Chapter Thirty-Six
THE RAH-RAH, I’M GOING my own way attitude I’d had when I blew out of Aspen Lake lasted until about Reno, when the gravity of what I’d done hit me, and I realized how much I wanted to see Logan one more time. Even though I knew it would only lead to me never wanting to leave him again.
I kept telling myself it was better to rip the Band-Aid clean off—except there was nothing clean about this. This one had torn the skin—or, you know, my heart. The tears came down in floods, making it hard to see, so I pulled off into a gas station and blared my favorite breakup song, “Un-Break My Heart” by Toni Braxton.
I leaned my head on my steering wheel, absorbing every word and note as tears dripped onto my bare legs. Minute after minute after minute, I stayed in that position, playing the song on an endless loop, wishing someone could un-break my heart. Preferably before I got a huge crick in my neck and had to spend the night in Reno. How pathetic would it be if I only got forty-five minutes away?
Judging by how I seemed unable to move, and the tears weren’t going anywhere, I was going to find out just how pathetic it was. Two different women had already knocked on my window to make sure I was okay. I’d blubbered through the glass that I’d just left the perfect man for me, because he was still hopelessly devoted to his dead wife. They’d nodded like they understood and had gone on their merry ways .
On what had to be my twentieth listen of “Un-Break My Heart,” I heard some tires squeal loudly behind me like someone had braked suddenly, and then a door slammed. Someone had probably called the police to report a crazy woman in the parking lot. One look at me, and they were going to call for a psych evaluation.
Honestly, I probably needed one. I could tell them all about how my rich and powerful father had paid off my mom because he didn’t want me, but then my mom had hatched a crazy plan thirty years in the making to force our meeting. But Maxwell Harrington couldn’t have that. No way was he going to let his middle-class daughter wreck his world, so he’d tried to get me as far away as possible from him, in Florida or anywhere that wasn’t Aspen Lake, under the guise of “helping” me.
I’d be sure to mention that while that plot unfolded, I had been falling in love with my neighbor, who was still madly in love with his dead wife. Then, when I’d discovered who my evil father was and his nefarious plan, not only had he rejected me, but the handsome doctor I was smitten with had left me for his dead wife.
I could picture the psychiatrist whispering to their nurse that this was outlandish, and I had probably just watched too many CW dramas. At that point, the nurse would probably tranquilize me, and I would welcome it because, unfortunately, it was all real, and I wouldn’t mind forgetting about it for a hot minute.
So, when the knock on my window came, I didn’t even flinch. I lifted my head, expecting to see a police officer and ready to accept my fate of being hauled off and examined, even sedated. Bring it on, I thought.
But it wasn’t a police officer. I blinked my tear-filled eyes repeatedly, wondering if someone had already tranquilized me because surely I was hallucinating. Why would Logan be standing outside my window looking almost tormented and like he wanted to rip the door off its hinges to get to me?
“Brooke,” he called out, sounding relieved.
I turned down the music and rolled down my window, still not convinced I wasn’t tripping on some psych drugs, but if I was, my mind deserved some serious props for conjuring up Logan. Before I could ask what he was doing at a gas station in Reno, he shoved what he could of his body through the window and grabbed my face with his masculine hands and urgently pressed his lips against mine.
Wow, my mind on drugs was crazy good. Every zing of his touch ricocheted through my body, from my head to my toes, until I wasn’t sure where he ended and I began. It was like that with all of our kisses.
His fingers tangled in my hair, the slight pull sending shivers down my spine as his warm breath cascaded over my skin. His tongue brushed my lips, begging for more. This wasn’t a goodbye forever kiss. This was a stay for the rest of my life kind of kiss, and I was so there for it.
My lips parted, begging him to take control of my mouth, and he did. His tongue swept and tasted, pulling me deeper into the place where only he and I existed. The world outside the car seemed to blur. The mild roar of traffic and passing strangers fell away as the heat between us burned and drowned me in the taste of his cinnamon breath.
Like waking up from a beautiful dream, I came to my senses and concluded this was real. My mind was nowhere near this good. If it were a dream or hallucination, I would have been late for class, wearing no clothes, and unable to remember my locker combination.
This realization had me pulling away, catching my breath, filled with a hundred questions. The first being, “How did you know I was here?”
Logan refused to let me go, his fingers knotting in my hair. “I didn’t know. I took a chance on which route you might take. And I got lucky when I saw your car pulled off at the gas station.”
I liked that, but the most important question was, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m chasing you,” he whispered.
“Why?” I didn’t understand, although I wanted to melt right there. No one had ever chased after me like that. This was an A-lister movie plot.
His thumbs brushed along my temples, soothing me. “Because the summer’s not over, and we didn’t finish our bucket list.”
“I finished my bucket list,” I assured him. “Lola helped me. ”
“I said ours .” Reluctantly, he let me go and reached into his pocket. A crumpled receipt appeared, which he handed to me through the window before opening the creaky car door and kneeling in front of me.
“Ours?” I echoed as I took the crumpled-up old receipt, not sure what I should do with it.
Logan smiled apologetically. “It was the only thing I could find in the car, and I was in a hurry to catch you.” He flipped it over, revealing jagged lines of what I guessed was supposed to be writing. Doctor handwriting. Did they actually teach this chicken-scratch technique in med school?
Curious, I smoothed the paper and squinted, trying to decipher what he’d written. I read out loud, “Number one: Make Brooke believe she belongs with me and in, uh ... as pez ...”
“That’s Aspen Lake,” Logan clarified, his eyes searching my own to see what I made of this huge revelation.
“Oh,” I squeaked, the magnitude of the bucket list item sinking in, confusing me even more while I let the receipt fall into my lap. “But I don’t belong with you or in Aspen Lake. It’s why I left. Did you read my letter? It’s all in there.”
“I read it, and it was touching, but I have to take issue with some of it.” He paused, his eyes boring into mine. “We belong together, Brooke.” He stated this like it was a scientific fact.
I wanted to believe it so much, it ached. But how could I?
“No.” I shook my head. “You want an Erica. And I’m no Erica. And I refuse to live in her perfect shadow.”
“I would never expect you to.” The back of his hand caressed my cheek. “Brooke, I left because I knew what we had was anything but a fling. But that meant I had to face some things. Things I’d been too afraid to admit.”
“What things?” I asked, fearing that maybe he had reservations about me and my crazy life.
Logan’s shoulders relaxed slightly, his hand dropping from my cheek, only to rest against my knee. His fingers traced small absent-minded patterns on my skin, raising my pulse. “Things like how Erica and I weren’t perfect. In fact, we were having some problems when she died,” he admitted.
“Can I ask what kind of problems?” I tried to be careful—I didn’t want it to seem like I was reveling in this news. But it was important for me to know.
“I was hoping you would.” A wistful smile played on his lips.
“You were?”
“Yes. I don’t want anything to come between us, especially the truth.”
I tilted my head, trying to make sense of his words. How would the truth come between us?
“Brooke,” he whispered. “I love my wife; you know that. But what you don’t know is that I thought the best way to honor her was to perpetuate this perfect-couple persona we had created. A persona that got in the way sometimes.”
I placed my hand on top of his, letting him know I was there for him and that there was no judgment. Look at my crazy life—I was the last person who had any right to cast stones.
“How?” I asked.
“I was ready to start a family with Erica, and she promised me we would once we’d been married five years. You don’t know how much I looked forward to it. But as we approached that time, she admitted she wasn’t ready, and that she wasn’t sure she ever would be. She’d lied about wanting to have kids.”
I stilled for a moment, trying to process. That was a big lie.
“Of course, she didn’t use those words. She said something to the effect that she knew how important it was to me, and so she thought she could change for me, so she wasn’t really lying. But we both knew that she had. What hurt me most was that she didn’t feel like she could be honest with me. Like our relationship wasn’t strong enough to work through it.”
“I’m sure that hurt.” My heart ached for him.
“Like hell,” he admitted. “But when she died, I tried to brush it off, focus only on the good, because there was a lot of it. And I felt so damn guilty that our last words were angry, so to assuage that guilt, I did what I thought she would want me to do—keep up the persona. That worked for a while and then ...” He paused and tugged on a strand of my hair. “You came crashing into my life.”
“You make that sound ominous,” I teased.
“At first it felt like that.”
I held up a finger. “Excuse me—should I be taking offense here?”
“Hold on. I promise I’m getting to the good part.” He grinned. “It’s the way you consumed me and how much I wanted you that felt so overwhelming.”
“Okay, I like that,” I said, reflecting his smile.
“Me too, except I wasn’t prepared for it. Especially because, in so many ways, you’re Erica’s opposite. That, combined with how Erica and I left things ... it caused a lot of guilt. I couldn’t have that coming between us. And believe me when I say I want nothing between us.” His voice dropped, and the way he said it—so dang sexily—sent a shiver down my spine.
“But you left,” I reminded him, trying to stay grounded before I got ahead of myself. It was easy to do with him. “And I saw you the night I slept in your bed. All you could do was stare at Erica’s photo.”
“First”—he smirked—“if you were sleeping, how would you know that? And you must have been sleeping, because if you were awake, you would know I spent most of the night looking at you.”
“Oh.” I nibbled on my lip. “You did?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t excuse me for leaving you. I apologize sincerely. If I thought for one second you’d believe I left because I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t have gone. I swear.” His hand tightened slightly on my knee, his gaze locking on to mine with an intensity that made it so I couldn’t breathe. “I left because something Maxwell said panicked me. It made me realize how much I wanted to have zero regrets with you.”
There was so much to unpack in his words, but I had to start with my least favorite. “What did Maxwell say to you? Did he try to warn you away from me? Tell you I’m not good enough for you? Just like my mom wasn’t good enough for him?” I spat.
“No.” Logan cupped my cheeks with his warm hands, calming me. “If anything, I honestly think he didn’t want me to hurt you the way he hurt your mom. ”
“I can’t believe that.”
“That’s understandable. But either way, the last thing I want to do is hurt you. It’s why I went to go work things out with Erica. I knew I had to. Sooner rather than later.”
“A heads-up would have been nice.”
He pulled me closer to him, his forehead landing on mine, our breaths mingling together. “I should have told you exactly why I was leaving, but I wasn’t sure you wanted something past this summer, and I didn’t know if I would find the peace I was looking for, so I stayed quiet, thinking that my trip might all be for nothing.”
“I wish you would have told me the truth.”
“Believe me, I do too. I’m sorry, Brooke. Truly, I am.”
“Did you work out what you needed to?” I had to know.
“I did.” His lips brushed mine.
“And?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“And I don’t want you to leave. I’m falling in love with you.”
Oh. I wasn’t expecting that admission.
“You are?” My voice came out all garbled; I could hardly believe it was true.
“I am.”
“How does Erica feel about it?” I didn’t want to push her out of his life, but I couldn’t bear the thought of her coming between us either.
“She didn’t say,” he teased me. “But I told her about this amazing woman who’s made me realize life doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be good. In fact, figuring out the mess of it together makes it more worthwhile. I wished Erica and I would have discovered that.”
“Are you saying I’m a hot mess?” I giggled through my watery eyes.
“Definitely hot.” His lips landed on mine, pressing ever so gently. “Come back with me,” he murmured against my lips.
“I don’t know if I belong in Aspen Lake. My own father doesn’t want me there.” All my vulnerabilities spilled out.
“To hell with him. I want you there. And if I’m not mistaken, judging by your letter, I think you’re falling in love with me too.”
“You got that, did you?”
“It seemed pretty obvious to me,” he said cockily .
“I am falling in love with you.” It felt good to admit that. So good. Yet there were other considerations. “But what if this doesn’t work out? It’s not like I can afford to live in Aspen Lake for much longer, and I don’t have a job, which doesn’t look good for you—dating an unemployed DJ who canceled her once-in-a-lifetime job interview tomorrow because I refuse to let Maxwell pay me off again. And I told the rental company I was leaving today.” I rattled off every barrier I could think of, my voice rising with each one.
“Are you finished?” he spoke against my lips.
“Uh-huh,” I said, completely taken with him.
“None of this is insurmountable. We’ll figure it out together. Besides, you didn’t even read the rest of our bucket list.”
“I’m still trying to get past number one. I can hardly believe you think we belong together.”
“Let me prove it to you.”
“How are you going to do that?” I needed to know what I was signing up for.
“You’re going to have to read the rest of the bucket list to find out.”
“I will later, after I learn how to decipher your chicken scratches,” I teased him. “But you know, the last bucket list someone gave me led to some pretty big discoveries. One not so pleasant.”
His thumbs brushed against my cheeks. “Brooke, I can’t promise you a happy ever after. That’s never a guarantee. But what I can promise you is that I will do my best to take life to the limit with you. And I will do my damnedest to never push you past your limits.”
Oh, that was it. I was a goner. Him remembering my mother’s words did me in. I gripped his shirt, hanging on for what I had a feeling was going to be the start of a wild, beautiful ride together. And I knew I had to take it and see where it went.
A relationship like ours didn’t come around every day, or sometimes not even in a lifetime. That I knew.
“Okay, I’ll go back with you.”
He let out a tremendous sigh of relief before he pressed his lips against mine, infusing them with what felt like hope. I liked hope. It meant we were both willing to imagine a future together. Possibly a future in Aspen Lake .
I didn’t know if Aspen Lake was ready for me—or me for it—but I knew there was unfinished business there. Something else my mom had left for me to discover. I just hoped it was more of a big-budget film than a network drama.