Logan shrugged, his smile self-deprecating. “I’m not a twenty-four /seven kind of Dom. In the club, subs better not f**k with me or there’s going to be punishment. Outside the club? I’m just a guy, with other concerns and thoughts . . . and regrets.”
He was going to get personal, and a part of her didn’t want to stop him.
Her hand shook as she poured herself another glass of wine, then held up the bottle. “Drink?”
“No, thanks. I won’t overstay my welcome.” Logan turned for the door.
Tara didn’t examine the feeling, but she knew that she wasn’t ready to see him go. “Logan?”
He turned. “You need something, baby?”
Before she could talk herself out of it, she nodded. “Answers.”
She settled herself on the edge of the bed, then watched as he folded his big form into an ugly green plastic chair with sleek economy of movement.
“I’m wide open.”
God, where the hell should she begin? It had been an eventful day by any standards, but the information Xander had dumped on her late this evening gnawed at her brain. How much of what he’d said was true?
“What does the tattoo on your ribs really say? I know what you told me but . . .”
“That’s not important.” He dipped his head, looked away. “What happened in high school is. Don’t you want to know about that?”
In the past twelve years, she’d sworn that she had gotten over Logan. Now she knew she’d been fooling herself. Brad had accused her of giving him up for Logan. He’d been right. Logan had reminded her what it was like to truly feel and want and hurt again. The avalanche of emotion had smacked her hard. Had she, maybe, not built much of a life with Brad because she’d been subconsciously waiting for her withered relationship with Logan to blossom to life again?
It sounded absurd on the surface—but Tara couldn’t deny that his pull still lured her in like no man ever had.
Eventually, she’d have to listen to his explanation, but she wanted this conversation on her terms. “Do you have other tattoos?”
He pinned her with a cautious look. “Yeah. I’m in the navy, and I’ve been drunk overseas more than once.”
“You regret them?”
His somber stare wiped away any levity. “No. Cherry, ask me about our breakup.”
He’d promised that he wouldn’t explain until she asked him, and he was trying to live up to his word. Tara bit her lip. What if there was some explanation for everything? What if it was something that made her want to forgive him? After the magnitude of his betrayal years ago, did she want to? She was damn sure that it would be easier—and safer to her heart—to go on being angry with him.
But maybe, a voice whispered in her head, it was no longer realistic.
“Is it true that you haven’t had sex in the last five years?”
“God damn Xander,” Logan cursed, closing his eyes. “What didn’t he tell you?”
“If what he said is true, he didn’t hold much back.”
He rose, paced, stared out the window into the shabby parking lot. A moment later, he seemed to come to some decision and turned back to her. “Yeah, it’s true. Even before then, sex had become . . . infrequent.”
When Xander had spilled this secret, Tara had been sure the guy was insane. To hear Logan fess up to this absolutely blew her mind. “Why? In high school, you loved sex. If those rumors were true, you had a lot of it.”
“I don’t know exactly what you heard back then, but yeah. I took advantage of the fact that I was the J.V. quarterback and the tallest guy in my class. I figured out quick that if you could make a girl feel special for a moment, then it wasn’t too hard to get her horizontal.”
Tara grimaced. “God, you sound like a pig.”
Logan shrugged, the black T-shirt lovingly hugging his wide shoulders and muscled chest. “I was sixteen. I’m sure I was a pig. Then came you.”
She rolled her eyes. “It was a long time ago, and I don’t think for one minute that I had any lasting effect on you. You fell right back into bed with Brittany Fuller a few hours after we broke up.”
“I was drunk, and I was angry.” He swallowed. “Afterward, I felt really empty. When she left . . . I cried.”