“For a while there…she made me feel like a hero.”
Logan pats my shoulder. “You think a few brooding stares and bodyguard vibes make you a hero?”
“I feel like I lied to her.”
“You did,” Logan agrees.
“I didn’t want her to know.”
Now Logan scoffs. I look at him. He’s rolling his eyes. “She’s a smart cookie.”
“Yeah.”
“You should’ve told her before you fucked her.”
I arch an eyebrow. “We didn’t…fuck.” Yet.
Logan shrugs. “You got emotionally intimate.”
We did. So I say nothing.
“She was going to find out, Lucian.”
I turn away from the city, and sit on the couch.
Frustrated, I throw the coffee cup against the window. It crashes onto the floor, spilling ceramic and coffee on the polished walnut. The window remains intact. It’s bulletproof.
Logan steps over the coffee and broken cup and goes to the kitchen.
He makes me another cup of coffee, and another for himself. He sits next to me on the couch.
“You want forever, then you gotta be upfront,” Logan declares.
I don’t know how he knows but he does. He can feel how I feel. It’s scary—but it’s also comforting.
“You think Gideon and Adrian did that before they got married?”
“You’re not them, and Calista isn’t Kendra or Cora,” Logan reminds me.
The elevator doors open again, and I look questioningly at Logan.
He grins. “I called in the cavalry.”
The cavalry smells like bacon, coffee, and no judgment.
Adrian drops a bag of food on the kitchen counter. Gideon pulls out his phone as he sits at the kitchen island.
“Glad to see you’re not dead,” Adrian says dryly, glancing at the shattered mug on the floor. He doesn’t blink at the mess.
Adrian spreads out the breakfast like it’s a battle plan—egg sandwiches, and greasy hash browns.
Logan brews coffee. By the end of this breakfast, we will all consume enough caffeine to keep a corpse upright.
The Maddox brothers like their caffeine hits.
Adrian works fast, unwrapping, stacking, and then tossing napkins onto the counter without a word. It’s efficient, thoughtless:clean up the mess, feed the machine, move on.
I stand by the kitchen island, hollowed out, staring at the food like I don’t remember how everyday things are supposed to work.
