Your B&B or Mine

by Melissa West

  “Hey,” she said, unable to hide her excitement at seeing him and not caring in the least.

  “Hey yourself, gorgeous.” He leaned toward her just as something over her shoulder caught his eye from, and she knew without him having to say anything that he’d seen the Pruitts.

  “They’re here for dinner,” she said, trying to calm the storm she saw brewing in his eyes. Only this wasn’t something that words could settle. This was all misery, a wound that would never heal, no matter what she said. “Logan, look at me.”

  But she knew he couldn’t. Instead he hugged her like she were his little sister, and then stepped as far away from her as possible.

  Savannah tried to push aside the ache in her chest at his reaction. He was trying to spare the Pruitts’ feelings. How could she be upset? Only this didn’t feel like a simple act of kindness. This felt like a completely different Logan. The kind, compassionate businessman she knew transformed to a broken soldier before her very eyes. And maybe that was life for a soldier. Maybe their fatigues would forever remain tattooed to their bodies, right below their civilian clothes, never vanishing no matter how hard they scrubbed their skin.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Pruitt,” he said, forever the gentleman. He walked around the desk to them, shaking Mr. Pruitt’s hand then hugging Mrs. Pruitt, and all Savannah could do was watch, her eyes burning so badly she had to swallow several times to keep her emotions at bay.

  Lifting her head, she walked over to join them, feeling less and less like she belonged there.

  “I was just telling Logan that I would love to have you both over for lunch before he heads back to Atlanta and you to Boston,” Mrs. Pruitt said. “Will would have loved to see you were friends now.” Her voice cracked only once when she said Will’s name, but otherwise she showed nothing but genuine happiness at seeing them.

  Logan’s eyes found the wall beside them, and though he nodded once, he was no longer with them. Maybe he was back in Afghanistan. Maybe Iraq. Maybe at Will’s funeral. Savannah couldn’t be sure, but he wasn’t with her. And what scared her most was that she didn’t know if this was one blip on their relationship map or if it would be like this forever. A giant step back for every inch they took forward. Would every reminder of Will have him retreating?

  She didn’t know, but she did know that she couldn’t handle him leaving her again. Losing Will had almost broken her, and then Logan right after was enough to make her question how she would ever continue.

  She did, but only by leaving town and never ever looking back.

  ...

  Logan felt like all the air had been sucked from his body by a tornado, his skin pricking like even it wanted to escape. He watched Will’s parents sit down on their blanket in the gardens, Mr. Pruitt pouring a glass of wine for Mrs. Pruitt, and then the sweet smile on her face as she accepted it. They deserved nothing but happiness, and damn if he wasn’t the asshole who’d gone and moved in on Will’s girl, the one person they still viewed as a means to their son. He wanted to punch himself, but then Savannah returned from showing them to their spot, and he could see the hurt on her face before she’d even said a word. There was no winning here.

  “Can I speak to you please?” she asked.

  The main dining area was crowded with people, the bed-and-breakfast at full capacity. Logan would have grinned with pride, if he weren’t wishing he could be somewhere else. He thought of the Pruitts out on the lawn, their opinion of him forever golden, and then of Savannah looking at him like he held her pure heart in his dirty palms. For Christ’s sake, he was here to take over her family’s business. She should hate him. She should push him away and tell him never to return, as she had those first few days. This…this was just…

  “I need to make a call.” He heard himself say the words, but even as they left him he wished he could reel them back in like a bad cast. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything else. He felt his body shutting down, his heart closing up, steel slipping over his skin and bones, replacing the warmth with cold.

  When he’d joined the army, they’d taught him to leave his old self behind. Those weeks in basic training were meant to breakdown the image he held of himself and replace one, singular, with unit, plural. He was no longer a singular vessel, but a part of something greater.

  It had taken Logan a long time to shake the feeling of worthlessness once he left the army, and even now, there were moments he questioned the importance of his life. He pushed aside his negative thoughts most of the time, because while he wasn’t on a mission to support the freedoms of the American people, he was living out his best friend’s greatest wishes. Surely that meant something.

  But Will hadn’t wished for his best friend to be with the love of his life. Still, how was it Logan’s fault that he and Will fell for the same girl? How was it his fault that Will called dibs first? It wasn’t like he could turn off those feelings. He might have been a soldier, but he was also just a man, trying his best to do what was right and failing at every turn. Vowing to never fail again, he’d left Savannah. Left all those old feelings behind. Only to end up right back in the nightmare.

  He was a fool.

  “A call. At this hour.” It wasn’t a question and her tone was enough to make him want to ask her for forgiveness. For her to forget the stupid comment and sink into him the way she did, like he and he alone could shield her from the world.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “I have a demanding job. They call me when they want something, and they require me to respond. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  He looked pointedly at her now, allowing his anger at himself to take over his logic. “You’ve been here nearly a month, Savannah. What company on the planet would allow that kind of leave for someone vital to their organization?” Please, God, kick me in the teeth now before I do any more damage.

  “So, you’re saying because my company allowed me an extended leave that I can’t possibly be important to them? It couldn’t at all be that I have an amazing boss, who herself lost her mother last year? That she allowed me to take a week for bereavement, plus all the vacation time I needed? That I work every night making sure my job is covered and no emails are going untouched? No, that wouldn’t at all make sense to you would it? You’ve never thought of any one other than yourself your entire life.”

  Her words hit him square in the chest. Of all the people in his life, all the people he knew, he never thought she was fooled by the image he portrayed. He thought she saw more, saw deeper, and the realization that she was like everyone else hurt more than he could have imagined.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but you were thinking it.”

  He didn’t deny what she said, mainly because at this point he wanted her angry as much as he wanted himself to be angry. Anger produced results. Other emotions weren’t so easy to process.

  The sky had darkened to black, nothing out except the full moon to stare down on them. like even it judged him and his horrid actions. He walked down the front steps, Savannah beside him, and he desperately wanted to ask her to turn back. At the moment, his mind wasn’t thinking clearly enough to have this conversation. Any second he could ruin everything, and he still didn’t know if that was exactly what he needed or the worst thing that could possibly happen to him. The war between his mind and heart waged on.

  Savannah stopped a few yards down the drive, her arms wrapped around herself. He couldn’t see her face clearly in the dark, but he didn’t need to. Her thoughts were clear.

  “Just do it now.”

  His teeth ground together as he stared into the trees cradling the drive, every muscle in his body aching from the effort not to go to her. “Do what?”

  “Say good-bye. Do it now.” Her eyes lifted to his, tears brimming on her lashes, threatening to rain. “I can’t take you leaving again without a good-bye. I at least deserve that.”

  “Savannah…”


  “Just do it!” she cried.

  He peered down into the face of the woman he loved, his heart shattering into tiny pieces. “I can’t.”

  She shook her head and wiped away a stray tear then turned back to the bed-and-breakfast, and all he could do was watch her go, not strong enough to stop her and sure as hell not strong enough to leave.

  Once she slipped inside the door, he pulled his phone from his pocket, prepared to text Leigh to look after her, but saw a new voicemail from the office. He clicked it and lifted his phone to his ear, his body going numb with each word.

  “Logan? It’s Alan. Bill and I will be in Maple Cove tomorrow to look at the bed-and-breakfast. Meet us there at nine.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Savannah woke to a cold bed and nothing but the sound of her hammering heart to keep her company. She’d dreamed about her and Logan’s first kiss, the rain all around them, his face etched with regret as soon as he pulled away. The kiss had plagued her for months afterward, but eventually she’d come to the realization that she couldn’t erase it any easier than she could erase any other mistake. The problem was she didn’t view it as a mistake. And the blow of discovering that he did had been enough to make her hope she’d never see him again.

  When, exactly, their relationship had become more, she wasn’t sure. Maybe the day he rescued her while stranded out on the lake. Maybe the day he told her Will had died. She and Will had shared a deep love for one another. They knew the other’s faults and accepted them willingly. But Savannah couldn’t say that Will understood her deep down in her bones the way Logan did.

  She still remembered that fateful baseball game all those years ago, the impossibly hot sun above them, and a boy in a Maple Cove High uniform coming up to her. At first she thought he was Logan. It was only after she lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun that she realized it was Will, a boy she had always considered a friend. Her eyes had drifted to the dugout for only a second, a part of her searching for Logan even then, but he was nowhere to be found. And besides, they were not the same. Will was her match, a solid guy with a solid family and a solid future.

  It had taken her a surprisingly short amount of time to love him, though she would never have said she was in love with him. At the time, the idea seemed dramatic and juvenile. Relationships were built on more than silly, overly emotional feelings like love. Still, she respected him and admired him and, for all intents and purposes, loved him. And she would have married him and likely been a very, very happy person.

  Because she was blind to the truth.

  Her heart belonged to another boy, a boy who had the power to make her fall into a deep, gut-wrenching love, and that boy wasn’t Will. The tragedy of it was that she was no longer blind. Her eyes were wide open and her heart so gone it was a wonder she could function without him around. But that man didn’t want her, not in a real, tangible way. Not in a work through the tough stuff, fight until you cry, do whatever you must to hold on kind of way. And she wanted that kind of love. She deserved that kind of love.

  Sadness took her over as she opened the door to Jim’s Hardware, but it held only a second, because the moment she stepped inside, her eyes landed on her sister standing far closer to their handyman than one should unless…

  They started to lean into one another and then— Oh my God!

  Turning quickly to avoid being seen, Savannah slammed into the person coming in after her, a stand full of postcards toppling over as she jumped back.

  “I’m so sorry,” Savannah said. She dropped to her knees to pick up the postcards, only to find Patricia Pruitt staring down at her.

  Utterly fantastic.

  With one glance over her shoulder, she saw that Leigh and Jim were now several feet a part, their cheeks far too red for Savannah to have misunderstood their closeness. Jack was going to kill Jim. Like, chop off his head kill. He’d always been strict with his friends—touch one of his sisters, lose a finger. And though Jack was older now, and dealing with his own problems, she couldn’t imagine he’d simply let this go.

  Savannah focused on Mrs. Pruitt..

  “Oh, good. I was hoping to run into you again.”

  Savannah set the rack back up and began haphazardly placing the postcards into spots—clearly all the wrong ones, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask Jim to direct her.

  “Mrs. Pruitt. Nice to see you again.” The rack started to fall back over, so Savannah grabbed it, tried to straighten it, and then, realizing she’d likely broken something that made it work, leaned it against the wall. Crap. Jim was going to kill her. She’d have to offer free dinner one night. Or maybe Leigh already gave him free dinner, because they were— She didn’t want to think just then about exactly what they were.

  Savannah realized in her mental babble she’d missed something Mrs. Pruitt had said. “Sorry, what did you ask?”

  “I was hoping you had a free moment to come by the house. I have something for you.”

  “Oh, um…” She glanced around as if for help, but then her eyes landed squarely on Leigh, who looked like she’d just stolen a hammer and had gotten caught in the act. Gah. Why couldn’t she just tell Savannah? Were they really such strangers that she couldn’t tell her own sister that she liked Jim?

  “I understand if you’re too busy.”

  They were blocking the door now, with several people trying to leave or come in. Having no other choice, Savannah nodded. “Sure. What time?”

  “How about now?”

  ...

  The walk to the Pruitt’s home was both absurdly short and impossibly long. Mrs. Pruitt talked about the weather, the upgrades to the elementary school where she taught, anything and everything, as though they were still as close as they once had been. She would have made an amazing mother-in-law, and one of the things that hurt so badly about losing Will was losing his family. His family loved her and she loved them back.

  The Pruitts’ two-story house sat directly off Rochester Street, one road over from Main. It was one of many on the street, all of them close to the road, sidewalks lining their fronts. Like something out of an old sitcom, it was all smiles and happy times around the kitchen table for breakfast every morning. That was the Pruitt home through and through.

  The house was brick, with a white front porch and black shutters, the blinds raised in all the front windows to allow in light. Even after losing their only son, the Pruitt home had a happy vibe to it.

  Mrs. Pruitt opened the already unlocked front door and then held it for Savannah.

  “Would you like some tea? I know you were always a coffee drinker, but sometimes in the afternoons I like to enjoy tea on the back patio. Would you care to join me today?”

  Guilt punched through Savannah’s heart at the hopeful expression on her face. She should have come by more often that summer after Will died, asked how she was, made sure she knew Savannah cared. Thankfully, the Pruitts had been away for the last few weeks, so at least her absence now wasn’t so noticeable.

  “Tea sounds great.”

  “Earl Grey or English breakfast.”

  “English breakfast,” Savannah answered.

  Mrs. Pruitt beamed at her, same as she had the day before at the bed-and-breakfast. “Fantastic. I just need to grab something. Would you mind helping yourself outside? You remember the way?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As she started down the long hall to the deck, memory after memory hit her. Many of them of Will and the smile that never seemed to leave his face, but others were of Logan, tiny details she’d never noticed.

  Logan holding open the door for her when they’d eat out back.

  Logan switching seats so she could sit beside Will when they watched a movie, his eyes darting to her more than once during the film.

  Why hadn’t she seen these things before?

  Taking her seat outside on the stone patio, the sun bright above, she began to rethink her time around Logan, and each memory brought a new detail, a new encounter wit
h the two of them, until finally there was no denying the truth. She’d thought Logan had hated her when she was with Will, that she was nothing more than the annoying girl who was always around, taking away his best friend. But he was just putting up a front. He’d liked her. Oh God, he’d liked her. How could she not have seen it before? All those times after Will died when he talked about always seeing her, the real her, she hadn’t realized what he was really trying to say. That whatever happened between them that summer wasn’t the start of it for him. It had been going on much longer, the same as it had for her.

  “Here we are,” Mrs. Pruitt said, slipping out the sliding glass door and setting a tea service down in the center of the table where Savannah sat. Then she handed over a shoebox that she’d rested on the tray. “And this is for you.”

  Savannah’s gaze lingered on the box. “What is it?”

  “Some personal things that were Will’s. I think he’d have liked you to have them. You can open it now or at home. Either way, I’ll understand.”

  “Oh, no. I can’t take this.”

  Mrs. Pruitt set her hand over Savannah’s. “He loved you, dear. So much. He would have wanted you to have this. And he would have wanted you to be happy.”

  “I am happy.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Pruitt asked. “Then why does it look like you’re about to cry?”

  Savannah’s gaze traveled to the perfectly landscaped backyard and the white fencing that lined its perimeter. She wondered if Canton Park had been their landscaper, which brought her back to thinking of Logan. “Life’s just harder than I thought it would be. They never tell you that, you know?” She focused back on the woman beside her, the woman who had been like a second mother to her when she was a teen. It was weird to view her as a stranger now.

  “There is this saying I’ve always loved. It goes: if the bad times weren’t so bad, the good times wouldn’t be so good. We need them both to fully appreciate what we have, dear.”

  “So you’re saying…”

  Mrs. Pruitt took her hand. “I’m saying, be happy. You have a life, seems a waste not to live it.”