I looked to the yard, too, and told him.
We stayed out there, sitting on the steps of the deck, our knees brushing, for what felt like minutes at the same time it felt like hours, talking about nothing that felt like everything before the guy he came to the party with stuck his head out the back door and called, “Low, ridin’ out.”
To that, he told me he had to go and we both got up.
He didn’t kiss me.
He walked me into the house straight through to the front door.
There, he ordered somewhat severely, “Your girl is totally shitfaced, so you go nowhere with her and you let her go nowhere. Hear?”
I nodded. “Staying here, Logan.”
He nodded.
Then he lifted a finger as his eyes dipped to my mouth and he touched my mole.
More thigh tingles.
He looked back at me. “Tomorrow, babe. Call you.”
“Okay, Logan.”
He grinned and walked away.
I watched him, feeling a crazy-giddy that had nothing to do with beer, strangely not disappointed he didn’t kiss me.
He’d touched me in a way that felt way sweeter than a kiss.
And the next day, he called me.
CHAPTER TWO
Every Breath He Took
Millie
Present day...
WHAT I WAS about to do was ridiculous.
And possibly insane.
But there I was, about to do it.
It had been a week since I saw Logan at Chipotle.
I still had that bin of spinach and bag of shriveled carrots in my fridge and they were still the only things there. Except that bin of spinach was now not wilted but instead spoiled.
I should throw them out.
I didn’t throw them out.
I worked.
I got fast food (or ready-mades, though no salads).
I slept.
I watched TV.
And I thought about Logan.
I couldn’t get him out of my head. I even dreamed about him.
And these were not good dreams. They were dreams of him walking away. They were dreams of him shouting at me that I was a coward. That I’d thrown my life away. They were dreams where he was pushing a faceless little girl on a swing, smiling at a faceless woman who, even if faceless, I knew she was beautiful and she was definitely not me.
In other words, bad dreams.
Dreams that haunted me even when I was awake.
So now I was here and it was ridiculous, stupid, insane.
Dottie would be pissed if she knew I was here. Twenty years she’d been struggling to pull me out of Logan’s snare, a snare I was caught in even if he didn’t want me there and wasn’t even in my life.
She wanted me to move on. She’d even begged me to move on. At first she’d wanted me to go back to Logan (and she’d begged me to do that too). When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she’d wanted me to go on a date, to go see a shrink, to go get a life, any life without Logan.
None of this had worked.
Now I couldn’t get him out of my head.
So I was there.
“Shit, damn, damn,” I whispered, looking at the façade of the roadhouse.
It was run-down, near to ramshackle. The paint peeling on the outside. The sign up top that said SCRUFF’S was barely discernable considering it was night and only the neon u and the apostrophe worked.
Strangely, Scruff’s looked much the same as it had twenty years ago when Logan and I used to come here all the time.
Except back then the c also worked, though it had flickered.
There were bikes outside, less of them now than back when this was Logan and my place because it was Chaos’s place, but it was still clearly a biker bar.
I just had no idea if one of those bikes was Logan’s.
I hoped one was.
And I was terrified of the same thing.
“You should go home,” I told myself.
I should.
But home was where I’d been nearly every night since I’d bought my house and moved in eleven years ago. It had changed since I’d renovated every inch of it (I had not done this myself—I’d paid people to do it—but it was all my vision).
I loved home. I never got sick of looking at what I’d created (or someone else had, obviously, through my vision).
But I was there nearly every night. And the only times I wasn’t were when I was at Dottie’s or babysitting a friend’s kid or at one of the events I’d planned.
The last, being my work, didn’t count.
Now I was not at home. I was back at Scruff’s. A place I hadn’t been in twenty years.
I was there because Logan might be in there.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
“God, this is crazy,” I muttered, pushing open the car door and throwing out a leg.
I got out, slammed the door, and beeped the locks, keeping keys in hand and purse clamped securely under my arm.
I walked toward the building, worried about my car. I had a red Mazda CX-5 that was only a year old. I loved it. I hadn’t upgraded cars in five years, so it was my baby. And not only was this bar not the safest spot in Denver, it was located in a neighborhood that also wasn’t the safest in Denver.
I had to brave it. I was there. I was out of the car.
There was no going back.
Before I got to the door, a biker fell out of it, shouting behind him, “Fuck you too!” and I nearly turned back.
He stumbled the other way, so my path was clear.
I knew I should retreat.
I didn’t.
I went in.
When my eyes adjusted to the dim, I saw the inside hadn’t changed much either, except to get seedier. In fact, even the neon beer signs looked the same and on my second eye sweep after the quick, frantic one I did to see if Logan was there, I saw four of the plethora of them no longer worked at all. The vinyl on the barstools was worn, the furniture scattering the space was more mismatched. Even the felt on the pool table was more faded.