“We’re going back in two weeks,” Jeff adds.
“I’m just warning the girl that she might need to push me away so I don’t smother her.” Annie smiles. “I won’t mind.”
“Yes she will, but there are three other brothers for her to complain to, so it’s fine.” Logan squeezes my shoulder. “But that’s a problem for later.”
I exhale. “Wow. Okay.” I’m reeling, but it’s a good kind of reeling. “Please feel free to smother us. Or at least Logan. I think he loves it.”
He tips his head back and laughs, and I can’t look away. I don’t want to look away. He’s so beautiful, and he was right, his parents are lovely. A lot, but a good kind of a lot.
It takes us a whole hour and two cups of coffee to escape to his childhood bedroom.
“There’s no way I’m going to have a nap before I have to leave for the game,” he says, sitting on his bed.
It is, as promised, covered in a twenty-five-year-old fleece blanket, which he now pats.
“Come here.”
“You’re very proud of yourself, aren’t you?” I climb into his lap, straddling him on the narrow bed.
He slides his hands up my thighs. “Yep.”
I kiss his cheek and then rub my nose in his freshly-trimmed beard. “I wasn’t sure we’d ever get to be alone today.”
“And I have to leave in an hour.” He curves his hands up my back, pressing all of me against all of him. “But tonight I’m going to hold you all night long.”
“Are we sharing this delightful little bed?”
“No, there’s a suite in the basement we can use. That’s actually where I stay when I visit. This is just fulfilling a fantasy of mine.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm. It’s very specific. Your dad never left Minneapolis, we grow up together, you date some version of that Russian shithead, but I intervene at some point and steal you away from him, your heart never gets broken, we make out in this room all the time, and we live happily ever after.”
“That isveryspecific.”
“I’ve had a lot of time alone with my thoughts.”
“From vengeance fantasies to poetry with our bodies… You have so many layers, Logan Granger.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
“You should. You’re very creative.”
“Not at all. Everything I’ve ever said to you that’s poetic has come from observation, not my own mind.”
I giggle. “I dunno, it still feels like you have the soul of a tortured poet. What else did you crib? You told me about the line fromThe Mist at Dawn’s Edge.”
“I have a list.”
“A list!” I scramble off him, but don’t get far. He tugs me into his side as he pulls out his phone.
And sure enough, in his Notes app is a list labelledRomantic Things to Say to Frankie.
I cannot stop laughing.
“Poetry with our bodies…damn it, I got that one wrong. It was from the menu at the restaurant the first night.Find someone who wants to make poetry with your heart.Which is better thanwhat I said.”
“No. Nothing is better than what you said.”
