Fighting Fate

by Linda Kage

  Einstein rolled his eyes. “Yes. You should’ve seen my mom when she came across the mess. Totally freaked out. Would’ve thought I was dying or something.”

  Probably because he had been dying. So many things about his story rang false. For one, his reason for cutting himself. She doubted Logan Xander had sliced his own skin open purely because of academic curiosity. She doubted anyone would, even Einstein.

  Tilting her face to the side, she blinked. “So you did this before your mom ran off with the rock star?”

  His cheeks flushed as if he’d been caught in a lie. But he smoothly revised his story. “I meant my stepmom. My stepmom freaked.”

  That was totally plausible, but she still didn’t believe him for a second. She nodded as if she did, however. “Oh. I see.”

  She wondered if anything that came out of his mouth was true. Again, sympathy struck her deep in the chest. She was probably the first person he’d talked to all year that hadn’t thrown something at his head. He no doubt wanted to impress her with some grand story just to keep the conversation flowing.

  Bending to clean up the broken jar between them, she pulled out another wet wipe and listened to him brag about his trip to the hospital, where they’d sewn up his wrists with an unprecedented amount of stitches. It made her glad she’d talked Logan out of rushing her to the hospital earlier. Even the idea of one stitch made her woozy.

  But Einstein’s ramblings successfully drew her away from such thoughts. She actually appreciated his non-stop chatter. It gave her something almost frivolous to focus on. After the night she’d had—first night of work and so many new revelations about Logan Xander—frivolous was good.

  Self-consciously tugging his long sleeves down until they nearly reached his knuckles, Logan glanced both ways at the crosswalk before stepping into the street. Though he wasn’t scheduled to work that evening, he headed toward The Squeeze as soon as he finished his last class on Monday.

  Passing the front of the juice bar, he snuck a discreet sideways peek inside to make sure she wasn’t working and hurried around to the back. As soon as he slipped inside, he headed straight to his boss’s small, square office.

  The office didn’t have a window or even much circulation, and the smell of body odor struck his nose as soon as he tapped on the doorframe.

  “Gus?”

  The voluptuous man wedged behind the desk glanced up from a laptop he was typing in. “Logan. What’s up?”

  Logan slipped off his ball cap and fingered the brim nervously. “Do you have a minute?”

  Gus’s attention had already fallen back to his screen. Backspacing over what he’d just entered, he waved Logan forward with a free hand. “Sure. Come on in.”

  Logan took two steps inside and sank into the folding metal chair opposite Gus.

  “I can’t work with her,” he blurted. “Please don’t schedule me to work with her again.”

  He gritted his teeth, deriding himself for saying that. For the past hour, he’d been practicing a completely different line.

  I quit.

  There, how hard was that to say?

  Gus stopped typing, his fingers freezing over the keyboard, and looked up. “You can’t work with who?”

  Logan’s mouth moved as his face flamed. But he couldn’t say her name. Every time he said her name, he felt like he was going up in flames, and he wasn’t entirely certain if they were good flames or bad flames.

  “The…the new girl,” he croaked.

  Gus blinked. “Paige?”

  Wow, even hearing her name affected him. Ignoring the prickling heat just under his skin, Logan nodded.

  Steepling his hands, Gus cocked his head with a puzzled squint. “Why not? Didn’t she do a good enough job her first night?”

  Logan paused. For a brief, guilty second, he considered lying. He could say no. It’d be so easy. Gus would believe him. And he’d never have to worry about working with her again. He’d never have to feel any of those things he felt whenever he got close to her. No guilt, no shame, no panic, no fear, no desire.

  The last thought made his insides seize. He needed to cut that kind of thinking out right now. Just because a girl was pretty, and had a smile—for other people, certainly not for him—like an angel’s, and a voice that caressed his ear with a carnal awareness, and beautiful glossy hair he wanted to sink his hands into every time he saw her, and—

  Okay, okay. None of that should induce him to feel interest or desire.

  In a normal world, yes, but none of this was normal. With her, he should feel…well, probably nothing.

  “Logan?” Gus said, a strange frown on his face, reminding Logan he’d been spacing out big time.

  Clearing his throat, Logan ducked his face. “Yes,” he admitted. “Yes, she did a fine job.” And if she were anyone else, he’d probably be begging to work with her every shift instead begging the opposite. She hadn’t passed the buck on any of the workload—even though it had been her first night—and she’d dealt with the customers surprising well, plus she caught on fast and hadn’t messed up one order. Frankly, she’d been remarkable.

  “I just can’t work with her,” he mumbled to his lap.

  With an impatient sigh, Gus growled, “Does this have anything to do with that family feud you two are having?”

  Logan jerked his face up, his eyes burning, and he stared at his boss hard.

  “I killed her brother.” The words slopped from his mouth like spilled acid, fast and deadly.

  Gus physically lurched back in his chair. “Excuse me?”

  Logan’s throat was so dry it hurt to breathe. This was the first time he’d told anyone in this town what he’d done. At home, everyone had known, so he wondered if this was the first time he’d ever actually uttered the words aloud.

  Bowing his head, he squeezed his eyes closed. “We were in high school. Rival sports teams. We got into a fistfight, and he hit his head.” When he built the courage to look up, Logan found Gus’s jaw had gone slack and his eyes were open wide.

  “It was an accident,” Logan added. “I didn’t even go to jail. But he’s still dead, and she’s still his sister. We absolutely cannot work the same shift together. She hates me. Please, Gus.”

  Gus swallowed, then wiped a hand over his face and blew out a breath. “Yeah,” he said looking dazed. “No, yeah, you’re right. You two definitely shouldn’t work the same shift.” After filling the air with a fluid curse, he shook his head as if trying to clear it. “Wow, this was not what I was expecting to hear. Why didn’t I know any of this before?”

  A defensive streak in Logan made him knot his jaw. “I’m not an ex-convict. I didn’t have to report it to you.”

  When his boss narrowed his eyes, Logan’s muscles tensed. He braced himself for the inevitable. He was about to be fired. It should be okay; he’d come into this room to quit anyway. But the thought of losing his position terrified him. What if his next place of employment demanded a reference? The only person he could name as a source was Gus, and Gus would definitely tell them what a murderer he was.

  If he couldn’t find another job, what would he do then? How would he—

  “You’re right,” Gus finally said. He let out a soft chuckle. “Hell, I doubt I’d be able to talk about it either.”

  When Logan opened his mouth, Gus waved him quiet. “Okay, okay.” With a weary sigh, he grumbled, “I understand and agree. This will be a challenge, but I’ll make sure you two never work together or even cross paths. God knows I don’t need that kind of drama hanging over my business.”

  “Thank you.” Logan exhaled, though strangely as disappointed as he was relieved. What if he never saw her again? The thought of never setting eyes on that hair, those eyes, her smile, left him feeling glum and lost.

  Though he’d gotten what he wanted, it didn’t seem to matter how he viewed the situation. His future still looked as bleak as it had been for the past three years.

  Chapter Twelve

  BY OCTOBER, Paig
e had slipped into a routine.

  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings, along with early Saturday mornings, she worked at The Squeeze. Miracle upon miracles, but she didn’t work any day of the week with Logan. She didn’t even spot him on shift changes. A guilty part of her wondered if he’d quit there too, just as he’d dropped out of Geography class and the grief group.

  She told herself it didn’t matter; he’d find another job. But that small, sympathetic side of her that could no longer hate him felt bad about making him change so much of his life just to accommodate her. She’d had no idea trying to live Trace’s dream for him would affect anyone else.

  Not that she was doing very well in that department. Classes were progressing passably. But the thought of taking an actual business course in the spring scared the bejesus out of her.

  And Chemistry still sucked. Then again, another part of her routine involved doing homework with Einstein, which helped her immensely. He hung out a lot in the game room of their dormitory, and sometimes he still loitered under the staircase in the main foyer.

  When he popped out of either place to greet her each time she entered the front door, she felt obligated to stop and talk to him for a while. Their visits grew so long she finally asked if they could just work on homework together in the game room so she couldn’t fall behind in in her classes because of her attempt to befriend him.

  She hadn’t asked him for help on her Chemistry—honest—he had simply looked over her shoulder and said, “That answer’s not right.” It bothered him to no end when she came up with the wrong equations, and since he constantly looked over her shoulder at what she was studying, he was bothered a lot.

  But at least she was rocking a nifty B in the class because of him.

  Mariah continued to shuffle men through their room, and Paige continued to camp out on Bailey and Tess’s floor. Though her suitemates went home every weekend, whenever Paige wasn’t in class, at work, attending grief group, or studying with Einstein, she spent her free time with them.

  Phone calls to Creighton County grew fewer and fewer, and Kayla’s stories about people from their hometown began to sound more like tales of complete strangers.

  All the while, her Tuesday night meetings became as important to her as her classwork. Within a month, she’d accumulated the position of caller, someone Samantha referred to as a person anyone could call whenever they were feeling particularly down. Two members had called Paige already in the middle of the night. After talking to them and listening to their heartbreaking accounts, she began to wonder if social work or psychology might actually be her life’s calling.

  She knew she helped others by simply listening to them, yet ever since the first meeting she’d attended, she still couldn’t mention her mother or Logan Xander’s tie to her to anyone. Not to Tess or Bailey, and not to the members of the grief group.

  Although…Xander’s tie to her no longer seemed like an issue. It was as if he’d dropped off the face of the earth. If she hadn’t seen him so much that first week of school, she might’ve convinced herself he didn’t exist at all. She knew he hadn’t left Granton, though. She’d finally checked the time cards at work and seen how he punched his regularly.

  But it was possible he’d dropped out of school, because she hadn’t spotted him on campus. She didn’t want to care whether he had or not, but late at night, when she found it hard to sleep, his face would drift into her head. His desolate blue eyes would look at her, and she just wanted to comfort him, kiss his short crop of hair, and wrap her arms around his neck to press their cheeks together. Share the loneliness and pain that plagued them both.

  Her mind wandered to him as she walked to class one day. She hadn’t seen him in a good six weeks, not since the night he’d wrapped her thumb, which had healed nicely due to his thorough administrations.

  She wished she would’ve at least apologized for being so rude, so—

  With a gasp, she paused in her tracks. Logan Xander sat about thirty feet away. She slipped into the shade of a nearby tree and stared covertly at him. It was as if her thoughts had conjured him. But there he was, across the lawn, sitting on a bench and—

  What was he doing? Drawing, maybe?

  With an ankle crossed over one knee, he’d perched a large pad on his lap and was bent over it, scrawling madly. Every couple of seconds, he’d pause and glance up, staring across the campus lawn. Following the direction of his gaze, Paige spotted a couple camped out on the short grass, lying on a blanket. The girl read a book and rested the back of her head on the guy’s chest as he sprawled out perpendicular to her, playing with her hair.

  Returning her attention to Logan, Paige watched him pause and simply study the lounging students with a wistful sort of smile. Then he glanced down at his pad, and the smile died. Scowling, he ripped the large sheet from the pad and tore it in half before chucking the paper into a nearby trashcan. After glancing at his watch, he stuffed the drawing pad into his book bag, hooked the strap over his shoulder, and pushed to his feet.

  As he started off in the opposite direction, Paige’s curiosity got the best of her. She darted forward and headed straight for the trash receptacle. The torn sheets lay right on top, so she pulled them out, ironed them as best as she could with her hands, and held them together to see what he’d created.

  It was astounding.

  Logan Xander would probably never be an artist, but the stark representation of his subject matter left her breathless, her chest tight with emotion. Using straight blunt lines, he’d sketched a Cubism picture of the two students. But it wasn’t the lack of realism that struck her with awe; it was the passion in the scene. The couple with their heads close together and the guy gently touching his woman was love in its purest form.

  Remembering the achy, wistful look on Logan’s face as he’d watched them, Paige pulled in a shaky breath and gently set the picture halves back into the trash. Dazed, she walked away, because deep inside she knew she’d found a completely unacceptable connection with someone who was completely unacceptable.

  But he was someone who ached for something more. Just as she did.

  She couldn’t concentrate in her next class, and once it let out, she raced back to that trashcan, but someone had already emptied the contents, and the drawing was gone.

  She was still wishing she’d kept it the next morning as she sat in World Regional Geography class, waiting for Presni to make an appearance.

  “Morning, gorgeous.” Slipping into a chair next to her, Reggie—who had become her Geography buddy in the past couple weeks—grinned as he slumped into a comfortable sprawl in the seat beside hers. “Did you get your assignment finished?”

  Pushing troubling thoughts of troubling guys from her mind, Paige gasped. “Assignment?” When Reggie’s eyes flashed open wide and he opened his mouth to explain what she’d forgotten, she relaxed and grinned. “Of course I finished it.”

  Strangely enough, she was making better grades in all her classes at Granton than she’d made in high school.

  Reggie rolled his eyes. “That’s right. You got the little boy genius doing all your homework for you, don’t you?” Winking, he bumped his elbow into her as if congratulating her. “That’s pretty brilliant actually.”

  She gritted her teeth and scowled. “Einstein does not do my homework.” But a second later, her shoulders collapsed. “He does seem to go over everything I do and pre-grade it, though,” she had to admit.

  With a chuckle, Reggie stuck out his fist for her to bump. “Hey, I’m not hating, girl. I say, right on. Milk it for all it’s worth.”

  Compelled to clash her knuckles against his as she sighed and rolled her eyes, she sucked in a sharp breath when he caught her fingers before she could retract them.

  “Ouch,” he murmured on a low whistle while he ran his thumb over the angry red scar on her thumb. “How’d you get this beauty?”

  Suddenly uneasy, Paige wanted to pull her hand away. She pictured Logan bending over her as he ge
ntly wrapped gauze around her finger, and she didn’t want anyone else filling that memory or touching what he had taken care of.

  “I…I cut it at work.”

  “Wow, I didn’t know the juice bar was so dangerous.”

  And she hadn’t realized he knew where she worked. His touch slid away from the old cut and down the side of her finger, sending prickles of warmth up her arm.

  But she wasn’t sure if she appreciated the sensation or not.

  Reggie Oates had flawless looks, gorgeous dark skin and eyes, with cheekbones to die for along with the widest, most charming grin on campus. But something about him told her he probably ran wilder than she did. She was actually surprised he hadn’t shown up in her room attached to Mariah yet.

  She managed a carefree laugh. “Oh, well, I usually find danger everywhere I go.” Total lie, but it sounded good in the heat of the moment. Okay, it sounded corny, but at least it made him smile that delicious grin of his.

  “So I gotta know; if I come visit you sometime at The Squeeze, you going to give me a free smoothie?”

  It took everything Paige had to keep her mouth from falling open as his fingers wandered down to the back of her wrist.

  He was flirting her with, openly flirting with her.

  Thrilled such a hottie thought her flirt-worthy, she swallowed, feeling her entire face flame with jittery excitement.

  She quipped back, “Only if you make my tip the price of your drink.”

  Reggie chuckled and wrapped his entire hand around her wrist. “Deal.” Before she realized what he was about to do, he brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed her knuckles as if to seal the agreement.

  She fluttered her lashes, unable to look away.

  “So there’s this costume party I’m going to on Halloween,” he murmured against her knuckles, his breath washing across her skin. “Do you already have plans that night?”

  Paige opened her mouth, but she couldn’t even manage a croak. Her first impulse was to decline. Sure, flirting had been exciting, but it didn’t seem fair to go out with one man when she couldn’t stop thinking about another. Then again, she shouldn’t be thinking about the other. In fact, the best thing she could do to get him out of her brain was fill her thoughts with someone else.