“Logan?” I called.
He pulled me deeper into him and his voice was unsteady with his laughter when he said, “Fuck, it’s so good to have my girl back, it’s not fuckin’ funny.”
God.
I loved that.
Loved it.
Maybe we could do this. Maybe it was going to be that easy.
I melted in his arms and started to stroke his shoulders.
“Go to sleep, Low,” I whispered.
He found my mouth, touched his to it, then settled back in.
“?’Night, beautiful. Drift good.”
I smiled, pushing in closer, my face at the base of his throat where I kissed him.
“?’Night,” I whispered against his skin. “Sleep well.”
“Tangled in you, only good sleep I’ve had for twenty years.”
It was no surprise I felt the same, which made it even more unfortunate mine was messed up with jet lag.
I closed my eyes and snuggled deeper, shifting my hand to play with the ends of his hair.
I felt him enter dreamland and he did it rolling into me so I was to my back, his weight was partly to my side, but his hips were still between mine, his face in my neck.
I pulled the covers up over his shoulders, then kept playing with the ends of his hair, feeling him, smelling him, holding him...
And lying in the wet spot.
I tamped down my giggles.
Then, later, I finally fell asleep.
High
When he heard his phone ring, High opened his eyes, seeing, smelling, and feeling Millie.
This meant for the first time in two decades, Logan “High” Judd woke up smiling.
He heard his phone stop ringing, and although he wanted to stay right where he was, he couldn’t.
He had to get up, check his phone, and if it wasn’t who he thought it was, he had to make a call and do it while his girl was asleep.
It wasn’t that he wanted to hide that from Millie. It was just that he needed to introduce it to her slow-like.
One thing was certain from the last two days. He had to handle Millie with care. He had to pay attention. As they rode out their reunion, he had to have total focus on her even when he had other important things in his life that needed his focus.
This was because he needed to take care of her.
It was also because he was not about to let anything spook her so she slipped through his fingers again.
So he carefully extricated himself from her, exited the bed, made sure she was covered, and found his briefs. He yanked them on, and his jeans, pulling his phone out of his back pocket.
He checked the screen.
The call didn’t come from who he thought it came from.
It came from Tack.
Tack could wait. The call he needed to make couldn’t.
He went to the bathroom, took a piss, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, and came back out to the bedroom. Eyes to Millie curled up in bed looking peaceful, his lips curved up. Then he nabbed the Henley he wore the day before off the floor and tugged it on as he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
He started to make coffee at the same time he hit the buttons on the phone and put it to his ear.
He’d called her yesterday, before Millie got up and again after Millie crashed the first time.
And he’d learned from Deb that his girls were disappointed the snow came right before a weekend so they were shut in but not shut out of school.
Though, Deb reported they had plenty of food and all was good.
The second time he phoned, he’d talked to his girls, both now ecstatic about the snow, both wanting him to come over so they could go out and do shit in it.
He couldn’t and he lucked out when he heard Deb say in the background, “I know you want to see your dad but I also know you don’t want him driving in this snow. It’s dangerous. You can see him after the roads are cleared.”
With her doing it, he didn’t have to say no to his babies, something he found difficult to do, which in turn didn’t make Deb happy.
On this thought, after pouring the water in the coffeemaker, he was shoving the pot under when she picked up.
“Hey, High,” Deb greeted.
She’d always called him High. Not once did she call him Logan. She knew his name—it was on their marriage certificate, their kids’ birth certificates—but he’d introduced himself to her at the bar where they met as High and he’d never been anything but all the time they were together.
Truth be told, not many people called him Logan anymore. Even his mom and dad had reverted to using High most of the time.
So that had become Millie’s.
And now he had her back so he had Logan back.
There was something significant about that that he wasn’t going to sift through while on the phone with Deb.
But he understood it. He remembered the man he was before her, with her.
He also knew the man he became when he lost her.
Having that name back was like having that man back. Washing away the shit of his life without Millie and starting clean.
It would take more than that but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel fucking great.
“Hey, Deb,” he replied. “The girls good?”
“They’re hoping for more snow so school will be canceled tomorrow,” she told him. “But it’s good. They’re clearing the roads. Company sent us home on Friday, so I’ll probably need to go in this afternoon to do some catch-up so I’m not swamped on Monday. But Mom said she could come around and look after the girls when I do.”
Deb had a great job, made good money as the manager of the shipping department of a computer parts factory in town. They had five factories all over the world and were corporate through and through, but they weren’t assholes, which was good in times like these since they did shit like send her home when a storm got bad.