Panic assailed me and I twisted farther his way. “High—”

“Eat,” he ordered inflexibly. “Then we’ll talk.”

I stared at him, fear beginning to infuse my bloodstream, then I turned back to my plate and ate.

Fast.

Forking it in, swallowing it down, cleaning my plate in no time.

I then turned back.

“Done,” I announced, mouth still holding half-chewed toast.

His lips were curled up as he replied, “Christ.”

I swallowed with difficulty and declared, “We’ll talk in the living room.”

Before I could move, he dumped his plate on mine on the tray and took the tray off my lap. He then leaned so deep into me his stomach was pressed to my thighs and he did this so he could drop the tray to the floor with a clatter.

Before I knew what he was about, he arched up, took hold of me, shifted, hitched, twisted, and hauled so he was under the covers with me. He’d pulled me over his body in a roll and pinned me to my back in the bed with him on me.

Panic gripping me, I started panting.

Then I caught the look on his face and started gasping for air.

“I get it,” he whispered.

“Y-yes,” I stammered. “You did. I gave it to you. And now it’s supposed to be over.”

“I get it,” he strangely repeated.

“Logan, I told you so this would be done.”

“I get it and I’da done the same thing.”

I stared up at him.

He lifted his hand, the tips of his fingers tracing my hairline along the side of my face and he kept talking.

“Found out it was me, found out I couldn’t give it all to you, I woulda done the same thing, Millie. I would have made it so you got it all and I would have done it ugly so you’d walk away from me and never look back so you could have it.” He dipped his face closer to mine. “So I get it. I get why you did what you did. I totally fuckin’ get it.”

Okay.

That felt good. Better than good. It loosened the grip that took hold of my heart the second he turned and walked away from me, letting it pump again, almost like normal.

But no.

It was good he knew. It was great he understood.

But this was over.

“I’m glad you understand,” I replied. “And thank you for sharing that with me,” I went on. “However, what I don’t understand is why you feel the need to do that lying on top of me in my bed.”

His head jerked back a few inches.

“Say what?” he asked.

“It’s all out there, High, the game has been played. There are no more moves to make. So it’s over and it’s time we both put it behind us and move on.”

“Put it behind us and move on,” he parroted incredulously.

“Yes. What we have is damaging and unhealthy and we have to put a stop to it and get on with our lives.”

He stared down at me and I tensed when his expression started to turn stormy.

I tensed even further when his face suddenly cleared and he roared with laughter, his weight bearing into me, his head dropping so his forehead rested on my cheekbone, his hair tickling the skin of my face.

“High.” I pushed at him.

He kept laughing.

“High!” I snapped, pushing harder at him.

He lifted his head, eyes dancing, lines radiating out the sides, creasing, body trembling with the chuckles that still had control over him and there it was again.

Perfection.

Enough!

“Get off me,” I demanded.

“Babe,” he replied.

I listened.

He said nothing else, just rode the wave of his amusement until it naturally died.

Then it hit me. The memory. The memory that there were a variety of occasions where Logan spoke Badass.

There were only a few words in the Vocabulary of Badass but each one had a number of meanings. They included beautiful, Christ, fuck, Jesus, and shit.

But the one used most was babe.

I was out of practice. I had no idea what that particular babe meant.

And I wasn’t going to find out.

“Nothing about this is funny,” I bit out. “Let us not forget, I came to you to tell you what I told you yesterday and in your fancy-ass RV, you humiliated me.”

There was no amusement in his expression when I quit talking.

No.

Instead he shifted over me so he was fully covering me. I was taking a fair amount of his hefty weight, and he lifted his other hand so he could use both of them to hold either side of my head.

In other words, there was no escape.

“Yeah,” he growled. “I did. I did it with intent. I was a dick and I was a dick on purpose. Because what you did to us fuckin’ destroyed me and I never put the pieces back together. But, Millie, I did it for more reasons than that. I did it for self-preservation. I did it ’cause you were back in a way you were back, in my bed, ass in the air for me, takin’ my dick and I felt you, I smelled you, I heard you, and I saw the ink on your back permanently declarin’ you were mine when you made that a lie for reasons I did not get. And all I could think was that I wanted to keep fuckin’ you, listenin’ to how much you loved takin’ me, feelin’ my cock sink inside you, and I wanted that until I stopped breathing. If I had you on your back, woulda seen your face, which would have fucked with me more. I picked the lesser of two evils. So I had to cover that shit on your back so I didn’t let go and let you lead me to the brink again and convince me to jump.”

Oh my God.

“High,” I whispered, and he dragged his thumb along my cheek, pressing it into my bottom lip until it hooked on the edge of my teeth and he moved in so we were so close, I could see nothing but him.

“I’m Logan to you.” His voice scratched out, chafing my skin.

Against his hold on my mouth, I forced out, “I—”

That was all I was able to do.

“You feel sweet. You feel scared. You feel happy. You feel sad. You feel anything you use your name for me. You can call me High. But not times like now. Times like now, I’m Logan.”

I wasn’t entirely certain I understood precisely the different occasions I could use his different names but I felt in his current mood I should agree.

So I said, “Okay.”

He swept his thumb from my mouth to the flesh under my cheek and pressed in lightly.

Then he went on.

“I held you down for that,” he continued to explain. “I held you down, coverin’ that ink. You were not faceless pussy, Millie. You could never be that and you fuckin’ know it. Even if you forgot, what came after woulda told you that shit couldn’t be true.”

“What came after wasn’t much healthier,” I shared hesitantly.

He moved back an inch and tilted his head slightly. “Yeah? You think?”

What?

He didn’t?

“Of course,” I said quietly. “You were there. You have to think the same thing too.”

“Three weeks ago when I didn’t have it all, maybe. Now. Fuck no.”

“It wasn’t healthy, Logan.”

“I couldn’t get enough of you, Millie.”

I drew in a sharp breath.

“Couldn’t get you outta my head. Didn’t rest until I found a new reason to get in your space. Found those reasons, got in your space. If I didn’t give a fuck about you, I wouldn’t have followed you for forty-five fuckin’ minutes, from the second I laid eyes on you at Bill’s rally, and found my shot to get in your face. If you didn’t mean shit to me, I’da seen you and put you out of my head. I didn’t. I got in your face. You kissed me. I fucked you. And I kept comin’ back for more.”

Okay.

Damn.

Okay.

Shit.

That made sense.

“And you,” he continued. “If you didn’t give a shit about me, you moved on, you would not have seen me buyin’ a burrito and come lookin’ for me. You woulda heard what I said, felt what that meant, and went on with your life. You didn’t. You found me. You kissed me. You took my cock. And even with how I took that from you, when I kept comin’ back for more, you kept takin’ it. You didn’t want it, you know you made that clear, I woulda been gone. You did not make that clear. You entered that fucked-up game we were playin’ because you needed what you got, unhealthy or not. Just like me when it comes to you, you’d take what you could get.”