“Why would I think otherwise? No one had seen you or heard from you. No one knew where you were or how you could have left Sagebrush. The best I could figure out is that you left on foot over Compass Mountain. But then no onecould find you on the other side. That was the hottest March on record. There was no way you could have hiked eight miles over steep terrain in that heat. You were already acting…I thought…well.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry, Logan. I didn’t think—I didn’t think anyone would miss me.”
That hurts. I turn my attention back to the red chip in my hand, flipping it between my fingers again and again and again. Is that the answer? She just thought I wouldn’tcare?
“So that’s how you found the cave,” says Sierra finally. “You were searching for me?”
“When you first went missing, I searched until summer hit, and then I could only search for an hour or two at a time until it cooled down again in September. I found the cave a couple of months later.”
Sierra’s laugh sounds hoarse. “God, Logan. You were supposed to say that you lost all the gold in a bad crypto investment or something.”
“Crypto? Do I seem like that much of a tool to you?” I joke weakly.
“Don’t make me answerthatquestion.”
I smile, but my heart is no longer in it. I drain the rest of my wine. The last swallow leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
“Another round?” she offers. “I feel like I owe you at least one glass of wine for what I put you through.”
“I’ve had enough,” I say. “I’ll close our tab.”
I berate myself all the way back to the house. What the hell am I doing? Taking her on wine-tasting dates. Forcing my company on her. Seth was right—some things are better left buried.
Shit. Seven weeks can’t pass fast enough.
When we arrive at the house, Sierra takes my arm and gently turns me toward her. She searches my eyes, hers dark and liquid in the moonlight. Then she plasters herself to me in a hug that feels almost ferocious. My breath stops. I take a moment to savor the feeling. Her arms lashed around me, her soft breasts squished against my chest, her hair tickling the tip of my chin as my breath and the wind stir it.
For years, I imagined this moment. What it would feel like to have her in my arms again. My imaginings don’t come close to how sweet—how bittersweet—the reality is. Even still, I enclose her in my arms and pull her even tighter against me, and we hold each other. Seconds stretch to minutes, and yet I can’t bring myself to be the one who lets go, who steps away.
When we finally separate, it’s she who initiates it. But I know—because even after all these years, I knowher—she didn’t want to let go either.
Ten
Sierra
The weeks leading up to the Candlelight Tour pass quickly. The two of us fall into a rhythm that is both familiar and awkward since the night we went wine tasting.
We start our days together on the couch in the living room. Logan lends me a laptop, and I go through his list, line by line, while he plans the next event, typing intensely next to me.
I have no idea when he transformed into part worker bee, part world-domination robot. He certainly never acted that way in school, although in retrospect, that was partly my fault. I skipped class often and frequently convinced him to ditch too.
Once, after Brianna Bernard announced during PE class that she had seen different cars parked outside my house on three separate occasions over the past week and mused out loud if I also serviced the men who stayed over with my mom—and if that was how I afforded my new Converse shoes—I convinced Logan to skip the rest of the day. We then broke into a recently foreclosed bar off Main Street, got shitfaced on the half-empty tequila bottles left behind, and got picked up by the cops when we tried to stumble home after curfew.
His parents were not amused.
Anyway, he paid moderate attention in school, doing just enough to placate his parents when they gave him a hard time. But his intensity and work ethic have only quadrupled since then. It’s a sight to behold.
And watch him I do. Somehow, I’m always aware of him. Every small movement draws my attention. When he rubs the back of his neck, stirs a spoon in his coffee mug, or shifts in his seat. I glance up every time he sighs, every time his breath changes. I’m attuned to his rhythm, ready to stand when he does, to start lunch, to lean back when he needs to bounce ideas off me. It is a relief when he goes in to do his cave tours and leaves me alone—I’d never catch up on work otherwise.
Logan-the-boss is different from Logan-the-high-school-boyfriend. There are flashes of the same person. Logan always wanted to hear my thoughts about things when we were younger. We could always talk for hours—with or without tequila—and he was one of the few people in my life growing up who would give me his undivided attention when I spoke. It was addictive then, and it is addictive now. Now he listens closely to my ideas, and every time he focuses that quiet intensity on me, my pulse stumbles.
Logan-the-boss is also a lot more patient than Logan-the-boyfriend. When I messed up an order and paid for overnight shipping instead of ground, I braced myself for the old Logan. I fully expected him to unleash his temper on me for such acostly mistake. His jaw tightened, there was a sharp inhale of breath, and then he simply said, “No problem. Mistakes happen. Let’s double-check that next time, okay?”
And that was that. No yelling. No ranting. No calling me careless or stupid.
He used to be so angry. At the time, I didn’t blame him at all. I felt the same. Life was frustrating. He struggled to find his place as the youngest son in a family of seven in a deadbeat town that never expected much of him. He used to call himself a useless runt all the time, even though I begged him not to, which would sometimes trigger fights between us too.
That’s another thing. We haven’t fought. Maybe it’s because we’re keeping things platonic, mostly professional. It makes it easy to dodge certain topics and keep things cordial. But I don’t know how long we can keep pretending the past isn’t sitting between us, polluting the air around us like some heinous, chemical-lavender-scented Dollar Tree candle.
