Then, for six months, he watched her try to hide the slowly increasing changes in her manner, to shield him from the worry that he sometimes caught leaking into her eyes as all else remained the same.

Including them fucking like rabbits anytime they could and his girl never coming up pregnant.

He did it not knowing that he’d live for twenty years before he found out she fed him bullshit as to what all that meant.

He did it not knowing, through all that, he should have mentioned those fucking pills.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hole in My Soul

Millie

I OPENED MY eyes feeling disoriented and not knowing where I was.

But I smelled bacon.

I shoved up a bit and saw I was in my bedroom.

I’d come home.

Right, I’d come home.

But what was with the bacon?

Suddenly, it hit me like I was at the bottom of an avalanche, covering me, smothering me, and in a flurry, I threw back the covers and launched myself out of bed.

I stood there and looked down at myself.

I was in the clothes I’d worn to travel. No boots. No

jacket.

I looked around.

My room had been tidied.

However, the last thing I remembered, I was fading away in Logan’s arms in Logan’s bed at Chaos.

How did I get here?

On that thought I spied a beat-up black leather bag on my chaise, gaping open, clothes hanging out, some in puddles on the floor.

Cautiously, I moved to the bag.

I pawed through the clothes. Heathered gray thermal Henley. Faded black thermal Henley. Midnight blue thermal Henley. Two pairs of exceptionally faded jeans. A belt. Black socks. Black boxer briefs.

Slowly, I turned my head to look down the hall.

It was empty.

But the bacon smell was assailing me.

Without thought, my stocking feet took me in that direction, soundless against the wood floors.

I made it to the end of the hall and stopped, peeking around the corner.

And there I saw Logan moving around my kitchen, hair wet and slicked back, unshaven.

What on earth was he doing here?

No.

Unh-unh.

I didn’t care.

Not right then.

He wanted to be in my house cooking bacon after the extreme of the day before?

Whatever.

One thing I’d learned the past few weeks, I needed to look after me.

And what I needed was to get out of these clothes. I needed a shower. Both of these things would make me feel tons better and (maybe) able to face whatever Logan had in store for me next.

Bacon, of course, the universal cure-all, would probably do that even better.

However, since Logan was cooking it, I wasn’t going there.

I retraced my steps and locked myself in my bathroom.

Or, more aptly, I locked Logan out of it.

There I saw on the double sink vanity (at the sink I didn’t use) a can of Barbasol (though why he had that and put it in the bathroom since he clearly didn’t use it, I did not know). Ditto these thoughts on the opened pack of razors and the electric shaver. There was also a comb.

And as I approached the shower, I saw a bottle of shampoo that wasn’t mine and a bar of green veined soap.

Who used bars of soap anymore?

I knew who.

Bikers.

Fabulous.

It appeared Logan had moved in.

I decided for my own peace of mind, considering how fuzzy that mind was and how unable I was to use it at that current juncture, to ignore that too.

I kept ignoring things when I saw that Logan had thoughtfully brought all my luggage from the back door and set it in the walk-in closet in the bathroom.

I busted open my luggage, dug out what I needed, made a decision that was based on what was happening with my head and the strange, nagging but not alarming nausea I was feeling, and selected my apparel for the day.

I then took a long, hot shower, shampooed, conditioned, exfoliated (face and body), shaved, and got out to towel off, lotion, gunk up my hair, tone and moisturize my face, then put on my undies and pajamas. The pj’s were a soft gray-green, no lace, long tight sleeves, a fair amount of chest (if not cleavage) bared, and lounge-y, loose-fitting pants.

Unfortunately, through this, I learned that the healing powers of a shower didn’t extend to jet lag.

In other words, it was time to crash again, snooze away the fuzziness in my head, the weird feeling in my belly, and wake up, hopefully to Logan having consumed his bacon and being the hell out of my house.

I unlocked the door, opened it, and stopped dead.

This was because Logan was standing there, arm up high, hand to the jamb, leaning his weight into it. His ankles were crossed, his other hand was fisted and to his hip, and, until I opened the door, his head was bent to contemplate his socks.

But when I opened the door, his eyes came to mine.

They were warm. They were concerned.

They were Logan.

“Hey, baby,” he said softly.

I thought I was dead inside.

Gone.

Faded away.

So how could he keep killing me?

I didn’t respond to him. I skirted him and went directly to the bed.

I climbed in, pulled the covers up to my ears, and closed my eyes.

He wasn’t there.

This wasn’t happening.

Yesterday didn’t happen.

I was experiencing a very weird, long, crazy dream.

The bed moved and I knew he’d sat on it.

Shit.

He was there.

I gritted my teeth and fought back screaming in frustration.

“You still tired?” he asked.

“Go away,” I answered.

He said nothing to that but the bed moved again as he shifted to pull the covers down to my shoulder; then he locked them in place when he leaned over me, putting his weight into the covers by my chest.

“Think it’s best you’re awake when it’s day here, Millie. You need to get used to bein’ back on Denver time. And you gotta get some food in you.”

I needed to get used to being back on Denver time?

How did he know I wasn’t on Denver time?

I didn’t ask that because I didn’t care about his answer (I told myself).

“I’ll do all that when you go away,” I audibly told the insides of my eyelids.

“Not goin’ away, beautiful,” he said gently.

Why?

Then again, these days, why did Logan do anything?

“Of course not,” I sighed.

“Sit up,” he ordered. “I’ll bring you some food.”

Weirdly, even though I felt kind of queasy, I also felt hungry.

And there obviously was bacon.

That decided it.

I pushed back, avoiding his body that was sitting on the bed behind me, and sat up.

“Be right back,” he muttered.

I didn’t say anything. I arranged the covers precisely folded over my lap.

It took him longer to get back to me with food than it did for me to arrange the covers but at least in that time I was able to come up with a strategy.

I was tired. I was nauseous. I was jet-lagged. I’d had a massive drama the day before. I had a lot of reasons to be quiet that he’d likely get and therefore not question and thus I’d eat. Then, if I didn’t actually pass out, I’d pretend to pass out.

While I was pretending (or actually unconscious), I’d hope Logan would go away.

If he didn’t, I’d use that time to come up with a strategy to make him go away.

With this plan in place, I felt better when he got back, carrying a plate in one hand, a coffee mug in the other.

No tray.

“You didn’t bring a tray,” I blurted.

He was eyes to me as he walked my way and he didn’t falter a single step when he asked, “A tray?”

“If I have breakfast in bed, it should be on a tray.”

He stopped by the side of the bed and stared down at me.

God, he was tall.

And his shoulders were really broad.