Chapter 31 - Logan #2
She kneels on the bedroom floor and unzips it and starts pulling things out, setting each thing down like she's taking inventory of a life she's finally deciding to keep.
The jacket with the deep pockets comes out first — she holds it for a moment before setting it aside.
A few soft t-shirts. A book with a spine so soft it falls open on its own.
A second pair of jeans, almost identical to the first. A washbag.
A small tin I don't recognize — the kind that might hold aspirin or mints.
Each object placed on the floor with the same deliberateness.
I watch her hands do the work. The left hand, sure and practiced.
The right, working around the brace with accommodations she's already made automatic.
I have watched her adapt so quietly to what the injury costs her that I've almost stopped seeing it.
Almost.
"I'm going to buy you more things," I say.
She pauses. Looks up at me.
"A lot more things. Art supplies. Clothes. Whatever you want."
"Logan—"
"I'm going to spoil you. That's happening."
She shakes her head, but the smile is already there. "Fine. I get veto rights on anything ugly."
"Deal.” I smile. “Also, I’m going to marry you eventually. Not asking. I’m telling you that in advance.”
She kisses me, then goes back to unpacking. I watch the suitcase get emptier and feel something settle in my chest, slow and warm.
She reaches the bottom.
Her hands still.
She pulls out an envelope — white, crisp, official — and holds it up. Her name on the front. This address.
She didn't put it there. I can see her working through that fact, brow furrowed, turning the envelope over in her hands.
"Open it," I say.
She tears it carefully. Reads the first two lines. Stops.
Before the assault. Before the Gilded Lily. Before I drove to the Atlantic in the dark. I had already done this — already decided her work deserved a door, regardless of whether I'd be on the other side of it when it opened.
She looks up at me. Her eyes are wide and something is building in them that she doesn't have words for yet.
"What is this?"
"I submitted your drawings," I say. "To the Florida School of Fine Arts. I made copies from your notebook — the city sketches, the club, the ones of me. Filled out the application. Sent it in."
"You—" She stops. "When?"
"Weeks ago."
She looks back at the letter. Reads more of it. Her hands have gone still. The pencil callus on her right hand catches the afternoon light.
"You had no right," she says.
"I know."
"I didn't ask you to do this."
"I know."
"I might not even—" She stops again. Her jaw works. "I dropped out. I haven't thought about going back."
"Maybe it's time to start thinking about it."
She looks at me. Her eyes are wet. "You believe in my work. You actually—"
"I have one of the sketches framed," I say. "In my apartment above the club. I asked Gunner to make me a copy the week after you left the notebook open on the dining table — the one of the bay at dusk. It's been on my wall since then."
Her mouth opens. Closes.
"That's the only personal thing in that apartment," I say. "The only thing on any wall. I believed in your work before you gave me any reason to think you'd stay."
She stays on the floor for another moment, the letter in her hands, the empty suitcase beside her.
Then she sets the letter down carefully and crawls across the bedroom floor and wraps her arms around me, face pressed into my chest.
I hold her. One hand in her hair, one at her back.
"Thank you," she says. Muffled, small. "I don't know if I'll go. But thank you."
"You're welcome."
A moment passes. She pulls back slightly, still in the circle of my arms, looking up at me.
"If I go," she says, "you can't drive me. I'm not being dropped off at art school in a town car."
"I'll take a different car."
"Logan."
"A subtle car."
She stares at me. "You don't own a subtle car."
"I can buy one." A pause. "I'll buy a subtle car."
She laughs — that surprised, unplanned sound. The one I'm collecting, adding to the inventory of her I intend to keep building for as long as she lets me. It fills the bedroom and fades and she shakes her head, and I take her into my arms.
She mentions, half into my collar, that she called her father yesterday. He said he's trying. Sober, or working toward it. A sponsor. A photo of Wren and her mother on his phone that he still looks at sometimes.
"Are you going to call him again?" I ask.
She considers. "I don’t think he’ll be popping by for family Thanksgiving any time soon. But yeah, I’ll probably call him again."
"Good," I say, and I mean it.
We end up on the bed.
“Speaking of family dinners,” I say. “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“So?”
“So we have family dinner at La Sirena. With everyone."
She shifts beside me. "Isa?"
"Even Isa."
Something in my voice gives me away. She turns her head and looks at me with those gray eyes that catch more than I intend.
"What aren't you telling me?"
"Nothing."
"Logan."
"Just be there," I say. "Let them welcome you properly."
She studies my face for another second. Decides she'll get nothing more out of me. Returns her gaze to the ceiling.
"Fine," she says. "But if Isa is cold to me again in front of everyone, I'm blaming you."
"That's fair."
The quiet settles around us — the penthouse holding the last of the afternoon light, the bay doing its slow silver thing below. The future sitting open somewhere just ahead of us.
She reaches over, without looking, and finds my hand.
I close my fingers around hers. Hard, once. Then easy.