Chapter 11 #2
“Before your brother got sick?” I asked. I didn’t know if he’d want his brother brought up, but since we were talking about my mom, it felt applicable.
“Yeah. We thought we had it figured out. Play at Bribury together for two years. James could try to get on a team in one of the minor leagues like the AHL or ECHL. Maybe even in Europe. Then I’d join J after I graduated.”
“His name was James? Or Jay?” I asked, although he’d just said as much.
“James. Yeah, sorry. James, but that’s also my dad’s name, so around family and close friends he was J, just his first initial.”
“Got it. Sounds like you had a good plan.” James. His brother was James, but they called him Mrs. And family called him J. It was important to remember the things that defined a person after they passed. To be a placeholder for them in some ways.
“Yeah. What’s that saying they trot out to people in mourning? ‘You make plans and God laughs’? Something like that?”
“Something like that,” I said.
We sat in silence for a moment, me watching as Logan played with my hair.
He turned his arm that was next to me so that his hand was up, palm open.
Waiting for mine. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to slip my hand into his, and he firmly, but gently, grasped it.
The movement caused my hair to fall back into my space, but he brought a portion back to him and continued to wind it around his finger.
“In a way, J dying gives me a chance to, I don’t know, reset my idea of the future,” he said.
“As in?”
“As in… Do I really even want to play hockey beyond college anymore? Did I ever? Or was that always driven by my brother? And my dad?”
“Does your dad still see that as your future?”
He leaned his head back against the wall, taking his eyes from our joined hands and my hair, though he kept playing with it. “Probably. Maybe more so now that it’s just me. Or maybe not. We haven’t talked about any of that. Yet. There’s time for those conversations later. It’s still too raw.”
I knew his pain. It was so familiar to mine, and yet different. Different relationships, different circumstances. But the soul-shaking upheaval that losing someone can wreak on your life, the questioning, the perspective shift…
One of the things it did for me was add a bit of carpe diem. And it was that thought that propelled me to shift my head from the wall to his shoulder and make the first lean.
He hunched into me, the heat coming from him comforting.
“Megan? I don’t want to be manipulative, and this isn’t at all why I came here…”
“But?”
“But I really want to kiss you right now,” he said.
“I want that too,” I said.
“Even after all the points you made Wednesday night about it not being a good idea?”
“Points that are still valid,” I said. “But I don’t know. Maybe it’s the day. Maybe it’s the roses. But yeah, I want that too.”
Our heads moved slightly, so that we stared, not at the far wall, but at each other. His brown eyes were searching mine, and I knew the words to say.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be ok—”
My words were taken from me by the pressure of his mouth on mine. His lips were full and firm and the kiss was soft and gentle. That was where it started. But I needed more. I needed so much more. And I knew Logan Fields was going to make it all better.
He’d make me forget today. And that I’d forgotten today.
I parted my lips and my tongue met his, softly, tangling. Like he’d played with my hair, our tongues and lips felt each other, learned each other. Unwound each other.
But I found I was quickly wound back up. Tighter. So tight. And it seemed like Logan was there too.
“Megan,” he whispered, then devoured my mouth with his.
We made the quick move from sitting beside each other to lying in my bed, his body hard and warm on top of mine.
I shifted to allow my legs to fall open, and he settled himself on me.
He was already hard through his sweats, and I couldn’t hold back the sigh at the need that rippled through me.
“God, you feel so good,” I said before I could put any guardrails up. Maybe that was a good thing. Because I instinctively knew any walls built or safety nets put in place would be easily destroyed by falling for Logan Fields.
It was why I’d made that point last week at Schmitty’s.
And why I would completely ignore my own good advice just to have Logan lying on top of me like this, kissing me so deeply and whispering my name. I was no better than Ches in this moment, and I found I didn’t give a flying fuck.
“Right? Jesus, Megan, you feel… you feel…”
He didn’t have the words either, and that made me feel better about my own incapability to have a shred of self-preservation right now.
His mouth left mine and traveled down my neck.
My breath hitched at his warm lips on my throat, a small lick from his tongue, and I squirmed beneath him.
Needing to feel his heat even more, I slid my hands beneath his sweatshirt and pulled; he lifted and wriggled enough for me to pull it over his head and toss it to the foot of the bed.
His white tee was plastered to his strong, wide chest. I wanted to feel his skin, but this sight was so good too.
I settled for the skin on his forearms and ran one hand up and down his girthy bicep, while the other moved to his back and followed the wall of muscle down to his rock-hard ass.
My God, what hockey did to a man’s ass!
His mouth was back at my neck and he was rocking his hard-on into my crotch, which was unfortunately covered by panties and leggings. Why couldn’t I have been wearing a skirt that would have easily been pushed up?
“You’re sure this is okay?” he mumbled while taking a small nip at my clavicle.
“What, exactly?” I asked, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears. It was full of need, full of desire. Emotions I’d kept locked inside for too long were bubbling at the surface. Ready to explode.
Logan made me ready to explode.
“Any of it. All of it.”
“Yes, it’s okay,” I said.
“And that it’s today? When you might be feeling vulnerable and—”
I took his head in my hands and pulled him from my body so that he could look at me when I said, “It’s okay that it’s today. It’s probably only happening because it’s today. And things may need to go back to ‘just friends’ tomorrow, and I reserve that right.”
“Of course, whatever you—”
“But for now, for tonight, I need you to use me like I’m a girl you’ll never see again.”
He stared at me, dumbfounded. And then I smiled. And he laughed. His laugh was deep and throaty and made me tingle in places that had already started tingling from his kisses.
Tingle-on-tingle action. You couldn’t do better than that.
I put my finger in his chin indent. “Make me forget today, Logan,” I whispered.
His eyes turned a darker brown, intensity replacing his laughter. “Done, Megan,” he said.
Just as his hands crawled from my waist to my boobs—which were aching and so, so ready to be touched—there was a knock on my door.
“Everybody decent? No nudity to deal with?” Chloe’s singsong voice came from the other side. Then she burst into the room, only to stop in her tracks when she saw Logan lying on top of me, my legs open and wide under him. “Oh, shit, I was just kidding. I didn’t really think—”
“Need to have the roommate boundary talk, I see,” Logan said as he eased off me. He moved behind me, positioning me in front of him, I guess to hide his hard dick outlined by his joggers. I rolled to my side and sat up on the edge of the bed, my back to him, concealing his body.
“Jesus, Chloe,” I said.
“I’m so sorry, I just wanted to…” I thought she might turn tail and we could get back to business, but no, she kept coming into the room, turning her phone around to show me. “Look. It’s been, like, a half hour since I posted, and already a thousand views.”
“Posted what?” I asked, taking her phone.
“Us eating pizza,” she said.
“Us eating pizza got a thousand views?” I knew Chloe had over ten thousand subscribers, which Emily told me was really impressive for only having been at it for a couple of years. But to have a thousand views of girls eating pizza on a Monday night?
Oh. It wasn’t just girls eating pizza, was it?
“Logan, why didn’t you say that people are obsessed with you?” Chloe asked.
“What?” Logan jerked up, sitting behind me and swooping my hair from my shoulder so he could rest his chin there to look at the phone I held up.
“Somebody shared it. Or lots of somebodies. I haven’t done any analytics on it yet. Too new. But it’s a lot for one of my DITL posts. Like, twenty times normal.”
“What’s DITL?” I asked.
“Day in the life,” both Logan and Chloe said at the same time.
“You’re big on socials?” I asked him. I didn’t know why, but it seemed out of character from what I knew of him.
And that just brought home the fact that I didn’t know anything about Logan Fields, other than that he was a love-’em-and-leave-’em hockey player who had recently lost his brother.
And his body felt like it was sculpted in granite and made to be an exact fit to mine.
And for today, that was enough.
“I’m not,” he said. “Well, I didn’t want to be. It’s a long story, and—”
“Well, whatever,” Chloe said. “You should have told me you’d set off some numbers.
I wouldn’t have wasted you on just pizza.
Although I should probably reach out to Bonetti’s with these numbers for some possible collab.
” She took the phone back and continued to talk to herself as she walked out the door—leaving it wide open in her self-absorption.
I started to rise to close the door, but Logan was moving with me. He held my hips in place and jackknifed up behind me and off the bed. “That’s okay. I should probably get going anyway. Chloe might have done us a favor.”
“I said it was okay. That I felt okay about it,” I said.
He’d pulled his sweatshirt on and headed to his backpack by the door where he’d dropped it. “I know. I believe you. But…”
“But what?” I said. I still sat on the bed, as if maybe he’d come back if I didn’t move.
He motioned to the flowers he’d sent, to the picture of my family, and then to my closet, where my mom’s Bribury shirt was sticking out after I’d hurriedly hung it when I changed. He’d noticed that.
Logan Fields was very observant for a college jock. But then, I was beginning to realize there was much more to him than just that.
Even beyond his Greek god body and crazy-cute dimple.
“I’m not saying you were right last week. That we shouldn’t complicate things because of Grief Inc. But it feels wrong to break the seal on this day.”
I started to argue, but it felt hollow. He was right.
“I’ll see you Wednesday night,” he said. “Don’t make plans for after, okay?”
Was it a hint of promise or a hint of hopefulness in his voice at the end? Or both?
“Okay. Wednesday night. And after.”
He nodded, smiled, and was gone. I went out into the common room to microwave the leftover pizza.
And think about the range of emotions that had blasted through me today. It was a lot.
Thank God the pizza was so good.