Exposed (20 page)

And then I feel peace wash over me. I look around, and there he is. Tall, golden-haired, golden-skinned, eyes gleaming indigo. Striding toward me, arms swinging freely, the smile on his face a tender one, calm joy at merely seeing me. He’s wearing the same tight dark blue jeans as the first time I saw him, this time with a red T-shirt, on which is written in large black letters:
VOTE “NO” ON DALEKS, STOP EXTERMINATION TODAY
, with a picture of some kind of robot covered in black knobs and armed with a gun. I do not understand many of his T-shirts. References to pop culture, I believe, things I’ve not seen either pre- or postamnesia.

He wraps me up in his arms, pulls me to his chest. He is warm and solid and comforting, his scent now familiar, cinnamon gum and cigarette smoke. I rest my ear over his heart and listen to his heartbeat, and I merely breathe for long moments. He doesn’t speak, as if understanding without needing to be told that I am fragile right now.

His palm skates down my waist and comes to rest over my hip, over the stitches. I gasp in pain, and his hand flies away.

“Shit, are you hurt?” He holds me by the shoulder and examines me for signs of injury.

I shake my head. “No. Well, yes. I just had the microchip removed from my hip. No more tracking me. Not that way, at least.”

“When did this happen?”

I shrug. “Ten minutes ago, perhaps?”

“Damn it, Isabel,” he sighs. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.” He suits action to words, scooping me up in his arms and cradling me against his chest.

“Put me down, Logan,” I murmur, hiding my face in his neck. “I’m fine. And besides, you can’t carry me down the streets of Manhattan.”

“The hell I will, the hell you are, and the hell I can’t.” He moves through the crowd with me in his arms as if I weigh nothing, and he is careful to make sure my head doesn’t bump into anyone. “If a man carrying a woman down the street is the strangest thing these people see today, then they’re not paying attention.”

I don’t want him to put me down. Not really. So I let him carry me. I enjoy his presence, his heat, his strength. Being taken care of. Cared for. Cared
about
.

“So . . . you and Caleb.” It’s a gentle prod, a hesitant inquisition.

My throat seizes. “I can’t, Logan. Not just yet.”

His lips touch my cheek. My forehead. “When you’re ready. Or
not at all. I’m here, okay? That’s all you need to worry about. I’m here, and I’ve got you.”

His big boxy silver SUV is parked a couple of blocks away, and he carries me all the way to it, never faltering or shifting his grip or acting for even a moment as if my not-insignificant weight is a burden. He sets me on my feet, opens the passenger-side door, and helps me in, closes the door after me.

Slides in behind the wheel, touches a button to start the engine. Immediately, loud, wild, raucous music fills the cabin. The music is chugging yet melodic, the singer a woman, her voice sweet yet full of rage, moving easily from singing to screaming—
I am the dark you created, I am your sin, I am your whore.
Logan moves to turn it off, but I stop him.

“Wait.” There is something in the way she sings, the way she screams. Something in the lyrics. Something visceral in the madness of the instruments. “What is this?”

“The band is In This Moment. The song is called ‘Whore.’”

“It could be about me.”

We sit and listen. I am moved, deeply. The rage she so obviously feels, her ownership of the darkness within her, the demand for an answer to a question that has none . . . I empathize in some vulnerable corner of my soul.

And then the next song comes on.
Are you sick like me? . . . Am I beautiful?
There is more ire in this song, more deeply felt hatred and self-loathing and understanding of one’s own filth.

It is all too close to the state of my existence, too near to who I am. I could devolve into a creature carved from fire and rage. I have been lied to and possessed and forced into molds that do not fit me; I have been brainwashed and made to be a thing I am not. My past has been hidden from me. The truth of all that is me has been kept
buried. Even still, my desires are used against me. My needs made into weapons, forged into blades slicing open my own flesh.

I tremble, like a dry leaf in a long wind.

“I think that’s enough,” Logan says, when the song ends.

“No. One more.”

He turns on a song called “Blood,” and I focus in on the lyrics.
Dirty dirty girl . . . everything you ever took from me . . . dominate and you violate me . . .

I close my eyes and fall into it. Give in to it. Scream with her. Sing with her. Lose myself to it.

He plays another one, “The Promise,” and this one has a male voice added, and the promise of the title is that they will hurt each other.

I know that feeling. I feel it now. I risk a look at Logan, and I know it’s true. I’ll hurt him. I have hurt him. He just doesn’t know it yet.

He drives, and I let him play whatever he wants. He tells me what each song and band is as they come on, one by one. He plays Halestorm, Flyleaf, Amaranthe, Skillet, Five Finger Death Punch—how do they come up with these names?

The one constant is rage.

This . . . this I understand.

We reach his house, and I’ve had a brief introduction to music that can reach the secrets in your soul and turn them real and give them voice. It turns out my voice is angry.

“My girl likes metal,” Logan says, as he shuts off his truck.

“I’m not your girl.” I hate how harsh I sound when I say this, and a look at Logan tells me I’ve hurt him. “That came out wrong. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s true.”

“But it’s not what I meant. Or—it is, but not the way it sounded. I can’t be your girl. I want to be, I wish I were. But . . . I can’t. Logan, I just . . .
can’t
.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m broken. I’m all sharp edges and fragments. I’ll just cut you to pieces if you try to keep hold of me.”

“I don’t mind bleeding for you.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” I swallow bitterness in my throat. “Not for me. I’m not worth it.”

“Not worth—?” He seems to choke, but I can’t look at him. “Not
worth
it? God, that bastard’s really done a number on you, hasn’t he?”

“I did it to myself.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?”

“Yes.” I step out of his vehicle, and he follows. He takes a seat on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to his home. “Why were you there, Logan? Just now, I mean. How are you always just . . .
there
 . . . when I need you most?”

“I just . . . knew. I don’t know. I can’t explain it without sounding like a whacko. I just . . . knew I should be there. I knew you’d need me. I couldn’t sit around and do nothing. We finished the acquisition and now we’re off for a week, and I just . . . I was going crazy without you. And I knew you needed me.” He digs in a pocket of his jeans and pulls out my cell phone. “Also, you left this at my place, so I was going to return it.”

“Thank you.”

A shrug. “What happened, Is?” He lights a cigarette and inhales deeply.

I take it from him, smoke with him. It tastes horrible, but the lightheaded dizziness is worth it, the sense of floating above it all, the momentary sensation of freedom. And it binds me to him in some way.

“More stories, more half truths, more lies.” I stare at the concrete under my feet. “More of my weakness. More of all the things I’ve always known.”

Logan is silent for a very long time, the cigarette pinched between forefinger and thumb, lazy tendrils of smoke curling up around his face. “But I was right.”

“Do not mince words, Logan. Not to spare my feelings.” I take the cigarette from him, inhale, watch the cherry glow brighter. Hand it back. “Or your own, for that matter.”

He just blinks at me, takes one last drag, and with a violent flick of his hand sends the butt flying a dozen feet into the street, where it lands with an explosion of sparks. “Did you fuck him?”

I can barely manage a whisper. “Short answer . . . yes.”

A silence, short and brutal. “Fuck. I knew it.” He rises, paces away, tugs his hair free of the ponytail with a jerk, and shakes it out, spears his fingers through the wavy blond locks. Looks at me from ten feet away. “What’s the long answer?”

“I hate myself for it. I knew it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t change him. It wouldn’t change me. It wouldn’t bring answers. But . . . I’m weak, Logan. He mixes me up. I . . . don’t even know how to explain it. But this time . . . I felt . . . empty. I realized if he does care at all, he just can’t show it. Or he has a very bizarre way of showing it. I don’t know. I’m no closer to knowing anything about myself or my past than when I left here, and now . . .”

“And now what, Isabel?”

“You, and me. How can you look at me?”

He touches my chin with a finger. I didn’t know he was there in front of me, so absorbed in myself am I. “Why do you think I let you leave in the first place? Why do you think I wouldn’t let us actually have sex?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s bullshit, because you do.” He sits beside me again. “I told you why.”

I think back. “You said that there couldn’t be a beginning to you and me until there was end to Caleb and me.”

“Right.” A pause. “And? Was that the end?”

“I don’t know. I know you’re hoping for a decisive answer here, but . . . I can’t give it to you. It was an end to his hold on me, physically. But emotionally? I don’t know. There are still so many questions I need the answers to. I—I’m tangled up, still, Logan. He
knows
things, but he’s not telling me. You were also right about that. But I don’t know why he’s keeping things from me. What is there to be so secretive about? I just . . . I
need
to know more. And until I do, until I feel complete, I won’t ever be totally free of Caleb.”

“Can’t fault you for that, I guess.”

“And I don’t know if this means anything to you, but . . . I didn’t fuck him. He fucked me, and I let him. It’s the way it’s always been. I was complicit, I have to be honest about that. I allowed it, the way I’ve always allowed it. In the moment, when he’s there, I just . . . I lose myself. I lose myself.” I want to take his hand, but I am afraid to; I suffer a moment of bravery, slide my fingers under his. “Where does this leave us, Logan?”

He threads our fingers together. “I’m hurt. I’m upset. I mean, I knew it was going to happen, which is why I held us back. But it still sucks.” He stands up, leads me inside. “I just need some time, you know? Put some space between you and him and . . . you and me.”

I’m in no state to think about him and me. I can barely function. My mind is whirling like an orbital model of our galaxy, a million thoughts each spinning and all of them revolving in complicated, heliocentric patterns around the twin suns of Logan and Caleb. They are both supermassive entities, each possessing their own gravitational pulls on me.

Or maybe Caleb is a black hole, sucking in light and matter and
all things in inexorable destruction, and Logan is a sun, giving life, giving heat, permitting growth.

Logan leads me to his living room, nudges me toward the couch. I sit. He lets out Cocoa, who welcomes me with exuberant puppy kisses and then lies on the floor and watches us. Logan vanishes into the kitchen and returns with two open bottles of beer and a half-empty bottle of Jameson. “A caveat, before we start drinking: This doesn’t fix anything. But sometimes you need to just get hammered and not worry about the fucked-up mess that is your life. It gives you some space from everything. And I’ve discovered that I do my clearest thinking about problems when I’ve got a wicked hangover. Something about the pounding headache and roiling stomach just makes me more brutally honest with myself.”

He hands me the bottle of whisky and one of the beers.

I just stare at him. “Where are the glasses?”

A laugh. “No glasses for this kind of drinking, sweetheart. Just pull right off the bottle.”

“How much?”

“Two good swallows is about one decent-sized shot. But under the circumstances, I’d say just keep drinking until you can’t handle any more.”

This strikes me as very bad advice. But then, maybe that is the point: to get me very drunk very quickly.

I lift the bottle of whisky to my lips and take a tentative sip. It burns, but not the same way exactly as scotch. It’s easier to drink, actually. I let the burn slide down my throat and breathe past it. And then I do as he suggested: I tilt the bottle up and take one swallow, a second, a third, and then it burns too badly and I’m gasping for oxygen and my throat is on fire. I drain half my beer in an attempt to assuage my protesting throat, after which my head is spinning.

Logan takes the bottle and does the same, drinking the same
amount as me and chasing it with beer. And then he does something truly strange. He lowers himself to the couch, sets the whisky and his beer on a side table, and drapes my feet onto his lap, tossing my shoes to the floor. Lifting one of my feet and cupping it in his palms, he digs his thumbs into the arch of my foot, immediately eliciting a moan from me.

“What are you doing, Logan?” I ask.

“Giving you one of life’s greatest pleasures: a foot rub.”

It is incredible. I don’t want it to ever stop. It is intimate, so pleasurable it is nearly sexual. His thumbs press firmly in sliding circles over my arch, into my heel, the ball of my foot, and then his fingers crease between each of my toes and I giggle at the tickling touch. After a brief pause to sip beer, he gives my other foot the same treatment.

And then his fingers dimple into the muscle of my calf, kneading it in circles and from one side of my leg to the other. Higher, higher, near to my knee, and the massage becomes all the more intimate with every upward inch. The stretchy cotton of my dress is draped over his hands, one of which is holding my leg at the ankle, the other massaging my calf.

I’ve forgotten my beer; I take a pull, then peer at him. “This feels amazing.”

“Good. You need some amazing things in your life.”

“There’s you.” I didn’t mean to say that; whisky loosens my tongue, it would seem.