Page 17 of Annika's Aurora

She was suddenly very aware of her nakedness, but she didn’t care. Logan was home. She was safe in his arms. That was all that mattered.

He ended the kiss again but still held her close. “Can you ever forgive me, Annika? I am so sorry. I should never have left. Please forgive me.” His begging demolished the last of her ice walls.

Wanting to see his eyes, Annika tilted her head back. Vulnerability burned in the dark chestnut color there. Reading the anxiety in his features, she placed a hand to his cheek, forcing him to maintain eye contact with her. “I was mad at you for a very long time. I once read somewhere that the hardest goodbyes are the unexplained ones. The ones that are left unsaid. It was exactly that. The unexplained goodbye. An ache that never went away. I still am a little mad at you, but none of that matters now. You are home. You came back to us. To me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She sighed and continued before he could say anything. “I don’t understand why you left. I can’t begin to comprehend what it had been like for you. The pain you must have been feeling. And to face it alone … I can’t imagine that. I prayed every night that you would reach out to us. Every night for fifteen years.”

“Fuck, Annika! I’ve failed you in so many ways. First with Jamie. Then?”

“Wait. What do you mean with Jamie?”

He drew in a deep, shaky breath, his eyes lowering as if unable to look at her. “I killed him, Annika. It’s my fault he’s dead.”

She shook her head emphatically. What the hell? How could he have ever thought it was his fault? “Logan, no. You didn’t kill …”

“Yes, I did,” he interrupted. “I was driving. I can see it so clearly. I was distracted. By you and that little kiss you gave me in the parking lot. Even just looking at you in the rearview mirror distracted me. If I’d been paying more attention to the road, I might have been able to react more quickly to avoid that truck.”

“Oh, Logan.”

He tore himself away from her and threw his legs over the edge of the bed. He sat shoulders slumped with his head in his hands, breathing heavily. Tears trickled down his face.

“After we were hit, if I had moved faster, got you out faster, maybe ...” He grasped his hair tightly, agony pouring off of him. “I nearly had him, Annika. He was right there. I nearly had him free of the seatbelt.”

He stood up suddenly and began to pace. His hands tore into his hair again before coming to rest linked at the back of his neck, elbows jutted out in front of him. “If I had been able to move faster ... It’s my fault he’s dead. I failed. I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t good enough. I’m so sorry, Annika. It’s my fault he’s gone. If I could trade my life for his, I would gladly die for him.”

Annika gingerly got out of her side of the bed, a wave of dizziness slowing her down. She reached for her pajamas, putting them on. Flannel pants and a Foreigner t-shirt.HisForeigner t-shirt. It was a little worse for wear, the image faded, but she could never part with it, it was all she had of him.

Walking over to him, she stood directly in front of him to stop his pacing. She grabbed his elbows and pushed down, making him lower his arms. Then with a hand on either side of his face, she drew his head up, forcing him to meet her gaze. His eyes were so tortured, dark and brooding as always, filled with agony and desperation. “Listen to me, Logan. Nothing that happened to Jamie was your fault. Do you hear me?” She shook his head slightly. “Not your fault. You didn’t fail me. You saved me. If you hadn’t pulled me out, I’d be dead too. You are a hero. And you always will be to me.”

“But your parents must blame me …”

“No, Logan. We never blamed you. Never. Not once did any of us think it was your fault. I’ve spent years in therapy trying to come to grips with what happened. The only conclusion I’ve been able to come to is that it was just his time. I’ve comforted myself by imagining that God had something important for him to do in heaven. And that makes me happy. You know why? Because it means that someday, I will see him again. We all will. Even you, Logan.”

He tried to shake his head, to deny what she was saying, but she wouldn’t let him. “Yes, even you. Jamie is still with us. He’s here right now. He’s always been with us. In here.” She pointed to his heart. “Jamie opened your heart and brought you back to us. He knew that you needed us as much as we needed you.”

He released a lungful of air as he mulled over her words. “I think Mama Jo had something to do with that the day she sent me a new email.”

“Maybe. Or maybe Jamie told her it was time to reach out to you again. That you were ready to come home.”

“I don’t know, Annika …”

“ButIdo,” she said emphatically. “Is that why you stayed away for so long? You felt guilty?”

“Yes. Of the two of us, Jamie was the better man. It should have been me. You lost your twin. Your other half. And it should have been me.”

She dropped her hands from his face, grabbed his hands, and held them tightly. Pulling herself straight up to her full height, she peered directly into his eyes. “I’m only going to say this one more time, and I hope I never have to say it again. It was not your fault.”

“How can you be so sure?”

She shrugged. “I just am. I know you, Logan. Or at least I used to.” He winced. “What I mean is, you are a good man. You would never wish ill on anyone. So, tell me, can someone who’s so kind and giving ever willingly kill someone? No,” she answered for him. “No, they wouldn’t. You are a hero. You wanted to be a hero long before the accident. Remember? You always wanted to be a SEAL. You were a hero that night too. You saved me. And you risked your life trying to save Jamie.”

She paused to take a breath. “And look what you’ve done with your life since. I’ve done some research on what it takes to become a SEAL. I know what they put you through. You overcame impossible conditions and succeeded. And I’m willing to bet you played the hero on numerous missions. Even now. Logan, you’re a Nighthawk. If those men are not the true definition of a hero, then I don’t know what is. You risk your life every time you go out to save someone else, to help a total stranger. I watched you do it that night when you risked your life for Jamie. And you probably risked an awful lot to get to me at the bottom of the bluff. You are the bravest man I know.”

She kissed his hands that were still clenched in hers. “Besides, did it ever occur to you that Jamie mightnothave been my other half. That maybeyouare my other half?”

His eyes widened with shock. “Sure, Jamie was my twin. We shared a special connection, and I loved him. But you were always the one I wanted to be near the most.”

“Fuck, Annika. The things you say. I don’t know how you can be so forgiving after everything I’ve put you through for all these years.”

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