Twisted Love by Summer Cooper
20
Keily
“You’re leaving?” She rolled over as she felt him get up from the bed.
“I am, yes.” He answered softly, searching around for his clothes.
“Logan? Why are you leaving?” But her eyes had fallen on the scar and she stared at it. Was that a…butterfly?
Memories flared to life, memories she’d banished from her mind. A drunken night at the pond, the screams of a helpless boy, her own screams at Joe to stop and let the boy go. She’d been unhappy when they pulled the guy out of the woods, she’d been angry when Joe had ripped her favorite keychain from her hands, and terrified when Joe ordered his buddies to hold the guy down.
When she protested louder, shrieked at Joe to stop, he’d slapped her. It hadn’t been the first time he’d slapped her, only the first time he’d done it in front of others. He’d hissed at her that she’d be next if she didn’t pipe down, but she’d still protested. Only, not as loud as before.
She couldn’t stop the memory of that gangly boy’s screams that night, or the smell as Joe had branded the guy with her keychain. She’d suppressed that memory, hid it from herself as best as she could. But that boy’s name hadn’t been Logan. He hadn’t looked like Logan either.
He’d been goofy, a nerd that she’d barely taken notice of throughout high school. Now, she couldn’t forget his face. But that wasn’t Logan’s face. Was it?
Joe and his buddies hadn’t just been drunk that night. They’d snorted one too many lines of coke and were out of their minds. The way Joe had growled at her, hissed at her that she’d be next if she didn’t shut up, had truly frightened her. Joe was a prick on good days, on coke he was another beast entirely. One she didn’t want to poke too much.
Her cries of protest had died down and they’d eventually let the kid go. He hadn’t been crying, he’d been screaming. Keily thought it must be the pain, but she knew it was humiliation too. She’d looked away as Joe dragged her to his car, wondering how she was going to get into her house without her key.
And she’d lived with that memory locked away ever since.
Eugene.
That had been the boy’s name. Eugene Baumgarten. Not Logan Sinclair.
But as he pulled his pants over his ass and turned around to put his shirt on, Keily saw it. The anger in his eyes, the features that had morphed from a boy’s features to a man’s.
“Eugene?” Even as she questioned him, she knew it couldn’t be. He’d have said something, wouldn’t he? Shock washed over her as Logan smirked.
“Noticed that finally, have you?” He put his shirt on, a cold smirk on his face. “I guess that’s about all the explanation you need then. Oh, by the way, we’re done, Keily. Have a nice life. I won’t be in it anymore.”
“What? Logan, wait.” She rushed from the bed, not caring that she was a mess. She needed to stop him as he walked out of the bedroom.
“No, Keily. That’s it. We’re done.” He came to a sudden halt in her hallway and turned to face her. “I’ll let you keep the apartment and the car, but otherwise? We’re done. Now please, don’t make this about you and let me go.”
“But…” She stared up at him. The man who’d gazed up at her with complete adoration in his eyes only a few minutes ago now stared down at her with cold…emptiness. She’d been a part of the reason he was like that. Whether she’d tried to stop it or not, she hadn’t, and she’d lived with the man that had done it. She’d married him, to make it even worse.
There was nothing she could say to take it back. To make it better. She couldn’t make him stay. Not after what they’d done to him.
Her mouth closed and he turned away. She heard his footsteps as he walked away, heard the sound of the door closing. It was over.
She went back to her bed, crawled in, and pulled the covers over her head. Tears streamed down her face and sobs broke the silence, but she wasn’t aware of it.
Emptiness, loss consumed her for hours. Her phone buzzed, she remembered for a moment that she was supposed to meet Rosa for breakfast but didn’t care. Logan was gone and gone for good.
Her heart was truly broken now. She’d spent the last few weeks almost positive it was over. Then, when he hadn’t shown up last week as he’d promised, she’d been even more certain. She’d learned about the earthquake, saw the damage on her television screen, and had breathed a sigh of relief. It had struck that night he didn’t show up. He must have flown out to get there immediately.
Logan’s employees were incredibly important to him and she’d read that his was one of the buildings that collapsed. She’d excused his absence, his lack of communication and when he slid into her bed late last night, she’d been too glad that he was there to be angry. Instead of telling him to get out she simply accepted his presence with a sigh of happiness.
He was back, all would be well. When he’d woken her up to the sweetest touch she’d ever known, she’d felt hope spring to life. They could get past whatever had kept him away. They could make this work. They could be together, have a future.
If she’d known that was the last time that she’d ever touch him she’d have spent more time memorizing his body, she’d have made it last a little longer. She hadn’t known, though. She never suspected who he was, never even wondered about how he could be from King’s Hill, but she had no idea who he was.
When he first arrived, she hadn’t known that he was from the area, but she’d gleaned that information from things he said. It just never occurred to her to ask him why she didn’t recognize him. Why she didn’t know his name.
She still didn’t know where he got the name Logan Sinclair from but knew it must be his legal name now because it was the one he signed on all his legal documents. He must have had it changed, well, obviously he had, she thought as she sat up and swiped at her face with the towel that had been wrapped around her hair when she fell asleep the night before.
He was that poor boy that Joe had assaulted. The one she’d walked away from without a backward glance. Every now and then the memory would try to surface but as the years passed, she’d managed to bury it deeper and deeper. Joe had replaced it with more bad memories, she’d learned to stand up to him over time, and eventually, she’d walked away from him.
Joe never mentioned that night, or Eugene, and Keily wondered now if Joe even remembered it. Probably not. He’d dropped her at home and gone out to raise more hell with his buddies. He probably didn’t remember anything about that night at all.
Was that why Logan came back? To get revenge on Joe? To make him pay for what he’d done? There was no better revenge than success, or so she’d heard one too many times. Logan, Eugene, had certainly become a success. He’d brought life back to a town that had given him nothing but pain and humiliation. Because it wasn’t just that night that had brought misery to that kid.
Joe and his friends had tormented him for as long as Keily could remember. Even she’d said snide things to him when Joe was around, just to get a smile from the jerk. To feed his already massive ego. Not that hers hadn’t been huge as well, she’d been no angel when it came to that.
Had Logan known who she was from the start? He had to, everyone knew her name back then, knew who she was. Was that why he’d hired her without too many questions? Why he’d tormented her until she broke down and quit?
Yeah, he’d wanted to sleep with her, that was mutual, but he’d been an absolute jerk to her, and she’d hung on until she couldn’t take any more. Then she’d become his mistress.
Humiliation washed over her as she thought over the last few months. He must have known who she was all along, then. This must have been part of his plan.
Had she just been some revenge fuck? A way for Logan, Eugene, to get back at Joe and his friends? She must have been. That’s why he’d walked out the door, after all, wasn’t it?
He had such a cold look on his face when he left that she knew, deep down, that he wasn’t coming back. That he’d taken what he wanted, and he was done with her now. Just like every other fucker in her life.
Rosa had been right, after all. Logan hadn’t loved her at all. He’d only used her.
That was, oddly, something she could understand. She was used to that. What she couldn’t understand was how he’d looked at her with so much adoration as he’d fucked her in the early morning light, then turned so cold after.
The necklace tugged at her skin as she rolled over in the bed and she tugged it to free it from where it was sticking to her skin.
Then she remembered what it was. A butterfly.
She took the necklace off and held it in her hand. A butterfly, not much different from that keychain. How could she not have seen the hint he’d given her? It was right here, all this time. He’d told her exactly who he was, but she’d been too self-involved, still, to let herself put the two together. She just assumed he’d noticed how much she liked butterflies, even after what Joe had done with her keychain.
When you suppress a memory, it’s possible to not have an aversion to reminders of what had happened. Or so she’d heard, learned, as the years passed her by. It had been seven years and she hadn’t allowed the memory to do anything but nudge the surface since. She’d walked away, not looked back, and done what was expected of her. As she always did.
And he’d used that against her.
He’d used her own need to actually be loved for once in her life against her. Then he’d thrown her away like a toy he was tired of playing with. That hurt, it really did. But not as much as knowing she’d never touch him again. That brought to life an ache unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Worrying that she’d never get a chance to touch him again wasn’t nearly as bad as knowing she wouldn’t.
How was she supposed to recover from this? Could she recover from it? Even her sadness that Violet wouldn’t return her calls didn’t hurt as much as this loss did. Maybe that was still selfish of her, but she’d always had a fragile relationship with her sister. She’d pinned unspoken hopes on Logan, she’d dared to dream of a future with him. She’d even wondered about more than that. Wanted more than that.
Sniffling, she put the necklace on her nightstand, but couldn’t take her eyes off of it. How could she decorate her life with those things after what Joe had done? Had Logan looked at every one of her pictures, figurines, and felt a stab of pain? Had he seen it as insensitivity, carelessness, cruelty on her part?
She hadn’t meant them that way. She saw butterflies as a representation of herself. Flighty things that went where their biology told them to go, but with short lifespans. Easily damaged, yet vital to the earth in so many ways. The insects were a sign of beauty and hope to her and that’s how she’d always seen them. Even after that night. Despite that night.
And now she could barely look at the necklace without shame filling her. She’d had no clue about who he really was. And now he was gone.
There were no words she could say to defend what she’d done, or hadn’t done, that night. She could have called the police, reported it. She could have approached him at their graduation and asked if he was okay, offered to help him press charges. Instead, she’d gone home, gone to bed, and got up to preen with her friends the next day as if nothing had happened at all.
She’d been just as culpable as they had been when she didn’t go to the police. She could have checked on him, at the very least. But she’d already been in the process of letting it all go, of pushing the memory away from her. What Joe and his friends had done had been deplorable. It wasn’t a boyish prank; she’d seen the evidence of just how awful that night had been in the vivid scar on his ass. It had been a brutal assault that would have made the papers if it had been done to a woman. If he’d reported it.
It must have pained him for a long time and seeing the mark must have been a reminder of that every time he saw it. Cold certainty filled her the more she thought about it. He’d said they were done, and she had no doubt of that at all. He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it.
She couldn’t blame him, either. She’d allowed something beyond awful to happen to him, and then she’d kept quiet. It didn’t matter if she’d changed, become a better person than she was even a year ago. She was still that girl that kept her mouth shut and had then married a man so brutal he’d marked another man, assaulted him in a most degrading way. A way that had marked that other man for life.
There was no way she could expect forgiveness for that. There was no way she could ask him to accept that she wasn’t that same girl who’d left him screaming by a fire, in utter agony both physically and mentally. There was no coming back from that.
It was done, and she knew it. For the first time in her life, she couldn’t stop the tears, couldn’t stop the pain, and knew, deep down, that she deserved every second of it. Even if he’d come back to town with humiliating her in mind, of getting back at Joe, she couldn’t blame him for that either. Joe and his friends had tried to destroy Logan that night. Instead, he’d become better than all of them. She was happy about that, that he’d become such a success, but he deserved love.
Because of her and Joe, she doubted that would ever happen. It didn’t help that she still wanted to be the one that gave him the love he needed. That was impossible now, and she knew it. There was nothing she could do to make it right and her life with him was over. Maybe, she thought, maybe that was exactly what she deserved.
But was it really? Rosa would tell her it wasn’t, but Keily thought that a lonely, heartbroken life might be exactly what she deserved. Women like her didn’t deserve happiness and never would.
* * *
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