“You look like a man in need of company,” she said, sliding into the seat next to him.
He turned his head slightly, enough to take her in. She was attractive, her dark red hair falling in loose waves across her shoulders, and her lips painted in a deep shade of red that matched her nails.
Logan offered a half, noncommittal smile. “That obvious?”
She shrugged and stirred her drink with a cocktail pick. “A little.”
She was direct, and under any other circumstances, he might have found that appealing. Instead, he felt nothing.
He nodded towards her drink. “What are you having?”
“Dirty martini.” She took a slow sip, watching him over the rim. “Not a fan?”
“I prefer my drinks uncomplicated.”
She drummed her nails against the edge of her glass, thinking. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not a drink.”
For the rest of the evening, they exchanged small talk. She was studying to be a neonatal nurse and had recently discovered that her boyfriend of six years had been living a double life. Where she’d been plotting their future, he’d been planning the getaway car.
Logan could hear the pain in her voice, not just in the words she chose but in the way she spoke them, as if each soft and bitter syllable was a reminder of her own perceived foolishness. But more than that, he saw it in how she held herself—shoulders drawn in, hands wrapped tight around her glass, and how she seemed to shrink further into herself the more she drank.
Against the quiet protest of his conscience, he invited her back to his place. Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was something far uglier. Either way, he ignored the part of himself that told him to walk away. She was quiet for most of the ride, her fingers tracing mindless patterns on the edge of her seat, and he was grateful for the avoidance because without it, he knew doubt would take hold.
At his apartment, he unlocked the door and stepped aside, letting her enter first. She hesitated half a second before crossing the threshold, and he followed.
It was all muscle memory, he told himself,a sequence of movements he could do blindfolded. But it felt hollow and more than that, it all seemed wrong.
Then she kissed him, slow and deliberate, like she was trying to anchor herself to the moment and steer them both away from hesitation. Clothes fell away, slipping to the floor, but Logan wasn’t really there. His mind was elsewhere, detached. Even when she gasped his name, her acrylic nails digging into the dips of his back, he felt nothing—just a hollow space where desireshould’ve been. But she needed this. And maybe, in a way he didn’t want to admit, so did he.
Later, when she was asleep beside him, her breath slow and even, Logan lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The weight in his chest hadn’t lifted. If anything, it had settled deeper within him, burrowing itself deep into his soul. He turned his head slightly, studying the woman curled up in his sheets. She was beautiful, and six months from now, he wouldn’t even be an afterthought to her.
But him? He was a man lying next to someone he didn’t know, confronted with the stark realisation that he was becoming everything he once despised, all for Daisy, a girl he barely knew.
XV
DAISY
Daisy wanted to wait until he returned from Afghanistan. Callan had other ideas.
“It'll be easier,” he said. “If anything happens to me, I know you'll be looked after.”
She’d told him not to be so absurd, that nothing could or would happen to him, but he insisted. So, they did.
Instead of the intimate garden wedding she’d pictured as a girl, they married at the courthouse with a handful of friends and his mother in attendance. He promised it was only a formality and they would do something bigger when he got home. As he put it, “He’d have more money then,” but Daisy knew it would never come.
It should’ve been the happiest day of her life. Callan was kind, generous, the kind of man she’d want her daughter to have, and he loved her—all of her. Yet, to her surprise, after it was all said and done, she locked herself in the bathroom. There, staring at her reflection and growing belly, she cried. Life was moving at double speed, and there she was, feeling as though she were taking on water and drowning from the inside out.
She sat there for a while. Then, without really deciding to, she took out her phone. The message from Logan was still there, the one about marriage, untouched for over a year. She didn’t ask what he meant in her reply. Didn’t ask how he was. She just typed:I hope you’re wrong about this.Then she let the phone slip from her hand to the floor.
An hour later, perhaps two, Edie finally came looking for her.
“Daze?” she said, knocking on the door. “Let me in.”
She stared at her shadow under the door, watching it flicker as she swayed. Edie had been drinking, which meant any advice she gave wouldn’t be tainted with unnecessary caution.
“Is anyone else out there?” she asked.
“Nope. It's just me.”
