by Taylor Hart
Obviously, from the hatred in Shane’s eyes, it was bad. So he approached it a different way. “Look, dude, obviously we’re not friends, and for the life of me I can’t see a life where we’re not friends, but would you mind filling a guy in? I woke up to this crazy woman, Kim …” He said the name softly, still unable to believe she was actually his fiancée. “Also my supposed agent, and then they took me to this mansion, which was cool, but what happened? Where …” He threw up a hand. “Where’s my dad? What happened with Paris?”
Shane scrunched his face into a tight frown and then massaged his temple. He’d always done that, and Logan found the gesture somewhat comforting.
“What happened to my life?” Logan asked, a bit afraid after the crap show he’d woken up to.
Shane leveled him with a gaze. “Okay, I guess if I’m the one to give you Cliffs Notes, then I’m the one. Fine. So, let’s see. Your dad passed away.”
“Oh.” Logan blinked and turned away. It wasn’t surprising, not really. For the life of him he didn’t even want to ask how it happened. He always feared his dad would drive drunk and hurt somebody.
“And Paris is here. Divorced.”
Logan’s heart thudded painfully. Everything was different. He knew that. Waking in the hospital and his house and the other woman proved that, but a new wave of nausea took hold.
“Are you okay?” Shane leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder.
Logan brushed his hand away. “No, I’m not okay.” He slumped against the wall. “Talk,” he ordered.
Shane let out a long, shaky breath. “Fine. Let’s see. We were both given scholarships to UC Berkeley. We played together for two years, then my scholarship was yanked and I came back and went to Billings and finished my business degree. And I work with dear old Dad.” He said the last part sarcastically.
Logan’s mind was churning. He would have made fun of Shane if things had been different, but he could feel Shane wouldn’t think he was funny. “We both played football?” he asked, unable to stop the happiness inside of him, and he put up a hand to give Shane a high five.
Shane half-heartedly high-fived him back.
“That is awesome! We did it!” Logan leapt to his feet, noticing almost all his pain was gone from his head.
Shane stood too, looking unsure. “You did it. You went pro.”
“Didn’t we celebrate, have fun? Didn’t we have a blast in college?” Logan’s mind was whirling. “I can’t believe it. We did it! All our work paid off.”
Shane shook his head. “It wasn’t that great.”
The elation leaked out of Logan like air from a balloon. Everything he heard just added to the clutter in his mind. How could one of the biggest dreams he and Shane had had all growing up turn out so horrible?
For a few seconds neither of them spoke. Then Logan blurted, “Okay, then what happened with Paris? Why didn’t I ask her to marry me? Did she marry some jerk?” Logan ran a hand through his hair. “Why am I marrying this other woman?”
The top of Shane’s lip quivered, almost suppressing a snarl. “No. You didn’t marry her. I guess the jerk part is debatable.”
“Dude, what is all this anger? Look, if you need to punch me for something, just do it. I mean, I don’t know what happened, but will you just fill me in on the blanks, please? Then we can get rid of all this crap between us and be back to being us, right? Maybe this is a good thing.”
“Shut up.” Shane’s anger deepened to something close to hate. It reminded Logan of the look Shane gave Bill Durkham when they were in seventh grade and the ninth grader had started picking on him in front of Lila Kennedy, the girl he’d been sweet on.
Logan felt a surge of the deep, caveman-ish adrenaline that any man feels when another man looks like they want to kill him. Shane didn’t just want to hit him. Shane would kill him. The realization took him aback. Shane had been everything to him, everything.
Shane shook his head again and turned away from him. “This is unbelievable.”
“Just tell me.” Logan was past the blame game now. As quarterback, the thing that had always given him the edge was to be able to look at the field and make decisions about how to get the ball down it. He’d been good at it, taking in the information and then making instinctual decisions, but if he didn’t know the playing field, he couldn’t make any calls. “Tell me,” he said with a bit of anger in his own voice.
Shane’s nostrils flared, and his eyes turned to steel. “Fine. I’ll give you details. I told you, we went to UC Berkeley. You were a star. Paris, she went to Juilliard.”
Logan smiled. “She got it.” He thought about trying to fist-bump Shane or high-five again, but he didn’t look in the mood.
Shane didn’t stop. “Your dad died after our sophomore year. You came back for the funeral. I was cut from the team by then and we weren’t close.” He said it matter-of-factly.
“Why?” Logan demanded, feeling like this couldn’t be the reality. “How could we not be close? You’ve been like a brother to me.”
Shane’s upper lip curled into a brief sneer. “Because you changed, Logan. Okay? I don’t know how to sum it up in a sentence. You…everything was different.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Man…”
Another round of silence. Logan could not understand this reality. It made absolutely no sense to him. “Paris?”
Shane shrugged. “Honestly, I didn’t know what all happened between you and Paris, but after your dad passed away at the end of sophomore year, you guys broke it off. It was done.” His sadness morphed into a scowl. “You blew it with her on your own, okay? You.” He pointed at him. “It was your fault.”
Logan gritted his teeth. “Where is she?”
“She’s here.” Shane flexed his hand and massaged his palm.
“Just spit it out!”
Shane swallowed and tensed as if bracing for a fight. “You guys split summer after sophomore year. She dated this artsy guy at Juilliard. They were going to do the concert circuit all over the world, and then her mom got diagnosed with cancer and she ended up coming home. They split.”
“And?” Logan was hyper, jittery.
Shane stared out the window. “I married her. We were married almost four years, and now we’ve been divorced a year.”
Logan froze. All the energy buzzing inside him dropped dead to a flat line. He stumbled back and found one of the conference chairs for balance. “You moved in and married her?” His voice had come out raspy, and his mouth was dry.
“Logan, don’t act like that. If you would have thought about anyone but yourself, you would have noticed that I loved her too. Always had, but it was always you two and me. When she came back from Juilliard and you were living the high life.” He pointed at Logan in a stern way. “Believe me, you’ve been living the playboy high life, dating movie stars, buying cars, organizing events with all the billionaires in Jackson.” Shane slammed a fist down on the conference table beside him. “I married her. And I loved her!” He was full-on yelling now. “And you know what, Logan? It was good. Great. Perfect. Until you had to hire her company to organize your stupid event where you prance around Jackson like royalty.” Without warning, he grabbed Logan’s shirt and pulled his fist back.
Logan didn’t react. It was like he was living in a movie and watching himself from a distance.
Shane flinched and then let him go, shoving him back at the same time. “Gahh!”
Logan stumbled, but caught himself.
Shane cursed, and his eyes were bright with emotion.
Logan held to the chair and sucked in a ragged breath. Had he noticed his best friend loved his woman? No. No. None of this made any sense. He forced himself to breathe and stand. “So you married the woman I love?” Logan didn’t know what he was supposed to do. What he wanted to do was full-on fight Shane, but he didn’t.
Shane’s words echoed in his brain. It was your fault. Then his mind flashed to his father’s face. His father was dead. With a heavy heart he pulled t
he chair back and sat, yanking in a breath. It didn’t surprise him, but it still hurt. He blinked, and Paris’s face flashed into his mind. He’d just kissed her, right before the game—standing outside of the locker room, his helmet in his hand, his other arm around her waist, pulling her into him. The feel of her against him. The way he wanted her. He slammed a fist onto the table. “No!”
Shane turned back to the window. He scoffed. “Yeah, welcome to reality.”
Logan tried to process it all. “Why did you divorce her?”
Shane turned to face him, the steely look back on his face. “Well, I screwed up, too.” He let a derisive laugh and pulled out his cell phone, checking the time. “In fact, I need to go pick up my son—our son—from school, and we’re leaving on a family vacation with my new wife.”
A phone rang. Not a quiet ring, but a blaring ring.
Shane swore, and then turned to leave. “I have to get this. Hold on.”
Logan watched him go and sat there for a few seconds, trying to think of what to do. Not waiting for Shane to return, he fled the conference room, rushed out the door, and started into a jog. The ache was still in his head, but it was manageable now. His old home wasn’t far from here, and he could pick up his car there.
His mind was clear: the only thing he could do was find Paris.
Chapter 7
Paris sat on the deck of her grandfather’s cabin, staring at the sunset. Even though it was June, she still wore a jacket. Wyoming summers were nice, but still cold in the mountains at night. She reflected on the call she’d gotten from Shane. He’d told her he’d seen Logan, and it was true—Logan didn’t remember. He’d told her that he didn’t know where Logan had gone, and to be careful.
It would seem touching, like Shane might really still care about her well-being, if he wasn’t leaving to take their son with his new wife on vacation.
She had taken half a panic attack pill tonight. She didn’t like to take them often; she was a mother first and had to be alert and ready if Ty needed something. Usually she just dealt with this anxiety that would flare up sometimes.
Tonight she’d made an exception. She also made another exception and had two glasses of wine, instead of just one. Probably not smart, but she didn’t care at the moment. She opened her laptop, thinking that work might be just the cure for some of the nervous energy that hadn’t been alleviated by the medication haze yet.
Activating her personal hot spot on her phone, she downloaded new emails. Surprisingly, there weren’t that many. She was grateful that Michelle was good at handling details, which helped to cross a lot of tasks off her daily lists most of the time.
As she looked through another contract she had to deal with for this All-Stars Event, she forwarded it to her attorney and then sent an email to Montana Crew’s company, telling them Ford Events would handle the legal procedures and everything would be ready for the concert.
She was truly grateful the All-Stars Event had taken off the past couple of years. It really helped to pay the bills. Of course, it’d been the thing she and Shane fought about the most, but what did it matter now?
The pills and wine had taken the edge off her worry. She turned off the hot spot on her phone and shut her computer, wrapping her sweater closer around her shoulders and staring out at the sunset. There was this nagging feeling that something wasn’t right, but she pushed it away. She pushed away the fact that her five-year-old son was leaving with his father. Pushed away the fact that she was alone. Pushed away the fact that Logan was somewhere. It wasn’t her problem, right? She … it’d been over for so long.
This was all ridiculous. Of course she wanted him to get help. Hoped he would get his memory back and be able to do what he needed to do in his life. Like so many times, her mind flashed to the last time she’d seen him. He’d come for her mother’s funeral, which had ticked Shane off too. It hadn’t been something she expected. She didn’t even know how Logan heard about it. He hadn’t shown up in a showy way.
No. He’d just been waiting at the graveyard after. The service had broken up and Shane and Ty stood by her, holding hands. Her father slouched at her other side. She had felt broken.
Then Shane had said, “He’s here,” in that disgruntled tone he always got when he spoke of Logan the past couple of years.
Logan had purposely waited until all the others who had attended the funeral were gone. Making sure no one else had seen him. Just off to the side.
Her father had patted her shoulder. “I guess he probably loved her too. He was in our home almost as much as you.” Her father had lifted his hand and waved at Logan.
Shane had grunted and picked up Ty. “I’ll be waiting in the car.”
Logan had moved forward, meeting at the gravestone and taking her father into a hug. Her father had always loved Logan like a son. Even though it was awkward now, her father often told stories about him to her, despite her telling him to stop.
Logan’s eyes had been red when he’d pulled his sunglasses off. “I’m so sorry,” he’d said to her father.
Her father, the wrinkles deep around his eyes from the past couple of years of fighting the cancer, had only thanked him, then moved toward the parking lot. “Take your time, Paris.”
She and Logan had stared at each other. It’d felt … real.
Even now, a surge of tears threatened to choke her throat. His piercing green eyes had had that same look, the look she’d known all her life. “I’m sorry, Pear,” he’d said, his lip trembling as he gestured to the coffin. “I loved your mom.”
She’d fallen into his arms. She still remembered how it’d felt like everything and nothing was between them. It was only moments later, when she’d heard Shane call to her, that she pulled her arms back, somewhat ashamed to have her husband see the way she couldn’t stop from falling into Logan.
Logan had pulled back and let out a light laugh. “Man, he can’t … I …” He’d taken her off guard and pulled her in for a kiss, revealing he’d known the secret she and Shane had taken great care to hide from him.
She’d been lost for a moment, then pulled back, with tears in her eyes. “Don’t ever do that again.” She’d been shaking. “Goodbye, Logan,” she’d whispered, leaving him standing there. The only thing that mattered was her son and his safety, protecting her family.
A knock startled her from that memory. She jolted to a standing position, knocking over the deck chair she was sitting on. Moving into the cabin, she hesitated before opening the door. It wouldn’t be surprising if the neighbor, Ms. Pixley, was waiting for her with something warm. She always noticed when Paris was here. It had been so long she wasn’t expecting such a warm greeting, and it usually took a couple of days. Pulling open the door she felt her heart slam into her gut. It wasn’t Ms. Pixley at all …
It was those dangerous green eyes she’d known all her life. It was the dark hair that was now mussed and hung over his eyes. It was his jawline and the way he gritted his teeth. “Pear …”
It was Logan Slade.
Chapter 8
Logan stood there, staring at Paris, his heart pounding inside his chest, everything else forgotten except her.
The older version of everyone looked a lot different, and she was no exception, but she was still beautiful. She had the same aqua-green eyes and same long, red hair. She wore more makeup than she used to. She stood in a T-shirt and shorts, her skin like porcelain. Every part of him wanted to kiss her, like he’d always wanted to kiss her. Tears glittered in her eyes.
Neither of them spoke. For how long, he didn’t know—it could have been a second, it could have been an eternity. Her cheeks weren’t as round, and she looked like a woman. Grown up. Breathtaking.
“Pear …” he began.
She shut the door in his face. “Go away, Logan!”
He stood there, shocked. He remembered when he’d helped her grandfather build this cabin. It had been the summer he’d turned ten and he had come to play with Paris, but he’d ended up swinging
a hammer. They both had helped and laughed through it, her grandfather promising them if they worked the morning he would take them out water-skiing in the afternoon. It had been the first time he’d ever had a chance to water-ski and wakeboard, and it ended up being one of the best days of his life.
It shocked him that Paris was no longer part of this futuristic life, that they weren’t even friends. A gaping hole opened up in his chest. “Pear, please.” He’d called her Pear since the third grade. She and Shane had always called him hotshot, ever since kickball, where he dominated. The memories assaulted him. Putting a hand on the door, he leaned into the space where the doorbell was. “Pear, I need to talk. Please.”
Waiting, once again, felt like it lasted a million years. Finally, she opened the door.
He noticed her feet were bare and her toes were painted a simple red. His eyes trailed up her body. Granted, she looked different. She actually looked slimmer than in high school. Not that she’d ever been heavy, but now she looked even better. His mind flashed to the fact she had a kid, that she was a mom. For some reason, he grinned.
Glaring at him, she crossed her arms. “What are you doing? What game are you playing?”
Having nothing but the truth to give her, he copied her stance, feeling stronger than he had since he’d woken up. Being here, with Paris, made sense to him. Being in her proximity had been the plan for what felt like his whole life. Well, the life he remembered. “There’s no game.” His voice faltered. “I woke up in a hospital and I don’t remember the last eight years of my life.” He said it simply, even though it didn’t feel that way.
Her eyes narrowed. “You were in a coma. How are you even standing here?”
Shrugging, he uncrossed his arms and let out a breath. Why was he here? He didn’t even know if she would be here for sure. Logan had driven around Jackson for a couple of hours, trying to process everything Shane had told him. Shane had married Paris? Shane had divorced Paris? They had a kid together?