Page 139 of Fraternizing with the Enemy
“Whatever it was, it was a lie.” Logan took another half step forward, hesitantly stretching a hand out again to touch my arm. “Let me—let me explain everything from the beginning?—”
“So Jade didn’t threaten you and Noah if you didn’t flirt with me?” I asked him, staring at the wrinkle in his hoodie. I’d traced it with my fingers earlier. It felt like a lifetime ago. “She didn’t force you to date me or else she’d lie and make it seem like it was your school trying to bribe Brentwood?”
Logan faltered, clearly taken aback that Jade would’ve painted herself as the bad guy. “She didn’t force me to date you,” he objected after a beat. “She just told me to flirt with you. She never said anything about dates. I took you out all on my own.”
It was my choice to date you, he said without saying.I chose you. “Logan.”
“I know what you’re thinking.” Now Logan finally reached down and picked up my cold hand, the heat from his fingers trying to thaw mine. “Don’t go down that path. I like you, Madison. I know what it looks like, but I really, really like you.”
A choking sensation gripped my throat. “Logan.”
“I haven’t been faking my feelings for you.” Panic caused his voice to go up an octave, and his hands fluttered on my arms, as if wanting to hold me still but afraid to grab on too tightly. “Not once. I’m not—I’m not that good of an actor. What I feel for you is real. You have to know that.”
Of course I knew that. If there was one thing in theentire world I was certain of, it was that Logan liked me. Or, at least,thoughthe liked me. He believed it so totally, but even I wasn’t sure if it was something more like Stockholm syndrome.
You’ll always wonder if it’s real, or if it’s another game I let you win.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “Why didn’t you tell me what Jade did?”
Now, though, Logan was hesitant to reply. “I?—”
“Was it because you didn’t trust me?”
His forehead creased. “Jade spins everything in her favor. She—she lies about everything. I was afraid she’d lie, and that you’d?—”
“That I’d choose her over you.” Exactly what Jade had said.
Logan’s fingers suddenly pressed into my skin harder, giving my body a soft shake. “Don’t do that,” he scolded gently. “Don’t pull away from me.”
“That’s why you thought we wouldn’t work out.” Like a domino toppling over, I thought of the night of Noah’s bonfire, when I’d come up to them in the garage.You think she’ll stick around when she finds out?The realization came as a hollow boom, like a bomb going off miles away. “And that’s why Noah hated me—not because I went to Brentwood, but because he knew what Jade made you do.”
“I’ll do whatever you need—our read the texts, and I’ll explain everything. It—it started out bad, but Iswear?—”
“You don’t have to explain.” My stomach cramped as everything crashed down around me. And really, there wasn’t anything to explain, anyway. Iknew what he’d done and why he’d done it. “I’m not mad at you. How—how could I be mad at you? It wasn’t like you had a choice.”
Logan’s face fell. “Madison?—”
“But that… makes it worse.” A rush of cold air washed across us, and Logan shivered, but I held perfectly still. “I’m the reason you were forced to do something you never wanted to do—something that I’m sure made you sick to do. I know you, Logan Castle. You try to handle everything yourself, even if it kills you inside.”
I could remember so clearly how heavy Logan’s body that night in the alley had been, when I’d wrapped my arms around him to try and hold him together. If I focused, I could almost hear his frantic heartbeat in my ear, tripping over itself as anxiety had sunk its teeth into him.
And that night, it’d been my fault, too.
“Every time you looked at me, you must’ve felt guilty. Even tonight. You couldn’t kiss me because you felt so guilty. And it’s my fault.”Sorry, he’d gasped out that day in the rain, when he’d come close to bridging the gap between us.Sorry, sorry. “You even said yourself, if you could go back?—”
“I would’ve done it differently, but notyou.” Logan spoke through a clenched jaw. “Never you.”
Something in my chest broke. “I don’t know if I feel the same way.”
Logan suddenly took my face in his hands and forced my head up, lifting my gaze once more back to his. So much had changed in them—they were still stormy, butopen, as if he wanted me to see every inch of him he could bare. “What happened to what you told me?” hedemanded, but his voice was quiet, reserved for the space between just us. “You told me that I can’t take on the guilt other people refuse to carry. That I can’t blame myself for Noah getting hurt. So why are you doing this? Why are you blaming yourself?”
Something in me broke then, and all at once, I began to unravel. I felt like a piece of fabric being torn through the wind, threadbare and useless. “Because I can’t handle it,” I whispered, the words almost caught and tugged away with the wind. My gaze began to mist over, the numbness finally wearing off. “It makes me feel sick. Looking at you. It… it makes me feel sick.”
Every thought of Logan made my chest cave in, like I’d swallowed shards of glass. It would’ve been easier if Logan had chosen this. If he’d played me at first by some flippant dare, and then accidentally stumbled into real feelings. That I could understand.
But the reality? That Jade had twisted his loyalty into a leash, forcing him to hurt himself in order to protect the people he loved—that was unbearable.
And worse? I’d pushed him right back into it. He’d tried to walk away after I found out he was from Jefferson, and I’d been the one who tracked him down. I’d talked Logan into the exposure therapy, into proving that I wouldn’t peak in high school. It was about me, about what I needed, and he let me, because Logan always carried other people’s weight before his own.
