She was relieved to see Logan visibly relax the second their hotel-room door closed.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know this would stress you out so much.”
“I’m not stressed out,” he argued. “But walking around with a couple thousand bucks that a lot of people saw you put in your purse is dangerous. I just wanted to make sure you got up here without anyone bothering you.”
“Well, good thing I had you with me,” she said as she sat on her bed and slipped her shoes off. They hit the floor with a soft thud and she flopped back on the bed. “I can’t believe the nerve of that woman to show up there.”
Logan sat on his own bed. “She’s persistent,” he agreed quietly.
“And I told her you were my husband. Really, does she have no morals?”
“She slipped me her number,” Logan told her, a smile stretching across his face when Beth looked like she was ready to explode.
“She what?”
“Actually, she had the waitress do it when everyone was ordering drinks.”
Beth sat up, anger flaring inside her and making her face hot. “What a home-wrecker,” she fumed, prepared to get her shoes and hunt the skank down.
Logan laughed, the sound rich and warm in her ears. “We aren’t really married, so no home to wreck, but yeah, kind of shady.”
“Kind of?” Beth scoffed. “She’s the epitome of shady.” Her eyes cut to him sharply. “If we were married and she did that, I’d kill her.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yikes.”
“Okay, I wouldn’t kill her,” she conceded, facing reality. “But I’d…I’d…” She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. “I don’t know what the hell I’d do.”
Logan was watching her, still with his eyebrows raised.
Embarrassed, she grabbed her pajamas and her toiletries, and fled to the bathroom. Once inside, she leaned her hands on the counter and stared at herself in the mirror.
“Get it together, Beth. He needs a friend, not a psycho, jealous, ex-nobody banging around his life.”
Unfortunately, the jealous ex-nobody stared back at her, the friend-zone message not received in the slightest bit.
She thought about Logan standing protectively behind her in the casino and his deep laughter during dinner.
This was going to be harder than she’d thought.
5
Logan was embarrassed to admit that he’d waited until Beth had gone to sleep before getting himself ready for bed.
Something about removing his prosthetic in front of her and hobbling around without a leg felt gut-wrenching. Like maybe she’d see him as less of a man or incapable somehow.
Even as he’d sat in a chair reading a book, waiting her out as her eyes slid closed, he’d felt deep waves of shame battering against him, pulling him under.
It was easy to tell himself that he was the same man, capable of the same things. He’d been through physical therapy; he could run with the right prosthetic if he worked at it. He could do just about anything he could do before.
But he wasn’t the damn same and that was what it all came down to. Where once, he’d have felt more than comfortable stripping down to nothing at all in front of Beth and working his way into her bed, despite the rift between them, he now felt unable.
He didn’t want her to see his leg and the aftermath of his surgeries. He didn’t want her to see a leg that didn’t really belong to him, propped up against the wall next to the bed. If he’d have known she was coming to his cousin’s house the other night, he would have made sure to have it on under his pants, so he’d have at least looked normal. As it was, he’d had the leg of his pants pinned up, but even that felt like some kind of black mark against him.
Was he so shallow that everything all came back to how he looked? He’d like to think that wasn’t the case. He’d like to think that everything he was, didn’t come down to one of his limbs.
He was more than the sum total of his parts, or something like that.
But, when he woke the next morning and Beth was sitting on her bed, staring at him, he felt wholly uncomfortable with the situation. The sheet covered him, but where his body was well-defined under the thin material, his lack of a leg was stark in contrast. The sheet dropped off the end of his stump, creating a plateau on the bed where his leg should have been.
Beth, however, was not looking at his leg. She was staring straight at his face, looking fresh and wide awake.
“What?” he asked, unsure of what she wanted from him.
“It’s eight in the morning,” she said, shifting slightly and looking away.
Taking the opportunity while she wasn’t watching him, he sat up and bent his leg, hoping to lessen the effect of the missing limb.
“So,” he replied. “Did we have something going on?”
Beth shook her head. “I’ve been up for an hour. I’m bored.”
Logan looked her over and noted her clothes: a sporty tank top, leggings, and some sneakers.
“You’re heading to the gym?” he deduced.
“I was hoping you’d come with me.” She shrugged. “They’ve got a big gym; I already checked it out.”
“You’ve already been down there?”
“Just for a minute. I went to get coffee.”
She was brimming with energy, nearly vibrating with it. He’d never seen her in such a state and it took him by surprise. Was she nervous about something, hoping to burn off some steam? Was she used to working out in the morning and was off her routine?
He looked at his leg out of the corner of his eye and almost blanched.
“Did you get me any coffee?” he asked, buying himself a minute to figure out what he was going to do.
Did he take her up on her offer and head to the gym? He hadn’t worked out in months, at least not the way he used to. He’d been on modified workouts for months, mostly walking slowly on a treadmill. Hell, just walking had been his focus for so many months; he’d mostly let everything else go.
“Can I see it?”
Beth’s voice was soft in the muted morning light that surrounded them, and her blue eyes watched him with a kind of sympathy he didn’t recognize.
Sure, he’d seen sympathy. That kind of thing when someone looks at you like they can’t imagine being in your shoes.
This wasn’t that, though. That was the kind of look someone gives you when they know.
There was a knowledge in her gaze, like the hurt he was carrying around wasn’t relegated to just him.
“See what?” he choked out, even though he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“Your leg,” she said, not bothering with her usual quips or pretenses.
The moment between them was charged with emotion. Not the usual passion that had arced between them like electricity pulsing between two conductors, but something softer and far more comforting.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that he was embarrassed or that their history was a train wreck. The way she’d asked him, something in the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes, softened the sharp edges of his uneasiness.
He sucked in a fortifying breath and stripped the covers off his lap, revealing his lower body. His good leg looked the same but the other barely passed the hem of his boxers. There, the scars were crisscrossed over the end of his stump, pink and mostly healed.
He surreptitiously glanced at her, wondering how she was taking it. Her eyes assessed him wordlessly, her fingers nervously tapping on her thigh.
“The upshot is that I don’t have a bum knee anymore,” he said, the joke falling like an anvil between them.
When her eyes shot to his, they were swimming with unshed tears.
“Please don’t make jokes,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
“When can I make jokes?” he wondered, confused at her use of the word yet.
“Just,” she stuttered, struggling to find the words. “Not yet.”
“No jokes at all or just no leg jokes, Sugar?” he asked quiet
ly, hoping to change the subject and lighten the mood.
Without blinking, her eyes still on his, a tear fell from her lower lashes and slid down her cheek.
“No leg jokes,” she choked out. “Not yet.”
He nodded, pulling the sheet over his lap and hiding the offending stump from view.
“I might be a bit rusty at the gym,” he admitted, turning his back to her and slipping the silicone of the prosthetic over his stump, putting his leg on. He hated for her to see him without it, but it felt worse for her to see him have to put the plastic one on. When he looked over his shoulder, she was staring at his back, not his leg. “It’s been a while since I’ve worked out.”
Her eyes met his. “I didn’t mean we had to train for the Olympics, Logan. Just looking to get my regular workout on.”
He nodded, understanding. They’d never spent enough time together for him to get a good idea what her regular workout might be, but he’d seen her naked on numerous occasions, so he knew she had one. Throwing away the opportunity to see her in action in the gym seemed shortsighted.
“Just give me a few minutes to get ready,” he said, turning away from her.
“Just meet me downstairs when you’re ready.”
She stood from her bed and grabbed a few things off the dresser: her room key, a bottle of water, and some kind of headband. Without a backward glance, she left, the door thunking closed behind her.
Logan stood, stretching his arms above his head, before making his way to the bathroom. It took him no time at all to get ready and within ten minutes, he was standing in front of the door, his hand on the knob, ready to open it.
Problem was, he didn’t open it.
Instead, he looked down at himself and wondered what the hell he was doing.
He tried not to go so far back as to wonder what he was doing on the trip with Beth in the first place, though the thought stuck in his mind like his favorite postcard on a corkboard. It just sat there, staring at him, every moment he chose to look at it.
What was he doing with Beth in the first place?
Using her for a trip to the Grand Canyon? He could have easily flown there himself and taken her out of the equation all together.
So the real question was, why hadn’t he?
Why did he enjoy watching her gamble like a badass in the casino the night before? Why, when a sexy woman hit on him, did he feel amusement more than desire, because he was already there with Beth? Why did standing guard behind her last night make him feel like more of a man than anything he’d done in months?
“Friends, my ass,” he muttered, banging his forehead against the door before shoring himself up and heading down to meet Beth in the hotel gym.
Beth had almost convinced herself that he wouldn’t show up at the gym. The look on his face when he’d shown her what was left of his leg stayed with her as she dipped low into a squat, a heavy bar of weights on her shoulders.
She pushed out a breath as she pressed up from her heels, lifting the weight and coming to stand again.
Logan had always been so sure of himself, cocky in a way that was rarely sexy, but it worked for him. To see the turmoil swirling behind his moss-green eyes, once filled with the spark of a life well-lived, was enough to throw her off-kilter. Waves of unease had rolled off him when she’d asked him to join her and she just knew, he hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of finding his way.
She was in a deep squat, the heavy weight bar pressing her toward the floor, when he stepped into the gym, surprising her. Still concentrating on her set, she didn’t smile or speak, just acknowledged him with her eyes and continued on.
She was encouraged when he began a stretching routine of his own, warming up his muscles and hopefully preparing them for some work. Exercising always brought a sense of evenness to her life.
No matter where she was or what was going on, she could always count on finding some way to work out. Not in an obsessive way, but more in the burning off excess energy way. Some days, it was more to clear her mind of the thoughts that plagued her, often the regret that gnawed at her daily.
For nearly an hour they did a silent dance in the gym. No one else joined them and they were free to sidle around each other, working up a sweat and working on themselves.
Sometimes, she’d get lost in her workout, tuning him and the rest of the world out. Other times, she’d get distracted by the flex of muscles under his pale skin as he shifted positions or lifted weights.
He worked up a sweat which she highly appreciated. As if seeing him in his boxers in bed wasn’t enough to cultivate a week’s worth of fever dreams, she now had the added bonus of seeing his sweat-slicked skin and embossing that into her memory.
He was still going when she finished and laid out on a mat on the floor, stretching her muscles out, watching him out of the corner of her eye. She certainly didn’t want to make him uncomfortable if he was feeling self-conscious, but there was no way not to look. Even in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, he was more to look at than any naked man she’d ever seen.
She waited quietly until he racked the weights he’d been using and lowered himself onto the mat next to her. He was out of breath and radiating heat, her body warming at his proximity.
“That was good,” he said simply.
She handed him her bottle of water, half-full but still better than nothing. He drank deeply, gulping down the rest of the bottle.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“That felt good,” he repeated. “It’s been a while.”
“Let’s stretch you out so you don’t suffer later,” she suggested, moving to sit across from him, the bottom of her feet pressed against his. He hesitated when she held out her hands for him to hold, his eyes locked on her foot where it rested against his sneaker.
It was his prosthetic.
Annoyed, she snapped her fingers, breaking his stare as his eyes snapped to hers.
“Come on, Logan,” she cajoled. “It’s either this or spend the next six hours in the car with cramps in your back because you were too stubborn to stretch.”
He took a second to think about it, his eyes locked on hers as if he was weighing his options.
When he looked at her like that, she was always reminded how much damage she’d done to him by not being honest. By getting involved with him when she knew very well that they were on different wavelengths. He looked at her like he wasn’t sure he could trust her, even with something so trivial as helping him stretch after a workout.
It hurt, there was no denying that. It was like the moment you realized the thing you wanted was out of reach. Not just out of reach, like there might be hope you could get there with some hard work and elbow grease, but like there were miles between you and the goal. The end so far away that hope jumped ship the second it saw how far off happiness was.
But then, Logan placed his hands in hers and she felt a surge of joy. She schooled her face and made sure she was neutral and he didn’t see the hope rising inside her. His big hands were hot as they held hers and like always, powerful. She pulled him toward her and leaned back, luxuriating in the feel of him so close.
“This wasn’t what I had in mind when I thought about getting between your legs again.” Logan’s muffled voice floated up and she nearly let his hands go, her spontaneous laugh shaking her body.
“I’ll take you any way I can get you,” she shot back, a laugh still in her voice. “Though I agree, I was hoping there’d be less gym funk in general if the situation ever arose again.”
He lifted his head, his shoulders still low to the ground as he looked her in the eye.
“Let’s not fool ourselves, Sugar. With you, I always feel like that situation is just around the corner.”
Beth pushed his head back down, unable to take the lusty heat his eyes were searing into her.
“It’s there,” she admitted, letting his back stretch and then helping him sit up. “But, I’m trying to let it be on the back burne
r.”
“Fat chance,” he murmured, pulling her in to stretch.
The top of her head just grazed the insides of his thighs, her nose nearly touching the floor.
“Maybe,” she said, her voice muffled against the blue floor mat. “But I meant what I said, Logan.” She sat up and scooted back, giving them both room to stand and pack up. “We’ve both got demons. If we have to run, might as well do it together.”
“Is that what we’re doing? I thought this was our big Thelma and Louise moment,” he joked, opening the door for her as they left the gym.
“Since they drive off a cliff at the end, I think I’ll pass on that scenario.”
“Spoiler alert,” Logan complained.
“Let’s pack up and head out. I keep waiting for your one-woman fan club to corner me this morning, and I can’t be held responsible for what I might do or say if I run into her.”
He shook his head as the elevator closed them in, bringing them up to their room.
“If it makes you feel better, I’m not interested,” he offered.
“It doesn’t,” she said right away, not a second after he spoke. “Not even a little bit.”
“Not even a little?” he asked with a laugh.
“Okay, maybe a little,” she conceded. “But we should hit the road anyway.”
“Where to next?”
“Cleveland,” she said. “Got a few stops marked out. Maybe, if you think you have time, we’ll stay a couple days. Take in the sights.”
The elevator dinged and they got off, companionably walking down the hall together.
“Cleveland has sights?” Logan joked. “Anything noteworthy?”
“Besides the house from A Christmas Story and the Rock and Roll Hall of fame?”
“Ah,” he chuckled as they entered their room. “The altar of Jim Morrison,” he recalled. “Got it.”
“I can drive if you want to check out some things to do. I don’t mind. Otherwise, you can drive and I’ll let you know what I find.” She riffled through her bag and grabbed some clean clothes. “I’ll jump in the shower, first, if you don’t mind. When you’re done, we can head out.”
Confessing History (Freehope Book 3) Page 8