Page 37 of Cruel Summer

TWENTY-ONE

The Loneliest Road

Now

She didn’t see Logan during her two weeks in Jacksonville. This time she stayed in the B.F. Dowell House because it was fancy and her whole childhood she’d been curious about it, so the minute it had been made a vacation rental, she’d fantasized about staying in it.

It was a large brick house with a widow’s walk on the second floor and historic furnishings. Gorgeous. And still, mostly she thought of Logan. Which was silly since she never even almost saw him.

Of course, she never went anywhere that she knew he would be.

She avoided bars of all kinds and didn’t go near Logan’s garage.

But the day she knew they were supposed to leave for the road trip, she decided she wasn’t backing down. She wasn’t giving Logan the chance to disinvite her from the trip without doing it to her face.

At five thirty in the morning, she rolled up to the garage.

She was taking a risk. It was entirely possible that he had moved the car to his house last night and wouldn’t in fact start from the garage.

But she just had a feeling and went with it.

When she saw the lights on inside, she felt triumphant.

She pulled into the space and walked up to the front door.

He had left it unlocked behind him, because it was a small town, and there was no crime to speak of.

But he hadn’t counted on her invading his space.

She walked into the garage and saw him, bent over the hood of a big black-and-silver car that looked like something from a gangster movie, his broad, muscular back taking up quite a bit of her mental bandwidth as she watched him.

“What’s up?” she asked, her voice a little sharper than intended in the silent space. “Fucking coward.”

She decided to just lean into it.

The muscles in his back shifted, but that was the only indicator he’d registered her presence. “Good. You’re here.”

“Yeah. Because I didn’t figure you were going to swing by to pick me up.”

He turned around. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

“How were you going to do that? You don’t know where I’m staying. I’m not with Elysia.”

“I actually know that.”

She stared at him. “How do you know that?”

“Because I listen to gossip about town, Samantha.” He rested his hands on the edge of the car, arms straight, and leaned against it. “As you should know.”

“You’re a liar,” she said. “I don’t think you do.”

“You’re a hot topic. Your apparent separation is much talked about by my customers. Amy Callahan came in. She let me know that you were renting from her. Asked if I knew anything about what happened between you and Will.”

“You told her?”

His expression went bland. “That I don’t know a thing.”

She hadn’t expected him to…lie. Not for her. Unless it was for Will. Will did sound like a dick in this scenario. She almost thanked him. Then decided…no.

“Wow,” she said. “And yet you couldn’t text me back.”

“I didn’t have anything to say. But we have an agreement. So I expected that you would come with me on this trip.”

“You just couldn’t be bothered to speak to me for two weeks.”

His mouth settled into a firm line. “I thought space was in order.”

Oh for God’s sake. Space followed by time spent shut in a car together. That was such a male, not-thought-through bit of rationale.

“Look who’s in denial now,” she said. “I made a mistake. I can own up to that. I screwed up. I wasn’t trying to use you, and I didn’t do a good enough job of making that clear.

I couldn’t think fast enough in the moment, and I wasn’t…

in the right headspace for the turn the conversation took. But I was never using you.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m not apologizing for the actual kiss, though. Because I don’t regret it. I needed to kiss you. I’m sorry if you thought I used you, and that hurt you. But I’m not sorry that I did it.”

“So not sorry at all,” he said.

“No, I am. About some things. Just not that thing.”

“Let’s get in the car then.”

She slid into the passenger’s seat and immediately ran her fingers along the shiny wood dashboard. “Wow,” she said.

“It’s a 1954 Rolls-Royce,” he said, gripping the black steering wheel with one hand as he turned the key in the ignition with the other. “I hate to let this one go. But I’m not sorry I get to drive it across the country.”

“Where’s the final destination this time?”

“Miami.”

“Miami! You didn’t think to mention we were going to Florida?”

“We weren’t speaking.”

“ You weren’t speaking, asshole.”

He grunted, and she wasn’t sure if she was meant to take that as an agreement or not. “We’re going on The Loneliest Road for a piece and then heading south.”

“Well, good thing I packed my swimsuit.”

“Like you weren’t going to buy clothes along the way.”

Fair.

“I hear Florida is one hell of a drug,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s a song… Never mind.”

It was going to be another fun trip. Except of course she and Logan were right back at hostile square one.

Though this time they had actually kissed, instead of just almost kissed, and he was the one who seemed to want to push it to the side.

They cut east instead of heading straight south, going toward Lake Tahoe. It was a desolate drive, the landscape becoming increasingly volcanic as they drove on. They essentially didn’t speak to each other.

It was icier than the very first road trip.

She just wasn’t having it. Maybe she felt too impatient.

Maybe the fact that there were only a couple months left of this weird period of time, this time where she didn’t have any certainty, any idea of what would happen in her life, made her feel like she was running out of time.

Maybe she was conscious of the fact that if she was going to live another life, she needed to start it sooner rather than later.

But whatever the driving reason, she was over this.

She wasn’t going to let the silence keep going.

“I started writing,” she said. “About this.”

It took him a moment, but he responded. “Really?”

He sounded actually interested in spite of himself.

“Yeah. I was getting tired of thinking . I mean, I know there’s a fair amount of thinking involved in writing.

But it’s a different way of processing it.

I don’t know what to do with it, though.

Like you said, my organization tips were helpful to you, but I don’t know if my messy thoughts about my fragmented twenty-two-year marriage and my make-out session with my husband’s best friend are going to be useful to anyone else. ”

She wondered if she’d gone too far there.

“You’re really all about that make-out session.”

She shifted, trying to ignore how tight her stomach had gotten. “I’m all about facing things. I’ve been sitting in it for a few months. I didn’t expect you to be the one that wanted to run away from it.”

“What do you want me to say? It’s not news to me that you’re a fantasy of mine, Samantha.”

She reached out and gripped the handle on the passenger side door, like it was going to keep her from melting into the floorboards. “What?”

“I’ve known that,” he said, like she hadn’t asked a question at all.

“You might have been blindsided by your attraction to me, but I haven’t been in denial for the past however many years.

I’ve known that you were inconveniently attractive to me for a long time.

So you can see how I take a dim view on being used as a path of exploration.

If you want to have sex with a new guy, go to a bar. ”

Anger tangled around the attraction inside of her stomach. “You would be fine with that?”

“Hell no,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Then you can’t be pleased.”

“I’m used to that. That’s kind of part and parcel with having a thing for your friend’s wife.”

“Right. Right.” But her cheeks were hot, and her body felt unsettled. She wanted to know more. About why he felt that way about her.

He could have any woman he wanted. So why fixate on her? Her self-esteem wasn’t so low that she couldn’t imagine a man wanting to sleep with her, she just didn’t understand why Logan of all people had been carrying any kind of torch for her.

Not that he’d said that explicitly. He was just attracted to her.

Though she came back to the kiss in the alleyway.

What they had was an exceptional sort of chemistry.

It had erased everything else from her mind.

Everything but him. She’d been so caught up in the moment that she hadn’t wanted to stop and think about anything.

That was damned powerful. Because turning her mind off was not her strong point.

Denial, sure. But denial was accomplished by layering other things over the top of the truth. The trick was to never have an empty mind. The trick was to have lots of thoughts, so that you were constantly intentionally guiding them.

Certainly when it came to sex, her experience was that her thoughts just kept moving.

She was loath to admit that occasionally she could be running through her entire week’s meal plan and kinda forget that she was supposed to be trying to have an orgasm.

So yeah. The experience with Logan had been something else.

Maybe that was it. Maybe he felt it too.

Chemistry that went further than it usually did. That was the thing. She’d heard.

“I’m… All right, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen,” she said.

“But I can tell you that all I wanted to do was keep kissing you. I can tell you that I thought about it more times than I can even count in the weeks since it happened. I can tell you that I…that I want more. That I think about you and…”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and he kept his eyes on the road. “Are you telling me that you think about me and touch yourself, Samantha?”

Calling her Samantha instead of Sam was so deliberate. So effective.