I hated to admit it, but when Maia turned up at my door that evening, a part of me wanted her to go away. That part of me was the part that was secretly wondering if she had also been enlisted by Logan to break down my defenses.
I stared warily at her.
“Um… can I come in?”
I stepped aside slowly. “You may,” I corrected her automatically.
Maia grinned at me and strode inside the flat. I followed behind her, my whole body tense with anticipation.
Spinning around to face me, Maia wrinkled her nose. “I’m bored. School is finishing, I have no homework, and Dad is working overtime. Entertain me, Grace.” She pouted comically.
My whole body deflated with relief. Maia was just being Maia. I was never so thankful. “What would you have me do?” I grinned.
She blew air out between her lips and looked around the room thoughtfully. Her eyes stopped on my DVD collection and her face lit up. “Let’s go the cinema.”
I considered my workload and then I considered how difficult it was for me to work at the moment because I kept thinking about the man next door. I could do with the distraction. “Okay. Do you have something in mind?”
“There’s that new action flick with Nick McGuire.”
Nick McGuire was the new action hero of the moment in Hollywood and very, very pretty. I knew exactly why Maia wanted to go see the film, and it had nothing to do with well-sequenced car chases. I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”
We decided to walk into Morningside, where there was this wonderful art deco theater we both loved. You could either buy a ticket for an ordinary individual cinema seat, or you could purchase an armchair or sofa. We bought tickets for a leather sofa to share and headed inside.
“I need the loo,” Maia announced as I took my seat on the small sofa. “I’ll be right back.”
“Get some popcorn on your way back.” I handed her some money, and she nodded before disappearing out of the theater.
The trailers were finishing up and Maia still hadn’t returned. Sometimes the lines for refreshments could be terribly long, but she had been gone for quite some time and I was getting worried.
I’d just bent down to get my phone out of my bag when the leather of the sofa creaked and the whole thing depressed with someone’s weight.
Much more weight than the weight carried by a slender fifteen-year-old girl.
I sat up, and the light from the cinema screen lit up Logan’s face. His body pressed against mine on the small sofa.
My heart started to pound. “What are you doing here?” I whispered frantically.
His eyes smiled. “Maia decided against the movie.”
I was going to kill her. “That little traitor.”
Logan shrugged his shoulder against mine. His heat was soaking into me along with his delicious cologne. “She’s on my side in this, Grace.”
I glowered at him. “Apparently everyone is.”
There was a glint of remorse in his eyes. “I’m sorry about the girls today. They are, too. It was overkill.”
“And this with Maia? What do you call this?”
“Necessary.” The deep, determined rumble of that one word made me shiver. He really needed to stop creating that kind of reaction in me.
I cursed my body. “You’re not playing fair.”
He gave me a slow, seductive smile. “No. I’m definitely not.”
Someone behind us shushed us, and I turned to look at the screen. The film had started and I hadn’t even been aware of it. That was pretty much how the next ninety minutes went.
If anyone asked me about the film, I’d have no clue what to tell them because, other than a make-out scene, I paid little attention to anything but the man beside me.
The force of the attraction between us was never so evident as it was in that dark theater. I had to give Logan his due. He didn’t try to seduce me with touch. He let his presence do all the work. My senses were on high alert beside him. My body reacted to the heat of his and my skin felt on fire from the beginning of the movie until the end. His knee pressed against mine out of sheer lack of space, and my whole being was focused on that point of contact. The pressure of the touch expanded, crawling up my leg until it almost felt like his fingers were trailing over my skin. During quiet scenes in the movie, I could hear the soft inhale and exhale of his breath beside me. Sometimes his cologne would linger into my space and activate memories of the night we had passionate sex against my kitchen wall.
That was the worst.
Because I remembered feeling him inside me.
I squeezed my legs together, trying to deny the rush of arousal, but I couldn’t.
It only increased when Nick McGuire started making out with his beautiful sidekick and heroine. The film wasn’t R-rated, so it cut to another scene, but clothes did come off and we got to watch a gorgeous couple in nice underwear glide against each other before it did.
I saw Logan’s hand curl into a fist on his knee, and I had a suspicion I knew what was going through his mind. Was he willing himself not to touch me?
I couldn’t breathe.
When the film finished I shot up out of my seat and brushed past people, muttering apologies as I tripped over the belongings they had scattered on the floor at the foot of their seats.
Once outside the theater I gulped in the fresh, cool air of the summer night and turned to stare at Logan as he joined me. I didn’t know what to say.
“Let me walk you home.”
Since we were both going that way, it seemed childish and petty to deny him.
For a while we walked in silence, the tension crackling between us.
“You could have left,” Logan suddenly said.
He was right. At any time I could have stood up and walked out of that theater. “Apparently, I’m a masochist.”
He grunted at that. “I’m quite sure that was an insult.”
“Logan…” I sighed wearily. “Let’s not talk.”
“I’d prefer not to. Right now I’d prefer to be kissing that fucking sweet mouth of yours.”
I flushed and stared at him, wide-eyed. “You can’t speak to me like that.” I glanced around, making sure there were no bystanders to his flirtation.
“Babe.”
“Don’t ‘babe’ me. In fact, quit with the ‘babe’ thing completely.”
“Fine. I’ll quit with it if you can tell me you didn’t feel that inside the theater. Tell me while I was getting hard just sitting next to you, breathing you in, that you weren’t thinking about what it’s like to have me inside of you. Tell me you weren’t thinking about me fucking you. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I want to fuck you and then I want to make love to you…” He drew closer to me as I kept walking, trying to walk away from the words that were making my heart rate speed out of control. “And I want to repeat it over and over for the rest of our lives.”
My breath stuttered, but I kept walking.
Until suddenly I wasn’t.
I blinked at the abrupt movement as I was jerked sideways down the alley between two boutiques. Logan loomed over me, pressing me against the cold, shaded brick wall. “Tell me.”
My lips parted to deny him, but I couldn’t.
He kissed me, crushing my mouth beneath his in an angry, desperate kiss that curled my toes in my shoes. I hated that the scratch of the bristle of his short beard sent goose bumps of arousal up all over my body. I hated that my breasts swelled with need, pushing up into his chest, pleading despite everything for his touch. I hated that my skin flushed and I tingled between my thighs.
I hated that I kissed him back just as desperately.
At the press of his erection against my stomach and the simultaneous brush of his thumb against the side of my breast, the jolt of lust that moved through me had the effect of reminding me of where I was and whom I was doing this with.
I gave Logan a gentle shove, and he immediately let me go.
His chest heaved as he stared down at me,
more than a glimmer of triumph in his eyes.
I huffed and pushed past him, darting back out onto the safety of the street.
He caught up with me, and I felt his question without him having to voice it.
“So there’s attraction between us,” I said quietly, feeling vulnerable and, for some strange reason, lonely. “It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Oh, it means something,” he disagreed, and I could hear that damned determination in his voice, along with not a small hint of cockiness. “You told me yourself, babe. You don’t light up for just anyone… and you become a blaze whenever I put my hands on you.”
“I really don’t like you right now.”
Logan grinned. “That’s okay. As long as you love me, nothing else matters.”
“You are so arrogant,” I huffed. “Have you always been this arrogant?”
“Don’t confuse arrogance with confidence.”
I made a face and stomped ahead, grumbling under my breath at the way his long legs easily caught up with me.
I didn’t shake him the whole way back to our building, and as I put my key in the lock of my flat, he pressed his chest into my back, his lips whispering across my ear. “I’m looking forward to repeating the best sex I’ve ever had.”
My breath caught at his confession, my body screaming to give in to him. Instead I turned the key and shoved inside my flat, slamming the door behind me so I didn’t have to look him in the eye and show him how much I still wanted him.
CHAPTER 20
“Y
ou really should think about giving me a key.”
I stared balefully at Maia as she stood on my doorstep the next morning. “I don’t give keys to traitors.”
She grinned sheepishly. “Can you blame me for helping a guy out?”
“Yes. Yes, I can.”
Rolling her eyes at me, Maia disregarded my glare and swept past me into my flat. “Do you have any cereal? Dad and I have run out.”
“I’m making scrambled eggs if you want some,” I grumbled, shutting the door and following in her wake.
She glanced up from the now-open fridge door as I wandered into the kitchen. “Did you say something about eggs?”
“I’m making them. Do you want any?”
“See, you can’t stay mad at me for long.”
“Oh, I’m still mad – just not mad enough to see you go without breakfast.”
“Then that’s not really that mad.” She shuffled up onto one of my kitchen stools. “You look kind of tired.”
I looked a fright. I’d barely gotten any sleep. Again! I’d managed to fall asleep at around five o’clock in the morning out of sheer exhaustion, and then Maia had banged on my door four hours later. “It’s Saturday. Shouldn’t you be sleeping in, like every other teenager in the country?”
She bit her lip, the cockiness she was picking up from dear old Dad suddenly disappearing. “I couldn’t sleep. I was worried about you.”
I immediately stopped pretending to be annoyed at her. “Maia, you don’t need to worry about me, sweetheart. I can take care of myself.”
“But can you?”
I slid onto the stool beside her. “What does that mean?”
As she stared at me with those violet eyes of hers, I realized that they were so similar to her father’s and yet so different. There was a tinge of darkness in her eyes, but they hadn’t yet grown the hardness that Logan’s had. It was a hardness that melted whenever someone made him laugh, and I shook off the disturbing realization that although his laughter was rare, it was less so with me.
Maia sighed wearily, the gesture so much older than her years. “I know you care about Dad. I just don’t know why you’re making this so hard for him.”
“There are things you don’t know, Maia.” I didn’t want to tell her that Logan had hurt me. I didn’t want her to ever think badly of him.
“I’m not stupid. I know he’s not perfect,” she insisted. “If he hurt your feelings, then I know he’s sorry.”
“Maia, please…” I buried my head in my hands, suddenly feeling the urge to cry. “I can’t talk about this with you.”
There was silence, and for an awful moment I feared I’d hurt her feelings.
“Grace…”
At the tightness in her voice, I lifted my head to look at her. The tinge of darkness in her eyes had spread until there was a whole lot of black in among the violet. An unwelcome shiver rippled over me in reaction.
“Do you remember when I first got here and you asked me what I’d been through?”
Mostly Logan and I got Maia the same way every day – funny, sarcastic, and warm. But there were days when she’d brood alone in her room or cry for no good reason at all. I chalked it up to being a teenager and the drastic change of direction her life had taken. I chalked it up to the fact that her mother had abandoned her.
I’d been waiting for Maia to open up about it.
Now I wasn’t so sure I could handle the truth.
“I know you’re worried about what happened to me when I lived with my mum.”
I nodded again, a choking sensation developing in my throat.
Maia stared me straight in the eyes, her own glistening. “It wasn’t good, Grace. But it wasn’t as bad as you think. Mostly she just wasn’t there for me. For ages it didn’t matter because she was my mum, and when you’re wee, you love your mum no matter what.”
I nodded, remembering that unconditional love I felt for my mother when I was a child. Day by day as the years passed my mother had chipped away at that love until I was only clinging to the idea of it.
“She would lock me in my room for hours when she had a guy over.” Maia’s haunted eyes made me reach for her hand and hold on tight. “I’d have to sit in there listening to them having sex, and then he’d leave and Maryanne would get high or drunk and forget about me. I’d need the toilet or I was hungry and I’d bang on my door, but she was out of it and I’d be stuck in there.” Tears slipped down her cheeks, and my own eyes stung in answer to them. “Afterward I wouldn’t talk to her because I was hurt, and she’d feel really bad and she’d take me out for lunch and buy me something. She’d sit with me the whole day making me laugh, and I’d start loving her all over again.” Maia brushed impatiently at her tears. “But she’d just repeat it.”
“Oh, Maia.” I squeezed her hand, not knowing what to say because I knew there were no words to soothe this kind of wound.
“She messed around with these really dodgy guys, Grace. They treated her badly. They spoke to her like she was nothing, and sometimes they hit her. For years she protected me from that. That’s why she’d lock me in my room, so they either didn’t know about me or they couldn’t get to me. But I heard it all. Heard her crying out in pain sometimes…” She grew silent in reflection.
I stared at her, willing the rising anger inside of me down.
I wanted to punish her mother for doing this to her.
I closed my eyes, more tears falling as I realized Maia would carry this pain for the rest of her life.
She would always, always feel like an unloved, abandoned child whenever she thought of her mother.
“Grace.” Maia’s grip on my hand tightened, and I opened my eyes. More tears sprang to her eyes when she saw how upset I was, and this little sob burst out between her lips. “Grace.”
In answer I got up and pulled her off the stool and into my arms, and I held her while she cried, her tears soaking my bathrobe.
Eventually she pulled away from me and wiped at her cheeks. She looked at the floor, her dark eyelashes glistening. Heaving a shaky sigh, she shook her head. “I didn’t tell you to upset you. I was trying to tell you why you should be with Dad.”
I touched her chin, gently lifting it so I could see her eyes. “Tell me.”
The sudden determination in her gaze reminded me so much of Logan. “I didn’t just decide to leave Maryanne. She stopped protecting me. She stopped pretending to love me. That guy… the junkie that
was in the flat with her.”
Fear knotted my stomach. “Yes?”
“That’s her boyfriend Dom. He’s been her boyfriend for a while now. He… He tried to touch me when Maryanne was out of it.”
I jerked away, my rage hot in my blood, my skin, my nerves —
“He didn’t,” Maia hurried to assure me. “I didn’t let him. But Maryanne didn’t believe me when I told her. That was it for me. I was done pretending that we loved each other. I was done pretending I didn’t hate her for what she was doing. I was done pretending I wasn’t ashamed of her.” Her eyes blazed with her anger and guilt.
We were mirror images.
Still learning to deal with the tangle of emotions and damage created by our parents.
I knew then I would die before this girl ever thought I didn’t love her.
“When Maryanne mentioned Logan was my dad, I took the newspaper article. I kept it. The day after she slapped me for telling her Dom tried to touch me, I started looking for Dad. I got on the computer at school and Googled him. There was an article about him and the nightclub. I went there and told some janitor guy I was a family member and someone had passed away and I needed to find Dad. He gave me Dad’s address.”
I raised an eyebrow at that information. “Did you tell your dad?”
She smirked. “Yeah. I mean, he’s glad I found him, but the guy shouldn’t be randomly handing his address out. Dad had words with him.”
“I imagine he did.”
“I didn’t know what to expect with Dad. I just hoped it would be better than what I had with my mum. I was scared there, Grace. I was really scared.”
“I know,” I whispered, hating that she’d gone through that.
“I’m not anymore.” She stepped toward me, light suddenly melting away the dark in her eyes. “Dad makes me feel safe. I feel like we’ve been with each other since the beginning, and I never thought that would happen. It’s like a miracle.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “It’s sounds really cheesy.”