“Raul had me in my first fight at twelve. I was gangly and hadn’t bulked out, but I was agile and determined.” He paused, and I felt his breath on my skin as he breathed in and out. “I was never part of what you saw in the dining room, Mouse. Never. Raul didn’t care that I wasn’t, because he was focused on me fighting, and he didn’t want girls clouding my focus.
“My mother, she kept me real. She taught me what she remembered of her life, values, morals, what was wrong about my father and the life I grew up in.”
“How old was she?”
“When she was taken?”
I nodded.
“Eighteen.”
I lowered my head, and the rain hit the tip of my nose. God, that must have been terrifying and horrible, and she was there for so long, and here I was moaning about fifteen days.
“My mother had been planning to get us out for years. Finally an opportunity came, and she took it. We escaped.”
I asked the question that I was afraid to ask. “Did you want to leave?”
He closed his eyes for a minute. “It’s all I knew. Despite the stories my mother told me, that place was where I spent sixteen years of my life.” The back of his hand stroked my cheek, and I wanted to lean into it, instead I pulled away. “Still, I hated that place. Every second of it. I fought to stay away from everything else, but I saw what went on there. The girls, the hurt, violence, the drugs.
“My mother and I needed money after we escaped, so I continued the fighting, but I never liked it. I did what had to be done, Emily. That was one thing I learned to survive my father, determination and the will to do what you have to. Giving up doesn’t exist for me.
“That’s how he found me. He tracked fighting circuits, sending his men to look for me. Took him eight years, but word reached him about an undefeated Sculpt, and he showed up at one of my fights.”
“The night I asked you to help me.”
He nodded.
“Is that why you moved up your tour date?”
“Yes. I had to leave. I had to get out of the fighting world, but it was too late. I thought once I refused to fight for him, he’d leave it alone, and he did for a month or so. I should’ve known better. Raul gets what he wants. And he wanted me fighting for him.” He looked up and met my eyes. “I would’ve done it for however long he wanted me to if he’d promised to leave you alone.”
My breath hitched. He couldn’t do this to me. He couldn’t make it better. I wasn’t sure I could handle the truth.
He lowered his head while he ran his hand through his hair. “But you don’t know him. He doesn’t work that way. I knew that. Anyone who knows him does. He finds your weakness and destroys you with it.”
“And I was your weakness.”
“You and my mother. Raul had men on her, if I didn’t show up with you in Mexico, she was to be killed and not just a gunshot to the head. Raul’s kills are long, slow, and agonizing.” That was why he never attempted to take off with me when we drove to Mexico. “Before I saw you, after you were taken by Alfonzo … I contacted Deck. He was out of the country, but he dropped everything to come back. He told me what I had to do and what needed to go down. Deck managed to get my mother out from under Raul’s men within four days.”
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I let it go when he said that. He continued, “That’s when I had to be really careful with how I treated you. Raul knew my mother was gone from his clutches and all he had was you for leverage. He didn’t trust me, and I had to convince him that I was there because I wanted to fight and … and that you meant nothing to me except a slave I wanted to fuck. If he knew how much I cared … it was the only way to save you. I needed to give Deck time.”
“But why didn’t you tell me? We were alone most of the time. You could have told me, Logan.”
“Answer me this, Emily. If I’d told you all this, would you have feared me? Would you have trembled? Would you have had that look of fear in your eyes?”
I knew the answer. No. I would’ve feared the place and Raul and Alfonzo, but I’d always feel protected by Logan. But none of it really mattered, because I still felt like I’d been ripped apart and was trying to put my pieces back together. “I feel broken.”
His hand slipped into my hair. “We’ll fix this.”
I turned my head to avoid his touch. “Sculpt.” I saw him flinch when I avoided using his real name. “It’s too late. We can’t go back. I can’t. I’m sorry … God, what you grew up with, what happened to you and your mother … it’s horrible, unthinkable, but I … Sculpt, I want to move on with my life, and you’re a reminder of what I want to forget.”
“Mouse—”
“Maybe it is what you had to do. But when I look at you now, I’m not sure who I see, the man I fell in love with or the cold, expressionless man that watched me suffer and made me fear him.” I took a deep breath and said the words I needed to say to save my already damaged heart. “What I’m sure of … is that I’m better without either one.”
I turned, slipped under his arm, and ran through the raging rain. I heard him shouting my name and curse several times before I reached the house. I went into my room, shut the door and leaned up against it, my chest heaving in and out and my nerves shooting off like the Fourth of July.