12 #2
I find myself leaning back on the desk again, pre-emptively testing its sturdiness for possibly being bent over it, before I make eye contact with the unsettling painting again, and decide actually, that can’t happen in here.
“What about you? You’re all covered in grass stains,” I say, returning my attention to Logan.
I push off the desk, putting a knee between his on the chair, straddling one of his legs.
Brushing a hand against the dress shirt with green hashmarks peppered over it, I flick off a few blades of grass still stuck to the fabric, if only for the excuse to keep touching him.
He gives an evasive hum instead of an answer, his hand tracing up the length of my thigh.
“Everything alright, out there? It seemed like you and Shawn were having it out.”
“I feel like I should say something about his bark being worse than his bite, but uh, his bite is pretty mean too.”
I laugh a little too loud, and at Logan’s quizzical brow, I explain, “Have you seen that bite on Elise’s shoulder?”
He gives me a long, unblinking look.
I wince, then ask, “Oh, maybe you don’t want to know about that?”
“Yeah, I think I can live without knowing.”
I wave haphazardly at the grass stains. “So, what was all this about?”
Logan rolls his eyes, shrugs. “Until like a month ago, I hadn’t talked to Shawn in years. I forgot how consistently annoying he is.”
I know a deflection when I see one.
Lowering myself down into his lap, I curl up against his chest. He’s quiet for a long moment, his gaze dropped to the space between us. I hum a note to let him know I’m listening, and eventually, he continues.
“He’s always been everyone’s favorite—grinning, telling stories, slapping people on the back when he laughs.
Some people are just naturally warm and charming.
When Shawn left, a weird thing happened.
Suddenly I was the golden child. Everything got better for me.
I wasn’t the problem child anymore. He was. ”
I have to stifle a laugh against his shoulder at that. “You’re telling me you were the problem child?”
“Oh, you know. All my life, everyone just kept telling me I had a bad attitude.”
I almost tease him then, but sympathy squeezes within my chest, because I can see exactly the way his default sullen glare would give that impression, and how it must have shaped his perception of himself into a tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy.
I press a kiss to his temple, and he returns a half-hearted smile.
“Before, it was like nothing I did was the right thing. I couldn’t figure out what would make my dad happy.
And then Shawn was gone, and there was room for me to step up at the brewery.
And I took it. I worked hard to be reliable, everyone’s rock.
I had common ground with my parents about how much it hurt not to have Shawn around anymore, and it had never been like that before.
For a while, it almost felt good,” he says, tracing meandering lines along my thigh.
There’s a tension in his jaw as he speaks, a vacancy in his eyes again.
“All Shawn has to do is come home to be loved and celebrated all over again. He doesn’t even have to apologize for all the bridges he burned. People will just rebuild them for him. And I’m back to being the black sheep of the family. Funny how that happens.”
I can’t help but rest my chin on his shoulder and peek over the top of the wingback chair at the family portrait, the middle child standing slightly further away from each of his brothers.
“. . . It looked like you two were getting along, mostly,” I offer gently, glancing back at the door still cracked open. “I wouldn’t go drinking with someone I had that kind of history with.”
“It might be the only time we talk. Probably because I’m just such a joy to be around sober,” Logan says. It sounds like he meant it as a joke, but the way his expression shutters after, it was clear he’d revealed something he might not have realized about himself before.
The jaded, self-effacing coldness returns to his eyes as they flick to me. “Don’t you start to like me now.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t. Not one bit,” I lie, even as he leans his face into my palm. He covers my hand with his and presses a kiss into my wrist. “But I enjoy you. And I don’t think you have a bad attitude.”
My heart isn’t ready to feel so deeply entangled with him. I’m still gluing all the pieces of me back together. But I feel so safe with Logan.
He’s going through a lot, but it’s not scaring me off the way I thought it would. I want to see him get to the other side of all this. I want to stick around for it. So, I ask, “What would help?”
“Hm?”
“What would . . . help restore a bit of normalcy in your life? Put things back the way they were when things were better for you?”
His hand stroking my thigh slows and comes to a stop, resting lightly against me. I watch his pinched expression worsen, the lines in his brow deepening as he considers it. “I don’t think I could get Shawn to leave, even if I tried.”
I blow out a breath, not really a laugh. If I never heard another thing about Shawn, it would still be too soon. I just want to take Logan away from all this.
“Then you and me, we’ll run away somewhere,” I suggest teasingly. “We’ll get on the road, however far my truck will take us. Run away from all our problems.”
“I don’t know that I could take the time off . . .” Logan starts to say, and I shake my head.
“This is a quit your job kind of escape. Burn all the bridges, so there’s nothing left in the rearview mirror. And then when people come looking for us, they’ll just hear that we don’t live around here anymore, we’re on the road.”
Maybe it’s the two-a.m. madness, but I almost like the sound of this little idea. There’s something about being awake when everyone else is asleep that the whole world suddenly seems brimming with possibility, that there’s no one around to stop you.
“But—”
“No buts. Just us,” I insist, wanting so badly for him to just let someone else pick up all the pieces of all the rules and restraints we’d break, to not feel like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Don’t you want to just go, be free? Be wild?”
He’s looking at me, expression soft, a fond smile, like he’s lost in thought. Not just charmed; something more. Something too deep. It makes my chest feel like something heavy is pressing against my sternum. I don’t want to keep being scared of it.
I close my eyes and lean my head against his chest. I try to remember, what exactly is it about him that makes me just forget that this is just a casual thing when he’s looking at me?
I’m not really able to come up with a reason. He’s just a guy. He’s literally any other guy. But the way he looks at me like he’s utterly, unquestionably mine lingers in my mind.
He strokes my hair, his fingers carding through the strands. His voice reverberates through his chest to my cheek as he asks, “What’ll we do?”
“What we always do.”
“The whole time?”
“Not the whole time. We’ll tell people we’re headed for Oregon, but we’re not gonna be checking the map, unless it’s for tourist traps. We’ll stop in every greasy diner on the way,” I say, daring a little eye contact, wondering if I’ve bared too much of myself, my most foolish and unbaked hopes.
“And a different bedbug-ridden motel every night,” Logan adds, deadpan, but I’m just glad he sees the vision. I try not to smile too wide, to tip my hand on how tempting this idea is, just the two of us disappearing off into the sunset together.
“Almost every night. Some nights we’ll sleep in my truck, you and me, camping somewhere under the full moon. You holding me every night, for as long as we can stand each other.”
His hand tightens on me, but his eyes drop from mine, his gaze becoming distant.
“It sounds nice,” he says, unconvinced, resting his chin against a hand. I follow his stare out the window, wondering where I lost him. I swear, a second ago I’d almost had him on board.
“It’s just a thought,” I mumble against his shirt, and he hums in response. He’s so tangled up in his problems, maybe it was a little naive of me to think I could get him to shrug them off just like that. But it’s fine. I’m willing to see how long this will take.
I sigh and settle my cheek against Logan’s chest. I can feel his heartbeat and mine, like a slightly off-kilter call and response. I can’t help it, I think I’m gonna be the first one to say that too-soon “I love you,” and I don’t even care that I already mean it.