Page 107 of Lady Sings the Blues

“Mine,” he grumbles again.

“How is this possible?” I manage to screech in his ear. The sound enough to shake him from whatever trance he’d been in. His fingers loosen, going back to just short of choking.

“Alright baby, you wanna know I’ll tell you.” Logan’s voice goes eerily soft.Right before the serial killer strikes at the main character in a movie, soft. “I was so about you, all about you. But you, the phone calls, the visits. Your sweet little ass spent more time with that dipshit once he went away to school than before he left, makin’ me the chump. I don’t much like bein’ the chump, you understand. So I found a guy who knew a guy and helped me find release.”

“What kind of release, Lo?”

“Tardust, snow, dream—blow, baby. The best kind of release.”

“Logan—no—please tell me no.”

“Cleaned up since then, don’t pretend to worry. Of course, didn’t clean up fast enough to save my full ride or place on the team. Random testin’.Bullshit. So I come to my sweet girlfriend needin’ her to make me feel better and what do I find, my girl and my boy—my cousin—hell, coulda been my brother for as close as we were, not just standin’ at your back but stabbin’ me in mine.”

It’s at this point Logan drops his hand from my throat and pushes back. Not far, but far enough to pace the carpet back and forth, clearly agitated. “Stab me in the back,” he murmurs.

“He didn’t stab you in the back.”

Logan lunges at me, stopping shy of touching me with anything but the tip of his nose against the tip of my nose.

“He did.Youdid. Tellin’ me you’re havin’ my baby withhimat your back. What the fuck was I supposed to do with that? Sleepin’ with that prick with my baby in your belly. That’s the fuckin’ definition of a whore, Elise.”

“I never slept with him, Lo. Not once. Never. Before I thought you died and for the five years after, I never slept with another man. You, however, didn’t give me that courtesy.”

“You’re a liaranda whore. But as I see it, he took what was mine so now I’m takin’ what’s his. Fair’s fair.”

“Please, Logan. Tell me how you’re alive when the town buried you.”

“Hard to identify the body with the head blown off. Was fuckin’ this girl, her brother was Horde. He helped me pick the dick out at a mall in Lexington. My body type, hair color. Rage helped me kidnap the douche, but I had to be the one to take him out. Didn’t think I could do it. Crazy thing about that, Elise. Didn’t realize just how easy it is to point and pull a trigger. My fingerprints on my dad’s rifle. Benefit of bein’the god of Thornbriar, the town was too stunned for those losers to do a proper identification. Then Rage helped me disappear. Enter Houdini.”

“You’re crazy,” I whisper.

“No baby, not crazy…free.” He walks over to a dresser turning his back to me to pull open the drawer so I take the opportunity to look around and realize I know exactly where we are. Exactly.

Same log frame bed. Same Navajo print blanket covering the soft pillow top mattress. Same tacky woodland prints hung on the walls. Same. Everything the same. Except the man. The man had changed. He too the same, but so very different.

I cannot believe he brought me here, to the first place I’d given myself to him. That’s when he turns back around throwing a pair of drawstring shorts and a T-shirt over his shoulder. He reads my face, knows I know.

“Yeah baby, long time since you been here. Let’s get you dressed.” Normally I don’t much take to being ordered around, but as I’m at a disadvantage sitting half naked on a bed with a crazy nutsoid, out of his ever-lovin’ mind Logan, I quickly stand, stepping into the shorts he’d crouched down for me to step into and allow him to pull them up.

He ties them resting low on my hips. And after unbinding my wrists, he slips the tee over my head, knotting it at my lower back as I pull my arms through the armholes.

With my wrists bound again, I’m led out of the bedroom. “I’m married to him, Lo. You can’t have me.”

“I don’t want you bitch. That ship done sailed. I mean, I’ll fuck ya. Still got a hot little bod. Always had a tight little cunt. Don’t look used, so I bet you’re still pretty fuckin’ tight. No, I’m takin’ the baby. Imagine it, Elise, the baby of the VP of Brimstone Lords bein’ raised by the Horde.”

“I’ll never stop fighting to get away, you know.”

“Not sure what you’d be goin’ back to. Bossman’s dead. Either way, he’s dead. Givin’ you this one chance, come willin’ and Maryanne lives. Livvy lives. Trisha lives. Fight me, I take ‘em out and make it painful. Won’t realize the meaning of suffer ‘til I’m done with ‘em.”

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

I close my eyes, picturing Beau’s molten chocolate eyes and crooked smile. I remember how it feels to run my fingers through that thick peanut butter hair. To feel his arms around me. His beard tickling my shoulder when he kisses my neck. To rest my cheek on my name tattooed over his heart when we’re lying in bed together. And at the very last, I remember how a duck walked into a bar.

“Decide now,” he orders.

There’s no way for me to escape right now. Not until he trusts me again. And if he’s proven anything this morning, it’s that he’s crazy enough to pick off my friends, one by one.

No, I never. My friends have to stay safe.

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