Page 52 of No One Can Know

“I’m married,” she told him.

“And does he make you happy, Emma Palmer?” Logan asked, jokingly.

“He makes me feel less alone,” she said. Logan fell silent, both of them startled by the answer. He shifted his weight, uncomfortable.

“Emma, all I know is that one of your dad’s guys paid me a hundred bucks to spend a night shifting cargo between trucks after hours. I don’t know what it was and I don’t know where it came from, but it can’t have been legal. But maybe go ask Gabriel Mahoney why his dad got fired. Or don’t. Like I said, there’s a lot of bad people out there. I wouldn’t want a nice girl like you getting involved with them.”

“I can look after myself.”

“You sure about that?” Logan asked. All that sleepiness was gone. His gaze was intent. Intrusive. He put a glass in front of her and poured a trickle of amber liquid in it, barely a swallow.

“I can’t,” she said.

“One sip won’t hurt anything, and you need it.”

She picked up the glass, staring at it for a moment. Whiskey. Her father’s favored drink, faithfully transferred to a crystal decanter each week. He didn’t often drink to excess, but he drank steadily, from thetime he got home to the time he went to bed. This stuff was cheaper than that; she could smell it from here. She knocked it back. Hardly a swallow, but it scorched all the way down.

“That’s better,” he said.

Emma made an unamused noise in the back of her throat. “I should go.”

“But you don’t want to,” he replied, unsmiling.

He was wrong. She did want to go home. Because Nathan was at home, and she loved Nathan. Maybe she’d never fallen in love with him, but she loved him. She had to. Because he was the man who had never left her. Even when he had the option. She knew him. She knew his flaws and she knew the worst thing he was capable of.

That had been enough before. It would have to be enough now.

She rose, reaching for her wallet. “Thank you for the drink.”

“On the house,” he said. “And tell you what. Give me your number. Could be I think of a few things from back then. I can let you know.”

She didn’t trust Logan’s affability, that easy way he let things roll off him. There was a hard glint hiding behind those eyes. He let things go in the moment, she thought, but she doubted he forgot them.

Still.

She scribbled her number on a napkin and put a bill down on the bar. “Thanks again, Logan,” she said, and made her way to the door.

24JULIETTE

Then

She’s aiming for the door. She almost misses, banging her shoulder against the frame and stumbling down the front steps.

“Juliette!” Logan is behind her. She stops, closes her eyes.

Not like that. She wanted it but not like that, and she shouldn’t have wanted it at all. She knows what she is. She knows it should be fine, but it isn’t, not for her, not for her father.

Logan, laughing, catches her arm and pulls her around. “Hey. Babe. What’s wrong?”

“I’m not—” she begins. She gestures. “I don’t like girls.”

“Aren’t all girls just a little bisexual?” he asks. He sticks a finger through one of her belt loops and tugs her against him. “Come on. It’s just for fun. It’s hot.” His breath is loud against her ear; he kisses her neck. He’s leaning forward, enough that she can’t hold up his weight, has to step back and back again, until her shoulders hit the rough bark of a tree. “Don’t worry. I know what you do like.”

He unbuttons her jeans. With her weight braced against the tree, his mouth against her throat, he works his fingers between her legs until she is stifling her cries, her eyes shut, her head tipped back. As soon as he’s done, a familiar feeling of shame floods through her, the need to not be touched or seen. She turns her face away.

She remembers coming back from homecoming. Her date kissed her goodbye. Did more than kiss her, leaning in, opening his mouth toslip his tongue between her lips. She kissed him back, delighted by the novelty of it, even if she had no interest in the boy himself, who had all the substance of damp cardboard. Her father saw.

He didn’t say anything. But the next day he asked her to bring him one of his guns, saying he needed to clean it, and then he spun the cylinder and sighted casually down the barrel at her and mentioned, as if out of nowhere, that he’d rather his daughters be dead than be whores.

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