He might not have seen my hands but he felt my reaction and he read it.
“No,” he stated. “You’re a ghost and I lived life haunted by your ghost so there’s no takin’ up where we left off because we never left off. We’re still back there. Now we just gotta find a way to put the shit in between behind us and keep on goin’.”
I started to say something but he kept talking before I could get it out.
“And the way we’re doin’ that, coasters do not factor.”
My body jerked again in surprise at his bizarre declaration.
And for a variety of reasons, all of them having to do with self-preservation, I focused only on that.
“I have nice things, Logan,” I informed him of something he could absolutely see.
“And you make a mint, got a mint invested, and I’m not hurtin’. You get bacon grease on your sheets, babe, we buy new and who gives a fuck?”
“I do,” I snapped. “These sheets are perfection. It took me two years to find these sheets. I don’t need to spend two more years finding new sheets that are perfect.”
“I’m in bed beside you, I’ll make it so you don’t think about sheets.”
He was beside me, I’d sleep on a bed of broken glass and not give a damn.
This was not something I intended to share at that juncture.
So instead, I shared, “I have a lock on two Himalayan kitties from a local breeder and they match these bedclothes. I’ve put deposits down on them. Cats can live fifteen, twenty years. And honestly, the last time I went looking, it felt like it’d take twenty years to find the right sheets. Put cats in the mix, these sheets have to last a long time.”
“You’re gettin’ cats to match your house?” he asked in open, badass, hot guy, biker astonishment.
“Of course,” I answered, like that was a perfectly sane thing to do. “The house and the sheets. It’s all going with me to Arizona. Including the cats, which my mother is ecstatic about, she loves animals. And I’m good to pick them up any day now.”
I’d clearly said the wrong thing because the storm that threatened his expression earlier in the conversation clouded his features and this time it did not clear.
Again with his voice chafing, he declared, “You’re not goin’ to Arizona.”
“It’s all sorted,” I returned.
“Babe, have you been listening at all?”
I shut up.
He didn’t.
“You’re leavin’ town to get away from me and shit has changed in a big fuckin’ way.”
Oh God.
It appeared that it had.
“Oh, right,” I muttered.
“Right,” he ground out.
“I’m seriously jet-lagged,” I explained.
“You’re lucky you got that excuse or about now you’d seriously be gettin’ a tanned ass.”
I felt my eyes get big.
“Are you joking?” I demanded to know.
“Babe,” he clipped. “Twenty years apart, haunted by you, walkin’ around with a hole in my soul, we’re back and we’re talkin’ about cats and you goin’ to Arizona? No, I’m not fuckin’ jokin’.”
Walkin’ around with a hole in my soul.
I stared up at him.
I stared up at Logan lying on top of me.
He was back.
Lying on me.
He knew it all.
He got it.
He wasn’t angry with me.
I’d laid it out and had a drama and woke up the next day to Logan making bacon and telling me we were back.
We’re back.
“I don’t know, but I think I’m either gonna be sick, start crying, or lapse into catatonia,” I whispered, way, way too out of it to be able to process all I was experiencing.
I felt his body relax on mine.
“It’s the first one, do me a favor and give me a heads-up so I can get you to the toilet. Bacon grease on sheets I can live with. Puke, not so much.”
I felt the weird sensation of hysterical laughter fizzing inside me and it didn’t feel bad in the slightest.
Tentatively, I put my hands to his sides, feeling his thermal, the heat and hardness of Logan under it.
We’re back.
“Millie.”
I focused on him and not the irrefutable evidence of all Logan was saying weighing down on me, heating me through his thermal, and saw his eyes searching mine, like he looked standing outside the bathroom earlier.
Warmth and concern.
Logan.
My Logan.
He was back.
My fingers fisted in his shirt.
“I missed you.”
It wasn’t a whisper.
It was a breath.
Barely audible, each word weighed down by heartache and history.
But he heard it and then I heard his groan, felt it tearing through him, tearing through me.
Pain.
A sound filled with pain.
A sound made releasing pain.
Then his face was in my neck, we were on our sides, and his arms were locked around me.
I slid my hands up his back and fisted them again in the material there, latching on like I should have twenty years ago.
Like I’d never let go.
I turned my head, my lips seeking his ear.
“Please kiss me.”
No hesitation, Logan obliged. His hand sliding up to curve around the base of my head where it met my neck, he held tight, took my mouth, and kissed me, deep and hard and wet.
It hurt, God, it hurt. The pain was unbearable.
And it felt utterly, impossibly, magnificently beautiful.
He ended it, shifting his head so his temple was pressed tight to mine.
“Missed you, too, beautiful.”
I closed my eyes and clutched harder at him, pushing into his body, holding him to me and attempting to meld myself to him.
The hiccup I involuntary gave to hold back the tears was an unpleasant one.
“Oh shit,” I whispered, and his head came up.
“You gonna get sick?” he asked.
“I...” I swallowed, the wave passing so I went on, “Don’t think so.”
“Fuck, Millie,” he clipped.