Page 44 of Riding the Sugar High

“Yes.”

“Honey?”

“Bzzz.” Logan fits a forkful of eggplant in his mouth. “Therefore, no.”

With a slow nod, I watch him chew dinner. I already know all of this, but I’ll pretend ignorance over anything to make him talk. Having dinner in total silence is the worst.

“What?” he asks. “Is the mock quiz over?”

Oh, so he noticed.

“Gosh, am I annoying you?” I ask sarcastically. “Maybe if you talked a little more, I wouldn’t have to carry the conversation.”

Eyes narrowing, he silently stares at me.

“I thought vegans loved to talk about veganism anyway.”

“Maybe vegans who love to talk.”

With a sigh, I push the food around on my plate as one of the piglets lazily walks past me and toward Logan. It settles on top of his feet, but Logan doesn’t seem to mind and keeps eating as if he has hardly noticed.

I throw the pink bundle another glance, wondering if it’s the male or the female. I can never tell them apart. “Wait, what about yourleatherjacket? And theleatherseat of your motorcycle?” I tease.

Setting his fork down, he rubs his eyes. “Okay. First of all, being a vegan isn’t a religion, okay? There aren’t rituals we follow to avoid eternal damnation.” He levels me with an unimpressed gaze. “We live in a way that respects all creatures, but we’re not perfect, and sometimes avoiding animal-derived products isn’t possible.”

So hecantalk.

“But it’s possible in this case. With faux leather.”

Of course.Fauxleather. Well, faux or not, they’re sexy.

“Are you worried about tomorrow?” I ask, thinking of our appointment with the lawyers in the morning. We’ll visit the police afterwards, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep until this is dealt with.

“No.” He takes a sip of water, his eyes studying me over the rim of the glass. “Are you?”

When I give him a half-hearted shrug, he sets the glass down. “It’ll be fine, Primrose. The lawyer will be with you the whole time, and he won’t let you mess it up.”

I hope he’s right, but seeing as last time, it only took me two minutes around the police to start talking about sex-kicking, this lawyer would have to be a wizard to compensate for my built-in inability to lie.

“Think about something else, come on.” He gestures at me to speak. “Ask me more annoying questions.”

I glare, then resume eating. Though he doesn’t deserve my sparkly personality, I’m also not sure he’ll ever give me a free pass on my constant chatter, and I intend to take advantage of it. “What do you do around these parts once you’re done working?”

He tilts his head like he doesn’t understand the question.

“Well, you have no TV. No internet. Do you read? Listen to music? Go out with Kyle and his brother?”

“What doyoudo in Mayfield?”

“Plenty of stuff. One of my closest friends—Taylor—lives only a couple of streets away from me, so we go out for dinner, walk in the park, and there’s this club...”

His brows furrow. “What?”

“N-nothing,” I mumble, though truth to be told, I just realized I haven’t seen Taylor in two months. Before that,god, we met for dinner about six months ago. “I guess...I mostly stay home. Listen to music, watch movies. Big city life means everyone is hustling around, and it takes forever to get anywhere.”

“I sleep.” He wipes his hand on a napkin, chewing as he studies his plate. “When I’m done working. I wake up at four every day, then work mostly in the fields for twelve hours. After that, I’m pretty much wiped.”

I nod, hoping my expression doesn’t betray how terrible that sounds. Working twelve hours a day and sleeping isn’t a life, exactly. It sounds more like survival.