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Water dripped from Logan’s long eyelashes onto his cheeks, slipping off the smooth skin under his eyes and catching in his beard.
Everly watched the tracks it drew over his face as the two of them sought shelter in his truck. It had been at least ten minutes, and the drum of the sudden storm against the windshield and roof had not let up.
The rain had started too quickly, catching them in the downpour. Logan had been forced to tear off his plaid shirt to protect the camera, leaving him in nothing but a thin black T-shirt as they ran for the truck.
By the time they reached it, they’d been soaked to the bone. And soaked they remained, even with the heat blasting from the vents. The fabric of Everly’s dress clung to her skin, and her hair was plastered to her scalp. Logan was not faring much better: his T-shirt shed water over the seats, and dripped more moisture onto his already soaked jeans. Everly cringed. There were few things worse than wet jeans.
She held her hands in front of the heat. “This isn’t stopping any time soon.”
“Agreed.”
“There’s a dryer in the garage at my place. We could warm up and get those—” She motioned vaguely toward his lap, then immediately flushed in embarrassment. Were they at the point where she was allowed to acknowledge his lap and what it contained? “—dry.”
He scratched the back of his neck, a sheepish smile dawning on his face. As if he was wondering if they were in lap territory, too. Or what activities they might participate in that involved his lap.
Her blush deepened tenfold.
As he navigated back to her house, Everly fiddled with her phone. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d opened the Read-It app, and yet that itch remained. Part of her was dying to see what her favorite contributors thought of her episodes.
Resisting the urge, she dropped the phone in the cupholder. She needed to stop letting other people decide how she felt about herself. She’d become so worried about everyone else’s opinion of her that she’d lost sight of her own. Reading what they had to say, good or bad, was going to mess with her head. If they liked her, she’d panic about how to keep that going. And if they didn’t, she’d believe them. Neither was useful to the new Everly she was trying to become.
Logan’s eyes strayed briefly from the windshield, finding her phone and then her face. He didn’t say anything, but she saw the furrow in his brow that she now knew preceded a question.
“Have you read any of the things people are saying about me?” Everly smoothed her hands over her wet skirt. Droplets of cold water raced over her knee and down her leg. “About us?”
“I refuse to feed the trolls.”
“I’ve been trying to do the same, but Becca told me about some stuff she’s come across, and it’s…” Everly’s shoulders stuck at her ears in a half shrug. “… brutal.” Last night, the two of them had been sitting atthe kitchen table, waiting for their chocolate-chip cookies to bake, and Becca had pulled up the forums. “I don’t want you to stumble upon these by surprise,” she’d said. She’d also offered a few creative (and probably physically impossible) things that these trolls could do with themselves.
Everly cleared her throat. “There’s the usual comments about my weight—which, no surprise, people online aren’t exactly known for their originality—but then there’s stuff about how you and me make no sense.”
“We make perfect sense.” His tone was so serious, sosure,that her bones liquefied.
“They don’t think so. Because I look like… well… me… and you look like you.” Everly didn’t buy into that bullshit that people’s appearances had to match. Tens with tens, and all that. Nor did she think fat people couldn’t be hot or have hot partners. But she’d be lying if she denied that it stung to have outside observers doubt what felt so right to her.
“We look pretty excellent together.” They were stopped at a red light, so Logan grabbed her phone from the cupholder and leaned in, his cheek cradled against Everly’s soggy scalp, and snapped a selfie.
He handed the phone back to her.
They were a mess: hair matted, clothes soaked, cheeks red from the truck’s heat. And yet they were beaming.
He was right. They looked perfect.
“Anyone who doesn’t think this works is an idiot,” he said.
She angled over the center console to kiss his cheek.
The downpour was still in full swing when they reached her house. The two of them dashed from the cab of the truck to the side door, which, bless her brother, had an awning, since it took Everly more than one try with her slippery fingers to get the key in the lock.
Goose bumps popped up along her skin at the chilled air in the garage.
No one actually parked in there, and for a hot minute before hemarried Becca, Ellis had tried to make it his man cave, but now it was where things went when no one knew what else to do with them.
They’d cleaned out enough of the clutter to create a little laundry area for Everly so she didn’t have to go into the main house if she didn’t want to. There was a counter to fold clothes on and a drying rack for delicates and an old couch so she could read while she waited.
Logan idled in the middle of the space, hugging his arms to himself to keep warm.
“I’ll go find us some blankets or something,” Everly said, heading upstairs. “And then we’ll get our clothes dry.”
