Logan (Federal Protection Agency #9)

Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23

Clay

My stomach swooped with a feeling of weightlessness before we even stepped foot in the plane. It was a small thing with only a few seats. The only planes I’d ever seen were commercial sized ones that carried hundreds of people, so this small contraption didn’t seem at all sturdy enough to get us airborne.

Under any other circumstances, I would have been terrified as I sat down in the cockpit seat within arm’s reach of the dizzying number of controls. Yet, as Logan sat in the seat next to me and his arm brushed mine, all I could focus on was his scent.

He was clean like soap and fresh air, with a bright note to his scent that made me think of sunlight filtering through green leaves. I’d forgotten what he smelled like. It was such a silly thing to worry about, but the fact that I could forget any part of him left me terrified.

If I could forget this, what else could I forget about him?

His voice.

His smile.

The color of his eyes.

If enough time passed, could I forget him completely?

With an impressive amount of confidence, Logan went through the sequence of starting up the plane and getting ready for takeoff. I never realized how much communication it required from other people, but he had to get confirmation from at least three different voices through the plane’s radio before we could even leave the hangar where the small plane was parked.

I clung to the arms of the chair with a death grip as we started moving. The runway area was completely flat, which created an optical illusion as if we were barely going anywhere, but I could feel the momentum of the plane around us and knew the tarmac was passing by just feet below us.

Beside me, Logan laughed and placed a comforting hand over mine on the arm of my chair.

“It’s okay. Take a deep breath. I’ve done this a million times. We’ll be fine.”

“Tell me that when we’re in the air,” I snapped at him though gritted teeth. “And keep your eyes on the road. Or the air. Or whatever you need to watch.”

Logan laughed again but didn’t say anything as he obeyed my order and focused on what he was doing. The plane crept across the tarmac, passing several other much larger aircraft that looked like they could run us over without even noticing. Apparently, even airplanes had to obey the laws of the queue and we waited for our turn at the start of the runway.

I got to watch several planes take off from an up-close view, and each time I still marveled at the fact that they were able to fly. It didn’t seem like it should work. These clunky metal beasts had neither the agility of birds, nor the delicacy of bugs, yet as soon as they got going fast enough their noses turned toward the sky and they left the ground behind.

Eventually, it was our turn and I clung to my chair so hard my fingertips turned white.

“Tell me when it’s over,” I said, though I never closed my eyes.

“We don’t have to do this,” Logan assured me, even as he was given final clearance for takeoff. “We can turn around right now and go back to the hangar.”

“No. I want to. I’m just… nervous.”

I was completely terrified, but it a good way, like the anticipation right before getting on a rollercoaster. I’d only been to a theme park once in my life, but I still remembered the addicting rush of adrenaline.

I could easily imagine going to a theme park with Logan.

Or a haunted house.

Or bungee jumping.

Even the movies would probably be more fun with him. It would certainly go a lot better than my last date.

No. I needed to stop thinking like that. Logan and I weren’t dating, and I shouldn’t put him in that position even in my imagination. It would be too easy to start to expect things from him.

Things I’d never get.

I didn’t even know for certain if he was gay, though I had my suspicions based on the way he looked at me when I first showed up to his hotel room.

Gay or not, it didn’t matter. We were on completely different levels. Friendship was already more than I could hope for, but he would never see me as anything else.

The seats inside the plane were upholstered with white leather, and the entire cockpit was spotless. It was such a pristine environment, and fit Logan perfectly.

I moved my hands from the arms of the chair to my lap and pinched them between my knees. Every place I touched inside the plane felt sullied. As if everything rotten inside me had leaked out and left a black stain behind.

I didn’t belong here in this spotless environment, but Logan did. He deserved someone unsullied, and that could never be me.

We started rolling down the runway, quickly gaining speed until something seemed to tug just behind my solar plexus and the whole plane tipped upward. The ground disappeared from sight, and all I could see was an endless expanse of blue sky and white clouds stretching out in front of me.

There were so many different things in the plane Logan had to keep track of as we ascended, but he handled them with ease. It reminded me of an expert pianist who always knew exactly which key to hit to create grand music.

Only when the pressure behind my solar plexus disappeared and I didn’t feel like I was being pressed back into my seat, did I dare to lean closer to the window and look down. The ground was so far away it looked like a patchwork quilt. I couldn’t even comprehend what I was looking at for a moment, but soon I realized that the lines dissecting the patchwork landscape were roads, and the little dots moving along the line were cars.

Even the buildings, which from the ground created an entire city, merely looked like a collection of scattered Lego bricks.

“It’s all so small,” I marveled as I pressed my face against the glass. “I can’t even see the people.”

This high above the ground, it was like all of humanity ceased to exist except for the two of us. Everyone else was gone.

Something inside me snapped, like a tether that had been holding me to the ground had suddenly released and left me free-floating. I was completely untouchable up here. Everyone who’d ever hurt me, or failed me, or used me, was so far beneath me that they were invisible.

Flying above the world, I was untouchable. Even if one of the monsters from my past decided to show up again, they couldn’t touch me if they tried.

“Clay?” Logan’s hand on my shoulder turned me away from the window. “Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah, I’m fine.”

With the back of one finger, he stroked my cheek, and when he pulled his hand away, a few drops of water clung to his skin.

At some point, while I’d been gazing at the world below, I’d started to cry without realizing. I wiped at my own cheeks, astonished at the tears I found there.

I’d cried plenty of times in my life. During my worst times it had been a daily occurrence, but I’d never cried like this before. Not only were the tears silent, but they didn’t hurt. There was no rush of ugly emotion or flush of heat or pounding heart. I barely felt anything as a few more tears dripped from the corners of my eyes, except for a gentle sense of relief.

“Sorry,” I said quickly as I wiped the new tears away. “I didn’t realize. I’m not upset. I promise.”

Luckily, he seemed to believe me, so I didn’t have to explain the strange emotions I was feeling. I had no idea what to even call these emotions, let alone how to describe them, and I probably would have sounded like a lunatic if I tried.

The plane kept climbing, though the assent was much shallower than our initial takeoff, so I didn’t feel the change as drastically. I didn’t even realize we were still rising until we were engulfed within the clouds and came out on the other side above them. Now the world below us was completely gone, and only a landscape of clouds and sunlight remained.

“It looks like heaven.”

Logan stared at me in shock. He tried to hide it, but I could tell I’d startled him.

I gave him a wide smile, instinctively tilting my head in a way that I knew showed off the angle of my jaw and the length of my neck in the best way.

“My therapist and I have been working on it. I still can’t say…” The word a ngel tangled on my tongue, and I shook my head. “That word, but I’ve managed to conquer related terms. Pretty soon, it won’t bother me at all.”

“Good.” Logan nodded. Something on the plane’s controls changed, and he flipped a few switches before adjusting the position of the steering wheel—a U shaped thing that was apparently called the Yoke—so we were flying at a subtly different angle. “Although, it wouldn’t matter even if you’re never able to say that word again. The term doesn’t really fit you anyway.”

I watched him on the controls but couldn’t understand what he was doing any more than I could understand what he was saying.

I wasn’t an angel?

What did that mean?

I knew what I looked like. I was the stereotypical angel that appeared at the top of every Christmas tree and on every Hallmark greeting card. Even once I’d exchanged the round, cherubic cheeks of my youth for the sharper angles of adulthood, I could still have easily stared in a nativity play just by putting on a white robe.

Or did Logan mean it in a figurative sense?

Angels were considered to be pure beings, and I didn’t fit that description anymore.

As if sensing the direction my thoughts had taken, Logan was quick to explain himself.

“I don’t mean it in a bad way. I mean… here. Look.”

He let go of the plane’s yoke to fish his phone out of his pocket. I panicked at first, thinking we were about to crash, but Logan assured me that planes weren’t the same as cars that needed constant steering. So long as we weren’t altering our course, the autopilot could do most of the work.

He searched for something on his phone for a moment before handing it to me.

“This is what you reminded me of the first time we met.”

It was a statue of an angel sitting in a particularly provocative pose, one hand on top of his head like he’d just pushed his shoulder length hair out of his face, and the cloth draped over his lap barely covering his otherwise naked form.

I glared at Logan. “Is this supposed to be some sort of joke?”

His cheeks flushed and he hurriedly scrolled down the page on his phone, nearly knocking it out of my hand in the process.

“No, I don’t mean it like that. Ugh, I’m not explaining this well. Here. Read what it is.”

Still trying to decide if I should be angry with him or not, I returned my gaze to the screen to read the description that the museum website had written below the picture.

It was called the Genie du Maal , and apparently it was a statue of Lucifer.

I scrolled back up to the image. What I had initially assumed to be typical angel wings were bare of all feathers. Instead, they had a membrane of skin and claws like a bat.

This was no angel. It was a demon.

Scrolling back down, I read the rest of the statue’s description, and laughed out loud over the scandalous story of how it had come to be.

Handing him back his phone, I smirked at him. “So, when I showed up at your door, you thought I was the devil?”

Instead of putting his phone away, Logan tossed it into a cup holder near the yoke.

“You’re certainly as tempting as the devil.” He must not have meant to say that out loud, because he looked startled by the sound of his own words. He dropped his face into his hands, and groaned. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate. I didn’t mean?—”

“Please don’t,” I interrupted him. One curious eye peeked at me from behind his hands, but Logan didn’t raise his head. I couldn’t look directly at him either. “Please don’t say you didn’t mean it. I…”

Should I say it?

Barely an hour ago I’d been scolding myself for daring to think of Logan in a romantic way, but that had been when we were on the ground. So far away from the rest of the world, all the things I’d been worried about seemed like they no longer mattered.

Gathering up my courage, I reached out and pulled his hands away from his face.

“I’d like it if you meant it.” My cheeks were so flushed with embarrassment, I could feel heat radiating from them, but I pressed on. “I’d like it a lot.”

His fingers slid between my own, one at a time like he was slowly weaving us together.

“Don’t tell me that. You have no idea how hard it is being this close to you without kissing you. Fuck. I wanted to kiss you the first night we met, but I knew that wouldn’t be appropriate.”

I leaned forward until our foreheads touched. It was closer than we’d ever been before, but we still didn’t cross that final line.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have responded well to that when we first met. Or, I’d have just assumed you were the same as everyone else and demanded that you pay for it.”

I’d meant it as a joke, but the harsh reminder I’d just given myself made me jerk away from him.

For one precious moment, I’d forgotten my own past, but reality slammed back into me with the force of a sledgehammer against my brain.

“No. You can’t mean this.”

Logan let me pull back, but also refused to let go. He ended up leaning into my side of the cockpit, so he was awkwardly bent over the center armrest.

“Yes, I do mean it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t.” I pressed against his shoulder but couldn’t bear to truly shove him away. “You shouldn’t want me. You deserve so much better. I can’t give you any of my firsts. They’ve already been taken.”

I was shouting now, but I couldn’t stop. I gripped his shirt in a tight fist, pulling him closer. The thought of him leaving terrified me, even as I argued for that very outcome.

“You wouldn’t be my first. You wouldn’t even be my hundredth. I have nothing to offer you, and you deserve someone who can give you everything.”

With every word I spoke, I pulled him closer until we were practically breathing the same air. My whole body trembled as Logan slowly raised his hands to cup either side of my face.

“I don’t need everything. I just need you, because you are everything. Forget about society’s stupid purity culture. It doesn’t mean anything. Virginity is a made-up concept, anyway. Just answer me one question. Do you want to be with me?”

I nodded.

Of course I did.

What other answer could I give?

“Do you want me to kiss you?”

I nodded again.

“Then that’s all that matters.”

I opened my mouth to argue but found myself silenced when his lips pressed against mine.

It was a soft kiss. In my experience, kissing had always been rough and unpleasant, mostly focused on taking rather than giving, and often involved the use of more teeth than I was comfortable with.

This kiss was soft, and so different than what I’d known that I couldn’t help melting against Logan with a pleased sigh.

Maybe I still had a few firsts to give him. Kissing Logan felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before, to the point that I wouldn’t even dare put it in the same category of the kisses I’d been subjected to in the past.

I needed a new word. Logan’s kiss, which filled me with such a sense of elation and seemed to tickle my very soul, deserved a name all its own.

We kissed until we ran out of air, then pulled back just enough to take a breath before kissing again. It would have gone on indefinitely if a beeping from the plane’s controls hadn’t caught our attention.

Logan returned to his place properly in the pilot’s seat and took control of the plane again. Even just a few inches of space between us felt like too much. So, I hugged his arm against myself and curled up at his side as we continued on our flight, sneaking more, brief kisses every now and then.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was content. Eventually, we would have to come back down to earth, but I would have happily stayed up in the heavens forever.