Page 61 of Riding the Sugar High

“No!” I rush to say, holding a hand to his knee as my feet find the floor. “Please, you can’t. What he said doesn’t even matter. It doesn’t—” My voice breaks again, and a tear falls down my cheek, quickly followed by a second one, then a third. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“Because—because...” I stand and pace to the other side of the room, but he follows me and grasps my shoulders. He’s towering over me, and I’m forced to look at his face. In his deep, hooded eyes. “Because he was my first boyfriend,” I confess. “Because I thought I’d finally found someone who...God, I’m so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid, Primrose, you?—”

“But I am. Isleptwith him!” His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t look all too surprised at the information. Bet that’s about to change. “He’s the first man that Iever slept with.”

The gray speckles in his irises become even more noticeable as his eyes bulge out, then he sighs, head dropping forward.

“And it didn’t go well.”

I can feel how red my cheeks have become. Besides a couple of really close friends, the only person in my life who knew I was a virgin until six months ago is Derek, and though his reaction at the time was kind, it was probably an act.

Logan’s shoulders tense until, with a groan, he turns around. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

“It’s fine,” I mumble. It’s not like I can undo it.

“Fine? No, it’s not fine. He took something from you that...goddammit, it should have been special, and now he goes around calling you leftovers. It’s anything but fine.” He straightens, and as if he’s found a new sort of peace in his anger, he calmly walks out the door.

“Where are you going?” I say to his retreating back.

He ignores me, and once I see him head for the main door, I rush after him. “Logan, you can’t. You can’t go there.”

“Bet, Barbie?”

Desperation claws at my chest as I step in front of him, blocking his path to the door. "Please, don't do anything rash," I plead, my voice trembling. “That’s exactly what he wants—for you to do something stupid that’ll get you in trouble with the police, so he can get his pigs back.”

He tries to move around me, his frustration evident in every muscle of his body. But I stand my ground, refusing to budge an inch. "Get out of my way," he snarls, his face contorted with rage.

I meet his gaze, my own eyes pleading with him to listen, to understand. “You promised you wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. You swore.”

For a long moment, he stares at me, his breathing ragged, his fists clenched at his sides. I can see the battle raging within him, the struggle to control the storm that threatens to consume him.

“I need you here,” I whisper.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his features soften. With a heavy sigh, he lowers his gaze, the fight draining out of him like water from a broken dam.

“Fine.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Thank you,” I say as I wrap an arm around me. “I’ll just—I’ll go take a shower.”

Once he nods, I walk towards the corridor, quickly stopped by his voice. “You’re not stupid, Primrose.” I face him, and he looks anywhere but in my direction. “You’re a smart, fun, and beautiful woman. And any man with sense would be ecstatic to call you his.”

My gaze lowers.

“No, look at me.” When I do, he holds my gaze. “I mean it. Okay? I need you to believe it.”

I nod, and we watch each other for a while, neither saying a thing as silence and tension sizzle between us. For a moment, it looks like there’s something more to it. Like maybe I’m not just Logan’s ticket out of jail.

Clearing his throat, he walks past me and shakes the moment off. “I’ll go make dinner. I’m starving.”

He enters the kitchen, and a pink blur in my periphery catches my full attention. In trots one of the piglets, who circles my favorite T-shirt, abandoned beside the couch, and pushes at the soft cotton with its snout until it decides it’ll do. Then, it proceeds to fall asleep in a heap on top of it.

“Wait,” I say as I go after Logan. “You never told me about the pigs!”

introduce me to his family