Neat (Becker Brothers, #2)(82)

Logan laughed, his eyes sparkling in the candlelight as he pulled me into him more, as if his warmth could stop the trembling that came with that admission.

“I can one up your crazy,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Move in with me.”

My next breath didn’t come, though my jaw dropped low enough to let in a giant gulp of air, had my lungs allowed it.

Logan smirked, chucking my chin with his knuckles until my mouth closed. “Move in with me, Mallory. We can figure everything else out together. Wanna know how I know?”

“How?” I barely whispered, still riddled with shock.

“Because I love you, too,” he said, leaning down until his forehead met mine. “And I don’t just think it. I know it.”

“You’re insane.”

“As long as we can be crazy together.”

Before I could laugh, his lips were on mine, hands sliding back to hold my neck and pull me into him. Two more tears slipped free when that man kissed me, and I leaned into it — into the pain, into the love, into the crazy. I leaned into the uncertain future that kiss promised me, into the man I trusted to get me through anything, and into the choices we’d both made that led to that moment.

He was my Romeo, and I his Juliet, and our families be damned — we were going to make it.

And this story wouldn’t end in tragedy.

It was the wildest, most whirlwind of a month I’d ever experienced in my life — that month I spent falling for Logan Becker. When he took my hand and led me outside to watch the fireworks, bringing the blanket with him, I curled up inside that warmth with him with the most relieving sigh finding my lungs. I’d never felt so right, so sure, so… at home.

He leaned against the storefront of the shop — the one that we’d built up together, the one now empty once again — and I rested my back against his chest, eyes cast toward the sky. We watched those bursts of light fire off in the sky, talking about the week we’d spent apart and what each of us had been through. Logan promised me his family would come around, that he would find a way for that to happen, that somehow, we’d make it work. And though it scared the absolute shit out of me, I believed him.

For hours, we sat there in the cold, talking and holding each other and watching the town of Stratford say goodbye to another year passed.

When the clock struck midnight, Logan pulled me to stand, wrapped me in his arms, and kissed me into the new year, into a new future, into that new universe we promised to make — one where it was me and him against the world.

Then, he dragged me inside, up the stairs, and we made some fireworks of our own.





Logan


“Oh, come on, Mom! It’s his graduation,” Noah pleaded, holding the shot glass filled to the brim with Scooter Whiskey. “Just one shot.”

“Absolutely not,” she said, pointing a finger at Noah in warning. “I said no, and I mean it. I’m not na?ve enough to think you boys didn’t drink before you were twenty-one,” she said, waving that finger across all of us older boys. “But, I’ve managed to keep this one away from the stuff so far, and I intend to keep it that way.” She said the last part pointing at Mikey.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jordan defended. “I was an innocent, law-abiding child.”

Mom rolled her eyes, taking the shot glass from Noah and slamming it back herself. A wave of whistles and cheers rang out when she slammed the empty glass back down on the table, cringing and shaking her head against the burn.

“Atta girl, Laurelei!” Betty yelled, throwing her hand into the air for a high five.

Mom slapped it, smiling victoriously. “Now that that’s settled, who’s ready for cake?”

A unanimous show of hands went up, and she laughed, waving us off as the chatter kicked back in and she escaped to the kitchen to retrieve the massive graduation cake she’d ordered for Mikey.

My younger brother sat on the opposite side of the table from me, an easy grin on his face — and the closest thing I’d seen to his full smile since the fall. He’d changed since he and Bailey broke up. He’d grown quieter, more serious, and he preferred to be alone more now than he ever had before. Still, he seemed relaxed that day, and happy — and he was surrounded by everyone who loved him most to celebrate his accomplishment.

His best friend, Kylie, sat to his right, laughing at a story Betty was telling. Betty was a relatively new friend of the family, one Ruby Grace had brought with her when she and Noah started dating. Ruby Grace had worked down at the nursing home where Betty lived, and through that connection, she’d become one of Mom’s best friends — and like a grandmother to all of us.

Ruby Grace was there, too, sitting next to Noah, who had his arm around her and a soft smile on his face as he watched her listen to Betty’s story, too.

Jordan was on the other side of Mikey, currently holding his shoulder firmly as he bent low and whispered something meant for just the two of them. I was sure it was something similar to the advice he’d given me on my high school graduation day — advice that I still carried with me every day.

Fight for what’s right, stand up for those who can’t stand for themselves, give yourself permission to love and to lose and to be loved and lost in return, and above all else, family first — always.