His older brother that was the father of my six-year-old little boy.
7
Breaking (Old) News
Itried to form words, but I couldn’t even manage a sound. Things had shifted between Levi and me that night. We’d gone from high school rivals to… something else. And for his part, he’d tried to reach out to me the remainder of that summer.
He’d left for a family vacation the next day, but he’d called me. I hadn’t answered. I’d had immense guilt about sleeping with Logan, even though I had been in love with Logan for as long as I could remember.
It hadn’t made sense at the time. I hated Levi. He’d been a thorn in my side since we were kids. And Logan… Logan had been the man of my dreams.
Why was I so miserable afterward? I’d lost my virginity that night to a man I supposedly loved and yet it was the kiss with Levi that was burned in my memory… branded on my skin.
Since that night, even with his tragic death, I realized I didn’t love Logan. Not in the real sense of the word. It was a crush. The kind of crush that was intense and overwhelming and born from a lifetime of not knowing what real love was, but it was only a crush. And it had only been on my side.
Logan was a nice guy, but the night we’d spent together didn’t mean anything to him. It was obvious the second my virginity had disappeared, and the evening was over.
Logan and I had been friends, but any kind of feelings were one-sided on my part. He was just a nice guy. A high school kid that had been able to see past my status and get to know me as a person. A boy that had been fun to laugh with and talk to. A friend I’d missed after he’d graduated. A decent first time. And he would have stayed all those things if Max hadn’t come into the picture.
Now things were more complicated.
Especially with Levi.
Levi had called. And then called again. And then called at least twenty more times over the next few months.
By the time I’d worked up the courage to face him, at least over the phone, I’d been late—too late to make an excuse for why I kept missing his phone calls.
And then I found out I was pregnant.
Six weeks after the positive plus sign on my home pregnancy test, before I could fully process what to do with the baby or my life or the future, Logan had been killed in the desert where he was stationed somewhere in the Middle East. IED. Three men in his unit were lost. But Logan’s death had hit Clark City like an explosion of its own.
Everyone mourned our heroic golden boy. No one knew how to recover or move on or go on with life. Nothing was certain anymore. Hope was gone.
Logan Cole was the epitome of perfect. At least to this town. He’d been smart, musical, athletic, skilled in all things farming, ranching, and cowboying. He was class president and valedictorian and student council vice president and captain of the football, basketball, and soccer teams. His list of accolades went on and on.
It was easy to see how I’d fallen so quickly for him. Not to mention, freshman year, when he’d been a junior, we had Spanish class together. He always sat by me and let me borrow his pencil. I told him I liked his hair. He told me he loved my style—grunge meets goth with a side of cowgirl.
It was love at first compliment. Not to mention he didn’t seem to care or even know that I was the poor loser from the trailer park.
Logan was not at all caught up in the small-town politics that ruled everyone else.
Which meant that if he had stayed alive, I would have for sure told his family about the baby. I would have told Logan immediately. At least after I’d been able to work up the courage.
But by the time I found out I was pregnant, he was halfway around the world without the ability to connect to civilian social media. And the one person I could have asked for his email or phone number or whatever was Levi. And I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t admit to Levi that I’d accidentally been knocked up by his brother after our life-altering, soul-shattering, world-rocking kiss.
But if Logan wouldn’t have died, I knew I would have told him. Eventually.I would have. It would have been his right to know… to be given the chance to be Max’s dad. Or not. It would have been his choice. But a choice I never would have taken away from him. I respected him too much.
But sincehewas taken away from us rather abruptly, Max’s dad had remained a secret.
What started out as a way to protect my frayed reputation from speculation that I was lying to profit from Logan Cole’s death, had turned into something more like protecting my son from the Cole family and this town in the past six years.
Obviously, I had been scared that nobody would believe me, that they’d assume I was just trying to get money from the family. But now I was afraid they would see my situation, see my station in life and try to take Max from me.
They had everything—money, power, influence. I worked at Rosie’s and lived with my mom.
God, just thinking about it made me sick with indecision. It felt unfair to Darcy and Rich, no matter what I thought of them, to keep their grandson a secret after their son had died. Part of me believed they would want to know him just to have a piece of their son back.
On the other hand, it had been seven years. Max was six. What if they didn’t believe me? What if they assumed I was making it all up for a paycheck. I couldn’t stand the idea of them rejecting my son. It killed me just to think that was a possibility.
