2. Brooke
2
***Brooke***
L ogan Brooks had grown up since the last time I saw him. I remembered that day so clearly and it was alarming that the boy I’d last seen had become a man even more devastatingly handsome. My breath caught in my throat as I locked gazes with him. His dark brown eyes had always been a giveaway to what he was really feeling. They’d gone darker with anger or sadness and lighter when he was happy. They were dark as he stared back at me but it’d been so long. I reminded myself that I didn’t know the man standing in front of me. I didn’t know his tells.
“Logan.” My voice was breathy and I had to clear my throat. “Um. Hi.”
He ran a big hand through his thick black hair and his lips tilted up in a half smile. “Long time no see.”
He’d gotten taller. And wider. I couldn’t help drinking in the changes. The scruff he’d been able to grow at eighteen had turned into a well-groomed beard that highlighted the sharp lines of his jaw. The sleepy look his eyes had once had was gone, replaced with the most bedroom of bedroom eyes I’d ever seen. He’d turned into a walking, talking, smoldering sex scene on legs.
I had to clear my throat again. “Yeah, I’m… I’m back.”
He took his time running his gaze over me and that smile turned into a smirk when my cheeks went up in flames. “Little bunny, you’re a mess.”
Of all the things I’d expected him to say, that wasn’t one of them. I’d forgotten all about the state of my being at the sound of his voice. Looking down at myself, I paled. “Oh… This? Yeah… I guess I am a mess. It’s been a long day.”
“And a big day?” He raised his eyebrows. “Where’s the mister?”
I was mortified. I hadn’t expected to be explaining my failures to one of the best men I ever knew on my first day back in town. I bit my lip and thought about lying but I’d never been good at lying. “I’m guessing balls deep in my boss right about now.”
That wiped the smirk right off of Logan’s handsome face. He braced his hands on his hips and frowned. “Oh?”
I forced my chin up. “Yep. I’m a runaway bride.”
He nodded like it all made perfect sense. “I’d ask you how you’ve been but I feel like I’m getting a pretty good idea of it by looking at you right now.”
I winced and couldn’t stop my hands from going up to my hair in an attempt to tame the beast. “I don’t normally look like this.”
“I remember what you look like, little bunny. You’ve, uh, grown up in some areas but you still look like Brooke.” His eyes flicked down to my chest and then back up to my eyes. “You’re okay?”
I had to stop myself from reaching behind me to loosen the corset again. I knew my boobs were on display but having Logan not so subtly call me out was humiliating. His use of the old nickname wasn’t much better. “I’m fine. Don’t I look fine?”
He just raised his eyebrows even higher.
“You’re not seeing me at my best.” I leaned over to look in my sideview mirror and gasped. I looked like a clown bride. A clown bride who’d had a very long day. I straightened and licked my suddenly dry lips. “I’m just going to get some gas now.”
I pulled the small coin purse I kept all of my cards in from the side door of Lola and began pumping gas. After the gas was flowing, the silence settled around me like a chokehold. I couldn’t stop myself from fiddling with the lace and tulle of the dress. Tugging it up again and again resulted in the fabric ripping. I heaved out a sigh and looked up to where Logan was still watching me with that smirk on his mouth.
“We’ve missed you around here. Everything’s a little bit boring without you.” He shifted closer and held a card out to me. “The guys had to move into my place after Hurricane Susan. Their places got wrecked. If you get an itch to run while you’re in town, call me.”
I hesitantly took the card and looked at it. Logan Brooks had business cards. Apparently, he was the high school baseball coach. I glanced up at him and swallowed down the lump of emotion in my throat. He’d grown up while I was away and I felt an oddly huge amount of sadness over missing it. I suddenly had a dozen questions I wanted to ask but I didn’t deserve his answers. Not after the way I’d left them.
“Good to see you again, little bunny.” He rubbed his jaw and took a step back towards his truck. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t marry an asshole who’d cheat on you.”
I stood there for a long time after he left, staring at the spot where he’d stood, and wondering why I’d ever thought life outside of Beaumont was the answer. When someone else pulled up to the other side of the gas pump I quickly finished up on my side and wrestled myself back into my car.
I’d been in Beaumont for less than thirty minutes and I was already feeling weighed down by my previous choices. I didn’t need a therapist to tell me that I had issues with endings to know that I did. I ran away from everything. I couldn’t even finish TV series or movies, a fact that many people in my life really hated. Even my art projects, they never were finished. I wasn’t a finisher, I was a known quitter and more than anything, I wanted to quit right then and there and run away. I didn’t have anywhere else to run, though. I was a trapped bunny and I had nowhere to run.