Chapter 38 Max
MAX
“Why is everything so sticky?” Lily asks, sitting up straight in between me and Logan, looking down at her crotch with a scrunched nose while my head is elsewhere.
The events of last night run through my mind like a movie. How I told Lily that I couldn’t sleep because I needed to feel her. How she happily obliged and how Logan woke me up, the longing in his gaze so strong it made my heart almost burst out of my chest.
And I remember every single word he whispered to Lily once he was sure we were both asleep.
Words that wrapped themselves around my heart like spiked chains, mixing love and pleasure and pain, and if it wasn’t for Lily, I wouldn’t believe that there was a way for me to experience love that doesn’t hurt.
Affection that is reciprocated instead of vanishing, like bloodied water running down the drain.
Logan lets out an amused huff, obviously unaware that I’ve heard everything.
“Yeah, sunshine, why is everything so sticky?”
“That’s your fault,” I mumble, mostly to myself, as I pull my boxers up and climb out of bed.
“Go and shower with her,” Logan says, yanking the blanket off of a groaning Lily. “I’ll make breakfast.”
“You? Breakfast?”
Lily tries to roll herself into a ball to avoid having to get up, and I tickle her feet.
“Can’t be that complicated. Take the breakfast stuff out of the fridge and the pantry, put the stuff on the table.” He shrugs, smiling at me in a way that has his canines showing.
I would find it charming. Would get butterflies in my stomach because Logan is doing something for me—for us—but after last night, I feel like I don’t know shit.
That each fragment of affection I’ve ever gotten from Logan was nothing more than part of a calculation, a move in a game played against a completely oblivious opponent.
“What a gentleman,” I say with a forced smile.
With Lily in tow, I walk past Logan and head straight toward the bathroom.
I need to get this under control.
Get me under control, not for Logan, but for Lily. It isn’t her fault that I am the way I am and that my all still isn’t enough for Logan.
The shower goes by quickly, and having Lily by my side makes it easier to ignore how my heart aches.
When we are freshly dressed and ready to join Logan in the living room, I’ve managed to compartmentalize my feelings to the point that allows me to sit down at the table without wanting to cause a scene.
Logan is already sitting at the dining table, arms crossed in front of his chest, and obviously proud of the breakfast he prepared. With a grin on his face, he watches as Lily and I fill our plates.
Everything is still in its respective package, apart from the thick slices of prosciutto.
The bread was toasted a tad too long, the bowl sitting in between two bags of cornflakes and a jug of milk.
Halved avocados with the pit still lodged inside roll around on the fruit platter because that is obviously where they belong, accompanied by a handful of blueberries, an uncut orange, and two apples.
It’s so adorable the pain in my heart stops for a moment.
Lily reaches for her cup, filled to the brim with tiny marshmallows and maybe a little bit of hot chocolate.
Just as I want to thank Logan, I’m interrupted by the sound of my ringing phone. In the past two days, I haven’t really used it, and since I didn’t want anything or anyone to disturb Lily’s sleep, I let it charge in the living room.
“I’ll be right back,” I mumble, and Lily turns to Logan, continuing their conversation while I walk over to the couch table.
Two missed calls from Joyce and four from Sam, combined with the fact that the current caller is Rockwell, make my stomach churn.
“Max, fucking finally,” he sighs once I pick up the call. “Tell your man we’ll have a problem if he keeps rejecting my calls. I’ve got bad news.”
“I already figured.” I walk back to the table after Logan asks who I’m talking to for the fourth time. “Rockwell,” I mouth while I sit down.
“Logan’s with you?”
Pressing my lips into a thin line, I put him on speaker.
“Yes.”
“Good. Joyce called me when she couldn’t get in touch with you.
There’s a problem with your leave, and before you ask, yes, it is because of him.
You need to come back. Today,” he adds, not giving me the chance to protest. “They’ll count it as unauthorized absence if you’re not here by tonight, and I really can’t take care of more shit right now. ”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Logan chimes in, and a few froot loops spill out of his bowl, rolling over the table.
“Sanders threatens to re-evaluate your contract, huffs about spending taxpayer money while you’re not even here to do your part.”
“Tell him to suck my dick—“ Logan says with a mouth full of cereal, swallowing hastily before he continues. “No, wait. Tell him I’ll have him choking on his own sad appendage if he doesn’t keep his mouth shut. And then I’m going to—“
“Logan, it’s serious. You need to come back.”
On the other end of the phone call, a door is slammed shut, and when a furious Sam starts yelling in the background, Rockwell ends the conversation.
Not before repeating that it is urgent and that we need to be back on base tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest. So much for our vacation with Lily.
“What about me? Can I come with you?” she asks, turning white as a ghost as she puts her half-eaten sandwich down on her plate.
“She should stay here,” Logan suggests. “We’ll leave you the car and tell Mrs. Worthington to check on you every one or two days until we can come back. The 203 won’t find you here.”
“No,” I say, worrying my lower lip. “Forgot to tell you, but it was Nick standing in front of the cabin that night. He said they’ve been having some issues around here lately. Didn’t go into details, but he made it pretty clear that we shouldn’t leave Lily on her own.”
“Sunshine, this house has more security systems than Fort Knox.”
“Doesn’t matter. Nick wouldn’t have been so nervous about simple break-ins. If anything happens to Lily, it would take us hours to get here and don’t even start bringing up Mrs. Worthington. An eighty year old with a shotgun can only do so much.”
“You’re probably right,” Logan says, continuing to eat his cereal. “Well, I guess you’re going back to Ruby.”
I don’t know if he doesn’t grasp how big the steaming pile of shit awaiting us is or if he simply doesn’t care.
We eat the rest of our breakfast in silence, and once Lily is done, I send her off to her room to pack her things and get ready.
“It’s bad, right?” Logan asks as we are alone.
I nod and decide to push my heartbreak aside to focus on the more pressing issue.
“We’re going to drop her off at the local airport. I don’t want her to enter base with us, I don’t want her name to appear anywhere Sanders could get his dirty hands on.”
I’m surprised by the venom my voice carries, and on the table, Logan takes my hand in his.
“Whatever you say, Sergeant Vaughn,” he says, tracing circles over the back of my hand with his thumb. “Think they’ll try to arrest me when we’re entering base? Just so you know, I’ll fight back.”
“They won’t. He’s just trying to intimidate you.”
Logan snorts, raising his eyebrows. “Me?”
“Us.”
“Looks like he’s succeeding.”
We should all have turned the other way the day Logan was smacking the shit out of Sanders. Loyalty and irrationality, two sides of the same coin, becoming so much more evident now that Cantrell is momentarily out of the picture.
Cleaning up the kitchen doesn’t take long since Logan’s idea of a breakfast spread wasn’t aesthetically pleasing but very efficient, and not even an hour later, we’re all squeezed together in my truck.
While I was waiting for Logan and Lily to get ready, I called Ruby, who not only was kind enough to agree to let Lily stay with her but also took care of the plane ticket and promised to personally pick her up from the airport.
I would have preferred if Dom, Vinny, or anyone else above 5’3” was with them to make sure both girls are safe, but Ruby would call me terrible things for even thinking something like this, and I really don’t want her to feel like I don’t trust her with protecting Lily.
We’re stuck in traffic for hours, and as we reach the airport, the boarding process has already begun.
Hasty kisses are shared in the car, along with whispered promises to come back as soon as possible, and with a heavy heart, I watch Lily disappear in a sea of strangers.
The second she’s gone, my mask begins to crumble, and the prospect of a seventeen-hour drive during which I can’t let my frustrations out in any way feels like torture.
“You can’t drive the entire time,” I say, hoping that Logan takes the bait and gives me a fucking reason.
“I know. Gonna drive for a few hours, then you can take over until it gets dark.”
“We can switch now. I know you haven’t slept much.”
“You neither,” he says, and the way he winks at me confirms yet again that he has no idea I heard him talking to Lily. “C’mon, get some rest, sunshine.”