Chapter 132

Ella

The room was bathed in the soft glow of my bedside lamp, casting gentle shadows on the walls. My eyes flickered from the ceiling to my digital clock. 2:37 AM.

Sleep was elusive tonight. No matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn’t catch it. I had been laying here for what felt like an eternity, hoping that exhaustion would finally take over me, but it didn’t. The comforter felt too heavy, almost suffocating, and I tossed it aside with a frustrated sigh.

It had been two weeks since I last saw Logan. The time was going by surprisingly slower than I had imagined, as though his absence was somehow slowing time down. I kept wondering to myself how I had let things get to this point, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

I only knew one thing: that this was my fault. All of it.

My mind wandered, once again, to that night in the hotel with Logan. The night where boundaries became blurred and lines were crossed—lines I had painstakingly drawn myself.

We had laughed, we had talked, we had touched, and for a few blissful hours, the world felt right.

And then the morning light streamed through the window, illuminating the reality of our situation, and I snapped. Like a whip cracking, I lashed out with words meant to create distance, meant to protect myself, but instead, they severed something delicate.

“I understand the nature of our relationship now,” he had said that last day in my office, his voice tinged with a coldness I hadn’t heart since the first night we met.

The words echoed in my head, constantly tormenting me, constantly reminding me of my mistakes.

I turned on my side, trying to get comfortable, but the words continued to circle in my mind. Was it too late to change the nature of our relationship? Had my defensiveness, my walls, and my sharp tongue cost me something I didn’t even know I wanted until now?

Unable to contain the turmoil inside me, I spoke softly into the darkness. “Ema, are you there? Can you hear me?”

Silence.

I closed my eyes, focusing inward, reaching for that part of me that was wild and untamed. My wolf that had been my companion, my confidante, for as long as I could remember. But she remained dormant, as she had been for weeks now.

“Ema, please. I need your guidance. I need to understand what I’m feeling. Why did I react the way I did? Why do I feel this... emptiness?”

Still, nothing. Not a growl, not a whisper, not a flicker of consciousness.

She was there, but not there at the same time. Asleep, perhaps, or just unwilling to engage with me. Either way, the silence felt like another betrayal, another loss. First Logan, and now Ema?

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling a lump form in my throat. This wasn’t just about Logan or Ema; this was about me, my choices, my inability to navigate the complicated web of my own emotions.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand, pulling me out of my spiraling thoughts. It was a message from Sarah, asking if I was okay.

She had noticed something was off earlier at work. Something had been off for weeks, but today in particular, I had been out of it. It was almost as if sleeping with Logan sealed our relationship in some way, and now that I was apart from him, it was like a piece of my soul was missing.

I started typing a response, saying that I was fine, just a little tired. But my fingers hovered over the ‘send’ button, hesitant. Was I really fine, or was I just lying to everyone—myself included?

I deleted the text and turned the phone off, setting it back on the nightstand. The weight of loneliness settled in, filling the room with its heavy presence.

I grabbed a pillow and hugged it tightly, imagining for a moment that it was Logan. That night that we had slept together, feeling his warm body against mine felt so right. What would he say or do if he were here now? Would he pull me into his arms, erasing the distance I had created?

And what about Ema? Would she reappear, lending me her strength, helping me untangle the mess of feelings that had worked its way into my chest?

The questions floated in the air, filling the room, crowding my thoughts until there was no more room for anything else. I lay there in the dark, my heart heavy with the realization that I had alienated not just Logan, but also my wolf, my one true companion in life.

All because I had been too afraid, too guarded to let anyone in.

The clock ticked on. 3:03 AM. I pulled the comforter back over me, but sleep remained elusive, a distant point that I couldn’t seem to reach. I decided to close my eyes and pretend that everything was fine, even as the aching loneliness enveloped me.

I wasn’t sure how long it had been. Maybe I dozed off every so often, but never for long.

Tossing and turning, I flipped my pillow to the cooler side for what felt like the millionth time. The red numbers on my digital clock seared through the darkness, taunting me.

5:02 AM.

A gnawing restlessness consumed me; I felt like a caged animal pacing back and forth, yearning for some sort of release. Thoughts of Logan kept swirling around in my mind; the taste of his lips, the feeling of his tongue, the way his scent enveloped me as he tangled himself with my body.

“Ugh, why can’t I get him out of my head?” I muttered to myself, pulling my tangled hair back from my face. “It was just one night.”

One night.

One night that had opened a Pandora’s box of emotions I wasn’t ready to deal with. The memories played back in my mind like a movie reel: his touch, the warmth of his eyes, the sound of his laughter.

For a brief moment, it felt like a dream I never wanted to wake up from. But morning came, and with it came a torrent of guilt and defensiveness that I couldn’t control.

“Dammit,” I sighed, throwing the comforter off. I got up, made myself a cup of chamomile tea, and sat at the kitchen table. “I really screwed things up this time, didn’t I, Ema?”

No response, as usual. I sighed.

Maybe I was too harsh with Logan. Maybe I was projecting my guilt over... other complicated aspects of my life. I mean, come on, I had slept with a mobster. A mobster! It was my decision to do it, and it was a decision that I had made willingly that night. It wasn’t Logan’s fault, not really.

But there I was, taking it all out on him.

“It’s not fair to him,” I muttered to the empty room. I looked around for a few moments at the brick walls, the open window, the mismatched cushions on the couch. My gaze then fell upon my phone, which was now sitting on my coffee table.

And then, a crazy thought entered my mind.

My hands shook as they reached for the phone. With a whirlwind of emotions clouding my judgment, I hastily dialed Logan’s number without even thinking about it, like it was second nature.

I hit ‘call’ before I could convince myself otherwise. What was I even going to say? “Hey, sorry for being a complete jerk. I actually had a great time with you and now I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking about you. You up for round two?”

I almost chuckled at my own absurdity, and went to hang up, realizing that this was stupid.

But then the phone clicked. He picked up, and his gravelly voice, thick with sleep, came through the phone.

“Ella? Why are you calling me?”