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A woman older than Ida, with vibrant red hair and tattoos covering her neck and shoulders, groans, “Oh, here we go. Now he’ll never shut up.”
A smirk tugs at his lips, crinkling his gold eyeliner. “I used to travel across the United States with the circus.”
Mable’s jaw drops. “A circus? Like, with tigers and elephants?”
“Absolutely, my dear. But it didn’t last long. I fell in love with a dancer from Nicaragua and finally found my calling.”
“Don’t forget about her stepbrother,” the man in suspenders, named Charles, pipes up.
He raises his glass, seemingly lost in a fond memory. “Now that was a ménage à trois for the books, my friend.”
Mable cocks her head. “What’s that?”
Ruffling her hair, Logan holds a finger to his lips, and Agán chuckles deeply. “After years of travel, and a nasty breakup, I settled in Topica Bay to finish the last of my scheduled performances, and I met Ida at one of my shows.”
I swallow a bite, too eager to ask for permission before I say, “Well, if you feel like coming out of retirement, Summit Estates is hosting a charity event this weekend. I think it’d be great to have a performance like that.”
Logan grins. “Now there’s a thought.”
Agán turns to him. “Charity event, huh?”
“Yeah, it was Dad’s idea, if you can believe it.”
Looking down at the opposite end of the table, Agán gasps. “Silas, charitable? Has hell frozen over?”
Noting my confusion, Logan swallows a bite of food, then clears his throat to clarify. “Dad didn’t find this area to be as profitable as Keerah, and tried to shut Honey Hollow down shortly after it was opened.”
The entire table erupts with a collective boo.
“How did you convince him to keep it?” Dorthea asks.
Ida’s face fills with pride when Logan says, “I told him that sometimes the smallest things can have the greatest value.”
A hoard of cloth napkins assails him as they heckle him with a round of aww’s.
Charles hooks an arm around Ida’s shoulders and raises his glass. “Now he’ll never be rid of us.”
He waves them off, but an odd twinge of envy burns my gut, temporarily stealing my appetite. I try to cover up with a smile, pretending not to be bothered, but it’s the pretending which bothers me the most.
Logan’s open and honest with the people he cares about while I’m still hiding behind my pride, afraid I’ll never measure up, afraid to be a failure, and more afraid to give this version of myself to the man in front of me.
“Oh, but Honey Hollow is such a gorgeous place,” the tattooed woman says. “Logan and Declan designed the complex themselves. There’s even a beautiful mosaic of the sun in the courtyard. You’ll have to stop by and see it sometime.”
His eyes are already fixed on me when I flick my gaze at him. He watches me slowly put the pieces together, one beautiful memory at a time.
“Black is too dark a color for you.”
“There’s nothing quiet about you, sunshine.”
“You’re beautiful. Did you know that? Like a ray of sunshine.”
It can’t be true. Logan didn’t—wouldn’t—use me as inspiration for Honey Hollow because, when it was built, we were living completely separate lives. And because if he did, then that means he still loved me.
It means maybe he never stopped.
When I clutch my water with a trembling hand, he’s there, gently smoothing his thumb over the backs of my knuckles.
I close my eyes, wishing like hell I hadn’t let my guard down. That we could stay in the safety of this cove, and I could hide a little while longer.
