Walk Through Fire (Chaos #4)(9)
But his head was tilted back, his eyes were on me and mine were on him.
We weren’t smiling. I was saying something to him and I had his full attention.
Like I always had his full attention.
I pressed my hands on the pages, palms flat, like I could soak in those times, like I could be thrown back years to relive them, like I could absorb the feelings I’d had back then of being safe and loved and living the life that was just right for me.
It didn’t work.
I turned the page.
Then I turned another page.
And another.
I did it reliving memories I’d relived countless times. They were burned in my brain in a way they were always there, even when I wasn’t calling them up. They were scars that tormented me in a way that changed the course of my life.
It wasn’t simply that I was in a rut.
My life had been interrupted and I’d never restarted it.
Since Logan Judd, I had not had a boyfriend.
I had not had a lover.
Not in twenty years.
He was it for me and those pictures showed why.
I met my perfect man at age eighteen and I had him for three years.
Then I sent him away.
Could I right those wrongs?
Should I?
You obliterated him.
I had.
And I’d done the same to myself.
Every woman on this goddamned earth wants a man like that to feel like that about them and you had it and you f*ckin’ tossed it away like it was garbage.
I hadn’t tossed him away.
Reb didn’t know.
She’d never know.
But I hadn’t done that.
I’d never do that.
Not to Logan.
Every breath he took, it was for you.
I turned the page and went still.
On the two pages before me were six pictures taken at what was known among the biker world as Wild Bill’s Field.
What it was was a biker rally that happened on Bill McIntosh’s farm every year.
I remembered those rallies, all three of them I went to.
The pictures on the page were from the second one.
Top left, Logan sitting on a log, me on a blanket in front of him on the ground between his legs. He was bent forward, arms around me, chin on my shoulder, the firelight was illuminating our faces as we laughed toward someone that, if memory serves, was Boz being his usual lovable idiot.
Center left picture, same, except my head was turned and tipped back and Logan’s chin was off my shoulder and he was looking down at me.
Bottom left, my hand was up and curled around Logan’s forearm and my head was still tipped back.
But Logan wasn’t looking at me.
He was kissing me.
I shut the book.
The Field.
Wild Bill’s biker rally.
Every biker from every club in the entire state of Colorado went to that rally every year. It was mayhem, bikes, tents, campers, RVs, sleeping bags, bonfires, a makeshift stage set up for local and not-so-local bands who played loud and deep into the night.
It was bring what you want or hit Wild Bill’s kitchen that he set up in a massive tent at the edge of the makeshift campgrounds. He bragged that the proceeds sent him to Miami for Christmas and supported him throughout the year, except we all knew we hit his field just after he harvested the hay or corn he always grew in it, which was the way he really made his living.
First weekend of October.
Which was two and a half weeks away.
Every breath he took, it was for you.
You obliterated him.
I needed to right that wrong.
He needed to know.
And I was the only one who could tell him.
It was good now. It was safe. He was alive and well, ordering burritos and raising kids and not a fugitive from the law or worse.
And he needed to know.
So I was going to find him.
Then I was going to tell him.
On a blanket by a lake, twenty-three years earlier...
He was on me and in me.
He was done.
So was I.
Logan Judd had just given me my first orgasm.
And it was crazy-great.
We were on our date.
He’d picked me up on his bike.
I had been right. My parents had freaked.
But they did what they always did. They trusted me and didn’t make a big deal of it.
They didn’t like me hanging with Kellie either. She was considered a hood. Her dad had taken off when she was a little kid and never came back. Now her mom and stepdad partied more than Kellie did and didn’t mind it when Kellie had all her many friends over (this was because, I suspected, Kellie, Justine, and I cleaned up afterward and they didn’t have much worth anything to break).
But anyway, I got excellent grades. I was going to college in a few weeks. I’d gotten into a good one. University of Denver. This meant I was going to stay close to home, something my sister didn’t do (she went to Purdue), so this was something my parents liked. I did my chores. I got along with my big sister. We were thick as thieves and I missed her like crazy since she’d gone to Indiana. I loved my family and showed it. I’d never been one of those bitchy, pain-in-the-ass kids who got in their parents’ faces all the time.
Even so, I was a bit of a rebel. I drank and it was illegal. Kellie and Justine and I’d go joyriding. I’d lost my virginity at age seventeen (but it was to my boyfriend of two years, who had broken up with me in his first few months at University of Colorado).