Chapter Five – Wren #2
“Everything I said that night, I meant it at the time,” he says, “but none of it is true. Not one single thing. I’m the pathetic one, not you.
I’m the fucking worthless one, not you.” He chuckles, but it’s a low, mirthless sound.
“I’m the one who has nowhere else to go, no hope for the future, but you?
You’re gonna do great fucking things, Wren, I know it.
You’re gonna graduate from this fucking place and be happy, and you’re gonna forget all about me. ”
I’m taken aback by how raw he sounds. That low, scratchy voice of his has never sounded so… so tired, so bleak. He’s still confident in what he says, but the nature of everything he’s telling me leads him to sound so utterly despondent.
“You’re better than me,” he whispers. “You’re so much better than me. I thought the only way to feel good again was to drag you down. I’m sorry, I am. I’m sorry I’m such a fucking asshole. I’m sorry I suck. I’m… I’m just so fucking sorry.”
I shouldn’t believe a single word he’s saying; logically, I know that, but as I stand there and listen to him, as I watch him, as I see the pain on his face and hear it in his voice, I do. I believe him. I believe every single word he says.
Does that make me a fool? Does it make me gullible?
“You,” I finally find my voice, “hurt me, Logan.”
“I know. I wish I could take it all back.”
“But you can’t. You hurt me. You were so mean, and then you just… you left, and I—”
What little distance remains between us is swallowed up by his next step, and just like that he’s mere inches away, so close to me I can smell his musk, I can feel his hot breath on my face. “I know,” he whispers.
“And then you pretended I didn’t exist,” I say, my voice growing stronger even though I want to shrink away from this conversation. “I got hit by a car. I was in the hospital. Do you even know that? Do you even care at all, or are you just here to make yourself feel better?”
His gaze searches mine for something, though I don’t know what. “I thought staying away from you was the best thing I could do, for both of us.”
“So you knew. You knew I was in an accident, and you didn’t care enough to check up on me and make sure I was okay.” God, I feel my heart breaking all over again. This guy… why does he still have such power over me?
“That’s not it,” he says. “I wanted to—I tried to… I just couldn’t, Wren, I couldn’t do it.”
“And yet you’re here now.”
“Because I saw you on campus and everything came rushing back. These things, I’m not used to them. I’m not used to feeling like I want to lose my mind. I don’t do this stuff. I don’t do emotions. You know that. You know all about who I was before, so you know exactly why I’m the way I am.”
“Being an ex-rockstar doesn’t give you a pass to be cruel.”
“No,” he admits quietly, “it doesn’t. I’m not… I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to be the cause of your pain. The only thing I want to do is—” He stops himself, leaving me to wonder just what it is he wants to do.
There are many ways he could finish that particular sentence, and my mind instantly explodes with the possibilities. I don’t know why, but I soon find myself egging him on by saying, “What?”
His posture shifts slightly. If he wasn’t so close to me, I might not have noticed, but since he’s all I can see, the moment his posture changes, I note it. I note the way his hands flex at his sides, how his head bends somewhat before he says what he says next.
“I want to kiss you.” The words come out of him in a breathless rush. “I want to touch you. I want to feel you just like I did the night I took you home. I want to drown in you. I want everything I have no right to.”
My breathing catches. How can he sound so genuine when he says those things, and why do I want to believe him still?
Why do I find myself leaning into him, against his chest, when he says all those things?
I should push him away, tell him off, order him to leave the house and never come back, but I can’t.
Because I want to kiss him, too. Because I want him to touch me. I want him in ways I shouldn’t, and that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? We are two people who shouldn’t be together, but somehow fate keeps pulling us in the same direction.
“I want you so bad I can’t think straight,” he murmurs.
“These past few months you’ve haunted me every single day, every single night.
I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.
If my ex-agent walked through that door and offered me a spot back in the band, you know what I would do?
I’d say no, because it’d mean I’d have to leave you.
I’d never be able to see you again, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few months, it’s that not seeing you is worse than death. ”
Out of everything he could say, that isn’t what I anticipated. I don’t know how to respond. A part of me wants to tell him it’s too little, too late, but another part of me—the bigger part—wants to close my eyes and fall into him, see if he’ll catch me.
Apparently, I didn’t learn enough last semester and I want to get hurt all over again.
His hands lift, and he places them on the sides of my face, cupping my head.
“You’re inside of me. You’re all I think about.
Fuck me, Wren, but you’re all I want. You’re the only thing I want, the only person in this goddamned world that makes me feel whole again, and being this close to you makes me feel so weak. You make me weak.”
My eyelids are having such trouble staying open, so they fall, and not a moment too soon. The moment they flutter shut, the hands on my face sweep back to my hair, tangling in its length, and his lips press against mine.
It’s a soft, hesitant kiss at first, opposite of all of the kisses we shared last semester. The night after the club was all fire and passion, him showing me what bodies could do together when there were no restrictions.
This? This is different. This feels… real.
This is the kind of kiss that makes the world stop spinning.
It goes against everything Logan is, to kiss so gently, and because of that it’s beyond easy for me to lose myself in it.
This kind of kiss makes me forget why I shouldn’t be kissing him in the first place.
A low flame flickers in my gut, my heart speeding up as I lean against him and surrender myself to the embrace. My hands are slow in roaming up his chest and curling around his neck, and I hold us together, fearing what’ll happen the moment the spell breaks.
Because it will. It always does.
Logan and I have always been hot and cold, or rather, he has.
He’s never really done anything like this before.
The closest we’ve come to something like this was when I got him to sing on that stage with me, when our voices and our passions mingled and combined, created something new.
I loved singing with him, even if it was just for that lone song.
Godsent.
But I don’t know if I can take the crash after the high. My heart can only handle so much. He claims I make him weak? I could say the same, and the longer the kiss lasts, the weaker and weaker I fear I’m becoming.
I don’t want to get hurt again. I don’t want him to break me. Is that so wrong?
So, before the kiss can continue on, before we can turn up the heat and really get lost in each other, I tug my hands off the back of his neck, place my palms flat on his chest, and push him away from me with all the strength I can muster.
Which, in reality, isn’t much since the man himself is made of muscle upon muscle.
But it’s enough.
It’s enough to make Logan release his hold on the back of my head and stumble back, enough to make him look at me like I’m crazy—like I’m the one who lost her mind and not vice versa.
As much as I want to continue, as badly as I want to feel those lips on mine again, I just can’t, and I tell him that.
With a shake of my head, I whisper, “I can’t do this again with you.”
He tries to salvage the situation by reaching for me and saying my name, “Wren,” but I artfully dodge his hand and don’t let the scratchy, low timbre of his voice sink into me. I also have to avoid looking at him, otherwise I’d see the hurt on his face, and I don’t think I could take it.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and the words come out like knives in my throat, cutting all the way up, but I manage: “Please leave.” It’s all I can say, all I can do.
If he doesn’t leave now, then… I don’t know what’ll happen.
I don’t know where we’d go next. With someone like Logan, what kind of a future does a girl like me have?
He’s all declarations of love now, but he’ll get tired of me.
He’s never been in a relationship before, he said so himself.
He likes to play the field, go home with different girls every weekend.
Why give a life like that up for me? It doesn’t make sense, and I like to think I’m not as naive as I used to be, so there’s no hope inside of me that he can change.
People don’t change. The seasons do, but people don’t.
Though I’m not staring at him, I can feel the hurt radiating from him, the utter melancholy.
The air itself turned sour and heavy, but I don’t linger on it.
I can’t. I know he wants to say more, wants to try to convince me not to make him go, but he must sense my determination, because he doesn’t say a word.
No, the only thing Logan does is leave through the back of the house, the same way he came in, and though he leaves without saying another word, I’m already changed by that single encounter.
My heart doesn’t want to get under control. My mind is a whirlwind of thoughts all at war with each other. And my lips? They tingle with the memory of his mouth on mine, the way his stubble scratched my chin, the ghostly sensation remaining long after he’s gone.
I let out a sigh and sink down onto the couch, every part of me suddenly so tired.
Oh, Logan. Why now?