Realizing that my life as I knew it was over.
I clutched the seatbelt like it was my lifeline as Logan's Benz purred to life. The parking garage was dimly lit, the fluorescent glow of the sparse light peeking into the car. I was glad it was dark and his attention was on maneuvering us toward the exit and not on me. I didn't want him to see just how shaken I was.
Even though I'd managed to laugh and eat my croissant with minimal hand shaking, the truth was slowly devouring me, chunk by chunk. I mean, this was some super spy stuff. The woman had infiltrated the restaurant with the sole purpose of digging up dirt on Logan. To find out about me. What would happen now? How long until they found out my name? Where I worked? Where I lived?
Logan's hand shifted from the gearshift to my thigh, and I struggled not to jerk away. Not because I didn't want him to touch me. His touch was the only thing that made sense. The only thing that felt right. But every person we drove past made me suspicious and worried they were secretly a photographer or some crazed Delilah fan.
"It's overwhelming, huh?"
I thought I was playing my cards close to the chest, but one look at his face and I knew that he saw past my charade.
"Overwhelming is an understatement." I forced myself to ignore the feeling that the whole world was watching, judging and concentrating on us. I lowered my hand on top of his, and almost instantly I stopped shaking and a calm settled over me. I realized something that made my heart flutter to my throat. "You knew I was pretending I was okay in the restaurant and you didn't call me on it?"
He lifted his fingers, slipping them between the cracks in mine. We were just holding hands, but I felt the desire building inside me, my core warm with need. He turned something innocent into something deliciously sinful.
And then his words made me fall for him a little harder.
"You didn’t need me to state the obvious. You just needed me there."
I brought his hand to my lips and kissed it, breathing in his skin. Reveling in his love. It was probably some sort of love-fueled delusion, but with him by my side, I felt the fear subsiding.
He pulled up to the parking garage attendant and paid the fee, and the fear level lurched back to high alert. People were at the exit on both sides of the car, aiming their cameras at us. Flashing lights cut through the windshield.
I slumped low in my seat as Logan eased from the garage, their shouts putting my teeth on edge.
"Mr. Mason!"
"Logan, who's the girl?"
"Over here!"
I snapped my eyes over to Logan, ready to aim my anger at him since the car seemed to be crawling through the sea of paparazzi, but I saw the white of his knuckles, the annoyed set of his jaw. There was no way he could gun it even if he wanted to. They had us surrounded, and besides the likelihood that he could injure one of them, if he dashed off, it would look like he had something to hide.
He let out an audible sigh of relief as we veered onto the street, fading into the bustling downtown traffic. "Jesus."
I repositioned myself, leaning my head back against the leather seat. "You calling on Jesus doesn't make me feel any better." I bit my bottom lip, trying to calm the queasiness in my stomach. "I need to believe that things will go back to normal."
"Normal is boring," he joked. When I didn't return his smile, he became serious. "Do you want me to tell you it gets easier?"
"Yes!" I nodded so enthusiastically my neck hurt.
"That would be a lie." He let out a tired sigh as we stopped at a red light. "Back when I was seeing Delilah, someone spotted us. My picture appeared on some blog and from then on, I had no privacy. People snapped pictures of me on my morning run, when I went to grab coffee, on my way to work. My whole life was suddenly public knowledge. Kids who wanted nothing to do with me growing up were suddenly my best friends, doing interviews with every tabloid on the supermarket rack.
When I ended things with Delilah and her fans started in on me, I thought with time it would die down. But it didn't. The only break I got was when I went to Pleasure Point. When I met you."
I hung my head, knowing that this was a moment. I was an escape for him, and he was an escape for me. We were both running from something and ran into each other's arms. But I couldn't get past his admission that it didn't get better. “I think I should have gone with the lie.”
"C'mere."
He tilted my chin upward, his green eyes gazing into mine. He guided me to him, his lips aligning with mine, silencing everything else but our kiss.
He pulled away too soon, putting the car back in motion. I was still, my eyes shut and holding on to his taste and the heat between my legs. I was on fire, wanting to climb on top of him, to ride him until we both melted together--and I wanted to climb into his bed and fade into his arms, surrounded by the warmth of him. I'd never been so simultaneously in lust and love with someone. So horny and hopeless.
“Just to warn you, there will be more of them at my building. If I could, I’d order them off the face of the Earth,” he growled. “They can’t come inside the building unless they’re a resident, but the sidewalk is public property.” His green eyes scanned me, then shot back to the front, on high alert. “We just have to get inside the parking garage and we’ll be good.”
I swallowed the expanding knot in my throat. “I understand.” The minutes that passed between his lips on mine and the reminder that my life could be turned inside out had me doubting if I truly understood. I didn’t understand that going on the vacation alone would put me on a collision course with Logan. That I’d meet someone who knew me so intimately without ever touching me. A guy who saw the real me beneath the person I pretended I was. And while I knew that love had everything to do with why I came back after I shut him out, I didn’t understand how deluded I’d been to think that everything would be okay once I saw Logan and we fixed things between us.
The traffic was at a slow crawl, a Gothic styled building standing out among high end department stores and trendy restaurants. The first thing that popped in my mind was New York, a grand building where even the concrete was molded into the shape of filigrees, every square inch a work of art. I peered out the window at the black awning with the street address in bold, white letters. Standing like an unmovable force was a man in a black suit, ready to leap into action the moment anyone that didn’t belong tried to enter the building.
When I saw the sea of photographers, my confidence dimmed. As if they could smell our scent, they turned in our direction. The cameras went off like bombs as Logan made a hard left, laying on his horn when a group of them stepped into the driveway to the parking garage. I doubted they could see his bloodthirsty glare, but they wisely dodged out of his path.