Page 96 of Here We Go Again

“No.” Her lip quivers. She is going to start crying again. “No, I’m not okay.”

Rosemary’s skin shimmers in the moonlight, and another firework lights up the confused expression on her face. “Damn. Was my singing that awful?”

“What? No! You were amazing. You were…”everything. “It’s me. It’s just… me.”

Rosemary steps closer, and Logan wants to meet her halfway. She wants to be comforted and cared for, but she doesn’t know how. Logan falls back away from her.

“Take a deep breath. Whatever you’re feeling right now, it’s okay.” Rosemary’s voice still sounds like a song. “Let yourself feel it. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

“But I always end up alone. In the end.” The sky riots all around them. “We’ve been drinking Remy’s lotus, and you’re a siren, and I am going to drown in you.”

“You’re confusing yourOdysseymetaphors.”

“That’s not… that isn’t the point.”

Rosemary takes another step forward. “What is the point?”

Logan takes another step back. “The point is that I…likeyou. So much.”

Rosemary takes ten more steps forward, keeps moving forward until Logan runs into a crate myrtle bush and can’t step back anymore. “Yes, we’ve already established this. I like you too,” she says, and she reaches up to cup Logan’s face in her hands. “So, so much.”

“Butwhy?” Logan cries. “You like safety, and I’m the opposite of safe. I’m a thousand red flags cobbled together in the shape of a woman. I’m great in small doses, but I’m not the woman people stick around for. I’m the prickly pear, and I’m going to poke you. I won’t want to do it, but my glochids are just trying to protect me.”

Rosemary pulls Logan’s face down, low enough that she can brush a kiss on her forehead. “My prickly pear, you’re safe with me. You can stop working so hard to protect yourself.”

The sweetness of it overwhelms her, and she kisses Rosemary in the dark. “I want to,” she says into Rosemary’s mouth. “I want to be as brave as you. But I don’t know how to do any of this.”

Rosemary kisses her back, and it feels like fire, like there is something burning between their bodies. Rosemary tastes like freedom and kissing her is the river Lethe. It erases her memory of her panic and her fear, her conviction that this will end with her hurting. It makes her forget everything but Rosemary’s sweet words and pretty smile and perfect mouth.

They’re making out in a church parking lot as fireworks decorate the sky above them, and it’s cheesy as hell.

For tonight, she’s going to let herself be cheesy for Rosemary Hale.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

LOGAN

She wakes up to sirens.

As her eyes flicker against Rosemary’s silk pillowcase, she thinks the sirens are in her head. A product of too much alcohol. Flashes of last night’s revels ticker tape across the back of her eyelids.

A leather jacket. A song. Fireworks and singing,She’s in love with the girl.

Alarm bells in her brain screamstopandslow downandprotect your goddamn heart, you fool. Still, she reaches out for Rosemary in their shared bed.

But Rosemary isn’t there.

And the sirens—they aren’t inside her head.

Someone cries out. Logan throws herself out of bed, gets tripped up in the sheets as she stumbles into the hallway. Her heart whooshes in her ears, because the crying is coming from Remy’s room at the end of the hall. She walks toward it as if in a nightmare, the hallway growing longer with each step.

It isn’t…

It couldn’t be…

Joe.

He’s laid out on the bed, the blankets all thrown back. When she sees him, she thinks he’s okay. Because his cheeks are bright with color.