Chapter 23

Logan

Auralie arrives at my hotel room a mere forty minutes after I do. I estimate she took a shower because her hair is still damp and she’s wearing different clothes. The subtle smell of jasmine hits me as I open the door, and I have to suppress the urge to jerk her inside, strip her naked, and feast on her for hours.

Hopefully, that will come later.

I step aside and Auralie walks in without comment, taking in the small, cramped room that’s typical of New York hotels as the need to cram as many people in as possible eats up the usable square footage. I shut the door and follow her in, shoving my hands in my pockets.

It’s a nervous gesture, and I’m not going to lie… my pulse is out of control with fear and dread over what I’m getting ready to lay at her feet. I’m going to tell her the basis for my nightmares. I’m divulging to this woman the part of me that’s a monster and not nearly good enough for the likes of her.

But it’s what Auralie wants.

It’s what she needs.

And I want to give her the world, even if I have to crush myself and possibly her in the process.

She’s nervous too, I can tell as she turns around to sit on the edge of the king-sized mattress covered in a blanket done in browns, tans, and lime-green geometric designs. It’s all too contemporary and modern for my taste, but then again… I’ve been happy living in a tin trailer for the last two years with a ratty old blanket I’d picked up at Target when I started my travels.

“Want something to drink?” I ask, only to buy time. I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to start my tale.

Auralie shakes her head. “No. I want to hear your story.”

“I won’t stop you from running once you hear it,” I tell her, already preparing myself for the end of something that really never got off the ground in a good way.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says quietly.

Confidently.

It should bolster me, but it doesn’t because she’s naive to think I can be good for her.

But still, I give a resolute sigh and walk past her to look out the window at the Brooklyn Bridge. I can’t bear to look at her as I start to deliver the speech I must have practiced a hundred times on the plane once I made the decision to fly to New York for her.

The minute I walked out of Bridger’s office last night, I knew I was going to open myself up to her, because I had nothing to lose at this point. Auralie was something I didn’t expect in my life, but once I got a taste of her and then subsequently lost it, I figured… what the fuck do I really have to lose at this point?

“I was married once,” I start off saying, and she gives a small gasp of surprise. “I was also a doctor.”

Another gasp, this one deeper, and she blurts out, “A doctor?”

I look over my shoulder at her and give a wry smile. “Hard to believe, right?”

“Actually, not really,” she says quietly. “I mean… I think you’re brilliant so why wouldn’t you be a doctor? But I do have to wonder how you went from doctor to fly-fishing guide.”

I turn away from her, looking blankly out the window. “I was a general surgeon in Chicago, where I was born and raised. Returned there after med school and my residency. Joined a prominent practice. Got married while I was early in my residency—her name was Donna—and we lived a pretty fucking charmed life.”

“A doctor,” Auralie says in awe.

“I was a jackass,” I say with no small amount of bitterness in my voice. “I was young but had a God complex. Thought I was hot shit because I graduated top of my med school and was head and shoulders above everyone else in residency. Didn’t think there was a problem I couldn’t cure or fix. I had an ego the size of the universe and the track record to back it up. I was just fool enough to think nothing could bring me down.”

“What happened?” she whispers fearfully.

I swallow hard, fight back the nausea, and tell her, “A little girl was brought into the emergency room when I was on call. Just five years old. She took a bad fall off some schoolyard equipment and landed on a railroad tie, causing a crush injury to her ribs.”

“Oh, no,” Auralie breathes out from behind me.

“A CT scan showed her spleen was ruptured, but no other major injuries. It was a simple enough surgical fix—quick in and out with a laparoscope to remove it. A procedure I’d done many, many times.”

She waits silently as I barrel forward with my story, the words getting harder and harder to get out. My heart thunders, echoing through my brain so I almost can’t hear myself when I admit with crushing defeat, “The other surgeon on call… he told me not to take the case. That he’d handle it, but I wouldn’t listen. God complex and all. I thought I was the best man for the job, despite knowing deep down I should stay away.”

“I don’t understand,” she murmurs in confusion.

I finally turn toward Auralie, because I need to look her in the eye when I tell her the very worst thing about myself. “It was my daughter… Carrie.”

“What?” she asks, and she actually rears backward from my revelation.

I can’t maintain eye contact, so I drop my gaze in a cowardly fashion to the mocha-brown carpeting. “Lots of unwritten rules in the profession of medicine, but you never treat a family member. I was told to back away, but I was too much of a conceited asshole to listen. I didn’t trust anyone to do the job right but myself.”

“What happened?”

Fuck… what didn’t happen is the question?

“I screwed up,” I say, managing to drag my gaze back up to hers even though it about kills me to see the pain reflected in her beautiful blue eyes. “Got her spleen out, but I missed a bleeder. Closed her up, watched her in recovery for a little bit, and then left to handle another surgical case.”

Auralie’s eyes fill with tears. “Missed a bleeder?”

I nod, my own eyes filling up with tears I’ve refused to let fall since the day I buried my sweet girl. “The recovery nurse realized pretty quickly that she was in trouble when her blood pressure dropped. The other surgeon on call opened her back up, gave her blood… but it was too late. Her organs shut down, and she—”

Auralie flies off the bed suddenly and slams her body into mine with a cry of dismay. Her arms go around my back and she plasters herself against me—tries to crawl inside of me—as she sobs, “No. Oh, Logan. No.”

As I blink, the tears spill down my face. I want to wrap my arms around her. I want to accept her comfort, but I can’t. I have to get it all out. “It was my fault. I killed my daughter. Donna told me so. She reminded me every day after Carrie died, even as we lowered her into the ground. She reminded me when she served divorce papers to me.”

Auralie makes a distressed sound in her throat.

“I gave up after that,” I murmur in quiet reflection. “Gave up the practice of medicine. Gave up my life. I just left. Left it all behind and never looked back. It’s why I don’t talk to my parents anymore… because I killed their only grandchild.”

“No, no, no,” Auralie chants as I feel her tears soaking through my shirt. “No, it wasn’t your fault. Mistakes happen all the time.”

I don’t disagree with her because that’s a basic risk of all medicine. Missing a bleeder can also be a normal consequence of just such a surgery, but fuck if I’ll ever accept anything but full responsibility for my dark-haired angel dying on an operating table. For the pain I caused Donna and her parents and my parents.

Now the pain I’ve caused myself?

I’ll accept that because it’s my punishment. I’ll bear it until the day I die.

Auralie releases her hold on me, reaches back, and grabs my wrists. She pulls my arms up and wraps them around her back. When they go lax in a subconscious move on my part to refuse her comfort, she pulls at them again, squeezing me to insist I hold onto her.

I suck in a breath, rapidly blink my eyes again, and when Auralie squeezes harder at me, I finally engage my arm muscles and hold them loosely in place around her. She doesn’t accept that though, burrowing in tighter to me, pressing at my arms to lock tighter around her body. It’s a silent plea, one that I read clear as day because I never miss a message this woman sends to me, that she is offering herself as a rock-solid means of support to me right now.

I don’t fucking deserve it, but I’m such a selfish bastard, I go ahead and take it. Pulling her in close to me, I press my nose into the top of her head and breathe in her scent. I listen to her as she starts to cry in earnest, and now I’m the one who wants to console her.

“Don’t cry, baby,” I whisper. “I’m not worth it.”

“You’re so fucking worth it,” she mumbles into my chest, squeezing me so hard I can barely breathe. “You’re mine and you are worth every goddamn tear I choose to shed on your behalf.”

“I don’t deserve—”

“Shut up,” she cries as she pulls back and looks up at me with tear-streaked eyes. “You deserve happiness, Logan. I don’t care if you made a mistake or if it was God who decided to take your baby from you. You’re a good man. A righteous man. You are my man, and you are not going to bear this alone. I swear to fucking God, so don’t even think about trying to use this as an excuse to push me away.”

“Auralie,” I say, because I’m stunned by the vehemence in her voice.

“You forgive yourself, Logan,” she presses on me urgently. “You forgive yourself right this moment, and if you can’t do it right this moment, then I’m going to remind you every single day for the rest of your life that you deserve some peace. And I’m going to remind you because I deserve some peace and happiness too, and you’re the only one who can give it to me, so I’m not going to let you leave me again because you’ve got some misguided notions about suffering for something that you’ve already suffered enough over.”

Fuck… this woman.

Goddamn this woman for giving me hope.

“When I fucked you that last time,” I tell her slowly. “I saw it in your eyes. You demanded to know about my life, and I knew if I told you, this is what you’d do. That you’d accept the broken and fucked-up Logan McKay into your life, and that you’d forgive me my trespasses because I didn’t have the strength to do it myself.”

“I’d forgive you anything,” she whispers before pressing a kiss into the center of my chest.

“I’m not sure I deserve that type of unconditional acceptance,” I tell her truthfully. “But I am giving you what you wanted… to know about the real me.”

“I don’t care what you think,” she says, leaning back to look at me. “And I’m falling hard for the real you. I want you to fall with me, okay?”

“Already did that,” I murmur, nuzzling into her head… feeling the softness of her hair against my cheek.

“Then it’s agreed,” she says. Although I can’t see her face, I can hear her smile. I can feel that fucking smile… soft, sweet, and utterly devoted. “We’ve fallen for each other.”

“I’m fucked up, baby,” I say, in a last-ditch effort to put her off. To make her see reason. To save her from a life with a fucked-up man.

“Maybe you are,” she says. “But I’m not going to let you stay that way. Like I said, I’m going to remind you constantly that you deserve more. That you deserve me. That right there is saying something because I’m no picnic half the time.”

A small chuckle escapes me, testament to the fact that despite the heaviness of this moment and the unburdening that just occurred, I apparently still have room for some measure of happiness.

Maybe… just maybe… I have room for even more.

“Logan,” Auralie murmurs as she nuzzles against my chest again for a brief moment before pulling back enough to look up to me.

Her face is still wet with tears. I loosen my arms from around her waist to bring my fingers to her cheeks so I can wipe them dry. “Yeah?”

“I want you inside me,” she says softly, her eyes warm and inviting. “Is that inappropriate?”

I smile back at her… my expression tender and full of emotion that I can’t contain. “Not inappropriate.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“For this,” I answer huskily and bend to kiss her.

Slow and deep, with nothing but a soft moan against her mouth that hopefully conveys my need for her.

Clothes hit the floor.

Her body hits the bed.

Then I’m inside of her and fuck almighty… how could I have ever have thought to walk away from this?

You didn’t walk away, moron, I tell myself. You went after her and bared your soul, and she invited you into her body. She invited you into her soul.

Auralie’s hands roam all over me, almost as if she can’t believe I’m real and she’s testing to ensure I’m not a mirage. Every glide of her fingers over my skin fills me with a fullness I never experienced before.

Fullness of heart, for sure.

But something else.

Life.

For the first time in years, my life feels… overflowing.

Complete.

I fuck Auralie slowly and sweetly, a first for both of us. Seems like it’s straight from a fucking fairy tale, but we both come together, groaning into each other’s mouths, which haven’t lifted from the other since I pushed my way inside her body.

When I empty myself in her, I wait for that blissfully blank space I normally go to. That place where sex usually leads me. A safe, insulated place where only I exist.

Except now, it feels completely different because I’m not there alone. Auralie is right there with me. It feels so fucking good that I’m not ever going to let it go.