Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Logan would never leave the Twisted C. Her career was in Boise. She worked long hours, late into the night. He thought her job was too dangerous.

  At the same time that they’d arrived at the depth of love and intimacy that had them talking about making a life together, the realities of their lives were trying to pull them apart.

  On the other hand, her practice was an unmitigated disaster right now, and her bank account was the proverbial bloodless stone. She’d just called her parents this very evening to ask for another loan so she could make her mortgage payment. Insurance had finally paid out, but it had almost all gone to pay off outstanding debts. There was nothing left with which to start over.

  She’d replaced her beautiful Porsche with a used Nissan.

  God, she’d worked so hard to make her career what it had been and to shape her success as she had. Yes, it was silly to weep over losing an expensive car, but she’d loved that car. She loved her pretty home and nice things. That comfortable life had held her close when she’d felt overwhelmed by the demands of the work that had paid for it.

  It galled her endlessly to think that she’d put it all in on a bet that her success hadn’t rested on the support of a prestigious law firm. She’d thought she was better than everyone else, and the universe had shown her the truth right quick.

  While Logan’s attack was still under investigation, and the assailant was still on the loose, and while Logan was recovering, they could set those realities aside and simply focus on the immediate present: Honor in Jasper Ridge, loving Logan, growing to love his family and find her place in it. Logan healing, learning how to trust her love and embrace his own feelings. Both of them thinking of Boise in the abstract, as something to deal with someday down the line.

  But Logan’s attack was no longer under investigation. Detective Thorne had called to tell her the case was closed. They had their man. The threat was gone.

  Someday was here.

  It should have been wonderful news, and it was. But Honor was afraid.

  A door from the house opened, and Honor looked over to see Gabe coming out, clutching a thick fleece cardigan around her against the frosty breeze. “You okay, Honor?”

  Honor had some trouble pulling out of her thoughts. “Yeah … yeah. Just had … a call.”

  Gabe came right over and sat beside her on the outdoor sofa—the pads had been put up for the season, so they sat on bare wood slats. “You look scared. Did something bad happen? Something more?”

  That last question caught Honor like a stab. Gabe had had to clarify whether more bad had happened. Another thing that could pull her away from Logan and his family: the way pain and suffering had hooked itself into her back to be dragged around, leaving a wake that her loved ones bled in.

  “It was Detective Thorne. They found someone who’d taken a photo on the street outside my building that day, and they caught Tyler O’Keefe going in, three minutes after Logan pulled into the garage and forty-one minutes before the attack. Dressed in a dark hoodie. The hood was down then, so they got a good ID.”

  Gabe clutched Honor’s arm. “That’s great news! Is it enough?”

  “It was enough for a warrant.” Honor faced Heath’s wife straight on. “He wouldn’t let the cops in, so they rammed the door. He slit his throat open before they broke through. He’s dead.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But they’re sure it was him?”

  Honor shifted her eyes back to her phone, which had gone dark. “Thorne thinks he used the same knife he stabbed Logan with. And there was a lot of … evidence in his apartment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Photos on his computer.” Thousands of them. “Of me, and some of Logan. Evidence suggesting he was tracking me in town, looking for me when I was out of Boise, and trying to figure out who Logan is. I don’t know all of it. Thorne only gave me the highlights. But they closed the case. So, yeah, they’re sure it was him.” Saying all that aloud unnerved her badly, and Honor stood and walked to the edge of the terrace. “I can’t believe I actually liked that guy when I first met him. I kissed him. I almost let him into my house.” And into her bed.

  Gabe came up to her side and set her hand on Honor’s shoulder. She was more than a decade younger, but she was old beyond her years, and had been through deep trauma of her own.

  Now, she didn’t speak, and that was perfect. With Gabe’s understanding wrapped around her, Honor stared out at the quiet, dark ranch and tried to understand what her life was now.

  *****

  Logan was standing at his tall dresser, trying to put on a clean pair of underwear after his shower. He was still recovering, and the knife had done some damage around his spine, so his balance and strength were not yet back to normal. If he’d sat down, he could accomplish this simple task, but he was always pushing himself to heal more quickly than his body would obey.

  He hadn’t heard Honor come in, and she didn’t announced her presence. He didn’t like her to see him struggle.

  It wasn’t his struggle she saw as she stood at the door. She saw his beautiful body, still strong even after this month of idleness. She saw the scars on his back, healed now, but still wide and dark red. They were mostly straight, unlike the two big, aged scars he’d already had—across his ribs from a tree-climbing accident when he was a boy, and across his hip from getting tossed by the horns of a bull when the rodeo clown hadn’t drawn it off quickly enough.

  The new, blood-red scars were from loving her.

  When he had the boxer briefs on, Honor pushed the door to latch, and he turned around in the stiff way he had now, without twisting at his waist. The scar on his chest was the worst of them all. That was the one that had almost taken him from her.

  He smiled. “Hey, counselor. You have a nice talk with your folks?”

  “Yeah. They sent the money over.”

  “Good.” He opened his mouth to say more and she put up her hand.

  “I know you’d lend me the money, too. And you know how I feel about that.”

  “I hate that you call it lending. If we’re together, it’s not lending.”

  “Can we not fight about this again? I have other news. Thorne called.”

  The argument he had brewing died out of his eyes. He held out his hand, and she went to him and let him lead her to sit on the side of the bed. “Trouble?”

  “No. It’s good. Tyler’s dead. They finally got good evidence that he was at the building. They went to execute search and arrest warrants, and he killed himself as they were trying to get in. Slit his throat.”

  “Goddamn.”

  “Yeah. Thorne said there was a lot of evidence in his place. They closed the case. It’s over.”

  Logan said nothing. His eyes dropped from hers, and he picked up her hand again, but he said nothing. Because he knew, like she did, that the blessed relief of the end of the danger meant they had some things to figure out.

  Things that might end them. If not now, then someday.

  “Heath and Gabe still here?”

  “Yeah. Your dad and Matthew are crashed out together in the living room. Heath and Gabe were in the media room when I came up. Watching Avengers.”

  “You want to go down and watch with them?”

  She smiled and stood up. He was right; they didn’t need to figure it out right now. Right now was too good for a talk like that. Someday could wait for a minute. “Yeah. You should probably put some more clothes on, though.”

  *****

  Honor couldn’t sleep. Her mind would not stop chewing on the problems in her life, the decisions and challenges, the dangers, the failures. She’d made so many wrong moves lately. Now she had more moves to make, and they all scared her out of her mind.

  Around two o’clock, worried her annoyed huffing and rolling back and forth disturbed Logan’s rest, she got up and pulled a sweater on. She’d intended to go down to the kitchen and find something in the fridge to stress-binge, but as soon a
s she was on her feet, her energy for the trip down depleted. Exhausted but wakeful, she stood in the middle of the room, unable to decide whether to get back in bed, or go downstairs, or sit by the window, or just stand in the middle of the room like a zombie.

  “You okay, darlin’?” The sleep in Logan’s voice turned the endearment into a long drawl.

  Honor smiled and turned to him. He was on his side, blinking murkily at her. He held out his hand, and she decided. Shrugging out of her cardigan and letting it fall to the floor, she climbed back in beside him. With a stifled groan, he turned to his back, and she settled carefully on his chest.

  His fingers combed gently through her hair. “What’s goin’ on in that pretty golden head of yours?” His voice rumbled around her and made her calm. At times like this, snug in his warm, strong arms, feeling his love and contentment surround her, tucked into a lovely room in this lovely house, on this lovely land, Honor could imagine herself letting this world absorb her, just falling back and disappearing into Logan’s life.

  She couldn’t do that. But if she didn’t make some decisions soon, she would. The temptation was too damn strong.

  So she made her first decision right then. “My parents want me to go home for Thanksgiving.”

  “Home? You mean to Wisconsin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I never had Thanksgiving away from here, but the family will understand. I can probably handle the plane ride by then, too.”

  The invitation had been for both of them, her parents were very interested to meet him, but Honor steeled herself and made her second decision.

  “Logan, I want to go by myself.” She needed some distance from his pull so that she could think clearly. In Wisconsin—away from Boise, away from Logan, at home, the place that would always be there—maybe she could see things more clearly and know which path to take.

  He was quiet for far too long, and Honor knew she’d hurt him before he spoke his hurt out loud.

  “You don’t want to spend Thanksgiving with me?”

  “It’s not that at all. I just … I need to go home. Get my head clear so I can figure things out.”

  His body went tense around her, and she expected him to push her away, but he didn’t. He lay still and quiet, his hand paused on her hair, and said nothing, letting another long silence stretch into the darkness.

  “I love you, Logan,” she finally said, and kissed his chest. “I really love you.”

  “I love you. But it sounds like it’s us you need to figure out, and frankly, counselor, that feels like shit.”

  She rose up and looked him straight in the eyes. The moonlight showed the sadness in them in stark relief. “I don’t have to figure us out. I know how I feel about you. Us, I understand. But I have to figure me out, and I can’t do that when I’m with you, because when I am, all I feel is how much I want to be right here, like this, and not think about anything else. You pull me in. You always have. If I give into that, I will disappear.”

  Another long, painful silence, while he stared hard, his eyes piercing deeply, pouring their sad worry in to mingle with hers.

  He blew out a shaking breath. “Just do me a favor, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Just promise you’ll come back. Even if it’s to leave me, come back and do it to my face. Don’t disappear that way, either.”

  She wanted to assure him that she would never leave him, but she knew she couldn’t make that promise. Unless she figured out how to have her life and be part of his, too, love would not be enough to keep them together.

  A tear slid down the side of her nose and landed on his chest, not far off from his new scar. “I promise.”

  His hand cupped her head, and he pulled her down and kissed her. She felt all his love, and his fear, move through her, as if he meant to bury that knowledge deep in her soul.

  She held him close and gave him all of her own as well.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Honor laughed as she came down the escalator and saw her brother standing below, stupidly tall and willow-thin as ever, like he’d been pushed through an industrial ringer. Wearing his typical uniform of paint-spattered Chucks, ratty black skinny jeans, and a sagging black sweater under an incongruously bright and practical yellow Columbia parka, he grinned and held up an elaborately hand-painted sign with her name—well, his version of it—rendered in red letters like dripping blood: HORROR BABINOT.

  He’d called her ‘Horror’ since an elementary-school assembly, when she was in sixth grade and he was in second, when the storyteller guest had called on her and misread the carefully handwritten nametag stuck to her corduroy dress. The whole school had laughed. Hardly one of her favorite memories, but it sure was an all-time top hit for Justice.

  She stepped off the elevator, strode to him, and snatched the sign from his perennially paint-stained fingers. “Douchecanoe.”

  “You love me,” he smirked.

  “Yes, I do,” she agreed as he bent down and throttled her with an affectionately brutal hug. As he released her, she tucked a loose lock of dark blond hair behind his ear. “I missed you, Jussy.”

  “I missed you, too. Can’t let the ‘rents know, of course.”

  “Of course not. Why let them off the hook now?”

  He laughed and took her hand. “Let’s get your bags. I guess you brought half your closet, as usual.”

  “Two bags. And I didn’t even have to pay an overweight fee.”

  “Wow. You really are down on your luck.”

  He’d been teasing, ninety percent of everything they’d said to each other over their entire lives had ranged from affectionate to cruel on the teasing spectrum, and Honor knew he’d meant that to be on the affectionate side, but it still stung like a slap.

  He saw that, and his douchey-little-brother smirk died out. “Sorry, sis. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know. It’s okay. The truth hurts.”

  He dropped her hand and pulled her into another hug. Honor wrapped her arms around his slim waist and rested her head on his chest. For pure physicality alone, resting on her bony brother wasn’t remotely like resting on Logan’s strong frame. At six-four, Justice weighed only about twenty pounds more than she did. If that.

  “I see you’ve been working out,” she teased and poked at his ribs.

  “Nah, I’m naturally this buff.” He set her aside and curled a long, scrawny arm. “Just the way all the pretties like me.”

  That was true. Since high school, and especially in college, Justice had never lacked in the romance department. Though skinny, he was broad-shouldered and beautiful. With his long blond hair and deep blue eyes, a strong jaw covered with just the right amount of stubble, and the full lips and upturned mouth they’d both inherited from their mother, he had the willowy hipster thing and the brooding artist thing blended into a concoction that made all the Madison college kids swoon. Girls and boys alike; Justice was bisexual and sampled across just about the whole gender spectrum. If they were interested in him, he was likely interested back.

  As they stood arm-in-arm at the baggage claim, he nudged her gently with his hip. “You’ve been the dinner-table talk since the summer, Horror. Be prepared for the Babinot Grill. I think they’d probably plotting their approach as we speak.”

  She expected nothing less. Twice, she’d had to ask them for sizable loans, and more importantly, they were fully aware of all the twists and turns her life had taken since that April day when she’d decided, wrongly, that she was strong and powerful enough to stand on principle and walk away from her secure, well-paying position.

  They also knew about Logan and were keenly curious to meet him, so she was bound to get questions about why she hadn’t extended their invitation to him.

  “Yeah, I figured,” she answered her brother. “Any inside scoop for me?”

  “They’re both playing to type. Dad wants to make a case for you to move home, and Mom wants you to fight until you drop. They’re still fighting it out betwee
n them, but I’m sure they’ll have their opening remarks ready when we get there. Plus, there’s your cowboy. Everybody is extremely interested in him. Me included. Is there photographic evidence?”

  She got her phone out and scrolled through her photos to her favorite picture of Logan, taken while she sat on the fence, watching him herding on horseback.

  “Sweet mother of all that is beautiful and pure,” Justice gasped. “Look at him!”

  Feeling absurdly proud, and wistful, too, she took the phone from her brother’s grasping grip. “Yeah, he’s pretty, huh?”

  “How could you leave that behind? I’d never let him out of bed.”

  “Gross, Juss. Please do not drool over my boyfriend.”

  “I had no idea that there were real-live cowboys that looked like that. I need to come for a visit. Have my own Brokeback adventure.”

  “Dude, you’re afraid of horses.” Her first bag came around on the carousel, so she rolled her eyes and pushed her brother out of her way.

  “I’m not afraid. I don’t trust them. They’re huge, strong, and stupid. Huge, strong, and stupid is not a good combination.”

  “They’re also beautiful and sweet, and so much fun.”

  “Look at Horror—gets a taste of cowboy cock and turns into Annie Oakley.”

  She kicked her brother in the back of the knee. “Douche. Take one of these bags.”

  *****

  Honor and Justice’s parents had met in college, at a Vietnam War protest. Curtis Babinot, a first-year graduate student in the history department, had been one of the organizers. Samantha Hinmann, a sophomore in the art department and already a lifelong political activist, had gone up to him to complain that no women had been asked to speak.

  The way they told the story in the years since, she gave him her heart when he handed her the bullhorn.