Page 121 of Wild Catch
“I don’t need?—”
Rose grabs my face in her hands, smooshing my cheeks until it’s hard to form words. “You do need help, Logan. You need us. And we want to be there for you, but you have to let us in.” The last part she says through gritted teeth.
I shake my head slightly, trying to free myself but she doesn’t let off. I grab her wrists and try to tug gently. But she still won’t let go.
I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if it’s a metaphor of some sort, of how she refuses to drop me. I can’t stand the damn hope itself making my heart gallop violently in my sore ribcage.
At least she eases enough that I can talk again. “It’s better off this way. You don’t want to get… contaminated by my mess.”
“Contaminated?” Rosalina scoffs and rolls her eyes so big, it’s a wonder she doesn’t get dizzy. “You seem to think I deserve to be put on a pedestal or something, when you know probably better than anyone here just how messy I really am. Why’s that, Logan?”
“Why’s what?” I swallow hard.
“Why did you punch my ex?” Rose waits but I can’t speak. Or more like I don’t trust myself to speak. Her hands slide away from my face, going over my ears until her fingers find my hair. Her fingers close around strands of hair at my nape, holding me in place. “What did he do to deserve that?”
I can’t imagine that she’d be defending Ben Williams in any circumstance. It makes me suspect that she knows and is fishing for confirmation. Fessing up would be like flying too close to the sun, though.
“He was mocking Starr.”
“Liar. He said I’m not the best he’s ever had and to enjoy his leftovers, didn’t he?”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Miguel was mic’ed up.” Her lips curl in as menacing a smile as someone as beautiful and sweet as her could possibly get. “I went up to the broadcasting room and it turned out the whole damn team heard that. So now everyone knows I was with Ben and that apparently I’m a bad lay.”
Volcanic heat rises up my belly and to my chest. I try to get up. “I’ll murder that son of a?—”
“And there it is again.” She lowers her forehead to mine, pulling at my hair just a tad and keeping me prisoner on this hospital bed. “How come you care so much about me that you’re willing to fight for my honor all old school, but you can’t say it to my face?”
And there it is.
The last ruse is finally up.
I grit my teeth hard and squeeze the edge of the mattress with my hands. “You know why.”
“No, I truly don’t. It’s why I’m asking you, and I deserve to know why.”
I close my eyes, not being able to stand the prying intensity in her eyes anymore.
“You know why,” I repeat, growling. “You deserve the world, Rose. You deserve safety and love and stability, and I can’t provide any of those. I can’t be the man you deserve. I’m too broken and all you see is fake—I’m barely holding it together. I’m medicated. I’m deathly terrified of turning into my father or my mother or my brother. I don’t know how to be a good person, I didn’t have a single good example to learn from growing up. I?—”
I gasp, my words stopping because my lungs are struggling for air again.
And then Rose tilts my head back, forcing me to open my eyes to see her and not the shadows in my head.
“You are a good person, Logan. You’re not perfect, but you know that and you work on it.” Those words slam me harder than the Riders’s runner. “You didn’t send me packing when I asked you for help with my job. You open doors, protect me from strangers and from exes, and even from your own relatives. You make sure I get home safe and you feed me.” She breaks off for an incredulous laugh and shakes her head down at me. “All you’ve done is prove over and over that you’re a good man—the right man. For me. I wish you could just see it the wayIsee it and stop getting in the way between us.
“We could be great, Logan,” she whispers, her nose lightly nuzzling mine. “We could love each other. But you have to let it happen.”
I choke on nothing, and then her hands ease off and she pulls away.
Rose gives me a solemn look. “I’ll be waiting for you, Logan.” And with that, she calmly walks out of the clinic without a backward glance.
If she had, she would’ve seen the devastation in my face because what she just said—all of it? It has destroyed every notion of who I am. Who I was before her.
CHAPTER41
ROSE
