Alpha One (Shadow Agents #1)(39)
Author: Cynthia Eden

“Why—why was he discharged?” Juliana asked.

“Because on his last mission, he had what some doctors called a psychotic break. He had to be taken down by his own team. He wasn’t following orders. He was just hunting.”

And that broken man had come home to Logan? “Where was your mother?”

“She left him.”

And you? She forced the words out. “And what about my mother?”

He lifted his hand as if he’d reach for her, but his fingers clenched into a fist before he touched her. “That night, I found him at another bar. He jumped in his truck and wouldn’t give me the keys.” He lifted that clenched hand to his jaw and rubbed his skin as if remembering. “He punched me. Hit me over and over then got in that beat-up truck. I couldn’t…I couldn’t just let him leave like that. I climbed in. I thought I could get him to stop.”

She didn’t hear the grandfather clock any longer. She just heard the drumming sound of her heartbeat filling her ears.

“He was going too fast, weaving all over the road. I was trying to get him to stop….” A muscle flexed along the hard length of his jaw. “I saw the other car coming. I yelled for him to stop, but it was too late.”

Too late.

“I guess I got knocked out for a few minutes, and when I opened my eyes again, he was dead.”

She blinked away the tears that she wouldn’t let fall. “And my mother?”

His gaze held hers. “She was…still alive then.”

Her knees wanted to buckle. Juliana forced herself to stand straighter.

“I rushed to her. I tried to help.” He drew in a rough breath. “She said your name.”

Her heart was splintering.

“It was…the last thing she said.”

She stumbled back. But he was there, rushing toward her, grabbing her arms, holding tight and pulling her close.

She didn’t want to be close then. She didn’t want to be anything.

“She loved you,” he said, voice and eyes intense. “You were the last thought she had. I came to find you… I was in that diner because you should have known how much she loved you. I wanted to tell you, I needed to. But then you looked up at me.” He broke off, shaking his head. “You looked at me like I was something—somebody—great, and no one had ever looked at me like that before.”

She couldn’t breathe. Her chest hurt too much.

“You loved me,” he said. His eyes blazed. “With you, then, everything was so easy. I knew if I told you that I was there that night, that my father was the one driving when your mother died…you’d hate me.”

Her whole body just felt numb. “I read…the reports. Talked to the cops. The man driving the car, his name was Michael Smith.” She’d dug through the evidence when the memories and pain got to be too much for her.

Her father had never talked about the crash. She’d been seventeen when she went searching for the truth herself.

“After he died, I took my stepfather’s name.” His fingers were still tight around her. “My mom had remarried another man. Greg Quinn. Greg…was good. He tried to help us.”

Her heartbeat wouldn’t slow down. “The reports… The police said a minor was in the car.” They’d told her…the teenager had been the one to call for help. When they’d arrived on scene, he’d been fighting to free her mother.

Logan?

He would have been what then, fourteen?

“I went by Paul back then,” he said. “Logan’s my middle name.”

All these years…he’d kept this secret?

“I was arguing with him,” Logan told her, his voice slipping back into that emotionless tone that she hated. “He wasn’t paying attention. I was arguing, he was drunk…”

“And my mother died.”

A slow nod. He released her and stepped back. “If I’d been stronger, I never would have let him in that truck. If I hadn’t been yelling at him, maybe he would have seen her car coming…. I could have saved her, but I didn’t.”

Her face felt too hot. Her hands too cold. “My father knew.”

“Yes.”

Another secret. More lies.

Juliana held his gaze. “You asked me to run away with you. You said you wanted us to start a life together.” Kids. A house. “And all that time…”

“I wanted to be with you more than I ever wanted anything else in my life.” Now emotion cracked through his words. “Your father investigated me, found out who I was. The son of a killer.”

He was more than that.

“He was going to tell you. He told me to leave, or he’d—”

“And that made you just walk away? His threat?” She wasn’t buying that line. Time to try another one.

But he gave a hard shake of his head. “No, I left because he was right. You deserved more than me. My father was right, too, you know… In a lot of ways, I am just like him.” He lifted his hands, stared at his fingers. “I was made to kill.”

“Maybe you were made to protect.” She was tired of this bull. “You don’t have to be like him. Be your own person! You didn’t have to leave me alone—”

“You looked at me like I was a hero. I never wanted you to look at me…the way you are right now.”

She stepped back. “You should have told me from the beginning.” Everything could have been different between them. No secrets. No lies. “You just left me!”

Juliana took another fast step away from him.

“I came back.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Six months,” he said, jerking a rough hand through his hair. “I’d joined the navy. Tried to forget you. I couldn’t.”

“You didn’t come back for me.” The lies were too much. Why couldn’t he ever tell her the truth?

“You weren’t alone.”

Juliana blinked.

“You called him Thomas. He was blond, rich, driving a Porsche and holding you too close.”

“How do you know about him?” Thomas had been her friend; then after Logan left, he’d been more. She’d just wanted to forget for a while. To feel wanted, loved by someone else.

“You were sleeping with him.”

There was anger, jealousy—rage—vibrating in his voice now. She almost wished for that emotionless mask.

“I couldn’t breathe without thinking of you, but you’d moved on. Gotten someone better.”

She and Thomas had broken up after a few months. He’d been a good guy, solid, dependable, but he hadn’t been…