Logan’s POV
I couldn’t stop touching her.
I couldn’t stop kissing her and breathing in her scent. I wanted to glue myself to her forever. I couldn’t believe that she was back. I spent days in complete agony. I started to lose hope at one point. The fear clouded my judgment and I was sure that I would lose her.
But I didn’t. She was here. She was in my arms and she was okay.
I placed another kiss on her temple and she got more comfortable in my arms.
“Where were you, Em?” Andrew asked her as he took her hand in his. “What was going on while you were asleep?”
I didn’t want to talk about it now. I wanted to be alone with her, kiss her, and tell her how fucking much I missed her. Andrew insisted that we talk about it immediately. He wanted to know what happened. We made everyone else leave, though. I didn’t want my kids to hear what happened and Anna was too emotional to stay. So it was now just Andrew, Emma, and me.
Emma took a deep breath and released it slowly. She bit her lower lip and furrowed her eyebrows.
“I’m not sure where to begin,” she said. “I am not even sure what that was.”
I ran my fingers through her hair and she looked at me.
“We know that Sienna was there,” I said quietly.
Emma nodded. “She was, but that was different.”
Emma furrowed her eyebrows and I could tell that she was struggling to find the words to explain what happened.
“Before I woke up I was back at our house,” Emma said as she looked at Andrew. “I relived the night Logan rejected me, but the end was completely different.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I hated remembering that night. I would lose my shit if I had to relive it. It hurt just to remember the mistake I made.
“Different how?” Andrew asked.
“I left that night,” Emma said. “Do you remember that? I heard you and Logan talking in the kitchen and I left through my bedroom window.”
Oh, I remembered it. Andrew was panicking because he thought that something happened to her. I rejected her when we found her. I remembered every second of that night. How wouldn’t I? It was the night I made the biggest mistake of my life.
“I remember that,” Andrew said, nodding his head.
“Everything was the same until that point,” Emma said. “I tried to leave through the window again, but it was locked.”
I glanced at Andrew and saw anger flash in his eyes. She was trapped in that house.
“What happened then?” Andrew asked, clenching his fists.
“Logan tried to reject me, but I didn’t let him,” Emma said and looked at me. “Something told me not to let him do it.”
I took a deep breath and kissed her temple again.
“Both of you were very different,” Emma continued. “Both of you were cold and…”
She stopped talking and shook her head.
“Everything was different,” she added. “Every picture in the house was gone. Everything was just different.”
She looked down at her lap and gulped. I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her against my chest.
“I don’t understand why you two were there,” Emma said after a few moments of silence. “I understand why Sienna was there. I expected to see Rolf and Samuel, maybe even Nathan, but not you two.”
I looked at Andrew and gulped.
“The book I read described darkness as something that hurt us in the past,” Emma continued. “Sienna hurt me more than you two ever did. I mean, Rolf and Samuel tortured me. They hurt me more. Why weren’t they there?”
Emma looked at us and I saw confusion on her face. I had to try to explain. I had to make it easier on her.
“I hurt you a lot when I rejected you,” I said, trying to hide the pain in my voice. “Andrew hurt you a lot when he supported me. Andrew and Logan you faced while you were asleep were the versions of us that hurt you the most.”
Emma furrowed her eyebrows a little.
“The darkness was always the pain I was carrying in my heart,” she said after a few moments of silence. “It was feeding on it. The curse latched onto it and it kept growing.”
Andrew and I looked at each other. I saw guilt on his face and I knew that he saw it on mine too.
“It was never about the people I didn’t care about,” she added quietly. “It was about people I did and do care about.”
Andrew ran his fingers through Emma’s hair. He gulped and took a deep breath.
“Those wounds hurt the most,” Andrew said quietly. “You had to face the three of us because we hurt you the most. You trusted us and loved us and we hurt you.”
Emma looked up at him and a tear fell on her cheek. I wiped it away gently.
“I looked up to Sienna when I was a little girl,” Emma said quietly. “I loved her before she changed. She wasn’t always mean to me. At least she didn’t show it.”
Andrew nodded. “I know.”
I kissed her temple and closed my eyes. I hated myself for hurting her.
“What happened at the end?” Andrew asked her. “How did you manage to wake up?”
Emma sighed and shook her head.
“I am not sure,” she said. “I was talking to Logan and I realized that I didn’t want to be bonded to him. He wasn’t someone I wanted.”
Emma looked at me and caressed my cheek.
“He wasn’t you,” she said quietly.
I felt the lump in my throat grow. I felt tears burning the corners of my eyes.
“So I accepted his rejection,” Emma continued, looking back at Andrew. “I don’t know how I ended up here, though. He wanted me to accept it because he was sure it would kill me.”
A quiet growl escaped me.
“I guess that he was wrong,” Emma said, shrugging. “Rejecting him didn’t kill me. It broke the connection I had with the darkness.”
Andrew nodded and squeezed her hand tighter.
“So you can’t feel it anymore?” he asked her.
She smiled and shook her head.
“I can’t feel it anymore,” she said quietly.
I couldn’t stop the tears that fell down my cheeks. It was over.
She won.
