by Cat Carmine
I blink in surprise. “Um, sure. But this is pretty important.”
“So is this,” he says with a sigh.
“Okay, then.” Maybe a five minute reprieve isn’t such a bad thing. Plus, I have to admit that I’m dying of curiosity.
“You asked me the other day who broke my heart.” Logan takes a slow sip of scotch and then sets his glass down on the table next to him. The crystal makes a gentle clinking noise against the wood. “The truth is, I used to be engaged.”
“Oh.” I blink in surprise. I’m not sure what I was expecting him to tell me, but it wasn’t that. “Okay.”
“She died.”
For a second, my heart seems to stop entirely. Just completely stops beating. Everything in the room is still, like we’re inside a black hole. A vacuum. “Oh.” It’s about the only word I can manage.
“Yeah.”
“What ... happened?” I twist the top of the water bottle, forgetting that the cap is already off. I stare at it in confusion, while Logan gathers his thoughts, his words.
“Ovarian cancer. One day, she had an abnormal pap smear, and a biopsy later, she had cancer. Eight months later, she was gone.”
My hand flies to my mouth. The sudden shock of what he’s telling me hits me like a punch to the gut. His fiancee ... died. I know people who’ve died, of course. Our grandmother died when I was seven — that was my first time going to a funeral. And when I was in high school, a guy in the year above me — a guy named Aaron, who played basketball and was in a band — got hit by a train and died. It was sad, of course, and the guidance counsellors came to our school every day for a week and all the popular girls would run to the bathroom to cry and touch up their lip gloss. And of course, working at a flower shop, we do tons of funeral arrangements and see death in all its shapes and flavors.
But for Logan to lose his fiancee — that just feels like a whole other level of grief. One I could never even begin to touch the edges of, never mind grasp completely.
Logan is watching me, and I clench my hands in my lap so that they won’t go to my mouth the way they want to. Tears are threatening to burst from my eyes, and this time it’s definitely not the hormones.
“Logan, I’m so sorry,” I finally manage, even though sorry doesn’t even come close. I wish there was something I could say or do that would magically heal the hole in his heart, but words seem so trivial. “But thank you for telling me.”
He doesn’t say anything, just takes a swallow of scotch. He’s slumped in that chair now, and even though he’s in a nice jacket and a crisp shirt, he looks nothing like the imposing man I see at the office every day. He looks like a man who’s been through something and hasn’t yet figured out a way to come out the other side.
“What was her name?” I ask, because I’m suddenly intensely curious about the kind of woman who could have this effect on a man like Logan.
“Laura. Laura Echolls. We met at Yale.”
“How long were you together?”
“Four years. Three years together and then a year engaged. She had just started planning for the wedding when the diagnosis came, and then we put everything on hold while she tried to fight it. For whatever that was worth. Sometimes I think we should have gotten married right away, as soon as we found out. Then at least I’d have been a widower instead of ... this. There’s no name for it when you lose a fiancee, you know. There aren’t any books. No greeting cards.”
He looks surprised at the words coming out of his mouth, and then immediately picks up his glass again and drinks from it. I get the feeling he doesn’t talk about this very much, and now the words that he’s held back for so long want to come pouring out. As much as it’s hard to hear about this, part of me is honored that he would trust me with it.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say again, twisting the water bottle in my hands. I wish I had a scotch to sip, too. It might make this moment easier. Then again, is there really anything that would make this moment easier? A time machine?
“I wanted you to know because ...” Logan stops. His face looks hollow, thinner than it usually does. I realize he looks ... scared. Or maybe not scared, exactly, but nervous? Tense? Like a man who’s driving along the sharp edge of a cliff and is incredibly focused on just making sure he doesn’t go over the brink.
He sets his crystal glass down. “I wanted you to know because ... I’ve come to care about you very much, Blake. Since Laura died, I’ve filled my days and nights with women who mean nothing to me. Now, there’s someone who means something to me, and it’s ... all a little new.” He sighs deeply. He doesn’t look any less nervous now that he’s said all that. “I’m not really sure what I’m doing.”
The silence fills the room again, with only the hum of the central air. He looks so alone sitting there, and suddenly I can’t stand having all of this distance between us. I set my water bottle down on the stone coffee table and cross the room. Logan’s eyebrows raise a fraction as he watches me, but that’s the only reaction he gives.
When I get to his chair, I straddle his thighs and crawl into his lap. I run my hands through his thick blond hair, trace my fingers along his jaw, his treacherous cheekbones. His face is beautiful, like a stone sculpture, like something out of a Greek mythology textbook. To see him hurting like this is killing me. All I want to do is make him feel better, and there’s only one way I know how to do that. I lean in and let my lips graze his.
For a second, he doesn’t return the kiss. My heart thuds in my chest, but I keep kissing him, moving my lips against his and tasting the essence of him, mixed with the sweet peatyness of the scotch. His body is tense under mine, but then I feel him shift, his hips moving to accommodate me better, his hands sliding up around my ribs.
I push my tongue past his lips and explore the shape of him, the taste. He moves against me now, finally, kissing me back, letting his lips work against mine, finding my tongue with his own. It’s everything, this kiss — precious and sweet and fiery and life-giving.
His hands move from my ribs to my breasts, massaging them through the t-shirt I’m wearing. It feels like ages ago I was at home with Lucy, agonizing over what to wear to that bar with my sisters. Now, in Logan’s lap, what I’m wearing doesn’t seem to matter at all — only that I can remove it as quickly as possible.
I lift my hands away from Logan’s face long enough to hold them up over my head, so that he can strip away the t-shirt. Then I’m on him again, holding his face between my hands, leaning in to kiss him, to try to take his pain away.
He unhooks my bra and lets that fall to the floor, too, and then he’s pulling me to him, crushing my breasts against his chest.
“Blake,” he says, into my hair, as he kisses the side of my neck. “How do you do this?”
“Do what?” I ask, breathless.
“Be so amazing.”
I laugh lightly, but I don’t answer, because answering means talking, and talking means not kissing. And I don’t want to do anything that’s not kissing right now.
I lose track of how long we stay there for, but it’s a long time. Hours, maybe. Years. I would stay there forever, if given a choice, but eventually Logan stands, lifting me with him. I wrap my legs around his waist and let him carry me to his bedroom.
Twenty-Three
Logan lays me down on his sprawling bed. I’ve never been in here before, and normally I’d be nosing around, trying to suss out all his secrets. You know, important stuff, like what kind of book he keeps on his nightstand, or exactly how many pairs of shoes he owns. But this time, my eyes are glued to Logan’s. I couldn’t tear them away even if I wanted to.
He’s incredibly gentle with me. Nothing like the other times we’ve been together. He peels my leggings off one leg at a time, kissing my skin, running his tongue over the fields of goosebumps. We’re both silent, focused. I unbutton his shirt, slide it off his shoulders, run my nails down the hard plains of his chest. His beautiful chest.
My hands can’t get enough of
him. My mouth, either. We strip off the remainder of our clothing, such as it is, and explore each other’s bodies in a slow and languorous way. Again, so different from the other times we’ve been together. The moonlight streams in from the giant windows beside his bed, bathing us both in pale luminescence.
My pussy throbs, aching to feel him inside me, but I like this slow thing, too. It feels right. For a second, I let myself imagine that I have a lifetime of this to look forward to, a lifetime of Logan and his hands and his tongue and his heart.
I blink back the tears that want to fall. Because I don’t have a lifetime. I might only have tonight. Especially once I tell him the truth.
I roll onto my back and pull him with me. I want to feel the weight of him on top of me. The heft. The hardness. He cups my face in his hands and grazes my lips with his.
“Blake,” he says, between kisses. He seems like he wants to say something, but instead he just shakes his head and kisses me again. “Blake.”
I put my hands over his. “Logan.”
Nothing but names, but maybe they say more than that. A name is who you are, all the different parts of you. There are a thousand different pieces of me, and somehow Logan seems to know them. There are a thousand parts of him, too. And I’m starting to know them. Once, he was just a heartbreaker. Now, I know he’s the heartbroken, too. Both at once. Funny how that works.
“Please,” I say to Logan, when I can’t wait any longer. He nods once, then reaches towards his nightstand. When I see him pull out the slim silver packet, guilt ricochets through me. But this hardly seems the time to tell him we won’t be needing that, so I clamp my lips shut and wait.
When he’s poised above me again, I press my fingers to his jaw, forcing his eyes to stay on me. They’re dark blue now, almost navy. As dark and unfathomable as the ocean.
Logan presses the head of his cock against my entrance. For a second, I feel poised on the brink of some great chasm. Then he’s pushing forward, filling me with his length, his thickness. I curl around him. My arms wrapped around his shoulders, my legs around his waist, the walls of my pussy hugging his cock. Every part of me trying to bind him to me somehow.
We move together like that. Skin to skin. Heartbeat to heartbeat. The only lovers left on an empty planet.
I whimper as the sensations get to be too much. Logan kisses my eyelids, then my lips, then slams his hips against me again. Tender, yet unyielding. Just like Logan.
I can’t hold on any longer. I wrap my legs tighter around him, pulling him to me. My hips buck underneath him. Everything inside me clenches and then loosens. Liquid pools through me, to the pads of my fingers, the tips of my toes.
I realize I’m chanting his name, over and over. Logan kisses me again, silencing me, pinning his name against my tongue. He grunts once as he pummels into me, and then he’s collapsing on top of me, kissing the side of my neck, the hollow under my ear.
Somehow, I remember to breathe. I remember to blink and to swallow and to take air in and out of my lungs. Thank God for autonomic nervous systems.
Logan’s head is on my chest, and I trail one finger along his jaw. He doesn’t look at me. I see the cord in his neck tense. I swallow again. Nothing autonomic this time — pure nerves. I want him to look at me. I need him to look at me.
“Hey,” I say. Even though I speak softly, my voice sounds like a gunshot in the silent bedroom. For a minute, Logan still doesn’t move. Then finally, he tilts his face up, meeting my gaze.
His eyes are sad. Haunted, almost. The way he peers up at me, from between those dark lashes. Something in it cuts me. I realize, in that moment, that he wants to love me. He really does. I just don’t know if he can. If he’ll ever let himself.
The thought fills me with the deepest sadness I’ve ever known. Sadness for me, sadness for the little one growing inside me, and most of all, sadness for Logan. For this shining man who’s gone so dim. Who doesn’t let anyone see the flame that still flickers inside him.
Anyone, that is, except me. I’ve seen glimpses of it. His face when he enters me. The tension that seeps out of his shoulders when he’s kissing me. The way he bites back a grin when I deliver one of my oh-so-hilarious comments.
I’ve seen it. I know it’s there, those sizzling embers, that briefest flicker. But I don’t know how to fan it into life for him. I don’t know if I can.
His chest rises and falls. He hasn’t looked away from me yet. Maybe that’s good. Maybe this is ...
He rises up out of the bed. The sheets slip from his naked frame. He doesn’t say anything, just walks into the bathroom and closes the door behind him.
Everything in me deflates. Because this is too hard. It’s just too hard. For me and for him. And what’s going to happen when he finds out about the baby? If even loving me terrifies him this much, then how is he going to feel about adding another life to the mix? Especially a life that’s so tiny and fragile and tender?
A loss like the one Logan experienced, it changes you. Hardens something inside you. It has to. And maybe it’s just been too long for Logan. Maybe it’s just too hard.
I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping the sheet around me as I wait for him to come out of the bathroom. It seems to take forever, but finally the door cracks open and he pads back to the bed.
This time, he sits beside me. Knees up, just like mine. We don’t touch, and the six inches between us might as well be a mile.
I take a deep breath. I’m going to tell him. I have to tell him. This is far from a perfect moment, but I doubt I’ll ever get a truly perfect moment. The truth is, there isn’t one. And even though tonight has been hard, it feels like there’s a connection here. A fine golden line that goes straight from my heart to his.
“Logan, I ...” I pause. I want to do this, and I’ve thought about doing it for so long, but somehow I never stopped to consider the actual words I might use. Do I just blurt it out?
Logan must be able to tell that something is bothering me, because he reaches out and squeezes my hand. The touch is comforting, even though we started out this evening with me wanting to be the one comforting him. God, what if I screw this whole thing up? What if this makes it so much harder for him?
“Blake, what’s going on? You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
I smile grimly. “I kind of feel like I do.”
“If it’s what I told you earlier … I don’t want you worrying about it. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to upset you.”
“No, no,” I assure him hastily. God, why does he have to be so sweet sometimes? This man seemed so cold and unfeeling when I first met him — he isn’t, though, not at all. He’s just buried everything in him that was soft, that could hurt. Now I understand why.
And here I am, about to present him with something that’s the ultimate in vulnerability. I’ve only been in the role for a few weeks now, but being a parent already feels like it might be the equivalent of carving your heart open every day for the rest of your life.
“Logan, I ...”
I don’t get a chance to finish my sentence. From in the hallway, where I’d dropped my purse earlier, I hear a familiar chirping.
“Is that your phone?”
“I think it is. But it’s so late. It’s ...”
“After midnight.”
“My sister, maybe?” My mind races. What if something had happened to them at the bar? Or on their way home? It’s Friday night, after all, there are bound to be all kinds of drunks out there. I fight to kick Logan’s sheets off from around my legs, and I almost fall flat on my face in the process. Logan grabs my arm to keep me from stumbling and then vaults out of bed.
“I’ll get it.” He bounds naked into the hallway and returns a moment later with my bag. I’m too worried now to even admire his form. I fish the phone frantically out of my bag, praying it doesn’t stop ringing. When I look down at the screen, it’s not Rori or Emma or Lucy’s name that I see there — it’s my mom’s.
“Hi Mom. What’s up?” I look over at Logan as I’m saying it, as if he can somehow make this all turn out okay.
“Oh, honey,” Mom sobs into the phone. Everything inside my chest crunches up, like a used napkin. “It’s Daddy, Blakey. Daddy had a heart attack.”
Twenty-Four
Everything that happens in the minutes after I hang up the phone takes place in a blur. I think I manage to tell Logan what’s happened, even though I’m not sure how, since it feels like words are impossible. He does a sweep of the room, gathering up all my clothes and his own, and the ones from the living room, too. We get dressed silently. I pull up the train schedules on my phone, jabbing this button and that, trying to figure out when the next train to Connecticut is. I groan in frustration as the stupid page refuses to load.
“What’s wrong?”
“I hate this train schedule. Just tell me if there’s a fucking train!” I yell at the piece of plastic in my hand.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that,” Siri answers belligerently. The bitch.
“Don’t worry about the train,” Logan says, putting his hand on my shoulder and kneading the tight muscle there. “I’ll drive you.”
I look at him in surprise. “You will?”
“Of course, I will.”
“But it’s far. And it’s my family — you’ve never even met them.”
“I’m sure I can handle it. I hardly think they’re going to be focusing on me, anyway, don’t you think? I’ll just blend right into the background.”
I don’t tell Logan that I don’t think it’s even possible for him to blend into the background. Right now, I’m just too grateful — not to mention terrified — to do anything but nod my acceptance. “Thank you. That would be great.”
I have just enough time to pull on my leggings and t-shirt, and then we’re on the road. I call Rori and Emma from the car. They were both home already as well, and are getting ready to hop into cars of their own and drive down. I tell them I’ll meet them right at the hospital.