Chaos series by Kristen Ashley

I stared up at him.

“You did wrong and only hindsight makes that clear. No way in fuck, baby, no way in fuck you shoulda made the decision you made to end us all on your own. You shoulda told me.”

My heart started hammering with a different kind of panic and my words were still whispers when I said, “But you told me you got it.”

“You were twenty-one, way too fuckin’ young to have what we had, feel what that meant, know we had a lot of life before us, and have enough of it under your belt to make the right choice. I remember bein’ twenty-four and feelin’ you put an end to us so I can go back there and know where you were at and why you did what you did. But it still was wrong.”

“Please, Logan—”

“You should have told me.”

I shut my mouth and pressed my lips together so they wouldn’t quiver.

He slid his thumb back to them, gentle this time, and rested the pad against my lips.

“You should have told me,” he whispered. “ ’Cause now I can’t prove to you you were all I wanted. You were all I needed. You took that shot away from me and it was as important then as it is now that you know that to your bones, Millie. You gave me what you thought I had to have and I’m grateful, so fuckin’ grateful, baby. When you meet Cleo and Zadie, you’ll get just how grateful that is. I love my girls. Fuckin’ love ’em, the lights of my life. But it’s the goddamned, motherfuckin’ truth that I would have had all I needed. I would have had everything if all I had in life was you. And you took away my shot to show you that. You also took away any shot I had of helpin’ you through gettin’ the knowledge we couldn’t have a family and buildin’ a new dream together and that cuts just as deep. You made those decisions on your own without sharing with me. And that was wrong.”

When you meet Cleo and Zadie.

My voice was trembling when I demanded, “You have to get off me.”

He put pressure on my head.

“You are not gettin’ me,” he growled.

I thought he had all my attention but the way he said that, I found myself giving him more.

“This is not me layin’ the guilt on you,” he carried on. “This is not me plantin’ more shit in your head to fuck with it. I told you I got it, I get it. Back then, twenty-four, knowin’ how bad you wanted kids, knowin’ how bad we both wanted to build a family, findin’ out it was me who’d take that from you, I love you so goddamned much, I couldn’t bear it. I wouldn’t be able to live with that burden for a lifetime with you. And I woulda done everything I could to make myself a man unworthy of you, make sure you knew it. It’d kill me. But I’d live life dead inside knowin’ I gave that to you.”

His face got close again and I held my breath.

“So I get it. I get what you did for me ’cause back then I’d do the same. And you gave me what you thought I needed and I’m grateful, Millie. But outta that over the years we both got somethin’ else. We’re not young and stupid and so caught up in love we’re blind. We got life under our belts and we know better now. So, what I’m sayin’ is, in future, learn from what we lost and don’t ever do shit like that again.”

In future.

Was he saying… ?

“In future?” I choked.

“In future,” he stated plainly.

“I… you… we…” I shook my head in his hands. “Are you saying we should start up where we left off?”

His comeback was instant.

“Did it ever end for you?”

My body jerked under him and my fingers formed fists on the bed at my sides.

He might not have seen my hands but he felt my reaction and he read it.

“No,” he stated. “You’re a ghost and I lived life haunted by your ghost so there’s no takin’ up where we left off because we never left off. We’re still back there. Now we just gotta find a way to put the shit in between behind us and keep on goin’.”

I started to say something but he kept talking before I could get it out.

“And the way we’re doin’ that, coasters do not factor.”

My body jerked again in surprise at his bizarre declaration.

And for a variety of reasons, all of them having to do with self-preservation, I focused only on that.

“I have nice things, Logan,” I informed him of something he could absolutely see.

“And you make a mint, got a mint invested, and I’m not hurtin’. You get bacon grease on your sheets, babe, we buy new and who gives a fuck?”

“I do,” I snapped. “These sheets are perfection. It took me two years to find these sheets. I don’t need to spend two more years finding new sheets that are perfect.”

“I’m in bed beside you, I’ll make it so you don’t think about sheets.”

He was beside me, I’d sleep on a bed of broken glass and not give a damn.

This was not something I intended to share at that juncture.

So instead, I shared, “I have a lock on two Himalayan kitties from a local breeder and they match these bedclothes. I’ve put deposits down on them. Cats can live fifteen, twenty years. And honestly, the last time I went looking, it felt like it’d take twenty years to find the right sheets. Put cats in the mix, these sheets have to last a long time.”

“You’re gettin’ cats to match your house?” he asked in open, badass, hot guy, biker astonishment.

“Of course,” I answered, like that was a perfectly sane thing to do. “The house and the sheets. It’s all going with me to Arizona. Including the cats, which my mother is ecstatic about, she loves animals. And I’m good to pick them up any day now.”