AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Three
Aria
“Alright, I think I’m too old for the Gravitron.” I giggled as Logan and I stumbled out of the thrill ride at Atlantic Fun Park.
“Are you kidding? It was a blast! It was like being a teenager again, the best years of anyone’s life!” Logan laughed.
“If you say so,” I mumbled. “How long since you were a teenager?”
“Seventeen years. Why? Are you saying I’m old?” Logan joked.
I hesitated. “You’re thirty-five?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
I gaped at him. “No way! Are you kidding? I would have never picked you as being in your mid-thirties, Logan.”
“Thanks. I wish I got that more often.” Logan’s line of sight travelled the area. “Want to go on the flipping arm?”
I baulked at the big yellow arm flipping people upside down like ragdolls. I instantly felt ill at the thought. “Uh . . . no thanks, I think I’ll pass.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive! Are you trying to make me throw up?” I slapped him lightly on the arm.
Logan laughed.
“You’re a bloody daredevil, aren’t you?”
He flashed a shit-eating grin. “Yeah, I have to be in my line of work. But I guess I’ve always been that way. I went on my first rollercoaster when I was seven. For my sixteenth birthday, I entered the San Diego Triathlon and came in third. When I turned eighteen, I went bungee jumping and skydiving. By the time I was twenty-one, not only was I a second-year student at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, but I was rock climbing, snowboarding, surfing . . . you name it, I was into it. The more dangerous, the more attractive it was to me.”
Logan was a fascinating person.
“And now?” I asked.
He threw his arms out, indicating the rides surrounding us. “Now I go on amusement park rides, it seems. But I haven’t been in Virginia Beach long, so give it time. I’m sure I’ll find some kind of extreme pastime I’m bound to fall in love with.”
I considered my next words carefully. “This might be a personal question, so you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, but—”
He knew right away what I was going to ask. “Why did I discharge?”
I nodded.
“Shoulder injury. I had my left shoulder mangled by weapons’ fire on a mission.” Logan shifted his shirt, and I could see a pattern of scars peppered over the cuff of his extremely muscular shoulder.
I reached my fingers towards it before I realised what I was doing. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You can touch it.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat at the sound of his lowered voice. I rested my fingertips against it and traced along the rough, hardened skin. I held Logan’s penetrating gaze and noticed that he swallowed hard as well. The way he was looking at me . . ..
“When this happened, I promised my ex-fiancée that I’d get out, so that’s what I did,” he said in an effort to cut through the tension that was suddenly between us. “It gave me the time I needed to heal, but I went to a dark place and I took my frustrations and resentment out on her. It wasn’t nice. That’s why I left San Diego.”
“You have a fiancé?” For some reason, I felt my heart sink.
“Had,”he corrected, his voice low and husky.
He held my gaze, or I held his . . . maybe we held each other’s. An unfamiliar feeling flowed through me—a feeling that made my body feel warm. I wanted to explore it, but at the same time, I was afraid of it and of where it might lead.
