She: Part 2 (50 page)

Less than an hour later Amélie appears at my desk and before I can start defending my muffin-stealing antics, she orders me to go home and rest so that I might perform a little more successfully tomorrow. It’s a fair critique; I haven’t written a single sentence all day.

“I’ll be better tomorrow,” I promise her. I suddenly remember that I promised myself the same thing last Friday. I told myself that I would take the weekend to contain my excitement about our engagement, and that I’d come to work today and concentrate harder. How ironic, I think, that I’ve spent the entire afternoon feeling totally unfocussed, my thoughts consumed with Logan once more, though for entirely different reasons. I’d prefer Friday’s lovestruck mindset over my current frame of mind, but I just can’t find that bubble of ours right now.

My thoughts a messy tangle, I say goodbye to Margaret and Layla, before me, my bag, and my big bouquet of flowers step out of the building only to find Logan’s black BMW parked right in front of the doors.

He
’
s back
? I step towards the passenger door, looking through the window, where there are papers spread over every surface in an apparent attempt at turning the space into a temporary office. Or has he been here all this time, I wonder.

He’s talking to someone on his mobile, probably someone on-site in Marseille, trying to make up for his wasted trip. He looks more like himself than he did inside earlier, I even see a glimmer of those dimples, and his demeanour certainly seems a lot calmer and relaxed. Until he catches sight of me watching him, that is. He does a double take before annoyance flickers in his eyes once more. I was beginning to enjoy my perving, but now it’s ruined. My own eyes narrow immediately, and a growl escapes me where I stand.
Why is he being like this? What have I missed
, I ask again. I hate seeing him respond to me like that, and what’s more, I hate not knowing why.

Logan leans across the car to open the passenger door for me to get in. He’s showing much less enthusiasm than I’m used to from him, and I find it disconcerting. I can’t keep Amber’s comment from floating through my head — it’s all down hill from here, she said.

Quit the dramatics
,
Gemima
.
Stop thinking and just go home
. Yes, excellent idea.

I give Logan a
there
’
s
-
no
-
way
-
I’m
-
driving
-
with
-
you
kind of look, before walking haughtily to my own car, getting in, and speeding off erratically, my driving a match for my mood.

The closer that I get to my home the sicker my stomach feels and I begin to suspect that that muffin I stole might not have been as fresh as it looked. However, as I reenter the underground garage a shudder runs through me and I realise that it’s the prospect of walking only metres from where my neighbour died that has my tummy churning. I feel hypersensitive as I park, just waiting in dread for those eerie, cold feelings to take ahold of me again. Mercifully, they don’t, and I suddenly discern that somewhere over the course of the afternoon, whilst being mentally at war with Logan, those awful feelings have left me.
That
’
s a silver
-
lining
, I think mockingly.

Logan follows me the entire way to the complex, and when I turn to drive into the garage he continues on, to park on the road. I find him waiting at the top of the stairwell (no elevator for me, thank you very much) by which point my need to throw up again is overbearing. Without saying a word to him, I walk hastily along the path, trying my best to ignore the teeming number of people who are in and around the house opposite mine.
Just don
’
t look
, I tell myself. And I should especially avoid staring at the bloodstained concrete, I think, spying it in my peripheral vision. I feel my body wanting to retch, but I suppress the urge, and hurry off the path to my front door.

A few moments later I empty what little contents I have in my stomach into the toilet bowl.

“Is that the first time you’ve thrown up today?” Logan asks me, his voice coming from somewhere behind me.

Is that the first thing you
’
re going to say to me
, I think, but don’t say out loud. “No,” I confess, somehow managing to feel hot, flushed, cold, and shivery all at the same time. He doesn’t say anything else for the remainder of the time I’m crouched on the floor, and I assume that he’s gathering his words together and his explanation will be imminent.
Any second now
.

When I eventually get to my feet and move over to the sink, Logan speaks from his seat on the edge of the bathtub, but they’re not the words that I need or expect to hear.

“Do you want me to pack you a bag?”

I look at him in the mirror above the sink. “Am I going somewhere?”

“To the apartment.”

I turn slowly around, keeping myself as coolheaded as I possibly can. “Why on earth would I want to spend my evening at yours with you after the way you’ve behaved today? Behaviour that still hasn’t been explained, might I add.”

He ignores my question and says simply, “It’s our apartment, not mine, and I’m not leaving you alone.”

I refrain from rolling my eyes. Does the think the gunman is still at large? “I can go to my mom’s,” I tell him.

“OK, we’ll go there…but I’m not leaving
you
, period,” he says, oh-so-annoyingly. Then he holds up something in his hand — it’s my mobile phone; he must’ve found it while I was vomiting. He throws it across to me and it lights up when I catch it. There’s a message on my home screen telling me that I have fifty-four missed calls from him.

“
Fifty
-
four
?” I shriek. I look up at him in shock. “Have you mustered the ability to explain why you’ve acted so OTT today?”

“I’ve already told you that,” he says.

No, he didn’t! Did he? I try to recall everything that he said to me earlier, and vaguely wonder if I’ve spent the whole afternoon grumbling for no reason, but I haven’t. I’m
sure
he never explained himself.

“Are you going to apologise for not calling me?” he asks quietly.

My mouth almost hits the floor.
Is he fucking serious
? The expression on his face tells that me that he is. Holding up my phone, I tell him, “I told you in my last message that I would call you at lunchtime, which I was about to do when you showed up. I purposefully
didn
’
t
call you earlier because I was extremely preoccupied this morning
and
I didn’t want to interrupt your morning on site, which is where I thought you were,” by the time I finish talking my voice is loud and angry.

“So you still haven’t put two and two together…”

“Two and two is four, Logan, but
your
little riddle is indecipherable,” I snap.

He looks at me impassively for a moment. Then he gets to his feet and says, “I’ll pack that bag for you.”

* * *

The view from the front of my house is a completely different sight to this morning, and now that my stomach is trustworthy, I take it all in. The cottage opposite mine is swarmed with men and women, someone in suits, some in police uniforms, and a long
do
-
not
-
cross
tape encircles the entire property. I could do with some of that tape right now, I think; I’d send Logan a clear message without even saying a word. Not that we’ve said anything to each other for the last ten minutes. We just moved around one another, packing clothes and toothbrushes, not to mention my flowers, him lost in thought and me torn between tears and a tantrum.

I decide on neither. I’m going to enjoy my evening, is what I conclude. A ready-cooked meal of Mercy’s and a soak in the hot tub, before sinking into bed and eradicating this day from my memory bank.
Logan can sleep on the couch
, I decide as an afterthought.

He locks the front door while I watch what’s going on across the pathway. Then, when he joins me at the top of the steps, I naturally reach for his hand, which he takes willingly.
Dammit
! Even after I’ve come to my senses and try to pry mine free, Logan doesn’t let it go. We walk the entire way to his car like this, and I have to admit that I like the normalcy of it. It’s the most familiar thing that I’ve felt all day, and it’s probably the reason why the journey to his is calmer than the journey to mine was. Sure we sit in silence, but it’s an easier silence somehow. Less prickly, less agitated, as though those brief minutes of our hands touching relaxed the crazy, stupid, unexplained tension between us.

Of course, in the back of my mind I still want to know what the hell has been going on today, but for now, at least, I’m happy to bask in the quietness, just feeling his presence beside me.

* * *

“Lights,” Logan says loudly.

Our
apartment lights up in front of my eyes, and then Logan stands near the open doors of the elevator, indicating that I should walk out ahead of him. I go to the kitchen to put the flowers into the sink; he follows me, throwing his keys onto the kitchen counter, their clanging sound making me jump.

“Someone has to call a truce,” he says, standing at the end of the kitchen island, watching me. “So I’m going to do it,” Logan mans up.

I nod, thankfully. “Good, I think you should,” I say honestly, given that it was him who started our spat.

He clears his throat, and lets my digging comment slide. “I’m going to tell you about my day, and I’m going to do so without insinuating anything about your intelligence.”

I want to sigh in relief.
At last
,
an explanation
. I give the flowers a little water, turn off the tap and then take several steps towards him. “That would be perfect, Logan,” I tell him sincerely.

He turns and leads the way into the living room where we sit side-by-side on the sofa that we pleasured each other on only a few days ago. We both instinctively lean inwards towards one another. A good sign, I can’t help thinking.

Then, to my surprise, Logan takes one of my hands in both of his own and holds it in his lap as he speaks. “This morning was probably the worst morning of my life,” he tells me and when my eyes widen in suspicious disbelief, he adds, “No exaggeration, Gemima.” The way that his hands tighten around mine tells me that he’s telling the truth. “I was already on-site when your last text message came through, telling me that you were about to leave for work,” he says, and I nod my understanding. “The thing that I think you haven’t taken into account today, for whatever reason, is that I own the complex where you live…”

I look at him, bewildered. “I know that,” I tell him quietly, still not understanding how that could excuse his behaviour. I urge him to continue.

“And because I own it, I’m obviously informed about any major problems,” he says.

“Like someone getting shot?” I assume.

“For example,” he nods, subconsciously giving my hand another tight squeeze. “So about half an hour after your last message to me,” he goes on, “I got a phone call from the complex manager telling me that a brunette woman in her late-twenties or early-thirties was shot dead on the pathway between houses eight and nine,” he says, his voice becoming uneven. “He told me the estimated time of the shooting, and it was about three minutes after
you
told me that you were leaving your house.”

That doesn
’
t sound good
, I admit to myself. I inch a little closer to him on the sofa.

“I’m
usually
a pretty levelheaded guy,” he says with the first hint of amusement that I’ve seen from him all day. “His description of the woman, and the location, and the timing were all a concern to me, but I wasn’t going to lose my mind yet, not until I knew more.” He sighs as he says, “That’s when I tried to call you…and call you…and call you…and you didn’t answer.”

I shake my head, shifting my position on the sofa so that I’m turned to face him. Logan mirrors my actions.

“I started to panic,” he confesses, his eyes pouring into mine. “Panic is not in my nature. That levelheadedness is who I am, and when I lose that, I feel like I’ve lost myself. That could account for the abnormally high number of missed calls,” he explains. “But when I couldn’t get through to your mobile, I called your desk phone. No answer.”

I would
’
ve been in the meeting room at the time
, I think.

“I called Pierson House’s front desk. No answer.”

Layla was absent from reception most of the morning
.

“
And
I called Amélie’s private office number. No answer.”

Amélie was with me
, I think mournfully.

“I knew that something was wrong,” Logan says quietly. “Four unanswered numbers, each called multiple times, is not a coincidence. That combined with the information that the complex manager gave me was enough for me to draw a very dark conclusion.”

It all makes sense now. A brunette woman, in my age bracket, outside of my house, and all those unanswered calls…it’s no wonder that he jumped to the assumption that he did.

I reach out and cup his face with my free hand, and a moment later Logan leans into me and wraps his arms around me, holding me like he never wants to let go.

“I had no idea that you knew about the shooting, Logan. Let alone that you thought it was me who got shot,” I whisper to him, hugging him tightly. I’d’ve called him in a heartbeat if I knew, of course I would’ve.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmurs, his voice infused with emotion, his arms pulling me closer to him still. “As unlikely and surreal as I thought it was, I was panicked into believing that every detail could only conclude one thing. I thought I’d lost you right after I’ve just found you,” he says, and I feel like I could burst into tears for the umpteenth time today and I suspect I’m not alone in feeling that way.

I want desperately to tell him that his assumption was crazy, I want to tell him that he’ll never lose me, but I can’t. I’d be lying if I did. My parents are a painful proof to me that you
can
lose the love of your life in the blink of an eye, and so all I can promise Logan right now is, “Not today. You haven’t lost me today, baby.”