Authors: S.C. Ellington

Unsettled (32 page)

BOOK: Unsettled

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“I just feel bad it didn’t work out between him and Liz. I talked to her last week. She’s starting to show, and I don’t think she’s told him yet.”

What the hell?
My
limbs
were frozen in place. I willed myself not to begin to panic. Maybe they weren’t talking about my Logan. Or maybe they weren’t talking about Elizabeth Drexel. There were plenty of people in the world named Elizabeth and Logan,
right?

The knot in my stomach grew with every breath. I was finding it hard to breathe.

“I don’t know how she’s going to be able to make it through shooting
Ashen Willows
. There are too many sex scenes. She won’t be able to hide her growing stomach.” Now I knew for certain that they were in fact speaking of Elizabeth and Logan.

I felt like I was going to faint. The realization that Logan had lied to me hit me in the gut like a wrecking ball. I put my hand against the wall of the stall to continue standing upright.

“Well, I’m sure she’ll figure it out. Let me just put on some more gloss, and then we can go.”

“Incidentally, did you see his date tonight? I have never seen her before. Doesn’t seem like she’s part of the normal circuit.”

“How could I not? He could only not take his eyes off her all evening.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too.”

I heard her blot her lips, “Okay, I’m done. Gloss is shining, let’s go.”

I heard the pairs of shoes shuffle along the tile floor, and then the door closed. When I allowed myself to breathe again, I dropped my arms to my sides, still paralyzed by what I’d just heard. How could he lie to me? He told me he hadn’t been with anyone in a year. He’d fed me lies and I just ate them up like a stupid idiot! My eyes burned as I opened the door to my stall, and focused on making it to the sink.

It was just me, my thoughts, and the echo of my heels in the enclosed porcelain chamber. As soon as I looked at myself in the mirror, tears began to well in my eyes.
Don’t cry!
I yelled at myself. I didn’t want to give Logan the satisfaction of knowing that he’d penetrated my armor.

“Brooklyn? Did you fall in?” I looked up as Alex was coming through the swinging door. “Hey—what’s wrong?” she asked. Her eyebrows creased with concern.

It took me a few seconds to form a sentence. “I want to…I want to go home. Now.”

“Brooklyn? What happened?” she asked.

I didn’t have the energy to respond.

“Okay, let’s go. Do you need to get anything else from the table?”

I shook my head in response and headed for the door.

I
stood outside the ballroom, waiting for Alex to come back with Jay. To my chagrin, when she exited the room, Jay and Logan were in tow. Alex shrugged her shoulders at me as if to offer an apology.

Immediately Logan was at my side. “What’s wrong, baby?” I didn’t respond. Words were lost in my thoughts.
How could he? How could he?

“Brooklyn, talk to me. What’s the matter?” I turned away from him. Alex and Jay stood on either side of me.

“Excuse me,” I said, requesting that he move out of my way.

“Brooklyn, talk to me, please. What happened?”

“You lied to me,” I said flatly. There. Now he knew.

“Lied to you? Lied about what?” he asked, his face contorted in confusion.

“Goodbye, Logan,” I said, sliding between him and Jay.

“What? What is going on?” he asked frantically, catching up to me as I continued a steady pace toward the exit of the hotel. Hearing the heartbreak in his voice seared my insides, but it served him right. He hurt me. He lied to me. He had a kid on the way. How could he not tell me that? If Elizabeth was pregnant, he clearly lied to me about when he last saw her. Actually, he lied to me about her in general. He told me they were never a couple.

“Where are you parked?” I barked at Jay. Having Logan in my proximity was grating on my nerves. I was really trying to hold myself together.

“Valet,” Jay answered, startled by the tone in my voice and clearly confused as to why we were leaving. I busted a left turn toward the valet exit. My dress got caught on my heel and I tripped forward. Logan was right there to catch my arm. “Brooklyn, please stop. Talk to me. What is going on?” he pleaded.

I yanked my arm away from his grasp. “Get off me! I got this,” I seethed. I made it to the valet area without another incident, but unfortunately Logan kept my pace. He stood menacingly next to me, tension radiating off him like electricity.

“Brooklyn—wh-”

“We have nothing to discuss,” I said, cutting him off. The shields around my heart had rose from six to thirty in a matter of minutes.

“Thank you for tonight. It was…eye opening. I will send the clothes back to you. Please go. There is no need to make a spectacle,” I hissed. Logan gaped at me in disbelief. For the briefest of moments, he looked like his world was crumbling, but then he slid on the stoic CEO face.

“Fine,” he said, turning and walking in the other direction. I watched as a tiny piece of my heart clung to his jacket and walked away with him.

How had I been so stupid to let myself fall so easily?

I STUFFED MY EVENING
gown into the backseat of Jay’s Altima. As soon as the door closed behind me, a solitary tear fell. Alex chose to sit in the backseat. I knew she wanted to console me, but I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I felt hot. I felt cold. I looked down to see that my hands were shaking. I shoved my hands under my legs to stop them from trembling.

As Jay pulled out of the parking garage and into the night, I just looked out the window in silence. The last couple of months had been filled with so much promise, but in a matter of minutes everything crumbled and was royally flushed down the toilet.

“B? Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“No,” I breathed, leaning my head against the window glass.

I didn’t have Jay take me to Logan’s house to pick up my things. In reality I couldn’t have done that if I wanted to since I technically didn’t know his address. I took solace in the fact that I had my wallet and cell phone. I hadn’t taken much, so it wouldn’t be that huge of a loss if my belongings were thrown out by Amelia.

The drive home went by at a snail’s pace. I started to ask Jay to press harder on the gas pedal, but decided I’d probably barked at him enough for the evening. The evening's sudden turn of events wasn't his fault anyway.

We finally made it home, and before I knew it I was undressed and slumped over in my bed. I was proud of myself; I hadn’t let another tear fall from my eye since I’d got out of the car.

Right when I got home I undressed and got a shower. I was resolute—I was going to be like Mary J. Blige—I wasn’t going to shed any tears over him.

But then I made the mistake at looking in the direction of my bookshelf. There he was, in his prized spot in the middle of my glass shelf. Herman sat bright and erect in the same spot I’d placed him in after my weekend with Logan. It was too much; the whole thing was too much.

A heavy sob escaped me. I curled up on my bed. All the tears I’d held back escaped out of me like a flowing river. He’d done it—Logan had made it past the metal grate and into the castle where my heart lived. The difference between my life and a fairy tale was that he’d managed to make it past the stone walls, then stab me with the sharpest of all swords.

I sobbed quietly into my pillow, praying for the pain to end.

MY PHONE BEGAN TO
vibrate on my bed in the darkness. I wiped my face. My eyes stung from crying. The screen was blurry. I swiped my finger across the answer button.

“Hello,” I said, my voice shaking.

“Brooklyn, it’s Damon—please don’t hang up.”

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