Page 23 of Unmistakably Us

Seven

January hadn’t intended to sleep. Her plan was to hold Logan until he fell asleep, get Ruger’s Precious back to him, and hop on Demon and head home.

She woke needing to pee like crazy, and Logan was rambling off a tale that turned her stomach. At first, she assumed he was having a nightmare and thought to wake him, but as she shifted her body ever so slightly with the intent of rising, Logan clung to her. He whispered, “Even in your sleep, you want to run away from me now, don’t you?”

Her heart broke into innumerable pieces. She thought she’d had a shitshow of a life, but hers was nothing compared to his. A freaking cakewalk.

Her mom was a controlling cunt, and she was giving up a decade of her life, but that seemed like a pittance compared to what he endured.

It explained so much of him. In hindsight, how did she not see it? It was all she could do to pretend to still be asleep when all she wanted was to throw her arms around him and tell him that all those people were wrong. He was an amazing person, and none of the vile things they called him were true. January decided he wasn’t confessing to her, but to the darkness, and to the darkness his words would fall…and remain.

His next words damn near caused her to involuntarily give up her sleep charade. “Michael’s my biological half-brother. And when I came here, I didn’t know how I felt about that other than he had a life no one ever offered me.”

Logan then launched into his thoughts of Lucinda, who she gathered was Michael’s biological mother. There was so much pain in his voice, it was obvious she was one of the few people who ever made him feel worth a damn, but then she let him down, too. Just like everyone else had, and it was because she was pregnant with Michael.

The pain radiating off him was palpable, and all she wanted to do was take it away for good. That and kick every single one of those people’s asses.

More than once, she had to remind herself he wasn’t really talking to her, he was simply having a therapeutic spill session, as Gus would call it.

Knowing Logan, he would be mortified…and pissed, if he knew she had heard him. But how could she keep this kind of thing from any of the Reid clan? Especially Francis or Dax. Shit, Michael was John’s best friend. How could she look him in the eye knowing what she knew?

The rest were Logan’s secrets to keep or not, but this one, how could she do it? It felt like a betrayal either way. Betray Logan or essentially betray her sister with a few degrees of separation. This was the reason the phrase “between a rock and hard place,” was invented.

She was starting to work up a good lather of anger toward Logan for putting her in the position, then he breathed a confession to pale all the others. “I believe I could fall in love with you. Hell, I probably already am, but I’m too fucking stupid to know it, just like everyone always said.”

He finally drifted off to sleep so she could pee—thank God. After washing her hands, she caught her reflection in the chipped mirror. She looked tired and different somehow. The dingy fluorescent light did nothing to lessen the affect.

She scolded herself for even thinking of leaving now. Logan was vulnerable, and her walking out could be something that had an ill effect on him. Not that she overestimated her worth, but he was in a weird place having relived all that.

She tiptoed back into the room, retrieved her cell phone from her discarded clothes, and texted Ruger, making the promise to fill up Precious and give her a good hand wash in payment for her not returning her tonight.

Ruger was gracious about it and said he’d catch a ride instead of taking Demon, but he’d lock him up for her.

Next, she shot a text off to her sister. After last night, she thought it was the right thing to do. Gus was a worry wart, after all. Before she put her phone away, she did something she had never done before…she took a picture of someone sleeping.

Logan looked at peace tonight, a stark contrast to last night, to every look he ever sported, asleep or awake. He was always on guard she realized, not just with his feet at the edge of the bed at night. Doing a rapid replay of every night she had seen him in the club, she realized he never relaxed when his back was to the door or the open part of the room.

As much attention as he paid to her, it was also divided between watching the door and the other patrons. As a matter of fact, he always ordered beer but rarely finished them. This was the first time she’d ever witnessed him blitzed, and Lord knows, he was.

January sat there for another twenty minutes or so, just watching him sleep and thinking about everything he said. She hated to admit it, but she cried. Not something she did often, not for real people, anyway.

“What am I going to do with you?” she whispered into the dated room. Shit, if I’m not saying that a lot lately.

She was doing a lot of shit lately she wasn’t used to doing. She wanted to blame it all on coming here and meeting Logan, but the truth probably was just she needed to feel like a normal fucking person…for a little while, anyway.

She hadn’t realized how abnormal her life was until she spent time with the Reids. Stripping was the most normal thing she had done to date, and that was sad.

With that last thought, she exhaled, put her phone away, and crawled back into bed. Logan immediately rolled over and enveloped her in his embrace. Neither had their feet on the edge, and neither seemed to care.

Speaking directly into her ear, Logan’s voice was raspy and threaded with proof he had slept soundly for the short period of time. “Did you hear me? I was sure you were awake for at least some of it.”

January considered lying but quickly discarded the idea, opting for honesty instead. She tightened her grip on him and nodded against his chest. She felt words would be overkill at this point.

“Hmmm, good,” he mumbled. They both seemed content to let silence reign, breaking it only with lazy kisses. January wanted, no needed, to connect with him on a deeper level. Maybe it was their shared fucked-up experience that fueled her, or perhaps it was seeing him so raw and finding peace with that.

It didn’t matter what it was, she needed to show him tenderness. Something he had obviously never received in a non-sexual capacity and judging by how he was in bed, she doubted he had ever experienced it sexually either.

Slowly, she rotated their positions until she was sprawled on top of him. In the dimly lit room, he met her gaze with questioning interest. January refused to let his dominating presence intimidate her into letting him control their activities this night. Not breaking eye contact, she rolled her hips against his with no sense of urgency. “When is the last time someone made love to you? Cared more about your pleasure than what you could bring her?”

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