“My mother, she kept me real. She taught me what she remembered of her life, values, morals, what was wrong about my father and the life I grew up in.”

“How old was she?”

“When she was taken?”

I nodded.

“Eighteen.”

I lowered my head, and the rain hit the tip of my nose. God, that must have been terrifying and horrible, and she was there for so long, and here I was moaning about fifteen days.

“My mother had been planning to get us out for years. Finally an opportunity came, and she took it. We escaped.”

I asked the question that I was afraid to ask. “Did you want to leave?”

He closed his eyes for a minute. “It’s all I knew. Despite the stories my mother told me, that place was where I spent sixteen years of my life.” The back of his hand stroked my cheek, and I wanted to lean into it, instead I pulled away. “Still, I hated that place. Every second of it. I fought to stay away from everything else, but I saw what went on there. The girls, the hurt, violence, the drugs.

“My mother and I needed money after we escaped, so I continued the fighting, but I never liked it. I did what had to be done, Emily. That was one thing I learned to survive my father, determination and the will to do what you have to. Giving up doesn’t exist for me.

“That’s how he found me. He tracked fighting circuits, sending his men to look for me. Took him eight years, but word reached him about an undefeated Sculpt, and he showed up at one of my fights.”

“The night I asked you to help me.”

He nodded.

“Is that why you moved up your tour date?”

“Yes. I had to leave. I had to get out of the fighting world, but it was too late. I thought once I refused to fight for him, he’d leave it alone, and he did for a month or so. I should’ve known better. Raul gets what he wants. And he wanted me fighting for him.” He looked up and met my eyes. “I would’ve done it for however long he wanted me to if he’d promised to leave you alone.”

My breath hitched. He couldn’t do this to me. He couldn’t make it better. I wasn’t sure I could handle the truth.

He lowered his head while he ran his hand through his hair. “But you don’t know him. He doesn’t work that way. I knew that. Anyone who knows him does. He finds your weakness and destroys you with it.”

“And I was your weakness.”

“You and my mother. Raul had men on her, if I didn’t show up with you in Mexico, she was to be killed and not just a gunshot to the head. Raul’s kills are long, slow, and agonizing.” That was why he never attempted to take off with me when we drove to Mexico. “Before I saw you, after you were taken by Alfonzo ... I contacted Deck. He was out of the country, but he dropped everything to come back. He told me what I had to do and what needed to go down. Deck managed to get my mother out from under Raul’s men within four days.”

I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I let it go when he said that. He continued, “That’s when I had to be really careful with how I treated you. Raul knew my mother was gone from his clutches and all he had was you for leverage. He didn’t trust me, and I had to convince him that I was there because I wanted to fight and ... and that you meant nothing to me except a slave I wanted to fuck. If he knew how much I cared ... it was the only way to save you. I needed to give Deck time.”

“But why didn’t you tell me? We were alone most of the time. You could have told me, Logan.”

“Answer me this, Emily. If I’d told you all this, would you have feared me? Would you have trembled? Would you have had that look of fear in your eyes?”

I knew the answer. No. I would’ve feared the place and Raul and Alfonzo, but I’d always feel protected by Logan. But none of it really mattered, because I still felt like I’d been ripped apart and was trying to put my pieces back together. “I feel broken.”

His hand slipped into my hair. “We’ll fix this.”

I turned my head to avoid his touch. “Sculpt.” I saw him flinch when I avoided using his real name. “It’s too late. We can’t go back. I can’t. I’m sorry ... God, what you grew up with, what happened to you and your mother ... it’s horrible, unthinkable, but I ... Sculpt, I want to move on with my life, and you’re a reminder of what I want to forget.”

“Mouse—”

“Maybe it is what you had to do. But when I look at you now, I’m not sure who I see, the man I fell in love with or the cold, expressionless man that watched me suffer and made me fear him.” I took a deep breath and said the words I needed to say to save my already damaged heart. “What I’m sure of ... is that I’m better without either one.”

I turned, slipped under his arm, and ran through the raging rain. I heard him shouting my name and curse several times before I reached the house. I went into my room, shut the door and leaned up against it, my chest heaving in and out and my nerves shooting off like the Fourth of July.

After I caught my breath I took off my soaking wet breeches and shirt then dried myself off and slipped on jeans without even searching for underwear. I had no doubt Logan would come after me. My running would not deter him from finishing what he started. I grabbed my pink T-shirt from my bed and pulled it over my head just as the door swung open.

Logan stood in the doorway with his hands braced on either side. He looked determined and impenetrable. Water droplets fell off the tips of his hair, and his T-shirt was plastered to his broad, hard chest. There was no softness in his eyes; he was hard and determined with glistening moisture clinging to his skin.

He stole my breath away, and for a moment I couldn’t move. It was his authority that made my body hyperaware. It was like this basic need in me begging to be fulfilled.

“Maybe I’m like him. Because I’d have killed, murdered ... I would’ve done it all if he’d sold you. I’d have done those things to get you back. Yes, I watched you being whipped, fondled, dragged away, knowing you were going to be tortured. And yes, my own father held a gun to your head and I had to walk away or risk him killing you, just to make a point.” His hands tightened on the wood frame of the door. “And I’d do it again. Because there was no fuckin’ way he was taking you from me. You get that, Emily? That’s what this is about. I did what had to be done. You survived. And I’m telling you right now, growing up with him, knowing what that shit was like, you wouldn’t have survived being sold, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. So, I did what I had to do, and so did you.”

I sat on the bed, folding my trembling hands in my lap.

A tear slipped from its captivity, and I was furious at it. He didn’t deserve my tears. “I hate what you did to me.”

“You hate what I pretended to be. You hate that I wasn’t your knight in shining armor. You hate that I made you fear me. But don’t run from the truth, Eme. You want to hide behind your Lego blocks and not take the chance at being vulnerable again. But the truth is you’re more vulnerable now, because you are hiding.”

“You made me this way. You made me vulnerable,” I shouted.

“That’s bullshit. You were strong as hell fighting Raul and Alfonzo. Shit, you held a gun to me.” He walked toward me, and his hands ran up my arms then back down again. “Mouse, we can fix this.”

“It’s not just broken, Sculpt. It’s shattered.”

He remained quiet, eyes meeting mine.

He watched me, and I continued to brush away the stupid tears that refused to stop.

“This. Us. It hurts too much.” My words barely slipped from my mouth before he was lifting me up and kissing me. A slow, long kiss moving across my mouth like we’d been melted together.

His hands came on either side of my head as his kiss grew harsher, his tongue slipping inside, his grip on me tightening. It was so fresh and raw, as if both of us had been starved for one another.

I tasted the salt of my tears on my tongue as his mouth took mine in a sweet urgency.

My body responded, remembering the taste of him, the feel of him against my skin, and it wanted more and that terrified me.

“No.” I pushed on his chest, and he backed away.

“Emily.”

A part of me, the side that was completely crazy for this guy, wanted to leap in his arms and devour him. But there was so much crippling anguish inside me. And I suspected him too. At his father, and himself. We were bound to destroy one another more than we were already. “This can’t happen, Sculpt.”

“Try, baby.”

I shook my head back and forth. “I did. I hoped. I tried to believe you were the man I first met. But you snuffed that out every morning, and then when you let me go ...”

“I had to be cruel, Eme. I was losing control, and I knew you saw it. You were beginning to have faith in me again. I needed you to leave.”

“Why? Why, damn it. Why didn’t you just come with me then?”

“Fuck.” He ran his hand through his hair and groaned. “Raul ... wanted me. He used you to make sure he had me. So, it was imperative I stayed, so he wouldn’t come after you.”

I choked on my sob. I didn’t want to believe him, yet I saw the truth like a flashing beacon in front of me. It was so much easier to bury the past than to have it plastered in front of me. And the reality was ... when I looked at Logan it hurt, and I didn’t want hurt anymore.

“I can’t do this.”

“Emily.”

“No. Please. I can’t.”

His eyes darkened for several seconds, and I shifted under his intensity. A tremor of fear slithered through me, and I wrapped my arms around my chest like a shield.

He strode to the door and turned. I recognized the look, because I often had it in my eyes whenever I looked in the mirror—torment. “I won’t walk away from us.”

“Sculpt—”

“You need time—I get that. But I won’t give up.”

“You can’t stay here. I live here and—”

“I own the fuckin’ place, Emily. You’ve been living on my farm for two years.”

Chapter 13

Kat found me an hour later sitting on the floor, leaning against the foot of my bed. Shock had settled in, and I felt as if I was buried under a sea of water. Too cold to react, numb and staring but not seeing.

Logan owned the farm. I’d been living here for two years thinking ... But the puzzle fit; it made sense—Matt bringing me here instead of the house in the city where the three of us had lived.

It had been their parents’ house before they died in a drinking and driving accident—their father was the driver and the drunk. He smashed into a cement bridge going ninety miles an hour.

Matt put the house on the market, a house I never thought he’d sell. Not only that, he also put his bar up for sale. It took several months, but the house and bar sold, and Matt bought instead a condo downtown and the farm, at least I thought he had. With the sale of his old bar, he purchased a new one and named it Avalanche.

Had Logan told them to move? Or had it been Deck? Why did they listen? How did they occupy the farm so quickly? And how did Logan buy it when he was with me?