His unfocused gaze turned to her. The pale skin of his face showed traces of color, and her heartbeat thudded in her chest.
Relief freed the tension in her shoulders, and she slumped.
Hallelujah, he’d pulled himself up from the pit, slowly crawling his way to the light.
“Aunt Mildred told me I was so close to death, my lips were blue. It took everything in her to bring me back. I wanted to die. I didn’t want to live if my own mother hated me enough to kill me.”
She sobbed, “Oh, Logan.”
Grasping his face, she kissed his eyes, his nose, his forehead, and trailed feather light comfort and care over him, infusing each brush of her lips with the very love in her heart.
Yes, she loved him. How could she not? This man, this amazingly wonderful, strong and courageous man had triumphed over an incredible evil.
Minutes ticked by as his erratic heartbeat slowed, his shuddered breathing returned to normal, and his shaking hands steadied where they lay against her thigh.
“Haven? I’m sorry...I don’t—I don’t know why I told you all of that.”
She shushed him with a light, lingering kiss against his lips.
“Logan, you told me because it needed to be said. Now it’s over, so you don’t have to talk about it again.”
Remembering his blank look and his terrified expression, she shuddered against him.
“You left me. The memories sucked you in, and I couldn’t pull you out. I thought I’d lost you.”
Tears fell, and she tried wiping them away before he noticed them or the pain and fear written on her face. Or the love etched into every pore.
He couldn’t know.
She wasn’t ready for the complications.
Pushing up onto his elbow, he gently placed his hand behind her head, forcing her to look at him.
His eyes were dark pools of something unfathomable, and his expression impossible to read. His voice, now steady, soothed her fraught nerves.
“Haven, my darling, I was drowning in those memories. I could literally feel the pillow over my face, the breath leaving my body. I felt the hopelessness of betrayal and abandonment.”
She flinched, trying to bury her tear slick face in the warmth of his hand.
“I was drowning but...something pulled me from the dark water.”
She turned to him then, her smile weak and trembling. “Millie.”
He shook his head and pulled her face toward him, bringing her lips within inches of his.
“No,” he whispered. “It was you.”
Their kiss was a crash of emotion propelled by the need to just touch, to taste, to know he survived. She responded to him as if her very life depended on it. If he could sense her emotion, he didn’t show it, but his response to her was so deep and devastating she didn’t want to surface. Ever.
And they didn’t—not until every inch of her body was blissfully sore, and every piece of her heart belonged to him.
Chapter Fifty-Three
As the gray morning light filtered through the window, Haven stirred when Logan kissed her forehead.
Murmuring against his hard, warm, welcoming chest, she refused to open her eyes. She didn’t want to wake up. Real life couldn’t possibly compare to the dream she’d experienced over the last four hours.
“She ran away.” His deep voice startled her, his words even more so.
