Shit, Macey, stop. Stop. Stop.
Desperate for something to do with my hands, and my mouth, and especially my tongue, I step out of our dance and sit back down on the table. I wildly grab my diary and open it to the entry I left off on. “You really want to hear where I am in the life story of Macey Henwood?”
Logan’s eyes widen slightly, the only clue to his surprise that I’m letting him in like this. Really, in a way I’ve never let him in before. He sits down next to me, taps my leg lightly, and says, “Go for it. Then, I can say I heard your words before they were published.”
Maybe having Logan listen to a few entries will help me get through the diary. At this point, I’ll try anything to get past the ache in my chest when I think of him marrying Gigi.
“One entry,” I say.
“Sure.”
“Where’s Gigi?” I ask abruptly.
“She’s staying with her sisters at the Old West Inn. They’re going over wedding plans.”
“Oh. Of course.” I look down at my diary.
Logan taps the open page. “I’m ready when you are.”
I suck in a breath and then start reading out loud.
On my sixteenth birthday, just as it turned July fourth, Mama and Daddy had a big fight at The Cowherd Whiskey, mere hours after they officially remarried.
“Macey, if you’d just come an hour earlier,” Mama yelled from her side of the bar. “I would never have caved and married your no-good, two-timing drunk of a daddy! I would have been a brave, single mother, much like I’ve been anyway!”
Mama’s water broke two minutes after they said “I do” the first time, a fact she never lets me forget.
“Your daddy was having an affair. With that schoolteacher, Dixie Dunn, who smelled like a bottle of something sinister. I never could figure out what kind of perfume she used, and it drove me crazy. But you know who I mean. Anyway, I was pregnant with you, eight months, and he didn’t have the courtesy to at least wait until I wasn’t forty pounds overweight and carrying around another human being. No, you know your daddy. He can’t wait, so he didn’t. He started parading around town with Dixie after one of our big fights, and here I was, about to give birth, and he’s nowhere around.”
I stomped my foot. “Mama, you’ve told this story a thousand times.”
“Well, history’s not going to repeat itself again,” she said.
Daddy cowered behind his great-granddaddy’s bar that’s now his, using the counter as protection and wearing a guilty look on his face. Mama’s new friend and bridesmaid, the big-haired, big-breasted Donna Kapchuk, stayed a safe distance away from all three of us, but I could see the hickey on her neck from here. Apparently, Mama could, too, because she picked up an empty beer bottle and aimed it at Daddy’s head.
I picked up the family shotgun. “I took target lessons for this very reason. To prevent stupidity from ruining this family. Now put down the bottle, Mama.”
I turned to Riley, who was looking at me wide-eyed, her perfect blond ringlets standing up on her head. “Take Ben and Free out the back door to Logan’s.”
The sound of glass shattering made me jump, and I whipped my head around to see Mama’s eyes blazing as she went to pick up another empty beer bottle off the closest table.
“No!” I stepped into the path between her and Daddy.
But it was too late. Mama had already released the bottle from her hand, and I never learned to duck the way Daddy did.
The bottle hit me square in the soft side of my wrist as I threw up my hand to protect my face. I heard Mama’s panicked scream as hot liquid seeped down my arm. When I looked down, I was surprised how much blood there was and how fast it was coming down.
I glance at Logan now. “That accident became my curse,” comes out of my mouth.
“Your curse?” He furrows his brow. “How so?”
I nearly tell him about the page in Vivian’s diary and how Mama’s spent years terrifying me that I’m as trapped as a fake ghost in a fake jail cell, but I don’t.
“Nothing. I’m being silly.”
I return to my diary.
Then Logan was there. Rushing into the bar, his normally cocky eyes so big I could see the fear as he ran toward me. But he put on a brave front, and so did I.
“I’ll be fine,” I said to him as he tightly wrapped my wrist in a dishtowel and Daddy handed Mama his truck keys. “I’m sure it will just be a few stitches.”
Logan put his callused, sturdy hand to my cheek, and we looked at each other in silence before he said, “Don’t be scared, Mace. Everything will be okay. I promise.”
I got home a few hours later, and just as we pulled into our driveway, the rains came, and they made everything red.
It rained and rained and rained…for four days and four nights straight. The back roads overflowed, and the Jacksons and Coles had to go to a shelter for the week because their basements flooded. The creek was so swollen you couldn’t sit by it for a month. They compared the rain to blood here because if you tried to go to the river, the bank was so muddy when you walked everything turned nearly rust red.
Logan called it the blood of our ancestors, the sins of our parents being washed away. After what had happened to him in the barn a few months earlier, and now me, we were feeling pretty low.
When it finally stopped raining, Logan and I stood by the river for hours, our feet in the mud. He kissed me, and I kissed him back. He held me in his arms and said he wished we could lie down on the bank together.
Well, we didn’t lie down because I can’t imagine what would have happened if we had. I can’t help myself sometimes. I just want to touch Logan Wild all over.
I clear my throat and dare to raise my eyes to Logan’s.
His are so intensely focused on me that a throaty noise escapes my mouth.
Logan closes his eyes and when he re-opens them, there’s that neutral barrier that’s been between us since he came home engaged.
“Keep reading,” he encourages me. “You’re doing good.”
I force my eyes back down to the page.
But I’m only a kid, and I must be crazy or something because kids don’t know what they want. That’s what Mama tells me all the time, at least.
To commemorate our bad year—the year we both got branded with scars from our parents—Logan said we should get tattoos. He wanted us to re-brand ourselves with love instead of hate. Logan cried a little when we talked about his father. He turned away so I couldn’t see, but I did. I pretended I didn’t, though. Boys are funny that way. They hide their emotions, maybe because they’re scared.
I look back up at him. “I didn’t write your story in here. Just so you know. I didn’t feel like it was mine to tell.”
His eyes warm. “I appreciate that.”
“But that doesn’t mean that I don’t remember every single second of being in your barn and watching you take on your father to protect what was yours.” I touch his leg. “You were my hero that day. You kind of always have been.”
“Macey.” Logan chokes up, and his eyes—they’ve got this strange look in them. Like he’s keeping something from me.
I put down the diary. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
He nods and points at the diary. “I’m fine. Keep reading.”
We walked into the new tattoo parlor on Main and decided on red raindrop tattoos. I got mine on my left breast, and Logan chose his right bicep. I felt so close to him.
“We’ll remember forever,” he said as he leaned in to give me a kiss.
Logan said he loved me for going under the needle with him. He claimed he didn’t know anyone else who would do that for him. Because no one else is as crazy as I am, I teased. I think he just said mushy things because he was emotional. But I loved him for it.
Okay. This is getting intense.
I dare to look up at Logan, whose eyes are on my face. We stare at each other for several heartbeats, with the only sound being the refrain of crickets and the occasion
al moo of one of his family’s cows in the background.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“That was easier,” I say in all honesty. “Reading it aloud like that. It was almost like we were back there again at the tattoo parlor. And that made the other part less painful.”
“The part at The Cowherd?” he asks me.
“Yeah.” I make a face. “You know I don’t like reminiscing too much.”
“Do you think this is necessary? To go back through all of it?”
“For some reason, I do.”
“You’re an incredible writer, you know.”
“You think so?” I smile at him. “Should I read you another one?”
He hesitates. And I know why.
Because parts of that entry felt like…foreplay.
And somehow, this moment feels different than our other times together. Maybe because in a short while, Logan will be married and all these nights will be in the past.
The ache in my chest grows bigger, but Logan breaks the silence.
“Sure. Read another one.”
“Okay.”
I’m still sixteen, but this year has been a lot of firsts, so I decided to write again even though it’s only May.
Mr. Torsen complimented me on my short story I wrote for English class. He said it showed character and a unique voice, and he specifically said that I’m not afraid to let go with my writing and he hopes to read more from me in the future. I think he’s bluffing for sure, but even bluffs feel good sometimes.
I went over to Logan’s to tell him the good news. He was painting, and I sat and waited for him to finish, and then he grabbed my hand and asked me to walk with him in the wildflower patch behind the ranch.
Oh no. I stop reading and bite my cheek. I never should have started this entry. It’s far too—
“Intimate?” Logan’s voice cuts through my harried thoughts.
I make eye contact with him, and he smiles fondly. “I remember this day.”
“But I’ve barely started to read it. How could you—”
“I remember every moment with you.”
Shit.
He taps my leg. “Read it. And don’t censor yourself.”
I can’t imagine getting the words out of my throat. I’m so turned on already and I don’t like to talk when I’m like this. I like to do other things, things that involve more touching and less speaking.
I manage a nod and return to the page.
It was a hot day out even though it was only the end of April, and I was wearing a new halter top and jean shorts. Logan asked me where I got the top, and I told him Wal-Mart on sale, and he said it looked a lot sexier than Wal-Mart. I turned away so he wouldn’t see me smile—I didn’t want him to think I was high on myself or something.
We sat down under a shade tree to rest, and Logan asked if I was still seeing Tucker Strom, the senior. I told him no, that Tucker had behaved in a very ungentlemanly manner last week, and so I dumped him. Logan nodded and looked away, and I asked him if he was dating Melinda. The slutty sophomore who’s had her eye on Logan since she was thirteen and he was fifteen.
“Nope,” he said. “I got over that real quick.”
“Oh.” I peeled off the label on my water bottle, trying to distract myself from my attraction to him.
It had been nearly a year since we’d last made out, and I hadn’t thought we would again, necessarily. But then again, I always hoped we would.
Logan leaned in and kissed me but pulled back right away. “I don’t want to assume anything. If you don’t want to…”
I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him then—with tongue. And we lay down on the grass, right in between all the wildflowers that had all grown up so nice this spring, and we grew a little ourselves. At least third base’s worth. And I couldn’t believe I’d dated Tucker all those weeks and never once felt this good. Not that I let him touch me this way. I’d never gone this far before, but Logan is different. He makes me feel safe. And aroused.
I stop again, my face so hot I can’t believe the sun’s not shining on it. I close my eyes and take a long, slow breath. Logan’s hands on my waist and between my thighs—the memory is hitting me so hard I have to keep my legs tightly closed so they won’t tremble. Parts of me that always only turn on for Logan are screaming to be satisfied.
He’s watching me.
“Logan, this is awkward…”
His breath is heavy. “I’m the guy in the story, for Christ’s sake. How can you be embarrassed to read something about us in front of us?”
I laugh. “I don’t know. I just am. I’m shy.”
Logan’s mouth is laughing along with his eyes. I haven’t seen him this himself since Gigi came along, and I want to keep seeing that.
“Look,” he says. “When you become a novelist, you’re going to have to do public readings. And you told me you’re planning to have romance in your books. So think of this as good practice.”
“Like we’re characters in a novel,” I say.
“Exactly. Just two people you wrote about.”
I return to the diary.
When Logan took off my halter top and kissed my breasts, I nearly came apart inside. I thought my heart would burst. And when he unzipped my shorts and slipped his hand inside—oh God, I could hardly stop from screaming.
“Tell me what you like, Macey,” he whispered as he looked into my eyes. “Move my hand where you want it.”
I closed my eyes. “I like what you’re doing right now.”
Logan’s breath is ragged now, and I’m exhaling so heavily I have to fight to control the volume as I curl my toes inside my boots and try to keep reading in a level tone of voice.
And as he moved his fingers until they reached a place no boy had ever been, I exploded from the inside out. My legs shook, and I clung to Logan’s neck with my arms.
“Was that okay?” he asked me, his eyes focused on mine. “Your little sighs were so amazing.”
“It was perfect.”
I reached over and pulled off his shirt so I could run my hands down his bare chest. And when I reached the buttons on his jeans, I didn’t stop.
“I don’t know how to touch you,” I said softly into his mouth. “I just love the way you feel.”
Logan’s hips bucked off the blanket as my fingers found their way below the elastic of his boxers.
“Oh, God, Macey, do that again.”
And I did until he cried out like I had a few minutes before. He buried his face in my neck and put his hand on my back as he whispered, “I’ll never have another first time. I want to lie like this as long as we can.”
I wanted to lie with him forever. I wanted him to touch me again and again. But I knew I couldn’t ask for more. Logan Wild could become an addiction, and addictions are dangerous.
When we finally stood up, I felt a little wobbly in the knees, and Logan held my elbow while I steadied myself. I laughed, and he did, too. We walked back to his house and said good-bye at the end of his driveway. He kissed me on the lips and asked me to fish with him and Blake tomorrow. And I kissed him one last time before I jumped into my car and drove off.
I cried all night. I sobbed, if I’m being honest. Because I missed him already. And I know I can’t—pursue anything.
We’re friends—best friends—who trust each other. Anything else could get awfully complicated, and I’ve watched my parents far too closely to ever want complicated in my own love life. “Keep it simple.” That’s what Mama told me. And even though she didn’t, I agree with her on this one. Simple is best.
I can’t look up when I finish.
But Logan takes my chin in his hand and raises my head gently. His eyes are troubled, as much as he’s trying not to show it.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” he says. “So sad afterward. You never said anything.”
“I know. I just—you know, I’m not great at the sharing part. I like to keep the bars on my heart.”
His breath catches
in his throat, and he moves his hand to my cheek.
When his phone goes off in his pocket like a fire alarm, we both jump back.
He pulls out his phone and looks at the screen. “Hi, Gigi.”
Logan’s eyes haven’t left my face, but I look away, breaking the contact between us.
I close my diary and fiddle with the lock and key before carefully putting the book away in my purse.
“Yep, I remember. I’m heading to bed soon. Sleep well.”
After Logan’s hung up, he stands up and puts out his hand to me. “Let’s walk through the fields.”
That sounds dangerous. Especially after how close we just came to…
“I don’t know. I think maybe I should stay here.”
“In your prison?” he says. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I take his hand and try to ignore the way holding it makes me feel even when it’s only meant in friendship. By the time we’ve reached the first fence of his family’s ranch, I have to let go because it’s too much. He doesn’t try to stop me, and I climb over the wire and wait for him to do the same.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask as we cut across the burned out grass.
“You’ll see.”
When he turns left and heads for his cottage, I laugh. “Yeah, I’ve seen this before.”
“Not what’s inside. Come on.” He increases his pace to the stone pathway and then walks up the two steps to his front door, pulling out his keys.
By the time I catch up, he’s already inside.
“I haven’t been here in months…” I start to say before I see what he’s done.
Paintings are everywhere. All over the front room. On stands, on the couch, hanging on the walls. Oils, acrylics, watercolors, depicting West Texas, Hill Country, and the rivers and lakes. “Logan. You must have over…”
“Over twenty of them,” he says. “I did a lot on my trip but some here also. Before I left, you know.”
I didn’t, actually. I didn’t know how far he’d come since I last saw him paint.
“I remember sitting on that tree stump by the back pasture and watching you paint the sky,” I say almost to myself. “Wow. I’m so proud of you, Logan. You’re incredibly talented. And this is just…” I gesture with my hand around the room. “Amazing. But you always were. Even before I saw all of this.”
Warrior Girl: A Cowboy Romance (Wild Men Texas Book 2) Page 13