Then again, why would I push it? This friendship feels good. Easy. Familiar. Like we’ve found our way back to something that used to work. Two peas in a freakishly short pod.
And he cooks now. Delicious pasta dishes, marinated pot roasts with creamy mashed potatoes, and crisp, savory stir-fries featuring our—unbeknownst to him—spirit-vegetable, snow pea pods.
“Necessity,” he says when I tease him about it. “I was spoiled by my mom. Can’t live off frozen meals forever.”
I can’t just let him cook for me, so we end up cooking together. Then eating together. Then I say I need exercise after sitting all day, and he leads me into the converted garage gym. And then I spend an hour every night trying not tostare at his bulging muscles as he lifts weights next to me. He certainly isn’t a runt anymore.
We’re spending so much time together that I don’t know how to feel. I should feel smothered. I should feel ready to bolt the minute I see a clear exit strategy. I honestly can’t remember the last time I spent so much time around one person and felt…fine. Great, even.
Okay, that’s a lie. Icanremember who I spent so much time around and felt this way.
And I’m looking right at him.
I can admit the second lie too—it doesn’t feel the same as it did before. It feels better. Not once has he made a move on me or indicated that he feels entitled to physical compensation from me. I’ve never felt so safe. He’s treating me with so much respect and care and…it’s almost dizzying. And arousing.
I know these feelings are dangerous, but I find myself making more and more excuses to extend our time together.
Late Friday night, we finally cross the last task off our daily list. Logan slumps back against the couch with a groan. His curly hair is mussed, his shorts are slung low on his hips, and he looks incredibly relaxed in a way that makes me swallow hard.
“Pizza?” he asks.
I look away. “Pizza,” I agree quickly. “Skip the pineapple.”
He orders while I jump up, unable to stay still. It’s been over a week since my last rock-climbing adventure. Working out in Logan and Seth’s home gym has been helping me get some of my energy out, but no matter how many times I increase the weight, barbells don’t give me the same rush that climbing does.
I peruse the bookshelf in the corner. A few fantasynovels—Seth’s, no doubt—and one slim volume catches my eye:Billy Blackstone’s Love Letters.Ah, the infamous erotic poems to one Lula Maude.
“Have you read this?” I ask when Logan sets down his phone.
“It’s been a few years.”
I flip through the pages. “Oh my god. This guy’shorny.”
Logan laughs at my scandalized tone. “Not what you expect from the prim and proper 1800s, huh?”
I bite my lip. It would be wildly inappropriate, but adrenaline rushes through me at the thought of reading this out loud to my boss-slash-ex-boyfriend.
I clear my throat dramatically.“Don’t deny this parched man a drink from your sweet waters. A sip from your lips, a taste of salty skin. My thirst swells and swells.”I skip a few lines.“Sate me, let me drink deep from the gushing spring…” I smother the instinct to fan my reddening face. “Your turn.” I toss him the book.
“I don’t want to read this.”
“You’ve always been such a prude,” I goad him.
Logan presses his lips together. “I’m not.”
“Prove it, then,” I say, my heart beating fast.
He cracks open the book and begins to recite, spinning and weaving line after line of sensual imagery. What starts as teasing me back soon melts into something else, and the laughing look in his eyes disappears. His tone deepens; his eyes darken. He cradles the book in his hands, licking his finger to turn each page. Goosebumps blossom over my arms with every soft rasp of a page turn.
“Is it only poetry?” I ask, my voice low.
“Yes, and one last letter,” he murmurs. “He wrote this to Lula Maude the day before he died. Got shot by the sheriffin nearby Cottonwood while trying to purchase stuff with the stolen gold. When I found the cave, there was a bundle of letters on the cot in the hideout. The historian thinks Lula Maude may have ended their relationship and returned his poems.”
He flips to the back of the book and begins to read.“Dearest, without you, I taste bitter agony day after day. Without you, I am fractured, splintered. Lost. No hope, my heart as porous and ravaged as tattered linen.”
I let out a slow, low breath when Logan’s gaze meets mine.
“My love, come back to me. Remember what we are to each other, what we are together; one bright flame in the undulating dark.”
