Page 63 of Logan
She looks at me and there’s no fear in her gaze. Just exhaustion, and something that hits me harder than any punch I’ve ever taken. Grace.
“I know it,” she says, her voice gaining strength. “You found me. You saved me.”
I shake my head. “You shouldn’t have needed saving. I let you go in there alone. I should’ve—”
“You respected me,” she says, cutting me off before the guilt can take root any deeper. “You believed in me. Don’t twist that into a mistake.”
Her hand comes up, brushing along my cheek. My eyes fall closed at the touch, and I lean into it like I’m afraid she’ll take it away if I move too fast.
“I can’t lose you,” I whisper, and it comes out like a confession.
“You didn’t,” she murmurs. “I’m still here.”
The silence that follows is different this time. It’s not sharp or suffocating. It’s heavy, weighted with everything we’ve both been through, everything we can’t put into words yet. It settles between us, honest and unflinching.
After a long minute, I ease onto the bed beside her. Slowly. Carefully. She shifts against me, tucking herself into my side like she’s done it a hundred times before, like nothing that happened today can erase the truth of where she belongs. My arm comes around her, holding her as gently as I know how, every movement deliberate so I don’t hurt her.
Maybe the place she’s safest is still with me.
And maybe I need her just as much as she needs me.
I press a kiss to the top of her head, breathing her in. The faint scent of her shampoo clings to her hair, mixed with the clean cotton of the blanket. I let it fill my lungs and push the rage down, if only for a while.
For the first time since I got to that room, I let myself believe that healing is possible.
Not easy.
Not quick.
But possible.
For her.
For me.
For us.
***
I walk downstairs to the basement room that we use when we need to handle problems privately. The heavy steel door at the bottom of the stairs is shut tight, the chipped paint around the handle a reminder of all the times it has opened to welcome the worst kind of men to their last moments. The air down here is different, thicker, heavier, carrying the faint vibrations of everything that has happened between these walls over the years.
Opening the door, the room smells like death, stale and lingering, but a smile touches my lips knowing that it hasn’t happened yet. Not for him. Not for the bastard chained in front of me.
Anthony is strung up by his arms, the steel links of the chain disappearing into the ceiling. His shoulders sit in anunnatural way, twisted too far forward, and I can tell they are both out of the socket. His body is a roadmap of pain, covered in gashes, bruises blooming in deep purples and sickening greens, blood crusting over older wounds while fresh ones still ooze. A dark, primal satisfaction rolls through me at the thought of how he got them.
Bursting through the door, I head straight for the piece of shit who thought he could touch her. Hurt her. Break her. My hand wraps around his throat, the skin hot and slick with sweat under my palm. “You are gonna die, motherfucker.”
He smiles at me, slow and smug, the kind of smile that dares me to finish what I started. “I don’t give a shit. At least I left my mark on that bitch first.”
The words are a spark in dry brush. My fist drives into his face before the sentence even finishes, and the crack of impact sends a shock up my arm. His head snaps to the side, body spinning from the force, the chain above tightening and jerking against his already ruined shoulders. I lose the thin thread of control I’d been clinging to.
My fists begin to find every inch of him, ribs, stomach, jaw, each blow making his body sway like the heavy bag I use at the gym. Except this is better. This hits back in a way a punching bag never could. My knuckles split wider, the warmth of my own blood mixing with his, the air filling with the metallic tang of it. I feel hands on me, pulling me back, and it takes a second before I realize it’s Cain, his voice cutting through the roar in my head.
“Take a breath, brother.”
Anthony starts to laugh, low at first, but it grows, a sound both mocking and broken, threaded with pain. It’s notthe laugh of a man who’s won, it’s the laugh of a man too stupid to understand he’s already lost.
Cain steps closer to him, his eyes dark. “Don’t think I’m pulling him off you as a sign of mercy. I’m doing it because what I have planned for you, I need you alive and suffering for.”
