My climax is a gentle, warm wave. I relax into him as he finishes, melting into each other until I don’t know where he ends and I begin.
To think I could have had this all along. Could have hadhim.My heart cracks open.
Logan says he thought we both knew it was a temporary split. For a moment, I indulge myself in thinking what would have happened if John Hillerman hadn’t stopped to check on me when he saw me crying outside my house, locked out again by my mother’s vindictive boyfriend. If I had just been patient, if Logan had come back to me as he thinks he would have. Then what? Nothing would have changed. We’d be fighting, breaking up, hurting each other…things could have escalated.
My eyes dart back to the Blackstone poetry on the side table.
“What…” My voice croaks. I clear it and begin again. “What happened to her? To Lula Maude?”
“We don’t know. We may never know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes people are just lost to history. To time. We may never know what happened to them.”
“Do you think Blackstone’s last letter would have convinced her to come back to him?”
“He would have kept trying.” Logan sighs. “Hewouldn’t have given up. She was the love of his life.” He kisses the delicate tip of my ear.
I didn’t think it was possible to melt more, but I do.
“But maybe…maybe they needed that time apart,” I say, trying to finish my thought. I reach across him for the slim volume on the nightstand. I flip through the pages until the last letter. “Look, he talks here about becoming a better man. He talks about dumping the gold and starting over for her, trying to become respectable, I…” I stop. “I’m extrapolating a lot from a bundle of poems, aren’t I?”
“Extrapolate away,” he murmurs, brushing the hair away from my shoulder.
“I think he was trying to change, make himself worthy of her,” I say, tapping the page with my fingertip. “Who knows how their story would have ended if he hadn’t been shot? Maybe the tragedy wasn’t that they separated. Maybe that’s what they needed to grow.”
His eyes are so warm and piercing that my voice trails off.
I flush and let my hair sweep back over my shoulder to hide my face. “Though who knows? I’m hardly a historian,” I mutter.
The hair is pushed back from my face, and he’s right there, his expression soft.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Why?”
“Because it feels like you’re looking straight into my soul.”
“I am. And I like what I see.” He kisses me gently. “You’re beautiful.”
Tears leak out of the corner of my eyes. “You’re beautiful too.”
He tries to kiss me again, but I place a hand on his bare chest to stop him. I can feel his steady heartbeat, his warm skin. Every precious rise and fall of his breath.
“All right,” I say. Adrenaline races through me, lighting my nerves on fire. This feels like the most dangerous risk I’ve taken yet.
“All right?” Logan repeats, confused.
“Let’s make it official. I’ll be your girlfriend.” The way his face lights up matches mine. “I’m yours, Logan.”
His lips crash into mine. We don’t come up for air for a long time.
“Oh, baby,” he murmurs when we finally break apart. “You’ve made me so happy.” Tears leak out of the corners of my eyes, and he sips at them. “Please tell me these are happy tears.”
I nod, too overcome to speak. The future and my past are still there, looming over us. But for now, I let us both live in this moment together.
Twenty Five
