“What do you think?” I ask him.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. I know it wasn’t something shocking.”
“How do you know?” I say. “It could be shocking. I could have gotten knocked up just like my mama did.”
“You could have,” he says. “Except you didn’t. Did you?”
“What if I had? What if I were about to have some other man’s baby right now? How would that go?”
Logan props himself up on his elbow and stares down at me. “You’re on the pill. You’ve always been on the pill.” He pauses. “Well, except for the first time. But we were always so careful, and I know you always are in general.”
“I’m not on the pill anymore.”
Now Logan’s really staring at me.
“But you’re correct,” I add. “I’m not pregnant. We didn’t even have sex. Not once.”
He lets his breath out like he hasn’t breathed this whole time. “Mace…”
I wave my hand in the air. “Your fiancée is obviously a lot more secure in her relationship with you than my—whatever Jamie was—was with me. You two seem to have worked everything out even after Blake said all that crap.”
“Yeah.” His voice sounds strained. “Blake’s an ass.”
“He means well.”
“I know.”
We lapse into silence as we keep looking up at the stars. Finally, I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t stand not knowing, and even though I’m scared of the answer, I have to know.
“So, is it the sex?”
Logan doesn’t answer me. The night makes for a good cover.
“The conversations?” I press.
Still nothing.
“The boobs?” I joke. “Seriously, what is it?”
Long pause. And then…
“She saw me painting in the desert, and she stopped and asked me what I was painting. I told her it was life. And she was hooked. She said the rich boys she’s dated are all the same—boring and spoiled. She said I was interesting, and she and her father asked me out to dinner. So I went.”
My breath catches in my throat.
“So there I was,” he says. “Sweaty, needing a shave, angry at my father, trying to paint my way out of a bad mood. I was standing there in the middle of the loneliness of the hot afternoon desert sun, and Gigi appeared out of nowhere. She said…” He pauses, and for a second I think he’s going to say something different, before he finishes with, “She said she thought we’d be good for each other.”
My heart comes into my throat.
Logan stops abruptly, and I reach over to touch his hand.
He grabs mine and holds on before letting it go. “Does it bother you a lot?” he asks me.
I shrug.
“‘Cause it would bother me,” he says.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
