Logan (Wild Boys After Dark, #1)(33)

Chapter Eleven


LOGAN DROVE HIS father’s old pickup truck down the mountain toward Sweetwater with Stella sitting beside him. He didn’t drive his father’s truck often, but when he did, it made him feel closer to his father. And now he felt closer to his father and Stella, which made Logan feel good. His father would have liked Stella, and he wished he were alive to meet her.

“Do you miss your dad more when you drive his truck?” Stella asked.

“I miss him all the time, but yeah, I do.”

She placed her hand on his thigh and leaned her head on his shoulder.

“What’s it like, knowing you can’t see him again?”

He knew she was asking because of her mom’s cancer, but she hadn’t shared that information with him yet, and as with her name, he wanted her to trust him enough to share those most private parts of her life with him. He felt his throat thickening as he prepared to tell her the truth.

“I wake up every day and there’s this moment when life seems normal. The sun comes up, and I think about work and what I have to do that day. And then my mind always turns to my mom, and when it does, it hits me anew. Dad’s gone.” He paused to gain control of the tears that threatened to fall.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” Stella said.

“It’s fine, darlin’.” He kissed the top of her head. “In those first few seconds as I remember, I feel like I’m being sucked under by a big wave. I can’t breathe. I’m not sure which way is up, and my world spins around me. And in the next breath, I stuff it away so I can function again.” He let out a fast, hard breath. “I was close to my dad. He didn’t want me to join the military. He wanted me home. He wanted me safe. But I had something to prove.”

She looked up at him with a curious gaze. “And did you? Prove something, I mean.”

He shrugged. “I never knew what it was I was proving. I just knew I needed to fight for my country like other people were.”

“Then you did what you set out to do.”

She said it so simply, and he’d never thought of it as being simple. He’d been trying to figure out exactly what he had to prove. He wasn’t proving anything at all. He was doing what he thought was right.

They drove down the long two-lane road toward town. It was a sleepy road lined with meadows on each side.

“My worst fear is that my mom will die before I see her again. She has cancer. She was responding well to the treatments when I left, but I…” She turned away, and he knew she was staving off tears.

“You’ll see her again, Stella. I promise.” He pulled her closer.

“I hope so. She’s strong. That’s where I get it from. She’s determined to beat it, and I hate that I had to leave, but I was worried he would hurt her.”

“I know.” He was sure her mother did, too. “What about your father?”

She shrugged. “I never knew him. My mom was only nineteen when she had me, and he took off. It’s fine, though. I don’t feel like I’ve missed out by not having a father. My mom more than made up for it. We’re so close. I just miss her so much.”

Wide cobblestone streets and old-fashioned storefronts came into view.

“Logan, is this Sweetwater?”

He was still trying to tamp down his renewed anger toward Kutcher for forcing her out of her life and away from her mother. “Yeah,” he managed.

“I love the way these Victorian houses are painted. They’re so colorful. It feels very old-fashioned, the way they’re mixed in with the old stores.” The excitement in her voice surprised Logan, and then he remembered how practiced she was at moving past her pain and sadness.

He turned inward and cold when he tried to do that, but she somehow maintained her warmth and positive outlook.

“You’re a remarkable person, Stella.” He kissed her again.

“Hardly.”

She pointed at a market with a green awning over the entrance. Family owned markets and boutiques took the place of chain grocery and department stores. Unlike in New York City, most of the residents in Sweetwater had grown up here. They gave meaning to the old saying It takes a village to raise a child and carried that forward toward the elderly, the ill, the sad, the happy, and everything in between.

“This is beautiful, but I don’t understand why I can’t stay at the cabin. You said I was safe there.”

Stella had acted hot and cold all morning, as if she vacillated over trusting that his feelings were sincere. Logan felt her hesitation with every layer of armor she peeled away, but he wasn’t deterred. The article he’d read about Stella and her mother had painted a picture of a loving daughter who took care of her ailing mother, and as Stella softened toward him, it was easy to reassemble the image of who she’d been. Now he needed to make her world safe, so she could go back to being that person again, and be reunited with her mother.

“I’m not comfortable leaving you alone.”

“But you said I was safe. How can I be safer here? Out in the open? What if you’re wrong and someone tailed us?”

“We weren’t tailed. Have a little faith in me. I am a PI, you know.” He shook his head and smiled. “You’ll enjoy it here.”

She smiled as Sugar Lake came into view.