Page 74 of Viking

Eventually, his grip loosens, and he pulls back, his arm resting on the small of my back. His gaze locks on to mine, and I see the weight he’s carrying, the pain, the guilt, the anger.

“I can’t believe I let this happen again.” His voice hitches on the last word. “I don’t know how to move past it,” he admits, trembling in my arms. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to go a little at a time. First get through today. Then tomorrow.”

Logan freezes and he pulls away from me. He digs his hands into his tousled dark hair like he’s trying to rip out the memories. Realization shifts in his gray-blue eyes and he begins pacing. “Lila. Shit. I’m so sorry. This is probably bringing it all back. When Reaper...”

Reaper?

“How do you know his—”

I can’t believe I let this happen again.

He stops moving, eyes trained on the floor.

“Logan. I don’t understand. Did you know Lincoln?” I blink a few times trying to steady myself, I feel like the room is spinning. I try to reach for him but he doesn’t let me. “What do you mean? What happened again?”

He finally turns to me, his eyes blazing with something dark. There was pain there before, but this is something else, something more. “I’ve lived this before—my wingman sacrificing his life to save mine.”

“What are you talking about?” I whisper, dread pooling in my stomach.

Logan has alluded to something in his past, something he isn’t proud of, something that causes his nightmares, especially on deployment. But he’s never shared more. And I’ve never asked. I don’t know if it’s because I’m trying not to pry or because I’m afraid of what he might tell me.

He laughs bitterly, a sound that sends chills through me. “You think I’m some hero, don’t you? Logan James, the invincible pilot. A guy who always does the right thing.” His voice drips with self-loathing. “But you don’t know. You don’t know what I did. I’m a lot more like a Viking than anyone could have guessed.”

I take a step closer, desperate to understand, but he holds up a hand, stopping me.

“It was my first deployment,” he begins, his voice trembling. “I was flying F-16s then. We were sent in to take out a high-value target.” Logan's eyes are distant, fixed on something I can’t see, something buried deep in the wreckage of his memory. His posture is slumped, shoulders weighed down by a burden he’s carried alone for too long. The raw edge in his voice makes my chest tighten, but I don’t interrupt.

“Lincoln…Reaper…he was my wingman. We trusted each other with our lives because that’s what it meant to fly together.” He swallows hard, his jaw clenched so tightly I think it might shatter. “The mission went sideways fast. Enemy fighters were on us before we could blink. I was locked in a dogfight, outmaneuvered and vulnerable. I should’ve had it under control, but I didn’t.”

His hands tremble slightly as he runs them through his hair, his breath ragged like the words are physically cutting him on the way out.

“Reaper saw it. He broke formation, came back for me. He saved my ass.” Logan’s voice drops to a whisper, filled with self-loathing. “But it cost him everything. He took a missile meant for me. His plan was to eject, but nothing went right. Systems failed. Murphy’s fucking Law at its finest.”

I feel like the ground shifts beneath me, the weight of his words crashing over me. My brother didn’t die in some random twist of fate. He died saving the man in front of me.

“It should’ve been me,” Logan chokes out, his face contorted with guilt and grief. “I should’ve died that day. He was the better pilot. The better man. But I lived, and he didn’t.”

I’m frozen, my knees locked, my hands in tight fists at my sides. Shock, grief, and betrayal ripping through me. Through any feeble attempt at scabbing over the wound caused by my brother’s death.

He’s shaking now, his hands trembling at his sides. He retreats until his back is pressed against the wall of my entryway, putting more distance between us. “And you want to know the worst part?” he says, his voice dropping to a whisper. “This happens all the time. Collateral damage, they call it. A sanitized fucking term when someone like me is responsible for the death of someone who didn’t deserve it.” He slides down the wall, crumbling onto the floor.

Someone like me.

A Viking.

My heart is shattering in real time. I can’t process it all, can’t reconcile the man I’ve come to know with the man Lincoln died for. I want to scream, to cry, but nothing comes out. Just silence.

And then he makes it worse.

“I remember you at his memorial,” he says softly, as if the words are a confession. “I saw you standing there, broken. I…I wanted to say something, but what could I say? That I was the reason your brother was gone?”

My breath stutters, tears blurring my vision. I remember that day vividly and he was there. He saw it all.

Logan drops his head into his hands, his body shaking with silent anguish. I stand there, paralyzed, trapped between heartbreak and fury, drowning in emotions I can’t name.

After a long stretch of silence, he lifts his head slightly, his storm-colored eyes full of tears. "I didn’t recognize you in Vegas. That night…it was just you and me, no past, no ghosts. I didn’t know you were Lincoln's sister. When you walked in on your first day with the demo team, all I saw was the girl I’d been trying to find since that night. I thought you were brought into my life for a reason, like God was giving me something good." He stares at me for a long moment, his chest heaving, his expression unreadable.