Free Exposed by Jasinda Wilder Page B

till you make it’?”
    I shake my head. “No, I haven’t.”
    “Sometimes it’s all you can do. Pretend you’re okay. Pretend you’re strong. Pretend you don’t need anyone. Fake it. Fake it for yourself, for those around you. When you wake up, when you go to bed, keep faking it. And eventually, one day . . . it’ll be true.”
    I have no answer. I’m spared from having to find one by the arrival of the Maybach. The long, low vehicle slides to a stop beside us.
    You are on the far side, behind Len, the driver.
    The window slides down, and your dark eyes fix on me. “Get in, X. Now.”
    “How about you let her decide what she wants, Caleb?” Logan asks, not relinquishing his hold on me.
    “This is none of your business,” you say. “And get your hands off her.”
    “I will if she tells me to.”
    “Would you like to go back to prison, Mr. Ryder?” you ask, your voice far too quiet. “I can arrange that, if you wish.”
    Logan tenses. Clearly that threat holds weight.
    I feel like a bone being fought over by two dogs. I dislike itintensely. “Stop. Both of you. Just . . . stop.” I turn to you. “How did you find me, Caleb?” I ask.
    “You are mine. I will always be able to find you.”
    “She’s not
yours
, asshole,” Logan growls. “She’s
hers
.”
    And then Len is out of the car, tall, wide, eyes soulless and roiling with death. A pistol emerges from beneath Len’s blazer, black and big and frightening. The barrel touches Logan’s head.
    “Back away. Now.” Len’s voice is colder than ice, flat, emotionless.
    “Fuck you. You won’t shoot me in broad daylight.” His hands tighten on my arms to the point of pain.
    “Think again,” Len says. He pulls back the top portion of the pistol,
snick-click
. “I sure as shit will. I haven’t forgotten, Ryder.”
    I remember the penthouse, my bath, Len being bound and gagged at gunpoint. I see murder in Len’s eyes, and I know Logan could die in a split second. Between one breath and the next.
    “Let go, Logan,” I whisper. “Don’t do this. I will not see you hurt over me.”
    “You have a choice,” he says. His eyes find mine, pleading. “You have a choice. In this, in your name. In your future.”
    “I
am
her future,” you say. Not to me, but to Logan. “Just as I am her past, and her present. And you are none of those. You are a distraction.”
    “Let him shoot me. I don’t fucking care, X. Make the choice for
you
.”
    I feel strangled. Choked by choice.
    I look at Logan, and his eyes blaze with fury, melt with . . . some emotion I do not understand, soft and potent and boiling and razor sharp, all at once, all over me, for me, directed at me. His blond hair is long, so long now, wavy and curled at the ends, hanging past his shoulders, blond curls drifting over his eyes. I see his scars, tworound holes in his right shoulder, white thin lines on his forearm and right bicep, and I know there’s another round puckered scar low on his right side, just beneath his ribs, and I see his tattoos covering his upper arms in a jumble of images; I see all this in a tableau, a frozen vignette, his indigo eyes and blond hair and scars and tattoos and work-roughened hands and his square jaw and high cheekbones and expressive lips that have kissed me and never demanded more, never claimed more, needing more, wanting more, but waiting until I was ready to give it. Will I ever be ready? Will I ever be free to choose him? Am I capable of it?
    I do not know.
    I pull away from him,
for
him. I cannot allow him to be hurt because of me.
    He is already hurt for me, though. That is written in his eyes, and it in turn strikes my heart like a knife.
    I pull away, and this is like déjà vu. Logan before me, you behind me, waiting. The car. Len. My heartache and my sorrow and my confusion. I want him, but I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my vision of the future with him. Do I trust him? I don’t know.
    You, behind me, in the Maybach. You