The silence that followed my admission was deafening. We both sat still, me drowning in the intense embarrassment that threatened to boil me alive inside my own skin. Logan in a state of jaw-dropped shock.
“You took my last name?” he finally questioned.
I gave the barest nod of my head in response before my childhood best friend leaned forward and slid his hand behind my head a second before his lips collided with my own. With zero hesitation, he slid his tongue across the seam of my mouth and when I opened, he plunged in and kissed me so hard my toes curled, nerve endings tingled, and my heart stopped beating. Maybe time stood still. All I knew was that once it restarted, Logan’s hands framed my face and his eyes shined with moisture that hadn’t been there before.
“You took my last name.” It wasn’t a question that time. It was a statement.
“You just kissed me,” I whispered as my fingers traced the lingering warmth on my lips.
“It was long overdue.” He leaned in and gave me another quick peck before pulling back. “Why did you use my name?”
“I’ve always used it for work,” I admitted without thinking. “I just wanted to make it official.”
“For work?” Logan asked.
“Shit,” I hissed.
“Nope,” he insisted. “You have to tell me the rest now. What exactly do you do for work, Aoife?”
“I write romance books.”
“How long?”
“What do you mean by ‘how long?’”
“How long has that been your job?”
I really didn’t want to answer him, but I supposed it was something I couldn’t avoid. “Since I started high school, but I was picked up by an agent and publisher during freshman year of college.”
Hurt bled through his features. “You never told me.”
“I would have, but I wanted to wait for the right time. It was hard enough to hide it when no one else knew. It was the only way I could squirrel enough money away for us in case we needed to run and hide together.”
“Because we were supposed to get married so your dad couldn’t force you to marry a man of his choosing.” Logan appeared to get lost in his thoughts then.
“Yes, but it ended up not mattering.”
“Because I was an idiot,” he admitted. There was nothing I could say to contradict him. It was true. If he hadn’t believed Grace over me, we may have been married for the past twelve years rather than missing one another.
“Did your dad know about the writing?”
“I don’t see how he would have.”
Logan gave a quick nod of his head as his eyes glazed over. “So, he’s been checking for the possibility that you’d take my name at some point. That is the one thing we never checked for. I didn’t think you’d have anything to do with me or my last name after what happened with Grace. It never occurred to me to run a combination of our names through the searches.”
“I should have known better than to change it to what I did, I guess.”
“I’m glad you did it.”
“You are?”
“Of fucking course I am. First, it’s less paperwork for you to do later. Second, it means you’re back finally after twelve long fucking years. I’ve missed the hell out of you.”
“What do you mean less paperwork?”
“We’re getting married. You already have my name, so it’s one less thing to worry about.”
“We can’t get married!” I all but shrieked at Logan.
