Because he still couldn’t walk in that building without feeling the pain. He still couldn’t hold a gun in his hand without visions of blowing Alexei Markov’s head away.
“Good. I’m glad to hear Ben and Chase will take care of her.” Then he could try to steer Leo away from the subject.
“Do you want to tell me why you shoved Georgia away when it’s so obvious to everyone that you’re in love with her?”
Or Leo could just push through. Logan snorted. “I’m not in love with her.”
He wasn’t actually capable of that now. He sure as fuck wasn’t deserving. Something had gone wrong with him. Maybe it was his father’s DNA. His dad had been a piece of shit coward who beat his mom and sent her on the run. Only Marie Warner had been able to save them. Marie. His other mom.
How ashamed would she be if she really knew what had happened in that room?
“So Georgia doesn’t have anything to do with why you haven’t had sex in six months?”
Leo’s words forced him back to the shitastic here and now. “I don’t know that my sex life is any of your business.”
“It is. Everything is my business, Logan. I’m your therapist, but more than that, I’m your boss. You’re in a position of power as a Master in The Club, and I have to understand the rationale behind any major changes in your behavior. Before you met Georgia Dawson, you enthusiastically fucked just about any woman who would let you have her.”
It hadn’t been that bad. He’d enjoyed himself. “You make me sound like a manwhore.”
“If it fucks like a duck,” Leo snarked, “it’s usually a manwhore. Look, man, I told you I’ve talked to Wolf. I would have thought that maybe you preferred a ménage, but you had sex with plenty of women on your own here. So I have to wonder if you’re in love with Georgia Dawson, and then I wonder why you pushed her away.”
Because he’d never really walked out of Nate’s office. He was still tied down and dying, and he didn’t know how to get off that fucking desk.
Leo leaned forward. “Logan, talk to me. We’ve been doing this for almost a damn year, and we’ve never gotten to the heart of the problem.”
“The heart of the problem is that some asshole beat the shit out of me, and I won’t let it happen again.” He still couldn’t talk about it.
Leo shook his head slowly, leaning back. There was a calm about Leo that set Logan on edge. “No. That was the start. You’ve talked about everything that happened in clinical details, but you’ve never gotten down to the feelings behind it. And I’m pretty certain you’ve never once told me the whole story.”
Feelings? Loneliness. Despair. Helplessness. Weakness. “I felt pissed that I was getting my ass kicked.”
And no one needed to know the whole story. No one except Caleb. He hadn’t been able to hide anything from the doctor who had put him back together, but Caleb had kept his mouth shut.
“See, your words betray you, Logan. What happened to you went beyond a Saturday night fight. You’re still making light of it. Tell me why you don’t read comic books anymore.”
He rolled his eyes. “Because I’m not fucking twelve.”
“Logan, you weren’t twelve when you were reading comics. You read them up until that day and then you burned your whole collection. You can’t tell me that wasn’t a defining act.”
“How the fuck did you know that?” He’d done it in his backyard a few weeks after he’d gotten out of the hospital. He’d doused three long boxes with lighter fluid and set his whole collection on fire. Twenty years of collecting up in smoke because every single one of those books had lied. There were no heroes. Or at least he’d figured out he wasn’t one of them.
“I’ve had long conversations with all of your relatives and friends.”
Betrayal bit into his gut. “What about that whole patient-client confidentiality you mentioned earlier?”
“That’s only in play when it comes to me discussing my findings with them. They can talk about you all they like. I simply called and put a few questions to them, and then I listened. They were very eager to talk about you because they love you. Well, most of them. That doctor just hung up on me.”
Leo listening was a powerful thing. “I want you to stay away from my friends.”
“Are they your friends?” Leo asked. “You haven’t talked to them in months. You’ve barely talked to your moms.”
He was real damn good at one-word answers. Yes. No. Maybe. “They’re okay.”
“I don’t think so. When I talked to them, they seemed a bit fractured.”
His moms? No. His moms were solid. Always. There was one certainty in his life and that was that Teeny Green and Marie Warner loved each other. They might not have ever been able to get married, but it didn’t matter. They were devoted. “What’s happening?”
He hadn’t called. He’d actually dodged their calls. And Seth’s. And Nate’s and Cam’s and Callie’s. And James’s and Hope’s. It was just easier to be here where almost no one had any expectations of him. Where no one knew who he had been before he’d been shown who he really was.
“I can’t talk about it. I can just say that your mothers miss you and want you to come home. You know it’s their twenty-fifth anniversary.”
He knew. “Yeah. I’ll send them a card.”
“You’re not going to the party?”
Party? His momma hated parties. Marie thought they were a horrible waste of time. Of course, Teeny loved them and Marie loved Teeny so…maybe. “Are they having coffee at Stella’s?”
“They’re having a complete rededication ceremony. It’s being paid for by the same man who paid for your…” Leo stopped, taking a long breath. “It’s going to be a lovely ceremony, but it will likely be empty without you there.”
A nasty suspicion played through his head. “Paid for my what?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything, but you can’t believe I’m doing this for free. Logan, you have people who love you.”
That didn’t answer the question. “I thought I was working off my debt.”
It was why he worked five nights a week in the dungeon. Hell. That was kind of wrong. He loved working the dungeon. He would do it for free. Of course, now that he thought about it, the dungeon itself was membership-only. The other Doms either worked for Julian full time or they got reduced-rate memberships in exchange for their work.
And Leo’s services weren’t exactly cheap. Fuck.
“Who? Is it Stef?” The king of Bliss was a likely candidate. Stef Talbot tried to take care of everyone, but the thought of charity rankled.
“No. It’s not Stef.”
Fuck all. His gut was in a knot again. “My moms can’t afford this.”
“I would never charge your mothers. Initially I was going to do everything pro bono, but you have a friend out there who didn’t want you to be beholden. You have an actual lifetime membership to The Club in your name. And none of that matters. Logan, forget I said anything.” Leo waved him off. “We have other things to talk about.”
There was a loud knock on the door, but Logan ignored it as the truth swept over him. There was really only one person who would swoop in and drop a wad of cash and never miss it and never mention it. “Seth.”
It was Seth. Seth, who damn well knew how he felt about taking charity.
The door opened and Wolf strode in.
Leo’s eyebrow climbed right up his forehead. “Hello, brother. Since when do you interrupt a session?”
Wolf stopped, rolling his eyes. “Dude. You’re ten minutes over time. I’ve been waiting forever, and we have a lunch meeting with Shelley, if you care to remember.”
Leo went a little white. “I remember. Jeez, don’t tell her I forgot. We’re supposed to be at Samar in fifteen minutes.” He stood up. “Logan, I’ll see you on Thursday.”