by Taylor Hart
Her father glanced at Logan, then back to her. “I’m going to take Logan to get some pizza. We’re not going to stay to eat, just pick up. We'll be back in half an hour.”
“Okay.” She was grateful for her father, for him sensing what she needed. All of her was so confused.
Sitting down, she forced herself to focus. Work. She and Michelle kept emailing each other until finally Michelle called.
“Hey.”
“You said in your last email you couldn’t talk about it, but Logan was staying with you. So you need to spill your guts about the ex.”
Paris flinched, especially on the heels of Ty’s accident. “Look, don’t call him that.”
“He is that.”
“No, he is a man who owns the company that hired our company to plan the All-Stars event. He lost his memory, so he’s here for awhile, but after the event, he’ll be leaving.”
“Will he?” Michelle asked.
“Yes,” she insisted.
“Okay, look, I don’t know what’s gone on between the two of you. All you’ve told me via email is that you had to host him or he threatened to fire us. So I get that, but c’mon, Paris, I’ve seen you the past couple of years. There’s been something, I don’t know what it is, but since the divorce you haven’t been happy. No, it was before the divorce, I noticed there was something missing. Maybe this is it. Maybe you’re being given another chance.”
“Don’t.” She couldn’t entertain this. Granted, Michelle knew a lot of their past, but Paris didn’t want to repeat their mistakes.
“This might be your chance for happiness, Paris. Are you willing to give that up?”
“He’s going to wake up!” she exploded. “They always do. Don’t you watch those silly amnesia movies or read those books? They always remember and it falls apart.”
Michelle was silent for a few seconds. “And, if I remember correctly, then it usually works out.”
“Shut up,” Paris said, then winced. She didn’t typically like that phrase, and she’d been saying it more than usual. “I’m sorry.”
Michelle sighed. “It’s okay. Well, I guess this latest news will make you happy, then.”
She braced herself. “What’s gone wrong?”
“We got to get you on the ground to deal with this Montana Crew contract. Man, he’s being such a baby about everything. You know how we’re supposed to host the gallery show and have all the football players there?”
“Oh, you mean the one Summer James has been putting together?”
“Yeah, well, Sterling Pennington is getting all possessive of her paintings, which doesn’t bode well with Hunter James, who is threatening to pull her stuff from the whole night.”
“What?” Those two men had egos larger than the Grand Canyon. “You wouldn’t know what good friends they are by how hard they make everything.” Paris smiled, thinking of how they were like squabbling girls sometimes and you had to have the right touch to handle them. It usually involved getting Summer and Sayla involved to help deal with them.
“It seems Montana’s getting a whole group of All-Stars all riled up about how Logan may not be there. You know it will fall apart if he’s not there.”
“He’ll be there,” she assured Michelle.
“Well, it seems they want to talk to you, in person, at Sterling Pennington’s gallery tomorrow at eleven.”
“No, my son is coming to the airport and I have to be there.”
“O-kay,” Michelle said slowly. “I can go, but Montana is pretty insistent you’re there. In person.”
“Too bad.” Bratty, babied famous people, thinking they could dictate everything in their life. When Michelle didn’t say anything, though, Paris deflated. “Fine, I’ll be there for an hour. Hopefully I can make it to the airport to meet Ty.”
Chapter 16
Later that night, Logan sat on the back porch of the cabin. He stared out at the dock, eating a slice of pizza. Paris’s father had told him he would be back; he was going to go visit with Ms. Pixley, which could take a while.
Logan thought about all the things he’d learned over the past few days. It was fun to hear about his college career and his professional career, but it wasn’t what he needed to know.
When they’d gotten back, Paris had been polite. Nice. It had been different and strained. He stared at the lake, wondering so many things, feeling so many things.
Paris appeared, a salad in her hands with some plates and cups. “I thought we could use more than pizza.”
He stood and went to her, taking the salad and plates. Their eyes held.
What did he see in those aqua-green eyes? When they were growing up most people had assumed her eyes were colored by contacts. Nope, she was just that pretty, he’d often said to people. His breath hitched. It felt as it had always felt with her—that no matter what was happening, it would be all right. They were together.
“Okay,” she said, breaking the trance and putting the glasses on the patio table. “I made garlic bread out of the bread you got. I’ll just get that and some utensils.” She rushed back into the house.
He put everything down and arranged it. She came back and sat across from him.
The center of his heart warmed, looking at her, and he wondered about the scar again.
“What?” she asked, breathlessly.
“How did you get that?” He touched his own lip right where the scar was on her face.
“Oh.” She seemed distracted, and then shook her head. “Let’s pray, I’m starving.”
It was weird, this flash of something that went through him and he remembered something crashing and screaming. He thought of his dream.
“Logan, let’s pray.”
His heart rate kicked up a notch. “Tell me about the scar,” he insisted, his voice low and his whole body on edge.
Her eyes moistened. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, mumbling a prayer on the food. She finished the prayer and began eating. “I’m hungry.”
Tentatively, he picked up the silverware and cut a bite of pizza. His mind wandered as he thought of what the doctor had said to his agent: ‘Sometimes, there’s things people don’t want to remember, and sometimes it blocks all of it.’
They both ate in companionable silence, but Logan’s mind kept going through his memories, sifting what he did know. He didn’t understand how he could make those pieces fit.
They had eaten most of their food when he couldn’t take it any longer. “Paris. Please.”
She looked up from her plate. “What?”
He put his fork and knife down. “How did you get that scar?”
Her expression darkened.
“Pear?”
She held her fork in the air and he saw her hand shaking. Noticing him looking at her hand, she put the fork down, then pinched her nose. “I just spoke to Shane. He and Ty are coming back tomorrow, Logan. You’re going to have to leave. Shane says Ty can stay here if you’re not here.”
His heart hammered harder. He was close to knowing. He could feel it, like he could feel the perfect opening in the defense. “Pear.”
Squeezing her eyes shut for a minute, she growled, “I have thought it wouldn’t matter if I told you or not because you’re going to remember. But fine. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend everything is normal having you here. It’s too hard. You did it, Logan.” She touched her lip. “You did it.”
His breath caught. “What are you talking about?”
She swung her legs over the picnic bench and stood, running down the steps to the trail by the house.
Logan followed. “Pear.”
She kicked it up a notch and he had to jog a sec to catch her. She gave him an uppity look. “You want to know all the crap? Fine. After your father died—well, wait. Before your father died, he showed up at UC Berkeley. He showed up at that stupid homecoming game. I was there. You were the star. Shane sat on the bench. After, your father told you he was sober and he wanted to be there for you. He wanted to get
back in your good graces. You took him in. You were so happy to have a father.”
He stayed close as she rushed down the path that led through and around the lake. “This doesn’t make any sense. My father got sober and came to my games?”
“Yes, he moved to Berkeley and you became best buds spring semester of your sophomore year. Then he slipped, fell off the wagon. And before I knew what had happened, you were drinking too. You let your grades slip; you, oddly enough, started partying. Went to parties. I would see all these Facebook posts of you with your football friends—not Shane, mind you—at parties. You told me on the phone that you felt closer to your dad than ever. You wouldn’t listen to me or Shane. And you just … spiraled.”
Logan took some time to process all that. He drank? He’d been drinking with his father? It didn’t make sense. “I hated alcohol.” Every part of him was shaking. “I never wanted that!”
“Right, that’s what I said, and Shane said.” She pushed herself harder. “That summer you and Shane and your dad came back to town. Shane lost his scholarship because the coach didn’t think he needed Shane. He was devastated. You acted like it was Shane’s fault and you were more interested in finding a party. Shane and I were worried, and I tried to get through to you. But your father wasn’t a good influence.”
The trail opened up and she stopped, overlooking the part of the lake bordered by the cliffs. She heaved in a breath and didn’t look at him. “You changed. You started using drugs, too. One night I realized you were stoned and you said it was just that once. But—” Tears burned down her cheeks. “I didn’t believe you.” She wiped them and looked away. “Then, your father died.”
Logan listened, horrified, and tried to imagine it.
“One night, after your dad’s funeral, I went to your house in Jackson. You were cleaning out some of your dad’s stuff and you were drinking. I told you it was time to stop and you threw a bottle at the wall. The glass ricocheted and cut my lip.”
Logan’s hand covered his mouth.
“Shane came right when it was happening. You and him, well, you both got in some good shots, but the things you said to him …” She shook her head. “You’re a mean drunk, Logan. You told him he only rode your coattails and never should have had a scholarship. You told him he’d never been as good as you and he was just a stepping stone.”
The very center of his chest ached and he tried to reach out to her, to comfort her from this monster she was telling him about.
She pulled away. “Just. Don’t.”
His heart raced and he wanted to run, run, and then run more, but he forced himself to stay. Emotion swirled in his throat and he thought of Shane, the other day, still showing mercy on him when he didn’t deserve it. Still being a friend. Logan’s eyes misted with emotion.
“I had six stitches in my lip and I didn’t tell the doctor the truth. I said it was an accident. Needless to say, we were through. You went back to school early and … you broke my heart.” She used the back of her hand and wiped at all the tears.
He stared in horror. This was all worse than he’d thought possible.
“We didn’t speak for a long time. I mean, you would call and leave messages in the middle of the night when you were drunk. You did the same thing to Shane. Shane and I, even though I was at Juilliard and he was in Billings, became quasi-parents. Or that’s the excuse we used to talk sometimes. Both of us were so hurt and we’d both lost so much. We would talk about things for hours.” She shrugged. “We became closer. As friends.”
Listening to her saying all this, Logan felt it was like watching a movie—no, it was like being in a dream, and you kind of knew it was a dream and all these things were happening and you even knew they were crazy things, but it was part of the dream, so you just let yourself go. Or rather a nightmare. That’s what he was doing, drifting along in this nightmare of her words.
She let out another long breath. “My senior year at Juilliard, I got engaged to a guy I was dating. His name was Jeff.”
Logan did a double take. “Okay.”
“Spring break you flew out, surprised me. You … well, you told me you were sober. You wanted to make a go of it again.” Her hand trembled and she cursed as tears fell down her cheeks. “Dang it, Logan, I was never good at resisting you.”
Finally, he’d come to his senses. Logan’s heart hammered harder. “So did we get engaged again?”
“Well, you succeeded at convincing me you had changed and I broke things off with Jeff. We slept together that weekend, for the first time.” Her voice sounded hollow.
Her admission of this made him sad. “So jerk Logan couldn’t wait?”
She threw her hands up. “You proposed, again. I thought we could make it work. But …”
“What?” he demanded. “How did I mess it up again?”
She squinted and looked down at her hands. “I found pills in your jacket pocket the morning I was taking you to the airport.” More tears. “I couldn’t trust you. You were saying all the right things, but you were different. I should have known you weren’t the same Logan when you were so insistent we sleep together.”
He felt frozen, torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to beat up this other version of himself. “I’m so sorry, Pear.” He wanted to marry her so badly. He wanted a life with her. Everything with her. How could he have become an alcoholic and drug user? How could he have thrown a bottle that scarred her? How could he have done all that to Shane? How could he have lied to her? Tenderly, he reached out and gently touched her scar. “I’m so sorry, Pear. Now I understand why you hate me so bad.” He choked on his words, tears running down his face. “And I can see why Shane wanted to kill me.”
She didn’t say anything.
He sighed and dropped his hand. “I … we were supposed to get married in the Faith Hills Chapel like your dad.” He sniffed. “So I could tell our son every chance I got that his grandfather and his father and mother had been married there.” He clenched a hand into a fist. “I was so stupid!” He kicked the dirt, and jarring pain resonated into his foot. He didn’t care. He deserved pain, he figured, as he thought of the loss he felt for a future he’d never had. A future that had been stolen from him without his consent.
He wanted to yell at a ref or shake his fist at a teammate. Logan liked controlling the field; that’s why he liked being quarterback. All this, he hadn’t even had a say on. It was over. It wasn’t fair. It had all happened. It was this, this jerk that had done it. That jerk was him.
Paris sucked in a breath and stared out over the lake, using the back of her hand to wipe her tears. “What are you thinking about, Logan?”
“What a loser I am.”
She snorted. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I actually think it helped me. Sorry.”
He turned to her, feeling hopeful she was okay. “You don’t ever apologize to me.”
She lifted and lowered one shoulder. “It actually helps to talk to the young version of you. The one who loves me.” She broke off into more tears, then shook with a sob.
Regardless of whether he should or not, he pulled her into him and held her. Thinking about his jerk self and what he’d put her through. Thinking about how she’d been strong enough to let him go.
“Logan, you don’t need to do this. It’s fine.” She tried to move.
He held her into him. “I love you, Pear. And I’m sorry.”
Stopping, she pulled back and stared in his eyes. “I just … it’s so unreal you don’t remember, and now, when we talk and when you look at me … I just, I’ve felt like I am falling in love with you again. Like, I’ve been falling in and out of love with you my whole life. This has to stop. I’ve been trying to keep you at a distance, but now I’m here again. Wrapped in your arms and not wanting to leave.”
“I never stopped loving you. I can promise you that.” He thought of the things she’d told him. “Even though I’ve been horrible, I know I never stopped.” He cursed. “My father was never good fo
r me. Ever.” He blew out a long breath and held Paris tighter.
They stood like that for a long, long time. Logan didn’t know what would happen next. If Paris could ever forgive him. If—his mind spun—if he could ever forgive himself. But he couldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t.
When the sun was almost completely gone, she said, “Let’s head back.”
They walked back, hand in hand. He didn’t know if she wanted him to, but he would hold it as long as he could.
Before they went inside, he had to ask. “Last thing, Pear. I just … I know I asked it before, but you haven’t told me.” He swallowed. “I keep having this nagging feeling that something happened when I came to your mother’s funeral. I just can’t get that picture of us out of my mind.”
She frowned. “Nothing.”
His gut told him she was lying. “Pear.”
“You kissed me.”
“I kissed you? At the funeral? With your husband and son there?”
She nodded.
Cringing, he shook his head. Perfect, this took the cake of jerkdom.
She let out a breath. “It wasn’t good.”
He could imagine Shane freaking out. Inwardly, he winced. “I shouldn’t have done that to Shane. Or to you.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.” She started for the cabin, then turned back. “Logan, I have to go into town tomorrow and deal with an issue with the event. But then I’ll be getting Ty from the airport. I mean it, you have to find somewhere else to stay.”
He nodded, understanding how much crap he put her through and wishing it was all still brain erased. “Okay,” he whispered, wishing there was a way to fix things and wondering what would happen to him and Paris now.
“Logan?” she asked, seeming to sense his sadness.
He pushed past her, heading for the house. “I never should have pressed you to know. Now I’d rather not remember the last eight years. And I wish my father never would have tried to come back into my life.”
Chapter 17
The next morning, Logan woke to the sound of tires crunching against gravel. Sitting up in bed quickly, he turned to the clock. Almost ten in the morning. He thought of Paris and jumped out of bed. He hadn’t slept well, even though he’d obviously overslept. He’d wanted to see her again before he left. Finally, in the early hours of the morning, he’d made a plan. He would leave. He would do All-Stars, then leave. He couldn’t fix this.