Chapter Thirty-Two
L ogan stopped dead in his tracks when he saw that everybody who mattered in Tris’s life was there. Jackson and Nic of course, but also what looked like most of the Rafferty clan and at least half the Highwaters. Which meant almost everybody who mattered to him was there, too.
He stared at the Friday night gathering, which suddenly seemed different somehow than any other crowd who had been here in the saloon when he’d come in for one of these before. Or maybe it was that he was different. He certainly felt different. The last week spent hidden away in his home had been nothing less than life-changing, for him anyway.
He let out a long breath, tried to suck one in to replace it. And then he felt Tris’s hand wrapping around his, her fingers strong as she gave his a squeeze.
No one should have noticed that small movement, yet it seemed like everyone in the saloon did. And every last one of them seemed to be looking at him.
And smiling. Some downright grinning.
Including Jackson. “About time,” he said as he came over and slung an arm around Logan’s shoulders. “Come on, I’m buying the first round.”
A voice came from behind the bar. “Fair warning, though, I’m a bit more generous with the good stuff than the regular bartender.”
Logan looked that way, and he was pretty sure his jaw dropped. Because there was a Highwater behind the bar as usual, but it wasn’t Slater. It was, of all people, Police Chief Shane Highwater. Who, in a way, had helped all this happen.
“Joey?” Tris asked, her voice sounding eager. And belatedly the probable reason for the staffing change hit him.
“Yep,” Shane—because it was clear that’s who he was tonight, not the chief—said, glancing at his watch. Still grinning, he went on. “About four hours ago. Mom and baby boy doing fine. New dad, not so much.”
Everybody laughed. A slim, petite woman with hair almost that same autumn-leaves color as Tris’s came up beside him, her smile almost as wide. “I seem to remember somebody else who pretty much lost his legendary cool in the maternity ward,” Lily Highwater said, slipping an arm around Shane while everyone laughed again.
“Guilty,” Shane confessed, pausing to give his wife a quick kiss. “I was a wreck.”
“Personally,” another unexpected voice came from behind him, and he turned sharply, “I want to know when someone’s going to add a girl to the population of this group.”
He knew he was probably gaping again but he couldn’t help it. Mrs. Valencia? The terror of Creekbend High School, the one teacher no one dared cross, here on a Friday night in the Last Stand Saloon?
“Working on it,” Jackson drawled, and Nic actually blushed.
To his shock the older woman reached out and patted his arm. “How’s one of my favorite students ever, Logan?”
If she hadn’t used his name he would have been looking around to see who she was talking to. And she was looking at him as if she knew exactly that. “I…was?”
“Of course you were. I knew your love of history was genuine, that your passion for it ran as deeply as my own. I wasn’t supposed to show favoritism, however, so I had to keep it under wraps. But now I’m retired, so I feel free.”
“Thank you,” he said, meaning it. “Ma’am,” he added, the memory of the fierceness of the woman in a classroom going through his mind.
“I wish I’d had the chance,” Tris said, respect clear in her voice.
Mrs. V, as her students had called her—only when they were certain she wasn’t around to hear it—smiled. “And I wish I’d had the chance to teach you.” She drew back slightly, taking in both him and Tris. “But I’m very glad you two history lovers have found each other.”
“So am I…”
They’d both said it together, almost in unison, and that earned them the biggest smile he’d ever seen the usually stern woman give.
“She’s changed,” he said as Mrs. V moved away.
“Or maybe you have,” Tris said.
He looked at her steadily. “I have. Thanks to you.”
“It was always there, Logan. Maybe I just helped with…the excavation.”
He couldn’t help it, he laughed. Loudly. Some heads turned, and he guessed it was probably because even though he knew most of the people here tonight, he doubted many of them had ever heard him really laugh. Because he hadn’t, really. Until Tris had come into his life.
Seeing Mrs. Valencia had reminded him of the scared, lonely kid he’d been. “I really have changed,” he murmured, almost to himself.
Tris moved away from the knot of people that had clustered next to them. He followed, automatically, inevitably. When they were off by themselves, she looked up at him steadily.
“You shouldn’t forget that kid you were, but he’s not you anymore,” she said quietly. Once more she’d read him like a book she knew well. But it didn’t unsettle him as it once had, it only made him feel…luckier.
Luckier than you deserve—
He cut off the old, instinctive reaction. Grimaced as he said, “I’m not sure I can completely put him behind me.”
“He’s part of what made you the man you are. Just don’t let him run things anymore.”
He thought about those words as the night went on. As people came up to talk he thought he felt a change there, too. He’d always appreciated the respect the people of Last Stand gave him, but had always assumed it was for his work, not for himself. Because that kid he’d been had been sure he didn’t deserve it.
That kid was still there, jabbing him with ideas, telling him it was Tris who drew those people over to chat, not him. …don’t let him run things anymore. Her words echoed in his mind, and he made himself accept the contact for what it really was, an assumption of friendship. It was a strange, new feeling for him, and for the first time he thought he just might be able to push the past far enough down that it would no longer pop up to taunt him.
Tris had done that. She was the one who’d make him think, made him stop, made him able to ignore that voice in his head that seemed only to want to tear him down.
While Mr. Herdmann, publisher of the local paper, The Defender , who to his shock had approached him about a profile their star human interest reporter—who also happened to be Mrs. Shane Highwater—wanted to do on him, paused to get a refill on his drink, Logan looked over to where she was talking to her brother and Nic. She seemed to feel his gaze because she turned her head, giving him a smile that had him wanting to bail on this gathering right now and go straight back to his place where they could be alone together. Another change. Before he’d have wanted to leave, but just to get out of the crowd.
Now he wanted to run to, not away.
And as they finally left, after Shane Highwater declared he was all poured out, he found himself glancing at her as they drove, another realization crystallizing in his brain. Something he should have realized long ago. Something that just might silence that kid forever.
Tris wanted him. She was smart, clever, and quick. She was observant, perceptive, and sharp as a horseshoe nail.
And hotter than any forge.
So shouldn’t the fact—undeniable after the last week—that she wanted him mean something? That he was worth it?
He was still marveling over the changes in his life that had begun that day at the Baylor ranch, when they had bumped into each other in the barn, when they got home and he paused to hang up his jacket. He turned around to find the room empty. Once, that might have been a jolt, but now he knew where to find her. Where she always went when they first arrived here, the deck looking out over the Hill Country.
He walked out there, and there she was, standing by the railing. They were approaching a full moon, and the light painted the rolling landscape with a cool, almost surreal glow.
He stopped behind her and slipped his arms around her. She let out a sigh that was so clearly happy it made his chest tighten. She leaned back against him, and again he had to process the revelation that for the first time in his life there wasn’t one single thing he would change.
“It’s nice to be home,” she said.
“I’m glad you feel like that.”
She twisted in his arms, although he didn’t let go, didn’t want to let go. She looked up at him. “I do. More than anyplace I’ve ever been. I feel as if this is what I’ve always wanted. I just never realized.” She was facing him now, and slipped her arms around him, pressing herself against him as if she’d felt that same need to never let go. “Thank you. For sharing this with me.”
“I’d share anything with you.”
Her arms tightened. “I know.” She let out a long, contented-sounding sigh. “That’s why I feel like I’m home, after a long, hard road.”
She did understand. More than anyone ever had. And the words he’d never expected to say broke from him.
“I love you, Tris.”
She tilted her head back and gave him an impish grin he never would have expected. “Would it be arrogant of me to say ‘I know’ again?”
He laughed, and with it the last bit of doubt, of that scared kid, took a nosedive. “Nope. Because you’re the most perspicacious person I’ve ever known.”
She laughed at the word, but then she simply looked at him for a long moment, her face painted by that same moonlight that was setting the hills aglow. “I love you, Logan Fox. I have for some time.”
Hearing it like that, from this woman, in this place he called home, with the hills rolling out beyond them in the moonlight, gave him a feeling he’d never had before. A feeling he knew he would fight to the death to keep. Just like those at the Alamo had.
“Then welcome home,” he whispered to her.
They stood looking out over the landscape, and Logan knew that it was true for them both, in different ways.
They were home at last.
The End