When Logan appears at my door, smiling his dimpled smile, wearing a tank and leaning on a cane, I resist slamming my body into his only because I don’t want to hurt his leg. But he pulls me into his arms and before I know it he’s got me inside, against the kitchen counter, pushing up against me and sending my body temperature into the sky.
“How was your trip?” I ask.
“Fine.” And then he kisses me some more, hunting my skin with hard hands. “Is Vera home?”
“No.”
“Good. Where’s your bedroom?”
I grin, interlace my fingers in his, and pull him into the smaller bedroom which is mine.
But it doesn’t take long before I sense something is wrong. He’s kissing me like he loves me, but there’s something behind his eyes, something he’s not saying. “You OK?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
His eyes flick away, then back to my lips. “It’s fine.”
“What is it?”
His eyes close, his hands stiffen on my back. He bows his head. “It’s...it’s not us. It’s...fine. I just want... I just want to catch up with you first.” I slide my fingers over his buzzed haircut. “Later,” he begs. “Later, OK? It’s been...crazy, and I just... You’re what I need now, Kyla. You.”
“OK,” I whisper. “OK.”
I’m on top. Logan’s leg is still too weak to put too much weight on it. Feeling his girth inside me is maddening, and not having had him for all these weeks has me crashing over the waves quickly, holding on to him like the end of the world is coming. My heart melts when he comes inside me.
That final crash, that final moment, lasts forever, everything OK, everything fine. And I wish we could just lie like this, me above him, him inside me, my arms around his neck. I wish we didn’t have to talk about what is clearly a huge problem in his world right now, whatever it might be.
But we must.
I lift my head to look at him. “Tell me,” I say.
Logan looks at me for a long moment, then shifts me off of him. Grimaces as he gets up and sits on the side of the bed. He puts his pants on and moves onto the other bed (which is used by no one, but it’s there because it came with the place.)
I stare at the ink on his chest, the roaring lion and the sharp-looking wolf. I’ve asked him many things, but I haven’t asked him what the ink means.
He looks up at me, waiting, hesitating, which has me sitting up suddenly, afraid, worried, nervous.
Logan’s eyes go to my bare breasts and they linger there, then he looks down at the floor. “I have to fight again,” he says.
“OK?” I still don’t get the problem. I assumed he would fight again.
“In a month.”
And then my skin goes cold. “What?”
He looks up at me. “Six weeks, actually. I asked for eight, he asked for four, we settled in the middle.”
“And you accepted?”
Logan tells me the details, how he has no other choice, no other hope, how he might—no, he will—lose his green card if he doesn’t do it.
“So what?” I say. “Then I’ll go to England to be with you.”
“In a year?”
“Less than a year.”
“They’ll never let me back in the states if they discovered I obtained that green card illegally.”
“You didn’t obtain shit illegally. Someone gave it to you. How were you supposed to know where it came from?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “I knew, Kyla. And immigration is not exactly the most caring of US departments. The only one worse is the IRS. No, actually, I think they’re both equally scummy.”
I run a hand through my hair, look down. “I can’t let you do this, Logan. Not for me. I can’t let you risk permanent damage to your leg when we can find a way.”
“It’s not only for you, Kyla. I have to do this for Ailee. I have contacts here, contacts I’ve built up over years. I’ll have to keep fighting while I build up the gym. And I can do it. People know me. Organizers know me. All I need to do is make a call here and I’m in. In Europe? Sure, maybe I’ll get a few fights. Word spreads. But they pay less. All those years of work and Ailee will have no future anyway.”
“I’ll loan you the money. I mean, I’ll get my father to loan—”
“No.” He sticks a hand up. “No. Not that. Anything but that.”
“Logan, there’s no shame—”
“There is shame!” His eyes are wild. “I make my own way, Kyla. I am not a wealthy man, but I am a proud man. Borrowing from Jenny to tide me over while the settlement comes in has been mortifying, but I had no choice. Now I do have a choice. But not from your father. Christ, not that. Definitely not that. If you and I... If you and I are becoming as serious as I think we are, I’ll need to meet this man. I know he won’t like me, no father would ever like a guy like me, and the last thing I need is to come across like some fool who needs his money.”
“I don’t care if doesn’t like you.”
“Neither do I, but I care that he respects me.”
“This is your leg we’re talking about, Logan. Respect and honor and pride come second.”
“I spoke to Jenny. In six weeks the leg will be strong enough. I won’t be crippled if I get a bad hit. I might have trouble with it for the rest of my life, but not crippled. And if I get the money I need from this bout, Ailee will be sorted. I can drop fighting completely after that. All I need is this one shot.”
I shake my head, tears starting to sting at my eyes. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Life has hurt me more than any fight ever could.”
We stare at each other for a while. His decision is clearly made, and I don’t think I have any say in it.
“Kyla.”
“Yeah.”
“I need something from you.”
I wait for it.
“I need...your blessing.”
“My blessing?”
“Yes.”
“This is not about me. It’s about Ailee.”
“No, it is about you. I’m giving you the facts, all the facts, what would happen if I don’t do it.
“If I don’t get your blessing, I can’t promise you I won’t do the fight. I couldn’t do that to Ailee. But...” He shakes his head. “If you say no, I just... I’m stuck, Kyla. I’m fucking stuck. I love Ailee, and I love you. Goddamnit, I love you, OK? Yes. I need your blessing, Kyla. I need it before I go into that cage. I need it if I have any hopes of winning. If you’re not happy with this, if you’re not OK with this—he’ll slaughter me.”
I look down, shake my head.
We sit silently for a while, Logan not trying to push his ideas on me, and me not wanting to be the reason his sister can’t get an education. I understand his desire not to borrow money from my father. I understand his desire not to want to borrow money period. It’s his honor. His pride. Men. Yes, but it’s also why I love him.
“I’m so scared for you,” I finally say.
“I know.”
“That’s the only reason I’m hesitating. I don’t wanna get in your way.”
“You’re not getting in my way. I... Fuck... I love you, damn it. I’ve never been in love before. And I just thought—I can’t do this without you. I...can’t.”
“You’ll need to be alone, won’t you? Before the fight.”
“No.”
“But...don’t I screw with your fighter mojo or something?”
“You’re the only reason I’d want to get out of this fight intact, Kyla. I know I’ll win. I will. I have too much at stake not to. Which is why Vito is putting this deal up for me. He doesn’t care if I never fight again, if I walk with a limp for the rest of my life, if I wake up in pain until I’m sixty. He knows I’ll win. That’s not what’s at stake here.
“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t care either. There was no hope in my life before you. There was only Ailee. And once she made it, then the reason for my life would be over. You...you gave me a new reason to keep going, Kyla. A new reason.
“I need you. I need you until the moment of the brawl and I want you by my side when I enter that cage, and I want you at my side when it’s over.”
It’ll kill me to see him do that fight, but it’ll also kill me to not see him do it.
“I trust you,” I say. “And I...support you, whatever you decide.”
Logan stares at me for a long while, perhaps in disbelief.
Finally, he gives a tiny nod, almost imperceptible.
I get up off the bed, move over to the one he’s sitting on, sit next to him. I place my hand on his thigh, the bad one, and I feel the tiniest twitch when my skin touches it. “How much does it hurt?” I ask.
Logan tenses his jaw. “More than you can imagine. But that’s not the pain that bothers me.”
“I know,” I whisper, and I move in to kiss him.
We don’t make love again, even though Vera’s out all day, thinking we’d be screwing up a storm.
I lie with Logan in my arms, under the sheets, neither of us sleeping, both of us thinking.
His mind is elsewhere, on the fight, on his life.
His leg twitches frequently, and he has to shift a few times to get comfortable.
My fingers dig into the wolf tattoo on his chest, hoping all will be OK.
“What does it mean?” I say. “The tattoo.”
Logan waits a second. “Which one?”
“Both.”
He keeps staring at the ceiling, thinking. “A friend told me about it,” he says. “Nate, remember him?”
I think back to our conversations in Texas. Lots of names, lots of old friends, but this one I’d always remember. “Yeah, he helped you on the day...” I don’t finish.
“Yeah,” Logan says. “He’s a big wildlife fan, wanted a career in it. And he told me about them, then I had someone design them for me.
“The wolf is monogamous. He finds one partner and sticks with her forever. At the time, I was thinking of Ailee when I got it. That she would be the only girl I could ever stay true to. But the wolf is also a fearful animal. A wolf would rather bark at the unfamiliar than attack it. When he does attack, however, he is ruthless. His jaw has a crushing power of nearly a-thousand-five-hundred pounds per square inch. Wolves were hunted, persecuted when people believed in werewolves. In nineteen-twenty-seven, the last wild wolves in France were slaughtered because of that fear. They are a dying breed despite their beauty.
“The lion is misunderstood. He is ferocious, and at first glance he might be considered to be lazy, being fed by his women, taking the first seat at the table after they have provided him with his meal. But it is the lion’s job to fend for his family, to protect his territory. The male lion is kicked out of his pride at a young age, made to fend for himself. Only the strongest survive. But male lions can also hunt themselves when it comes to taking down a formidable enemy like an elephant.
“So the lion starts off as a loner, fighting, and he ends up with a family that he kills to protect, and which he protects with brutality, using his own body to stop any threats from approaching his pride.”
I stroke both of the images, the roaring lion, the stoic wolf. “Which one are you?” I ask.
Logan swallows. “I hope I’m a bit of both.”