Chapter 7
Did I really hit my head that hard? Or maybe I'm still unconscious, because I swear Logan just implied that we are getting married. I shake my head and, quickly realizing that was a mistake, close my eyes to stop the room from spinning.
When I open them again, Logan's still intently watching me.
I swallow and try to keep my voice steady. "I'm not sure I heard you right."
He uncrosses his arms and jams his hands into faded jean pockets, his lips twist into a rather smug grin. "Oh, no, you heard me, sweetheart."
My eyes lock with his, and I feel the fury start to build inside. Who the hell does he think he is? There is no way I'm marrying him. It would be emotional suicide.
"You're crazy. I am not marrying you." My pulse is racing as he walks towards me, but I continue anyway; his bravado doesn't intimidate me. "Just because we slept together one night doesn't give you any right to make decisions for me."
Placing one hand on the bedrail and the other above my shoulder, he leans in, whispering, "Well, unless you want me to go to prison, I don't think you have much of a choice."
He presses his lips to mine silencing me before I can argue back. Does he think I will just acquiesce to his demands? I shove him back, gasping at the pain that shoots through my ribcage and interrupts my thoughts.
His eyes go wide at my cry as he tries to coach me to breathe. A tear rolls down my cheeks as he hushes me and smoothes my hair, too afraid to touch me anywhere else.
"Shhh," He looks worriedly at me as he fumbles for the nurse's call button. "We can fight about this later."
I'd argue with him if I could, but right now I can't even catch my breath. When the nurse comes in, he steps away from the bed, pushing his hand through his hair. He paces the small room while she attends to me, and when she leaves, she promises to come back with something for my headache.
All I want is to be alone with my pain and my thoughts. "Just go home Logan. I need to think."
"I'm not leaving. Did you forget about that other gunman out there?"
"He wasn't after me, he was after you." I look away from him only to turn back when I hear the sound of Carly's voice.
It never fails to amaze me how her presence can fill an entire room. "I told you he was trouble." She says in her best I-told-you-so voice.
Glancing between us she shakes her head and I can tell that she is annoyed. Holding the door open she motions towards the hallway with her handbag. "I need to talk to Lulu, alone. Get out."
Anger flashes across Logan's face at her easy dismissal of him, his jaw tenses and he looks back at me. "We'll finish this conversation later."
"There is nothing to finish. I already gave you my answer." I cross my arms in front of me and dare him to argue with Carly standing right there.
He catches my challenge and just smirks back at me. "We'll see Lulu, we'll see," he says, and walks towards the door. As he gets closer to Carly, she dangles a set of keys on a silver chain in front of him. He takes them, and the exchange raises warning flags in my head. She speaks in a voice barely audible but I can still make it out. "I think you're going to need these; Sonny is waiting for you in his office. I wouldn't keep him waiting if I were you."
"Thanks," he mutters and leaves, letting the door click shut behind him.
Carly strides across the room, pretending like nothing just transpired between them. She places her handbag on my tray table, and settles into the chair Logan has spent the past few nights sleeping in. "You know I warned you stay away from him."
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, "Carly, I appreciate your concern, but my head really hurts, and I'm too tired to do this right now."
"Well, did you at least knock some sense into yourself? God, Lulu, why did you involved with Logan Hayes? Better yet, what are you going to do now?" she asks.
"What do you mean?" I question, opening one eye and wondering how much she already knows.
Her bottom jaw shifts to the right and a scowl crosses her face. She takes a deep breath before she continues. "You know what I'm talking about. Are you going to agree to marry his sorry ass, or are you going to let Scott send him to Pentonville?"
I look away and chuckle in disbelief, "Did Sonny call you?"
"Yes. He thought that maybe you might need someone to talk to since your father, as usual, is nowhere to be found."
I slap my hands down to my blanket covered lap and stare at her in disbelief, "I can't believe this."
She seems to be a little flustered but continues anyway. "Don't get all pissed off at me Lulu, I'm just here to help."
I look away from her wishing that I didn't have to be having this conversation right now especially since I haven't even had time to process the situation myself. "Are you here to talk me in or out of this?"
"I'm just here to be the voice of experience. This is a big decision to make, life altering."
"Yeah I know. And I haven't even had time to figure it out yet." I mutter as flop my head back on the pillow.
She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "Well, I'm going to ask you one very important question, and you need to answer it honestly. Do you care about him enough to go through with this? Because if you can't say yes right now then you need to walk away." The intensity of her gaze is unnerving, and I have to look away, wishing that I could just get up and run away from this conversation.
I artfully attempt to dodge the question, hoping that she won't notice. "Carly, there has to be another way around this. I just haven't figured it out yet. But hypothetically speaking, if I did marry Logan, it's not like it would be forever. Just until this whole mess is straightened out."
She laughs, and it irks me. "You think that you can just go on with your happy life like it never happened afterwards? Lulu, open your eyes. Logan has been working for Sonny for over a year, and Sonny trusts him. He's not just an errand boy anymore, and that makes him and anyone affiliated with him a target." She pauses, "Oh, and don't think I don't realize that you are avoiding answering my question."
I bury my face in my hands, pressing my fingers into my temples. "I don't know how I feel. We've gotten really close over the past few months, and I trust him. But it's not like I'm ready to honestly get married. This would just be to keep him out of jail."
"Like the last time I married Sonny? Do you remember how that ended up? I almost lost Jax in the process. God, I can see so much of myself in you that it's scary." Carly shakes her head and stares at me. Her grey eyes search mine. "I've been where you are, and I want you to understand what you will be getting into. Once you make this decision, there is no going back. Married or divorced, you will always be tied to this business. Can you handle that? Can you handle that you and the people you love will always be in danger? They will always think that they can get to Logan through you."
"I think you are making this into a bigger deal than it is," I insist, wishing she would just drop this.
"You've already been caught in the crossfire once, and this won't be the last time. You can guarantee that he will be hurt, it's inevitable. He will lie and keep things from you, and you will just have to accept that there is a part of him that you will know nothing about."
"Carly you sound like I have already made up my mind. That this is a done deal, but I don't know what I am going to do."
She huffs and continues in an all-knowing voice that grates on my nerves, "Oh, my dear Lulu who do you think you're kidding? We both know you'll end up marrying Logan; it's what a woman does for the man she loves."
I gawk and laugh at her in disbelief. "Love? Who said anything about love?"
She smiles as she continues. "You keep telling yourself that, Lulu, and maybe someday you might actually believe it." She slips her handbag off the table and tucks it under her arm. "I have to go. They need me at the hotel, but I wanted to check on you and make sure you were okay first. Just promise me you'll think about what we talked about." And with those parting words she sweeps out of the room, letting the voices in my head scream the warnings that I know I won't heed.
My room is finally quiet except for the soft comforting hum of the lighting, maybe now I can figure out what to do. My gaze drops to my lap and I finger the hospital ID bracelet that loosely hangs from my right wrist. It reads: Spencer, Lesley Lu and before I can even stop it my imagination morphs the last name to Hayes. I chew the inside of my cheek and roll the sound of it around in my head until a small smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
What am I supposed to now? I don't want to marry Logan, at least not right now and definitely not under these circumstances. I am being torn apart inside by my heart and my head. Rationally I know it makes sense but deep down I know that Carly is right; I am falling in love with him and it scares the shit out of me. Especially since I don't even know how he feels about me. God, it was less then 72 hours ago when I was finally able to forgive myself enough to sleep with him and now I'm supposed to just marry him?
I know that Logan probably sees this as a way to fix a lot of problems, that us getting married is the logical step to legally keep him out of jail. It's times like these that I see shades of my father in him.
Parts of my conversation with Carly replay in my head. 'Hypothetically speaking, if I did marry Logan, it's not like it would be forever. Just until this whole mess is straightened out.'
I shake my head not even believing the words that came out of my own mouth. Even in my jaded little world I believe that a marriage is supposed to be forever. It is supposed to be a big deal, where two people that are in love are bound forever by God.
Could I walk away once the charges against Logan are dropped, would I want to?
Logan was raised in a broken home, by a mother that didn't want him and a father that wasn't there. He wasn't exposed to the epic kind of love that my parents had. I don't know if I can separate the emotional side of it from the legal end. I never thought it would be something that I would ever have to consider.
However the problem remains that if I say no, the alternative is going to suck even more. I can't let the man that I'm falling in love with go to prison. It would be selfish of me to not help him just to keep this fairy tale idea of what a marriage should be alive. Not everything can go according to plan.
Taking a deep breath I fight the butterflies that's swarm my stomach as I make a decision and accept the fact that someday soon, for better or for worse, I am going to become Mrs. Lesley Lu Hayes.
