Chapter Twenty-Nine
T ris was at a total loss. She’d called Logan and he hadn’t answered. Texted him and got the same, no response. She’d driven all the way out to his place to find him and his truck gone. If it hadn’t been Sunday she’d have gone to the library looking for him. In fact, she stopped by anyway, wondering if they were having some special Sunday function as they sometimes did, which allowed people to come inside on a day they were normally closed. Nothing.
She sat in the parking lot of the closed building, tapping her finger restlessly on the steering wheel. She didn’t know for how long. And she didn’t know what to do. They hadn’t made any formal plans to connect this afternoon, but she had assumed they would.
She assumed that, after last night, how could they not?
She shivered a little, remembering. She’d never experienced anything like it. She and David had had a relaxed, loving relationship.
Logan Fox set her on fire.
Was she expecting too much too soon, to know where he was every day? Maybe. But she wanted to know, and that was something she hadn’t felt about anyone except her brother and nephew in a long time.
But that didn’t mean Logan necessarily felt she had the right to know. Maybe one night together didn’t grant her that, in his mind. Even if it was the night she discovered just how alive she still was.
But what about all the rest of the time they’d spent together? The common bonds they’d found in their love and respect for history, in their preference for seclusion, their appreciation for quiet time spent together, when constant chatter was unnecessary and unwanted? Didn’t that count, too? Or had she misjudged its value, to him anyway?
A sudden memory flashed into her mind, of Logan explaining to a curious Jeremy how forging iron for horseshoes worked. He’d showed the boy how, as the iron got hotter, it first glowed red, then orange, then yellow, and finally became white-hot. The forging heat, the point at which you could actually make a shoe that would last, was a bright spot between orange and yellow.
Last night they’d gone straight through to white-hot. Maybe because they’d already been at the red stage before they’d even begun. At least, it had felt that way to her.
You can’t use white-hot iron to do anything. It won’t hold.
Logan’s words rang in her head now. Was that it? Had they been so white-hot they’d…what, burnt out? In one night?
Or maybe she was just so out of practice she’d misread him, misread everything, entirely. Maybe—
A tap on the driver’s window startled her out of the morass of thought she’d sunk into. When she saw who it was, she put the window down immediately.
“Chief Highwater,” she said, a little startled.
“Just checking to be sure you’re okay. You’ve been sitting here a while.”
She stared at the man. Realized that the library was in plain view of the police station, which was in the same central block. And how like him, when he could have easily ordered someone else to do it, to come check on her himself.
“I just wanted to be sure you were okay,” he said again when she didn’t speak. “This morning must have been a bit of a strain on you.”
“Oh.” The ceremony. Now she understood. She hadn’t seen him there, but she should have known he would be. Last Stand was his to protect, and he took the job very seriously. And she felt a sudden need to show her appreciation. “Have I ever told you how lucky I think Last Stand is to have you?”
He let out a half-chuckle that sounded embarrassed. “I could say the same to you,” he said. “So, you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. I admit, I’d be better if I could find someone who seems to have fallen off the map, but it went well this morning, and…it’s over now. Time to move on.”
The perceptive chief studied her for a moment. “I get the feeling you mean that in more ways than one.”
“I do.”
He nodded, approvingly. “Who is it you’re looking for? Anybody we might have seen around? I can ask.”
She hesitated, but then admitted it. “Logan Fox.”
Chief Highwater’s brow furrowed. “Hmm. Haven’t seen him since this morning at the ceremony.”
Her breath caught. She hadn’t told him about the ceremony, partly because she hadn’t known how to say it, and partly because it was fairly common knowledge in town. She’d always sensed him withdraw a little whenever the subject of David came up, and she hadn’t wanted that to happen, not when they’d finally—she’d thought—taken the next step.
Or maybe it had also been the last. Maybe it really hadn’t been good enough for him to stick around.
“He was…there?” she finally managed to ask.
He gave her a puzzled look. “Yes. He was at the back of the crowd, but he was. I spoke to him briefly.”
“Was he…did he seem all right?”
She could hear the tension in her own voice, so she wasn’t surprised when the chief picked up on it. “Actually, no. He seemed a little wound up. And he left in a bit of a rush.”
Her mind was racing, trying to find a way to ask without sounding…possessive. Controlling, maybe, as if she had the right to know where he was every moment. But once again, the man who was, after all, a trained observer, read her perfectly.
“I’d look south,” he said. “He mentioned heading to the Alamo.”
Her eyes widened. The Alamo? Why had he felt the need to visit that sacred ground for most Texans, the place where so many heroes had died? It was always on her list, and she always stopped if she was in San Antonio, but she hadn’t made a special pilgrimage in a while.
After the chief had headed back to the station, she sat pondering this bit of news. Why would he feel that particular need on this particular day? Why would he make a visit to the place that had seemed like it would end the fight for independence, yet had become the rallying cry that spirited all the remaining Texians on to a victory that would forever be in the record books, those eighteen minutes at San Jacinto?
What had driven him to seek out that truly hallowed ground?
She needed to know. She had to know. Somehow she sensed this would be the key to at last figuring out the puzzle that was Logan Fox. She started the engine. And at the same time set her mind to working out what she would do when she found him. Because this was new territory for her.
And she didn’t like it much.
She finally broke free of the grief, and the man who had made her do it just walks away? Leaves her like last night was just…one of those one-time things? When for her it had been nothing short of a revelation?
No way, Fox.
By the time she was headed due south, she’d worked herself up into what David had called fighting mode. Not to fight with Logan, but with whatever had made him run.
*
There weren’t many places where he felt as if he could sense the spirit of the past lingering, as if those who had died here lingered. Yet here, looking at the old mission, staring at the rough, battle-scarred walls, pitted and jagged in spots, it seemed…different. As if they really were still here.
It was a fanciful thought for him, but here, it didn’t seem so far-fetched. Why they would stay, he had no idea. Not after the heartbreaking outcome. Or maybe that was why. Maybe it had been so awful they couldn’t process it, and couldn’t really leave until they did.
Nearly two centuries later?
He almost laughed at himself. If nothing else could, thinking the spirits of the people who had died here lingered still should be enough to make him realize how far out of whack his mind was at the moment.
So far out that he’d done something he hadn’t done since he was a scared kid avoiding a foster parent a little too handy with a belt. He’d run. Unlike the heroes of this sacred ground, he’d run. Maybe that really was why he’d come here. Maybe he figured he might pick up some of that courage, like the song said.
By what, osmosis?
Disgusted with himself, he turned on his heel and strode away from the famous building, foregoing even his usual trip to the museum. He didn’t deserve to even be here, in the company of those spirits.
Even if they were imagined.
In the morass his inward-digging mind had become he was apparently not paying any attention to anything around him, because he nearly collided with someone walking the other way.
It was the impossibility of it that made it take a moment for him to realize.
Tris. Here. Right in front of him.
He was probably gaping at her, but he couldn’t help it.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
“Hello to you, too,” she said, sounding stung.
“What are you doing here?”
The edge was still in his voice, and something sparked in those deep blue eyes. As if a fire had been struck. It reminded him of the way she’d looked at him last night. Which reminded him of what that look had begun.
Which hadn’t at all meant what you thought—hoped—it did.
“What more appropriate place, since it seems you want to fight?”
“I don’t want to—”
He cut himself off, shaking his head. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling he had to, because he was having trouble thinking with her standing right there. Which was crazy, because she was all he’d been thinking about.
He tried for something else. “How did you know I was here?”
“Chief Highwater.”
He blinked. “He told you I was here?”
“He said you had it in mind.”
“And you just hopped in your car and drove all this way?”
“Too far to walk,” she said, still with that gleam in her eyes. And as if it were a given that of course she’d follow him.
Or as if she were spoiling for a fight.
“Tris,” he began, then stopped, not knowing what to say.
“So you do remember my name, at least? I’ve never been a one-night stand before, so I don’t know how it works.”
He winced and looked away. He’d never seen her like this, this angry, and it rattled him. “You’re not…you could never be just…that,” he ground out.
“Then why treat me as if I was?”
He looked back at her then. Gradually became aware of the people around them, lots of tourists on this June Sunday, and probably some locals out for a stroll as well.
“You really want to do this here?”
Her chin came up. “What better place to have a fight than at the Alamo?”
He stared at her for a long silent moment. And in that moment he realized a simple, obvious fact. The word for what this had to be. A word he’d never experienced in reality before.
He loved her. It didn’t matter that she didn’t, couldn’t love him, or that sometimes he thought he barely knew what the word meant, he loved her. Nor did it matter that she was obviously steamed at him. He’d grown up with people who seemed perpetually irritated with him. It hadn’t mattered to him, with them.
It mattered more than anything with Tris.
He met her gaze, looked into those eyes. She was indeed ready for a fight.
So he said the only thing he could think of. “Then fire away.”