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“You didn’t, either.”
“But why?” I ask, needing answers for us both.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing about you for over a decade now.” I flinch at the intensity of his stare and the solemn way he reaches for my other arm. “Hell, you could’ve texted that you’d moved on. Let me down easy instead of leaving me guessing.”
At first, I think he’s messing with me—he must be—and it makes me instantly defensive.
“Fuck you, Logan.”
“Fuck me? You disappeared on me, too. You can’t be the only one holding a grudge, and you damn sure don’t get to gatekeep the truth just because you’re afraid of mine.”
I huff, and he finishes washing me in stoic silence before tossing the rag at the foot of the bath.
Lifting my chin, we glare at each other—him with his shirt almost entirely soaked, and me naked, vulnerable, and not fucking liking it.
It’s the flicker of a challenge dancing over his features that eventually does me in.
“Come here, you stubborn woman.” He diffuses me easily by guiding me to sit so he can wash my hair.
With my muscles relaxed, I drag my knees to my chest to hide my breasts while Logan reaches for a small metal bowl beside the faucet. When he gently tips my head back, pouring water over my scalp and massaging the shampoo through the soaked tresses, my entire body turns to Jell-O.
After a moment, I find the courage to say what I’ve wanted to say to him for years. Things I’ve written in letters I couldn’t send. What I’d prepared to tell him when I moved back to the island after college.
“I waited for you after class every day for two weeks, thinking maybe it just took longer for your transfer to be approved. But when every call or text I sent never went through, I assumed you blocked me.”
Logan listens intently, going through the motions of rinsing shampoo from my hair and then applying conditioner. He’s thorough, yet gentle, scratching his nails against my scalp before dragging his fingers through the ends.
“When I came back to the island and found out you had moved on, I don’t know. I guess at that point, I was convinced you didn’t care.”
“How did you know about Rachel?” he asks quietly.
“I went to your dad’s office in Tauntuma.” My stomach clenches, afraid to reveal the truth. “He told me you’d been seeing her for a while… that things were pretty serious between you two. That you were the happiest you’ve ever been.”
His body goes unnaturally rigid, face pinched with confusion before he says, “You were looking for me?”
“Yes.”
He finishes rinsing my hair, stewing over this revelation before breaking his silence. “I don’t understand… I tried to reach you for weeks, but all my calls and messages failed, just like you said. I thought you were mad at me for leaving the way we had. You couldn’t have known I didn’t have my phone, but by the time I got it back, it was too late.”
A tiny flicker of hope burns in my chest as he reaches for a towel from the rack. So he hadn’t forgotten me, had even tried to contact me.
“You didn’t have your phone?”
With help, I gradually rise to my feet. Rivulets of water sluice down my body, but Logan averts his gaze, holding the towel out to shield my nakedness, and the gesture corkscrews its way through my heart.
“He saw us in the barn the day before we left,” he says. “Took it shortly after you went upstairs.”
The last memory I have with him sucker punches me. He’d given me his grandmother’s ring that afternoon, promising me the world and then some.
That evening, Dad and Silas were engaged in a heated discussion that lasted for hours, and unable to get to him, we settled for watching each other from our bedroom windows.
I fought hard to stay awake, but when the sunrise woke me the very next morning, they’d already left without so much as a goodbye.
He helps tuck the towel around my body. “It wasn’t your fault, Pen.”
I scoff when he plucks the thought right out of my mind. I’m the reason we were in that barn to begin with. Because I couldn’t keep my hands, my body, my fucking heart away from him.
“Sure feels like it.”
