After barely sleeping all night,I woke up in the morning feeling rather irritable. I’d hoped that ordering the biggest coffee offered from the café on the corner would help, but instead it made me feel jittery and nauseous.
Since I wasn’t due to Logan’s shop until eleven, I spent the morning getting ahead on some of my other work. I spread myself out on the couch in the living room with my laptop and some paper sketches that I’d started for a few holiday ads. One was for a local boudoir photographer who was offering special pricing for Christmas, and another was for the hardware store downtown who wanted to target holiday shopping for dads.
Adam and Rachel emerged around nine, both of them wearing workout clothes. Apparently, there was a gym somewhere in this building. Adam invited me to join them but I preferred to exercise outdoors where I could get lost in nature and fresh air. With the way I was feeling today, a nice long hike in the snow sounded like heaven. I made a mental note to make that a priority in the next few days.
As nervous as I was to see Logan, a huge part of me was also really looking forward to it. I held tightly to the belief that he wouldn’t intentionally hurt me, and that he wouldn’t still have Mara in his life if he was . . . doing what he did with me in Breckenridge. But I also owed it to myself not to sweep this under the rug and to confront the potential issue—we promised to be honest with each other and to tackle any fears together.
By the time ten o’clock rolled around, I was anxious and antsy and no longer focused on what I was doing. Logan’s shop was about a twenty minute drive away, so I packed up my work stuff and put it all back into my room—in a neat pile on the foot of the bed because my bedroom didn’t have a desk—and got ready. I’d decided to wear a simple black sweater, my nice jeans, and a pair of black ankle boots in an effort to look nice but comfortable. I put on a simple gold chain necklace and kept the makeup to a minimum before packing my computer and a notebook into my bag and heading out.
The drive to Logan’s shop was quick. There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic to worry about in the middle of a weekday, so I made it in about fifteen minutes. The parking lot in front of the building was almost full, but I found a spot in the deserted lot out back.
Once inside, an older hispanic woman was behind the front desk, her smile bright as she looked up at me. “Good morning, how can I help you?” Her question was somewhat muted by the sound of an air compressor and power tools coming from the bays.
“Good morning,” I said warmly. “I’m looking for Logan, I have a meeting with him at eleven.”
Her face lit up in recognition. “Oh, yes! You must be Amelia?” I nodded. “He told me to go ahead and send you back—I think he’s in the third bay right now working on something, but he should be done soon.”
“Thank you!” I turned to my right and saw that all six bays had cars in various stages of disassembly. Men in matching gray coveralls moved methodically as they worked on each one of them.
When my eyes finally landed on Logan, something deep within me stirred. He was bent over the open hood of a black sports car, working a wrench somewhere inside of the engine. He was wearing those damn coveralls with the sleeves rolled up, and I watched as his forearm flexed obscenely as he turned the wrench over and over again. I felt mildly jealous of whatever it was that he was working on, because I wanted him working on me instead.
One of the guys next to him caught sight of me watching Logan and bumped him on the shoulder, pointing in my direction when Logan looked up at him. I watched in heavy anticipation as Logan’s face turned in my direction. The change in his expression when his gaze landed on me was unmistakable—the brightness of his honey eyes ticked up a notch, his features relaxed, and his mouth curved up at the corners.
He was cinnamon whiskey and loud engines and the first snow of the season. My heart beat fiercely for him.
With a tilt of his head, he nodded toward his office, indicating for me to meet him there. I walked along the perimeter of the bays to where his office door was tucked behind large stacks of tires. The door was closed, but when I turned the knob it opened easily and I let myself in.
It would be a few minutes until Logan got there, so I took some time to look around at everything, knowing I was being undoubtedly nosy. The shine of a small silver frame on the corner of his desk caught my attention, so I moved to go pick it up.
It was an old Campbell family picture depicting all of us in front of the house that I grew up in. I remembered when the picture was taken in the fall of that year, so long ago, around Halloween. Logan, Adam and I stood proudly in front of a huge pile of leaves that we’d raked into the middle of the lawn, and my parents stood on either side of us. My mother had asked a neighbor to snap the photo, wanting to catch the moment. Logan and Adam looked like they were about ten or eleven, which meant I was only six or seven.
I had no idea how or why Logan had the picture, but the fact that it was here in his office broke open a fissure in my chest. I studied all of our faces and wasn’t surprised to see genuine smiles. Even on Logan’s. I realized that this was taken before my parents had gotten involved in his home life, so he was still living with his father at that point. I looked for any signs of distress in his expression, but his face was angled at me as I threw leaves up into the air.
“Hey.” Logan’s deep voice rumbled from behind me and I almost jumped out of my skin.
I turned to look at him, feeling caught in my snooping. “Hey,” I responded, waving the frame toward him so that he could see. “I’m sorry, I just . . . I noticed this on your desk.”
His eyes were soft as he watched me. He was leaning against the door frame, a smudge of oil on his chin. A stark white undershirt was peeking out beneath his coveralls at his chest, where the first button was undone. “Don’t be sorry.” His eyes flicked to the picture in my hands. “That was a good day.”
I felt myself smile, despite the nerves still raging inside of me. “Yeah, it was . . . how did you get it?”
“Your mom was looking through pictures when I was at the house a few years ago. I saw that one and remembered how good I felt that afternoon, just being a kid running wild in the leaves. I asked her if I could keep it.”
I looked back down at the frame and then set it back on his desk, keeping my eyes on it as I heard Logan’s movement behind me, feeling him take a few steps in my direction. His arms snaked around my ribcage and he pivoted me around to face him. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he murmured. His eyes were bright and his smile was disorienting—it was almost enough to make me forget about the panic in my bones but, nope, it was still there, chipping away at my resolve.
My tension must have been written on my face because Logan’s features suddenly transformed, his eyes focused and a small frown played on his lips. I could feel his arms around me stiffen. “What’s wrong, Amelia?”
I blinked. “I . . . um . . .” I hesitated, finding myself incapable of bursting this bubble. I wanted to rewind the last thirty seconds and pretend like nothing was wrong. His arms around me tightened as he took another small step closer to me, as if closing the distance between us could eliminate any threats.
“Amelia.” He said my name again, and this time it sounded like a plea. “Tell me.”
I let out a breath. “Adam said he wanted to invite you to a concert.” My voice was only a whisper. “He wanted to invite you . . . and Mara . . . for a double date.”
Logan briefly closed his eyes, and my heart hung over the edge of a cliff until he opened them again, and I could see his panic subsiding. “Is that what this is about?” And then he pulled me into a hug, pressing the whole front of his body to mine. My face rested on his chest and I could feel his heartbeat was steady, providing a sort of comfort. “Amelia, I haven’t been with Mara in months. Your brother is an idiot. I’m so sorry.”
I felt his hand cup the back of my head, his fingers winding into my hair, as my whole body melted into him. “Fuck,” I said. I didn’t know if I said it to him or to myself, but it was a much needed release of tension from my throat.
“I’m sorry,” Logan said again. I could hear the rumble of his voice through his chest. “Adam and I haven’t kept each other updated as well as we used to. I should have told him that I ended things . . . I should have mentioned it a while ago.”
