Wild (The Ivy Chronicles #3)(66)

Pepper paused and I realized how lame that came out. I sounded fourteen having to hang up the phone because I was wanted at the dinner table. Not that it was even the truth. I already ate an hour ago.

“Georgia, what are you doing?” Her voice was almost a whisper here, but no less demanding.

“I’ll be fine, Pepper. It’s not the end of the world if I have to move back home.” It only felt like it was.

She sighed. “What about Logan?”

Everything inside me seized tight at her question. “What about him?”

“You and Logan—”

“You heard Logan. He’s not sitting around waiting for me.”

“Yeah, I heard Logan.”

Embarrassment sizzled through me. “Well, then you know.”

“I know you’re both totally into each other, and you’re going to blow it if you don’t come back here.”

I already blew it. I pressed a hand over my chest, directly over my constricting heart. Great. Now my chest hurt, too.

“It was a fling, Pepper. What else can it be?” Bile surged in the back of my throat at the lie. It was so much more than that but what else could I say? I couldn’t tell her that I loved him. She would only protest harder for me to come back. She might even tell Logan.

“Look, I know Reece and I came down on you two like a pair of disapproving parents. Sorry about that. We were kind of *s. But I’ve been thinking . . . why can’t you and Logan be together? He’s going to school forty minutes from here. He’s a good guy and I’ve never seen him act this way over any other girl. I’ve never seen you act this way over any guy. If you come back here you could both—”

“It was just sex, Pepper.”

My blunt words fell on the air, the lie tearing something open inside me. The line crackled in sudden silence. My head felt like exploding. Tears streamed silently down my face.

Then she laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I snapped on a wet, tear-soaked breath.

“Yeah. Well. Once upon a time I was hooking up with Reece just for foreplay lessons so I could land another guy.”

“Yeah, I kind of remember that.” I might have been involved in some of that scheme, crazy as it sounded now.

“I know all about deluding myself. And I almost lost him because I was too stubborn and too afraid to admit what was between us.”

I filled my lungs with air. Yeah. I was afraid. I could admit that. I’d felt out of control since the first moment things heated up between Logan and me. But I was more afraid to embrace it all. To turn my back on the life I was supposed to lead, the one that had been planned for me since birth—or since my real father walked out and abandoned me and Mom.

Even if I wanted to embrace a relationship with Logan, it couldn’t happen anymore anyway. I was here. He was halfway across the country. If I went to him, I was turning my back on my family permanently. On the me I was supposed to be.

“Logan and I aren’t you and Reece.”

“You sure about that? You might be more like us than you think. How does it feel? Knowing you might stay forever in Muskogee while he goes off to college? The next time you see him down the road a few years, maybe at my wedding . . . if your mother lets you attend, that is.”

Her words hit their mark with all the accuracy of a well-aimed arrow. I flinched.

“Of course, he’ll probably be seeing someone by then,” she added. “He’ll have a date with him. Probably a girlfriend.”

“Stop. Stop it.”

“It hurts, right?”

I nodded, pressing my fingers to my mouth, holding the tears inside.

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt if there wasn’t something there. If you didn’t love him.”

I nodded, but didn’t let a sound escape. I didn’t dare. Not for her to hear.

“Georgia,” she pleaded softly. “I almost lost Reece . . . and myself. Don’t let that happen to you. Your home is here. Come back. It will all work out if you just come home. I’ll help you figure it out. We all will. That’s what friends do.”

I inhaled, closing my eyes tightly. “I have to go.”

Her answering sigh rippled through me. “Good-bye, Georgia.”

I hung up the phone and clutched it in my hand for a few moments before flipping to my photos. There was a group shot in there at Mulvaney’s taken a few months ago. Pepper, Reece, Emerson, Shaw, Suzanne. Even Annie was in there, tagging along with the group—whether we wanted her or not. I laughed, the watery sound filling the silence of my room.

And Logan. He was there, too. Coincidentally, he was next to me, his strong arm draped over my shoulders for the picture. My chest clenched. Not coincidental. I knew that now. There had been something even then, drawing us together before either one of us realized it. Or at least before I did.

I zoomed in on his face and let the ache in my chest intensify as I studied his strong features. The deeply set eyes and the square jaw. The golden-brown shadow of a beard growing in. The brilliant blue of his eyes seemed to stare directly into my heart.

I curled into a tight ball as dusk slid into night, tapping the screen of my phone every minute or so, stopping Logan’s face from going dark.

I don’t know how long I did this. Half an hour? An hour? Staring at his face, sodden in my longing and misery, a breath shuddered past my lips. I flipped to my contacts, to Logan’s name, and started texting before I lost my courage. I started several messages, deleting them all before settling on one.