“Yeah? When did you even start? Was it before or after you realized you’d been betrayed by that bitch?” He flinched and that gave me all the answers I needed. “That’s what I thought. You didn’t care if I made it home safely or what happened to me after that. You threw me and our friendship away for her and you’re yelling at me like it was all my fault.”
“You disappeared,” he argued.
“I had to.” Our eyes connected and I could feel the frustration rolling off him in waves but I shook my head to dismiss that because my anger and resentment bubbled up, too. “I came to you first and the awful woman you chose over me made damn sure that I couldn’t get help from you. You made choices that day and I reacted in the best way I could. The only option I had was to disappear.”
“You could have gone to my brothers until we were able to get things straightened out between us.”
“You turned your back on me, why on earth would I think to go to your family for help when you refused to be there for me?”
“I didn’t refuse…” He started to say and then stopped and growled out his frustration. “It wasn’t like that. I was working with the information I had at the moment.”
“No, you were working with her word against mine even when other people tried to tell you the truth. You shut it down and took her back while you left me swinging in the wind. Now, you want to blame me for finding my own way to keep myself safe?”
“No.” Logan stomped over and pulled me into his arms. “I’m so fucking sorry for that night. You’ll never know just how sorry I am for that. There’s no way for me to properly convey it.”
I sighed in response and took a step back. Logan released me and then reached down for my hand to guide me over to the couch along the back wall. We took a seat sitting side-by-side while twisting to face one another.
“I don’t mean to harp on that night. I do know what she did to you. It’s about all I know about your life after you left. It wasn’t safe to look into you. I was always paranoid that I’d be one search away from being discovered. Worse, I worried that I’d run back and put you in danger if something popped up that I couldn’t ignore.”
“You were okay with ignoring the fact that I got thrown out of MIT?” I knew by his tone that he was half-assed teasing me. Still, I chose to answer.
“No, but I was also too angry with you and quite frankly heartbroken at the time. Everything was fresh and it hurt. Part of me felt like it was your karmic justice, even if it also felt awful to know that you were probably going through hell.”
“I know I don’t deserve for you to hear me out about all that, but I hope you give me the chance one day. Right now, we need to figure out when and how they found you.”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters because I couldn’t find you and if for some reason we need to hide you temporarily while we take care of the problem, I need to know that you won’t be compromised again.”
“How did you find me?”
“Your engagement picture on social media.”
“Shaina.” I groaned. “I could have killed her when I realized what she’d done. I took it down almost immediately.”
“It wasn’t quick enough. You were already with Andrew Connolly. How did you end up meeting him?”
I rolled my eyes as I thought about it. “I met him through Shaina. She lived two doors down from me. That’s how we met. I would have ignored her forever, but it was weird…” My voice trailed off then.
“What was weird?”
“It was like we kept bumping into one another everywhere,” I mumbled. “I’d bet anything that she was planted there. It wasn’t random. She knew Andrew all along and kept hinting at him being this super important man.”
“Okay, what changed for you just before you met her?” Logan took my hand in his. “There had to be something that tipped them off.”
The tips of my ears burned with humiliation for what I was about to have to reveal. “I changed my legal name.”
“You changed your legal name in California?”
I nodded. “There were court hearings about it and I had a lawyer argue the legal requirements of placing an ad in the paper because my safety was at stake. We ended up having that requirement waived, but they must have tracked the information anyway.” I thought about it and wondered why Logan wouldn’thave seen the information pop up and my father or the men affiliated with him did.
“I need to know your new name, Aoife.” My face went up in flames, or at least it felt as if it did. “Now, I’m even more curious.”
“This is so embarrassing,” I huffed. He grinned at me. “Maddox,” I whispered.
“What was that?”
I glanced up until our eyes locked and I ripped the damn bandaid off. “Aoife Elaine Maddox is my legal name now.”
