrows.
He curled his fingers into the palm of his hand.
He missed touching her. He missed talking
with
her. He missed her laugh.
He just missed
her
.
It felt like he’d actually lost her ever since she’d learned about Nichole. He would have given his career, his money, his future career to change it. Anything so he didn’t have to cause her pain.
But he wouldn’t give her up.
She was alive, and she was his. He just had to remind her of that again.
“Izzy.”
She gave a sleepy little moan and turned toward his voice.
“Wake up, baby.”
Her eyes slitted open, vivid even in the low light. For a moment he saw the love that he used to wake up to every morning. Her soft smile chased away the demons that had been living in him for weeks now.
She lifted her hand to his face and saw the glove in her periphery. The light blew out like a candle and she pushed him away and tugged off the cotton covers he’d had made for her.
He bit back a sigh and stepped back. “Honey, we’re home.”
She slid out, snapping her fingers at Fiona who scrambled out after her. The big dog leaned against her thigh and Izzy idly scratched behind her ear. She headed for the walkway, leaving Logan to stare after her.
When she got to the door, she looked over her shoulder at him and then disappeared inside.
Logan scrubbed his hands over his face. Exhaustion had burrowed inside of him like a fistful of thorns. He couldn’t remember a day he didn’t hurt and he wasn’t tired at this point. He took her knapsack out of the front seat and followed her up the path.
She’d taken the smaller of the bags with her up the stairs. He hiked the bag over his shoulder and played pack mule with the rest. The stairs were narrow and lead to a loft-style room. It was all open.
A king sized bed was tucked under the sloping ceiling. Area rugs were scattered around in the same colors from downstairs. Two more couches and a chair clustered around a pellet stove.
The back door was open to the deck. She stood at the railing, the moonlight gleaming against the curtain of dark hair that had been blown back with the wind. She tipped her head back and he had to look away.
She didn’t want him.
Yet.
Bella looked out over the river. The water looked like glass in the dark, the crescent moon a shimmering cast that was just a little malformed with the current.
Kind of like her.
Just a little off balance. A blurry copy of the pretty one in the sky.
Fiona whimpered quietly next to her and she stroked her large head. She turned to find Logan bustling around the room. He had the suitcases open on the couch and was unloading tops, jeans, sweatshirts, and her favorite bulky cardigans.
With a quiet efficiency that belied his status as a badass rockstar, he unpacked and stored her clothes. But not only did he put them away, he did it in the same way she liked it.
His attention to detail had always amazed her, but knowing he was trying to keep everything as normal as possible for her put that damn lump back in her throat. His shoulder and back muscles flexed and flowed under the worn thermal Henley as he hung her cardigans and dumped boots and sneakers into the bottom of the closet.
When he looked up to see her staring at him, he flashed a grin at her. The crooked one that had hooked her that first night. The one he’d given her as they pored over his record collection that first night.
She swallowed and turned away to the other suitcase.
“I got it. Why don’t you take a shower? I’m sure you miss hot water that wasn’t attached to antiseptic.”
Because she wanted one so bad, her hand faltered at her toiletry bag. How did he know so much about her when she felt so very adrift from herself? It was as if she didn’t know anything anymore.
How could he be so sure of every-damn-thing?
She nodded and closed herself into the large bathroom. A deep claw-footed tub was tucked under a wide window. It was powder white with brass handles and feet. A soak would probably help her ribs, especially after the way she’d been banged around in the ICU.
No. Don’t think about that.
Lydia’s stricken eyes. The endless agony that had come off of her in waves. Sorrow and pain—it was a toxic brew that she’d been stewing in. Would she end up like Lydia?
She already felt it happening.
Her words were stuffed behind all that sorrow. And she’d lashed out at Logan already. Again and again, but she couldn’t stop. Every time she looked at him, she saw what they’d had and how arrogant they’d been even after every warning told them to back off.
She shivered and pushed those thoughts away. She was tired of the loop that seemed to play in her head like a horror movie soundtrack. All grinding notes that left her off balance and on edge. She trailed the tips of her fingers over the lip of the tub, but ultimately passed it by. The idea of sitting in water after days of getting sponge baths was a little too close to hospital life. She toed off her clogs and unsnapped her jeans before shucking her sweatshirt and tank top. She couldn’t quite manage to get a regular bra on yet.
She turned the dials on the shower to a notch above tepid. The burns still smarted too much for the hot showers she adored. It would be a few weeks before she could think about one of those.
Just as she was about to step into the stall, she remembered to grab her toiletry bag and she saw the uneven scar in a full-sized mirror for the first time. The bag slipped from her fingers and all the cosmetics and bottles scattered across the floor.
She’d known it was there—felt the itch and the pain daily. She’d even looked down at it a few times, but this mirror wouldn’t allow her to look away like she usually did. It was all there in its Technicolor glory.
The door burst open. “Are you—” Logan broke off, worry melted into wide-eyed fury.
She rushed for the towel off the rack and he stopped her.
“No.” He cupped her face. “I’m just angry that it happened. That she—” His jaw clenched so hard she could actually see the throb in his temple and muscle jump in his cheek. He dropped to his knees in front of her. “Don’t cover it up.” With shaking fingers, he traced the wide bloom of garish yellow and blue skin that shaded her ribs.
There were deep purple bruises along the gash where the glass had torn into her. And the red scar that itched all damn day. There were dissolvable stitches crisscrossing down her side from her bra-line to her hip that would last a few more weeks.
Even with the horror show stamped on her side, her nipples tightened at his gentle caress. How could he keep touching her when she looked like that?
He pressed a butterfly-soft kiss against her hip at the end of the stitches and stood up. His eyes were red with emotion and his lip trembled once before he kissed her forehead.
He scooped up her toiletries from the floor and dumped them in her bag, setting it on the small stand near the shower. He moved to the door and cleared his throat, his voice so deep it practically vibrated. “Shout if you need me—or something.”
She nodded and turned away from her reflection to get into the shower stall. She tipped her head back to get a full-on spray and let a few tears fall before she started the painstaking process of washing around stitches and burns.
When she was finally bundled into a robe, she found the bedroom empty and Logan out on the deck. A bottle of Breckenridge bourbon open on the coffee table with two inches missing.
The glass was empty on the railing and his head was bowed.
Watching his face and the emotions wash over him in the bathroom had dislodged something inside of her. She’d been drowning in her own grief for days, but she hadn’t allowed herself to really see what Logan was going through.
That he’d almost lost her.
That maybe he really wasn’t that sure and steady as he seemed.
She went out to the deck.
“I’ll be just a minute.” His voice was like sandpaper and alcohol on an open wound.
Fiona bounced to her feet from her perch beside Logan and leaned against Bella. She stroked the dog then stepped up behind him. She pressed her forehead to his back, dragging in his familiar scent.
Sandalwood and vanilla with a hint of clean air from the cool breeze off the water. She hooked her finger around his pinkie and stood there with him for a little while.
He didn’t speak, didn’t push her for more than she was giving.
When the cold deck seeped into her feet and bones, she finally let him go and went back inside. She tugged on yoga pants and pawed through the sweatshirts he’d put in the drawers. A familiar blue Henley was at the bottom of the pile. Her palm itched to get a hold of it, to tug it on and find the comfort that once infused the cotton. Instead she clutched a long sleeve cotton shirt. She put a layer of lotion on her hands and coated her entire upper body, paying special attention to her shoulders and the healing skin around her wrists and forearms before pulling the shirt over her head. She turned out all the lights and slid into bed, moving to the side closest to the sloped ceiling.
Fiona jumped on the bed and Bella curled around her, letting sleep find her.
Sometime later Logan came in. She heard him moving around, zippers opening and closing then the shower turning on. She dozed until he sat on his side of the bed.
Part of her wanted to banish him.
Part of her wanted to back into him and ask him to hold her.
But she stayed where she was and he stretched out on his back, with his arm tucked under his head.
A two-foot island between them.
∞♦
∞
When Logan woke, she was gone. Her side of the bed was made, the pillow cool to the touch. He jumped out of bed and looked in the bathroom then over the railing of the loft bedroom to the living space below.
Both Fiona and Izzy were gone. He rushed back inside to get dressed when he heard Fiona’s bark. He went to the sliding doors to the deck and dragged in a gulp of air.
They were on the dock by the river, Isabella sitting in an Adirondack chair, looking out on the water with Fiona running around her chair, trying to get her to play.
He curled his fingers over the sun-warmed pine. He hadn’t even heard her or felt her move. The cabin itself had eased the constant terror he’d been living with for weeks now. Knowing Aimee couldn’t get to them had allowed him to lower his guard enough to sleep. Evidently he’d needed it.
Seeing the extent of her scars had stolen the last of his reserves last night.
He’d known about them.
He’d seen the nurses treating her daily, but he’d never gotten a true look at them. Not the burns on her shoulders, or the gash that had almost killed her.
He closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. No, he definitely hadn’t been prepared for that. And she’d looked at him so impassively. Like he was a stranger touching her.
Christ. It was time to put that away. She needed time, and he just had to get a grip about it. He took one more long look at her. Dark hair loose around her shoulders, familiar bulky cable-knit sweater that she loved wrapped around her, but she was sitting up. And she was strong enough to get herself down there.
For this morning, that was enough.
He padded into the bathroom to try and get back into a normal routine. After getting washed and dressed, he went downstairs and made coffee before heading outside. The air was cooler in Maine so the trees already had a tinge of yellow and orange to their leaves. He followed the well-worn path to the dock.
“Morning.”
Startled, she twisted in her seat.
“Sorry. I woke and you were gone.”
She put her hand on top of Fiona’s head. Inferring that she needed to take the dog out, he nodded and handed her a mug. She gave him an almost smile and cupped her hands around the warm ceramic, then settled back into her chair, her attention back on the water.
They both drank in companionable silence. When he finished his cup, he reached for hers that she’d set on the arm of the chair. “Do you want to go walk around? See where everything is?”
She nodded.
He transferred the mugs to one hand and held out his hand to help her, but she ignored it and struggled out of the deep chair on her own.
Fiona dropped a ball at his feet with a hopeful doggie smile. He bent down to pick it up and threw it up toward the path they’d walk. She barked, turned back to Isabella for permission, and took off after it.
“There’s a recreation lodge that we have access to.”
She nodded, tucked her hands into the huge sleeves of her sweater, and crossed her arms across her middle as they walked up the trail. Fiona kept bringing the ball back to them and running through the woods. She kept Isabella in her sights at all times.
It was only a three minute walk, but he could tell it was wearing on her. “Want to take a little break?” She gave a half shrug and sat at one of the picnic tables. “I’m just going to check out what they have.”
She averted her attention to Fiona without a word.
Of course.
Logan cracked his knuckles as he went inside. A pair of ancient pinball machines lined one wall, with a Pac Man video game console in the corner. But it was the full-sized pool table that called to him. He and Zeke would play for hours at the dive bars they’d performed in during the first few rough years.
Transitioning from teen dream pop sensation to a hard rock lead singer with a band had been tough. Even more difficult when he was starting without a dime to his name. His father had cleaned out his bank accounts the week before he’d turned eighteen.
They’d fought for the last year about his career. Logan was tired of the fluff songs that he was playing and wanted to change his image, write his own music. And the closer he got to legal age, the more he pushed to take control of his career.
No matter what, he would have taken care of his father. Landon King hadn’t believed that in the end. Instead he’d taken thirty-seven million dollars and disappeared on the second to last night of Logan’s tour.
He spun the scarred cue ball into the middle of the felt. He’d come back from nothing. Trust and faith wasn’t a commodity he had in abundance, but he had it in Izzy. Getting her to believe in him again was a test he was afraid he’d fail.
He stood up straight, tired of his own thoughts. It was all he had lately since she wasn’t talking. He crossed to the half closed sliding door to the lodge, pushing it open to light up the far corner.
A sad piano sat in the corner with a busted bench and crumbling leg that left it lopsided. He lifted the cover and found a handful of keys missing. He pressed down the middle C and found only silence. He ran his hands down the worn ivories and found a few minor keys that were still wired.
The sad tones whispered out of the dust motes.
A cold nose at his wrist dragged him out of the sad melody. He smiled down and scrubbed Fiona’s head. “Time to go?”
She spun around once and he glanced back to see Isabella standing in the doorway. Another time, another piano, in a time that felt like a distant memory, she’d looked at him in almost the same way.
Then she blinked and backed out of the lodge, Fiona chasing after her.
Logan shut the cover and pulled the door shut, instinctively protecting the shattered piano.