Dear Logan,
I know this is a cowardly thing to do, but you have to understand that I just can’t do this. If my Mom and your Dad were still here, they’d be so furious with us. I can’t bear the thought of losing you as a brother, but I know things will never be the same again. I know you never wanted me as a sister, but I loved having you as my brother, and my best friend.
I’ll get in touch when I’m settled.
Love you.
Sophie.
No fucking way. She did not just up and leave him in the space of a few hours. But looking around him, crumpling the damn note in his fist, he realized she had. Where would she go? Certainly not back home – the embarrassment was still too fresh for her – he knew her like the back of his hand, and knew that she'd avoid going home for as long as possible. The city. She'd been talking about living in the damn city.
He felt his heart skip a beat as he thought of the sheer size of the city.
Chapter Seven
March 2013
Sophie
Finding a job in this city was like trying to find a needle in haystack – forget the haystack, more like a skyscraper. Her feet throbbing, she slipped off her shoes and padded into the open-plan kitchen and living area in her tiny apartment. She'd had more savings than she'd originally estimated – Taylor had been making repayments since their confrontation, and so far he'd payed back almost ten percent of the money she'd put into his business. By the letters her cleaning lady had forwarded to her, it looked like he intended to buy her out. Wonderful, at least she didn't have to deal with him in person about it. As long as he kept up the repayments, she was happy enough.
Using the money he'd transferred into her checking account, she'd been able to put a deposit on this apartment and pay the rent for two months. She had three weeks left to find a job, and unless she was willing to dip into her savings again – which she was not – that meant she would have to return home to face the knowing stares of her neighbors and friends.
Along with forwarding her mail, Barbara – her cleaning lady – had been sending her tidbits of information from the local gossip mill. It seemed the entire town now knew about Taylor's cheating ways, and his newly single status meant his business got a boost. Go figure. Nobody knew where she'd gone, but local consensus was that she'd shacked up with Logan in Somersville. Not too far off the mark there, really. She had lived with him until everything fell apart, five long weeks ago.
All those teenage emotions – which she'd mistakenly thought they'd both buried – had reared their ugly heads and destroyed everything she'd had left. She missed him desperately, and thought of him non-stop. Imagining his reaction when he'd read her goodbye note, she felt the strings of guilt wrap tightly around her heart. He hadn't deserved that, but she'd reacted without thinking things through properly.
If she'd been thinking straight, she might have sat down and talked things through with him, explained that things between them should never have gotten so out of hand. With a wry twist to her lips, she thought of his anger as he'd told her he'd never thought of her as a sister, and her own hurt at the admission. There wouldn't have been any talking to him on the subject. Logan was notoriously stubborn when he'd set his mind to something, and if he'd set his mind to Sophie, she may as well be talking to a brick wall as tell him how wrong it was. How their parents would disapprove.
Eventually he'd understand that leaving had been the best thing at the time. She just hoped she could convince her own traitorous heart of the same. Tick-tick-tick, went the clock on the wall, and right on cue, when the clock struck seven p.m., her phone buzzed.
Please talk 2 me.
Her resolve was weakening, her fingers actually caressing the screen as she thought about replying for the third time this week. Without fail, at seven p.m. every evening, Logan would ask her to talk to him. She never did, and at midnight, he would send another text to say goodnight. Last week she'd had to turn her phone off numerous times in order to stop herself dialing his number.
When she saw something amusing, or something sad, even something ordinary, she immediately thought of Logan and how he'd enjoy hearing about this or that, and that invariably led to her tearing up and remembering that they'd ruined it all. There was no way back from it and the sooner she realized it, the better.
Soph, please baby. I miss u so damn much.
Two texts this evening – that was new. She felt her tears well up and flow over as she read and re-read the heart-rending message. “I miss you too. More than I can tell you.” She flung her phone away to stop herself replying just that, and had to scramble when it buzzed for a third time. She knew it was him again.
It's Tuesday. I want 2 hear about ur week. Tell me.
“Argh!” with a sigh of frustration, she stripped off her clothes where she stood and decided to take a shower. It was Tuesday. She wanted to talk to him. They always spoke on Tuesdays. Turning the shower to the hottest setting she could stand, she climbed in and let her tears mingle with the water. She'd just managed to rinse her hair for the final time when the water started to cool. Another thing to hate about this place – no prolonged showers.
The fluffy towel that she'd left on the radiator was warm and soft, feeling almost like a hug. If there was one thing she needed right now, it was a hug. When Taylor had cheated on her, she'd felt like her entire life was in ruins, but it had more to do with feeling duped and embarrassed than losing her lover. Now that she'd lost Logan, she truly knew what it felt like when the ashes of her former life settled cold around her.
It had taken her only a few days for the initial pain of Taylor's betrayal to fade away, leaving nothing but a sense of anger at her own stupidity for being blind enough not to notice his cheating ways before. But with Logan, even after five weeks the pain was as strong as if she'd left him only that morning. Time wasn't healing this wound in a hurry.
Scrubbing her hair with another towel, she dried herself off and pulled on a shorty pajama set with a sleepy owl sitting on a branch on the pink top. “I'm not a night owl,” it proclaimed, but lately Sophie had been nothing but a night owl, lying awake until the sun rose sometimes, only falling into a fitful sleep when her mind, exhausted from thoughts of her stepbrother finally gave up the fight.
She curled on to the squashy couch with a mug of cocoa – the effort of making dinner too much for her right now. She'd make something later.
~
She woke up with a little patch of drool underneath her cheek on the arm of the couch. Stretching her shoulders to work out the kinks, she realized she had fallen asleep in the middle of her cocoa, which now sat abandoned and cold on the coffee table, growing a skin on top. Her phone's back-light went out, letting her know that was what woke her. She'd told herself a thousand times to turn the damn thing of in the evenings, but no matter how much she berated herself, she could never quite work up the will to do it.
With a relenting sigh, she reached for the thing, pressing the middle key to brighten the screen again. As if an advertisement, Logan's name flashed across her screen. Logan. Logan. Logan. Her thumb swirled around the screen before landing on the message icon. There were three texts – two that must have been sent while she'd showered, and the obligatory midnight one. The first message read:
My week was shit. Contract fell thru and there's a leak in the kitchen. I wanted 2 call u so bad earlier. But I know I won't get an answer. Wish u wud talk 2 me.
She frowned, her eyebrows drawing together in guilt and pain. She really wanted to talk to him, too. Could they just go back to being brother and sister, or was she crazy to hope for it? Maybe with time, they could regain some sort of normality. With an empty feeling in her chest, she turned her attention to the next text.
Mail came for u. Something Barbara found in ur closet when she cleared out Taylor's stuff. If u want me 2 forward it I'll need ur address.
Oh, very good, Logan, she thought with a smirk. Ask me for my address to forward some mail, and then you know where I
live so you can track me down. Nope. That was not going to happen. She'd get in touch with Barbara and ask her to get in touch with Logan so that he could mail it back to her house, and then Barbara could forward it on to her. Simple. Well, not simple, but sorted.
The third text was shorter. It read:
N'night xx
She wondered if she should reply, just once. Maybe if they could talk via text, she could get a feel for how they could work things out. She really didn't want to be without him forever. She'd woken up in a cold sweat the previous night, her night terrors still fresh in her mind, and reached for the phone without thinking. She'd gotten half way through typing his number in before she remembered. She'd cried then, for hours, rocking herself back and forth and regretting the entire mess.
~
Logan
His sigh still echoing in the empty room, Logan rose from Sophie's bare mattress and made his way to his own room. Every day for the past two weeks he'd been texting Sophie, figuring after three weeks she must have worked her shit out, but every damn day she'd ignored him. He was beginning to wonder if she'd ever speak to him again and what he'd do if she really didn't want him in her life anymore.
Besides his mother, who had finally met the man of her dreams and taken off on a round the world trip, finding an affinity for the Greek and settling there, he had no one. His best friend Janet was currently planning her own wedding, and didn't need this shit-storm brought down on her already heavy load, and he'd never really connected with anyone else the way he had with Janet, new friends never making it past the casual stage.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone vibrated in his pocket. Disappointment overwhelmed him when the name that flashed up read Bethany and not Sophie. Even after five weeks of polite refusals, she still sent him a text every so often.
Hey handsome, this one read. Wanna meet up for sum fun?
He allowed himself to consider it. He could blow off steam with Bethany – she knew the score – and try to find some way to get over his stepsister, or he could continue to mope. Moping actually sounded better to him. How sad was that? He'd finally managed to get the girl of his dreams, and she ran from him in disgust minutes after coming apart in his arms, and here he was, like a stooge, pining after her. What happened to the happy-go-lucky, one night stand and no more guy he'd been? Sophie had happened, that's what.
He swiped his thumb across the screen to be rid of Bethany's message. Toeing off his shoes, he decided not to even reply. Maybe she'd get the damn hint. He froze. Shit. Wasn't that what Sophie had been doing with him? Ignoring him in the hopes he'd just go away. He kicked off his pants and growled as he tugged his tee shirt over his head. He'd leave her be. No matter how hard it was. Shit, he'd probably be better off deleting her number. It didn't matter that he knew it by heart – deleting it was a symbolic gesture.
He'd allow her to get on with her life. And he'd move on with his, too. Before crawling into bed, he took a minute to send a text.
B in touch tomorrow. Fun is exactly what I need.
~
Sophie
It had been five days. Five days and no contact from Logan. Not so much as a good night text. She checked her phone fifteen billion times a day, paranoid that she wasn't getting a signal, that her battery had gone dead, or that her phone was just broken. But her signal was perfect, her battery was full and other people managed to call her with no problems. After five days, she was finally admitting the truth. He'd moved on.
She tried to hold back the conflicting emotions that thought brought with it. She should be happy he'd finally given her the space to forget the things they'd done to each other. She should be thrilled that he'd given up trying to change her mind and get her to talk to him. He'd realized she wasn't going to change her mind, and moved on. It was good, she told herself piling some pasta on her plate. It was good. Him moving on meant that she could move on too.
That morning she'd gotten the call she'd been waiting on. A job. An honest to goodness job. There was someone willing to take a chance on an interior designer without a reference – her old boss wasn't thrilled about the way she'd hightailed it out of town with only a text message to let him know she wouldn't be back any time soon, and he was so far refusing to forward on a reference for her, claiming that any reference he gave would have to include an account of her unreliability. She supposed she had no one to blame for that but herself.
If she'd brazened it out, stuck around amidst the gossip and the knowing looks, she might have been able to work off a period of notice and get a good reference – she was damn good at her job – but taking off like she had in the middle of the night had ruined more things than her relationship with Logan.
She glanced at the foot of her queen sized bed, which was just visible from her perch on the couch, where her clothes were neatly laid out for the morning. She was going to be a big city designer. Alexis – one of the other designers – was going to meet her out front in the morning, and together they would redecorate an old fifties style diner. As far as jobs went, it wasn't huge, and didn't require a partner, but she was new – they didn't quite trust her skills yet, and the partner was a condition of her employment for the next six weeks – and she was determined to make as good of an impression as she could.
Her future was now, and her past was where it belonged – behind her. With a wince, she thought again of her stepbrother, and tried to harden her heart to the fact that he now belonged in her past, also. If anything was ever clear to her, it was the fact that they were not good for each other. She'd figured that out when they were teenagers – and he had too, if moving into the dorms was any indication – but as if they'd needed the reminder, sleeping together was the wake up call they'd both needed.
She would always love him, and be thankful to him for the sacrifices he'd made for her, but it was time to grow up and be responsible. It was her fault they were in the mess they were in. She'd been the one to flirt and wish when they were kids, and she'd been the one standing there with her hand up her skirt watching her brother get off with another woman.
Everything that followed had been a direct result of her not having any control where he was concerned, and she was sick and tired of having no control in her life. This job was the fresh start she needed. In a year from now, she would look back on everything that happened and laugh, she told herself. Everything happens for a reason.
She spared her phone one last glance before reaching for it on the arm of the couch. The screen lit up one last time as she pressed the power button. With a sense of finality, she turned the damn thing off, vowing to get a new one first thing in the morning. With a new number to match. No more gazing into the past, she would only look forward from this point on.
Part Three
Chapter One
March 2014
Logan
“But then – get this – he said to me, 'Ma'am, I think you've had enough.' So I turned to him, fully intending to tell him I hadn't had half of what I wanted, and not nearly enough, and promptly vomited all down his snooty front,” Janet shrieked with laughter.
“Jesus, Jan. What did Paul say?” Logan crumpled up another sticky note reminding him to buy milk, and glared at the black coffee in front of him. He really should have put the damn note on the car, not the fridge.
“Oh, you know Paul.”
He did know Paul. The guy was as reserved as any he'd ever met in his life. “Yeah. I take it he wasn't happy?”
“He's been sleeping in the spare room the past three nights. Ugh,” she sighed. “Who knew marital bliss could be so...blissless?”
“Is that a word?”
The phone crackled as he assumed Jan shrugged. “Hell if I know, you're the college boy, remember?”
“How could I forget? You only remind me every day.”
“And twice on Fridays!” she laughed.
It was good to talk to his best friend again. She'd been incommunicado for a while – a three month honeymoon just wasn'
t natural. “So listen,” he replied, tipping the coffee down the sink and opting for a glass of juice instead. “You never told me what he wants to talk to me about.”
“I know,” she trilled. “You'll have to wait and see. Besides,” she admitted, somewhat sheepishly. “He's still not talking to me, so I can't give you any deets.”
“You need to sort shit out, Jan. You've only been married for eight months.” He grinned at the image of them both he had in his mind. Her, wild and free-spirited, and Paul... well, Paul was so straight-laced he wondered sometimes how they'd ever met, let alone gotten married.
“Shush,” she told him sternly. “You can give me relationship advice when you've had a woman in your life for more than one night.”
“That's not fair,” he argued, swallowing the bitter orange juice with a grimace. As breakfasts went, it wasn't the tastiest. He chased it down with a hastily buttered slice of toast and grabbed his keys where he'd thrown them on the island the previous night, stumbling in from more than a few after work drinks.
Remembering he'd have to walk, since he'd left his car at the Beer Bunker, he hefted his briefcase and strode out the door. “I've had women stay for more than one night.”
“She doesn't count.”
Surprised at the amount of acid in his friend's tone, he raised his eyebrows. “Who?”
She sighed, a tortured sound across the airwaves. “You know who, Logan. Sophie,” she spat.
Stepbrother, Mine Page 13