His lips purse as if he were considering it, but his eyes never leave mine. “Because you’re my soulmate, Skyla.” His chest depresses as he exhales as if he just delivered the worst news possible. “Our souls were knit together. You are my person. You are the only one my heart has ever truly desired.” He squints out a sad smile with his eyes, a neat trick, and it breaks my heart. “We were meant for one another.” He lifts my hand and lands a soft kiss onto my barren ring finger, his gaze still pinned to mine as if he were gauging me for my reaction.
The chill in the room finally affects me, and I take in a ragged breath. “Can I kiss you?” The words felt innocent coming from my lips, like that of a preteen talking to the high school star quarterback. That’s Logan and me in a nutshell right from the beginning.
“No,” he whispers, wicked intent curving on his lips. “I’m going to kiss you.” Logan leans in and brushes his lips over mine, soft and careful, his mouth lingering slowly, and then I feel it, the soft unspooling of all of this anger, this rage and hatred, all of my worry, pain, and anxiety melting away as if I were falling into a strong safety net softening the blow of the enemy, cradling me in its—in his strong, warm arms.
This kiss whispers,It will all work out in the end,every tear will be wiped away and you will have everything back,everyone back in your life once again. This horrible ache will not last. It cannot. I will not allow it.
Logan tightens his arms around me, my own arms locked behind his neck as we indulge in something deeper, soul-to-soul, his breathing growing heavier to match my own.
We pull back slowly, still drinking that kiss down deep in our bones, chaste, closemouthed, but even still one for the record books.
“I love you, Logan Oliver.” It comes out a statement, because it has always been our truth.
“I love you, too.” He blesses my lips with another quick peck. “You’d better hop in before you run out of hot water.” His eyes flit back to that shirt. “Do you see that?”
I glance to Marshall’s dress shirt lying exposed and opened, Emily’s blood splattered over it as if it were Jackson Pollock’s latest and great—
“Oh my God.” I take a step toward it, my breathing erratic, as I take it in. The background noise has faded away and I see the foreground for what it is. “It’s my face.” My fingers hover over my distressed features. “This is another one of Emily’s visions, painted in blood, just for me.”
“This is you.” Logan traces over my face, my oddly shaped frame that I didn’t quite see until he pointed it out.
“What am I doing? It looks as if I’ve fallen, I’m screaming.” Sounds about right. Every one of Emily’s premonitions leads to pain.
“I hope not.” He leans in. “Because I’m willing to bet money, that’s me.”
Sure enough, standing behind me is Logan, his eyes serious, the look on his face determined.
“Whatever the nightmare is, we’re in it together.”
Logan offers a crooked grin and makes the butterflies in my stomach come to life. A part of me despises those butterflies, because they affirm a weakness in me to make him mine. Hell, he is mine. He always has been.
I take a quick shower, put on the clothes Laken dropped off, and Logan and I hear the crowd screaming “Happy New Year” just as we leave the pool house.
“Happy New Year, Logan.” I dot his lips with a lingering kiss and he presses out that sad smile he’s known for.
“Happy New Year, Skyla. I have a feeling it’s going to be a good one.”
“It will. It can only get better from here.”
When you hit rock bottom, the only place to go is up.
New Year’s Day ushers in the wedding of the ages. The dawn of a whole new misery for all involved.
Demetri’s house, his ridiculous castle, has always been more of a nuisance than a meager architectural structure. It is the exact representation of that haunted mansion in the Transfer, a somewhat copy of Wesley’s mansion, which is also in the Transfer, but his is by far bigger, and if memory serves correct, Gage’s monolithic city in his dominion shares somewhat of the same blueprint.
The exterior of Demetri’s estate is festooned with ruby red roses, acres of the red petaled beasts as tight red buds. Fully opened blooms rope themselves around the pale white columns that adorn the outside of the mansion.
Rain has come for the occasion. Large, fat hostile drops that cannot be stopped flood the streets and the pots that dot the front porch and have turned the driveway into a virtual waterfall.
Gage may be willing to commit the darkest sin of all twice in my lifetime, but my mother isn’t giving them sunshine and rainbows to go along with it. Sure, rain is the order of the day on Paragon, but I’ve seen Demetri pull a blue sky out of his ass a time or two to know that he most likely tried and was shot down by the powers that be. That alone makes me love my celestial mother all the more.
Logan leans in with little Barron sitting restless on his hip. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.” I secure Nathan close to me as we make a mad dash for the entry.
Inside, classical music plays lightly, and the air is scented with the fragrance of those ruby blooms because everywhere you look a beautiful red rose was forced to die for this madness. My stomach sours. I want nothing more than to run for the nearest bathroom and sit on the toilet for the next few hours, shaking and crying. But I did all that last night.
Last night, I dreamed of Marshall. We talked of Paragon, the way things used to be, the former things that we both decided we liked better before my nocturnal wandering quickly turned triple X. And then the oddest thing occurred, embarrassing really—Logan Oliver joined in on the fun, and no, not in any good way. He put an abrupt end to my good time with the steamy Sector and took us to Pike’s Reef where there were miraculous blue skies and we watched rough waves move in and out over the sandy shoreline. We didn’t say anything. Logan had an arm wrapped around me, and both of our minds were on the fright we would have to witness today.
