“No. It feels right.” I glance up at him and give him a small smile. “Now that the car’s back where it’s supposed to be, I feel like I can let go now.”
The closure surrounding my dad’s death, and Donovan’s inevitable conviction in the near future has helped me move past is all. It’s slowly getting easier to live without my dad, though there’s still days when the loss of him hangs over me like a storm cloud, his absence still felt everywhere around me.
It’s time to stop dwelling on the past and start looking to the future.
We walk side by side down the winding narrow paths around the cemetery as I try to remember whereabouts my dad is buried. After about fifteen minutes we finally find it. The grass is a little overgrown but there’s a bunch of fresh flowers carefully placed in the centre. The card along with them is signed in my mom’s handwriting. She’s never mentioned visiting before. Maybe she didn’t want me to feel bad or hurt me.
It feels weird being here again, the image of his casket being lowered in to the ground still pops up in my mind from time to time, and seeing how the grass has evened out over the top has a lump forming in my throat at the thought of how long it’s been since I last saw him.
As if sensing my unease, I feel Logan’s hand wrap around mine, squeezing gently to let me know that he’s here. It’s still a comfort to know that he’s here with me, just like it was to have him at my dad’s funeral, and although he wasn’t standing right beside me then, I knew he was there. It’s strange to think how things have changed in only a few months.
How could so much have happened in such a short space of time?
Back then I never in a million years expected Logan and I to be together, it was a dream, a fantasy that I never thought would come true. It still hurts sometimes to think that my dad will never get to meet him, but somehow I know they despite our age difference, he would have accepted Logan. They would have shared an interest in cars and music, and laughed at each other’s stupid jokes, but sadly the image of the two of them together will never be.
A sharp stab of pain spears my heart at the thought of my dad missing this, my twenty-first birthday and the car back to its former glory, but deep down I know he’s here in spirit.
“What are you thinking about?” Logan asks, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“Thinking about my dad, and how I wished he could be here. You know, in twenty-one years, this is the first time he’s ever missed my birthday. Even when he was working, he’d come home on his lunch hour just to see me.” My chin begins to quiver, threatening tears but I force them back.
“He’s here, he always will be, inhere,” Logan covers my heart with his hand. His smile comforts me and I reach up to press a quick kiss to his lips.
We spend a few more minutes beside my dad’s grave, and I touch my hand to the cool, smooth surface of my dad’s headstone. I think back to the letter he wrote me, telling me to do something spectacular, well, I did just that. I know fixing up the car wasn’t exactly what he meant, he meant spectacular as in, finishing college and finding a job I love just as much as he loved his, but the car was a good place to start.
It was something that I had to finish for him.
I place my hand in Logan’s as we head back to the car, and when we reach it, Logan stops me just before I climb in. “You okay?” he asks.
“I wish he could have met you, Logan.”
“I think he would have killed me for getting you involved with my shit, babygirl.”
“No, he would have thanked you for getting meoutof it.”
“I’m still sorry for everything, it’s all my fault. I can fix cars for a living but I fuck everything else up.”
“No you don’t. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. All that time you spent fixing up the car, you were fixing me up too, patching me back together and helping me through the pain of losing my dad. Honestly, I don’t know what I would’ve done had you not been here.” I reach for him, threading my fingers through the soft dark locks of his hair. “I love you Logan Cooper.”
A wide smile stretches across his face, but falters slightly from the split lip still being tender. “I think in a way you helped fix me up too. Made me see what was important and what I truly wanted from life. I convinced myself that sex was enough for me, I rebelled against love for so long it was a natural reaction to distance myself from it, but somehow you managed to worm your way into my heart and I’m a better man for it.” He kisses my forehead, letting his lips linger there for a moment. “I can’t promise not to fuck up somewhere along the line, this is all still new to me, but I’m so happy I get to experience this with you. I love you too, babygirl.”
He backs me against the driver’s door and covers my lips with his. His kiss is deep and long. Unhurried. Heartfelt. I lose myself in his kiss, his touch intoxicating, filling each of my senses so much I feel almost light-headed.
“Fuck, Ames, what have you done to me?” he breathes out, smoothing his thumb over my lips. “You’re it for me, baby.”
“Even when I’m old and wrinkly and grey-haired?”
“Especiallywhen you’re old and wrinkly and grey-haired. Because it’ll mean we’ve had a long and happy life together. And I plan on sticking around with you for a long damn time.”
My heart skips a beat at his words, and I fall even harder for him in this very moment, something I didn’t know was possible. I’ve never heard him talk like that before. So sentimental and romantic, and it warms my heart that he sees us together years and years from now, a time that feels so impossibly far away.
He leans in for a kiss, and I pour every morsel of love I have for this man into it. Just a couple of months ago, I was tiptoeing around my growing feelings for Logan. I never thought that he’d be what I needed to make me whole, and as it turns out, I was that for him too.
He showed me how to live, and I showed him how to love.
I pull back, looping my arms around his neck and crane up to look at him. “Who’d have thought I’d be the one to tame Logan Cooper, the panty-destroying playboy.”
He grins, taking my waist in his hands. “I’m well and truly whipped, that’s for damn sure.”
