Chapter 11
Eleven
Logan
I finally tell my family about Sierra when we gather in the conference room for yet another meeting Emily has planned.
“The Sagebrush Founders’ Parade is coming up,” Emily explains when Ethan demands to know why we’re meeting again in addition to our regular weekly one. “I think we should participate with a float. What do you all think?”
“Another day, another business meeting that could have been an email,” Ethan grumbles.
“If it were an email, it would take days to agree on a theme and make plans,” Emily says. “This is much more efficient. Just an hour of your day.”
Ethan’s face falls. “You think this will take a full hour?”
“Before we get into that,” Seth says, glancing at me, “isn’t there something you want to update us on, Logan?”
With our staggered schedules, this is the first time we’ve all been together since Sierra reappeared. And I’ve been putting this off—nervous they’ll react the same way Seth did.
I steel myself, then say, “Sierra is back.”
Ethan, Cole, and Emily all start talking at once.
“What? When?” Ethan demands.
“Sierra Howard?” Emily says. “That Sierra?”
“Have you told Mom?” Cole asks.
“Yes, that Sierra. No, I haven’t told Mom yet. It’s only been a few days—”
“It’s been a week,” Seth says.
I glare at him. You wanted me to tell them myself, I convey with my expression.
He raises his hands and backs off.
“A week!” Emily shrieks. “That’s why we’ve barely seen you? And you knew too, Seth? Is that why you’ve both been acting weird and secretive?”
“I haven’t—”
“It wasn’t my secret to tell,” Seth says over my protest.
“It’s a secret?” Ethan asks, frowning.
Emily already has her phone out, manicured fingers flying. “Mom is going to flip.”
“No, wait!” I say.
“Sorry,” Cole says, tapping his screen. “Beat you to it.”
My phone vibrates hard with a loud buzz buzz against the table. The name “Mom” lights up the screen.
“Guys, come on,” I groan. But I answer and put it on speaker. “Hi, Mom. You’re on speaker. How are you?”
She skips the pleasantries entirely. “Where is she? When did she get here? Can you bring her to dinner tonight?”
“Mom,” I sigh.
When I thought Sierra was dead, my mom was more optimistic.
She drove to every homeless shelter, put up flyers in every gas station and grocery store in the area, searching for months after Sierra ran away, trying to track her down.
I still remember the hope she retained that we would find her alive, followed by the heartbreak when the PI tracked her down and we realized that she had left and never looked back.
Now I hear that same hope in her voice. My mom always said that, when she was ready, Sierra would come back to us, and now I have to crush her joy by telling her the prodigal daughter has returned but doesn’t want to see her.
“I don’t think she’s ready for that,” I say. “She seems really ashamed about…everything that happened.”
“Oh, I see,” my mom says softly.
Three small words shouldn’t carry that much weight. For a moment, I let myself hate Sierra a little—for breaking my mom’s heart again, and for making me be the one to do it.
“You might have time to see her. She’s staying for six more weeks,” Seth says. “Logan offered her a job.”
“What?” Cole says, frowning. “With us?”
“Not really,” I say with a glare at Seth. “Mom, we’re going to talk business. I’ll call you later,” I say and hang up the phone.
I turn back to my siblings, who wear various levels of irritation at my high-handedness.
I tell them how Sierra is helping me set up the events, how good she’s been at it already.
“Surprisingly so,” I admit. “Her independence, her ability to think fast on her feet—it’s impressive.
Every time an obstacle appears, she’s able to sidestep it with finesse.
When I worked by myself, it never took long before I got frustrated.
It never gets that far with Sierra. She jumps in immediately, smoothly adjusting plans, finding fixes, spinning it into something better. ”
“That sounds great,” Cole interrupts. “But you didn’t even ask us before you hired her? Come on, man. We literally talked about you making major company decisions without consulting us this last week.”
“I’m paying her out of my own pocket,” I protest.
He clenches his jaw. “And again—not the point.”
“I told Seth, and I’ll say it again now—I think I need this for closure.
And it won’t be forever. She’s signed on for helping with the Candlelight Tour at the end of this week,” I say.
“And then helping with the Blackstone Legacy event five weeks after that. There’s an end.
” I swallow against the sudden bile that rises up at that thought.
“So let me get this straight,” Ethan says, his tone cool. “You’re running your first major event, planning another full one in six weeks, training a new employee, doing caving tours, and working through deep-rooted emotional trauma?”
I rub the back of my neck. “Yeah.”
“I mean,” Emily says, “it is probably time you dealt with the emotional trauma part.”
“We can shift some tours to me,” Seth says with a sigh.
“That’s not necessary,” I say, but everyone else is already nodding. “Thanks, bro,” I say, my throat unexpectedly tight.
Seth gives me a look that says, I’m your twin—don’t look so surprised I’ve got your back. Even if you’re an idiot.
But now, days before my first-ever event, I question the wisdom of my plan. I am having a hard time focusing on the closure goal with everything else.
***
“Logan, it’s almost seven o’clock,” Seth says when he walks into the front door later that week.
I glance up from my laptop in the living room. Sierra threw in the towel about an hour ago to work out in our garage gym.
“And?”
“Haven’t you been up since six?”
I sigh and rub my temples. “It’s the first time all week I’ve felt like I could concentrate on my work,” I admit. “We’ve only got three more days to prep.”
Seth presses his lips together. “Oh? Is having an assistant making it harder? If Sierra isn’t working out—”
“It’s not her. She’s wonderful.”
As an employee, she’s fantastic. But employees don’t read erotic poetry together, not without HR dropping an anvil on them. They don’t live in the same house, cook and eat meals together, laugh over the same TV shows. Share a sexual history.
“She’s great at her job,” I say firmly.
Seth raises his hands in mock surrender. My delivery must have sounded more forceful than I intended. “Then how’s closure coming along?” he asks. “Mom keeps asking me for updates.”
“I just…” I hesitate, searching for a way to describe it that won’t betray my real feelings. Not that I can even parse out my real feelings.
In theory, everything is fine. It’s almost too fine—how well we work together, how easily our old dynamic seems to have slid satisfyingly back into place. It feels comfortable and new all at once.
And that’s the problem. I hate to say that Seth is right, but achieving closure seems…impossible. Not only because it’s an intense subject, but because I’m distracted by how good it feels just to be with Sierra.
And, well, it’s Sierra.
I thought my obsession with her before was because I was a horny teenager, but now, as an adult, I can see that it’s more than that.
She has incredible sexual energy, exuding it so naturally, I don’t think she even realizes it.
I find my eyes on her too often, my focus drifting, my discipline crumbling.
I’m behind on planning the Blackstone Legacy poetry event, and a part of me doesn’t care.
But I have to care. If I lose control, then I lose everything.
“There’s just too much to do,” I say.
“What? When Ethan asked you about it during our meeting yesterday, you said you had it handled. If you don’t, bro, you gotta tell us.”
“No, it’s just…it has to be perfect.”
“What needs to be perfect?”
The sound of her voice hits me before I even turn my head toward it. Sweet with a hint of smoke. Sierra stands in the doorway—flushed and glowing from her workout, wearing short Lycra shorts and an orange sports bra.
It’s perfectly normal gym wear. I tell myself that as my eyes skim over the smooth, bare skin of her trim waist. My focus disintegrates. What were we talking about?
I look down at my laptop in despair. “Everything has to be perfect,” I finally say when both of them keep staring at me.
“You need to lighten up, sir,” Sierra says playfully.
I try not to react to Sierra calling me sir as the word lands like a spark at the top of my spine and sizzles all the way down. Breathing in is easy. Breathing out takes a little more effort.
“It’s true,” Seth chimes in. “I’ve been saying that for years. He’s gotten too serious.”
“Some people would call it driven.” Inhale. Exhale.
“Yeah, some people, meaning Mom.”
Sierra drops down next to me on the couch, the cushion dipping just enough to tilt me toward her. I resist the urge to let gravity pull me against her.
“Yes, yes, you’re such a hardworking, dedicated beast. We lesser mortals can’t do anything but cower in the presence of your go-getter glory.”
I smile despite myself. She always saw me as more than I was, and that at least hasn’t changed.
She used to tease me, compare me to a knight in shining armor riding into battle to save her when I picked her up from her house, or shielded her from the gossip at school, or accompanied her on her insanely dangerous adventures.
She didn’t trust easily, and I felt possessively proud that she chose me to be her champion.
And then I threw it all away in a stupid power move.
“But even overachieving gods need a break. So let’s do something that’s not work or boring adulting stuff,” she continues. “God, I’d even be willing to play a round of Monopoly at this point!” She pokes my side, and it takes everything I have not to catch her hand, hold it there.
“There’s an event tonight that I’m going to,” Seth says. “At Whiskey Thunder.”