Too damn bad he’d gotten to be practically middle-aged before it had happened. Maybe he’d know what the hell he was doing if he’d had a little practice along the way.
*****
It took him a bit of a while to get out of bed—how he’d gotten there in the first place, he had no idea—and get into the shower to wash the misbegotten yesterday off. The hot water restored him most of the way, leaving only a bad headache behind.
On his way to the stairs, he checked in the spare bedrooms he passed, but none looked like they’d been slept in. Maybe she’d made the bed again already; Honor was pretty tidy by habit.
It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and he’d expected to meet the sounds and aromas of a Cahill family breakfast, if not still in preparation, at least still underway. They had a tradition of sharing a breakfast the morning after the Founders’ Festival. He could imagine them eventually starting without him, but it was too early for them to have finished already.
But the house was quiet, and all he smelled was an aging brew of coffee.
The house was entirely quiet. That was definitely not normal.
In the kitchen, he found only his brother, sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. No breakfast had been made in this room today. As Logan came in and stood just inside the doorway, Heath looked up.
“Where is everybody?”
“Emma’s making breakfast at her place this morning.”
“Why?” That never happened. The family came together here, in the house they’d grown up in. The only time they’d held a family meal at Emma’s before, Heath had been on trial, and he hadn’t been able to face sitting at the table here for a meal.
Because a year ago, on this very morning, Sheriff Murphy and two deputies had interrupted their family breakfast to arrest Heath for murder.
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
“I need you to sit down, Logan.”
Something really was wrong.
This was not how things went between them. Heath was the brother who needed to be managed. Logan was the brother who did the managing.
“No. What the fuck, Heath?” There was only one reason anyone would need to manage him. “Is Honor okay? Is she hurt? Where the fuck is she?”
“In Boise. Last night, after we got you into bed, I took her back to her apartment.”
His hangover returned with a vengeance. “What? Why?”
“Because she wanted to leave, and she needed a ride.”
Logan vaulted to the table and socked his little brother in the face before he saw it coming. Heath toppled out of his chair and landed on the floor. With barely a flinch, he kicked the chair away and was up, fists ready. But he didn’t punch back.
“You son of a bitch,” Logan snarled but didn’t strike out again yet. They stood there, faced off at the end of the table. A trail of blood seeped down Heath’s chin.
He used one fist to wipe the blood away. “You want to fight, Loge, you know I’ll fight you. But I was there. You’re the one that deserves the punch.”
Logan’s fists loosened. “What? What did I do?”
“I don’t know what you did before, but Honor was already upset when we got back from town. Then Reese called, and I went to fetch your drunk ass. When we got you into bed, you told her to get the fuck away. You said it twice. You said you didn’t want this. It was pretty fucking clear that this meant her. That’s sure what she heard. She wanted to go, so I took her.”
But he’d started to figure things out last night, or at least know he wanted to. He remembered that. He should have apologized when he got home. Why would he have pushed her away?
His fists gave way entirely, and he raised slack hands to drag through his hair. “Oh fuck.” He dropped to a chair at the table and set his head on his arms.
Heath put his chair back to rights and sat with him. Logan felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder.
“I think it’s do or die time, Loge.”
Logan thought that time had been last night. This morning, it was probably too late. “It’s too late.” With his face buried in his arms, he mumbled the words.
“It is if you let it be. If you ask me, Honor deserves to be the one to make that call.”
Logan looked up. “Isn’t that what she just did?”
“She went away because you said you wanted her to get away. She’s hurt. There’s obviously shit wrong between you, and you’ve obviously been your usual charming self.”
“Fuck off.”
Heath grinned. “Like I said.” Becoming serious again, he added, “You know, I’ve never hurt a woman I loved like you hurt Honor last night.”
Asshole. “Yeah, you’re a saint. You’ve only been with two women in your whole life.” And he’d married them both.
“How many have you been with?”
Logan only glared. It hurt his sore head to glare, but he did it anyway.
“How many have you loved, Logan?”
Logan glared harder. Then he rubbed the throbbing clench in his forehead.
“You know why I never hurt Sybil or Gabe like that?”
Logan waited for his fucking little brother to bestow his great wisdom.
“I talk, moron. I say what I feel. I’m not scared of having feelings.”
“I’m going to hit you again now.”
Heath laughed. “Been a while since I scrapped. Wouldn’t mind the exercise—and that’s the thing, Loge. I know I was a raw nerve for a long time, and that was not good. But you’re the opposite, and that’s not good, either. You shut down feelings you don’t think you can control. These weeks, watching you with Honor, I see how you feel. You love her, and it scares the piss out of you. So you’re trying to shut it down.”
“No.”
“No, you don’t love her? Or no, it doesn’t scare the piss out of you? Either way, you’re lying.”
“No, I’m not trying to shut it down. I’m trying to fucking figure it out.”
His little brother leaned smugly back in his chair. “Like I said, Loge. Do or die time.”
*****
Honor’s face appeared on the elevator screen. Seeing him, she sighed and let her head fall forward.
“Please let me come up.”
She looked up, and he saw that she was without makeup. Her eyes were puffy. His heart thumped with love and need. She was right; he found her so damn hot when she was bare and sad because that was when she needed him most. God, he was a dick.
“No, Logan. I can’t … I need a minute to breathe. I can’t deal right now.”
If he left now, that minute would become the rest of their lives, he knew. He had to let her know he wouldn’t hurt her more. It was safe to let him in. She was safe with him.
He had to believe he was safe with her.
“You’re right, counselor. I’m scared. You scare the piss out of me. But I see it, and I want to understand it. Please let me come up so we can talk.”
“I just told you I need some time.” She clawed a hand through her hair and stared off at some point just sidelong to the camera.
A chime sounded; someone had called the elevator. It had a complicated system to account for the security of the private floors, a system that privileged public passengers over people trying to get to the top floors without a keycard. They had a few seconds before the screen would go dead and the car would descend to pick up new passengers. Then he’d have to wait and start this process all over again, and maybe she wouldn’t even answer next time.
“Honor, please.” His chest clenched hard enough to throttle him. Yeah, that was fear. It sucked. But the feeling he’d had when he’d heard she’d left him? That feeling was a thousand times worse. “I lied last night, and I’m sorry. I love you.”
Her eyes came back, dusky blue and crystalline with tears, and stared into the lens.
The screen went dark.
Fuck!
But when the car moved, it went up.
*****
Without a word, she opened the
door and stepped back. Logan went into her apartment, and Honor walked away, all the way to the kitchen, all the way to the far end of the island. She’d put half of her home between them.
He stayed near the door and let her have the space—or would she interpret it as him staying near the exit and his escape? More times than he could count, he’d done exactly that in his life. He’d done it with Honor.
All this overthinking and insecurity was going to kill him. Eat its way out of his chest until it had swallowed him whole.
He walked to the nearest end of the island. The stainless steel was cool under his hands.
“I know I’m a dick, Honor. I’m trying not to be.”
Her arms wrapped tightly around her chest—she wore a t-shirt with a deep V-neck, and her cleavage swelled above her arms—Honor stared at the island between them. “You use it. You’re a dick when you want to get away.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“So you must want to get away from me.”
“No, darlin’. I really don’t. Last night, I wanted out of that fight is all. It hurt. I didn’t want you to go away.” He smiled, but she hadn’t looked up yet, so she didn’t know. “What’s happening with us, it scares me. That’s a fact.”
Now she looked up. “Why? What are you afraid of?”
“If I knew, I could get it in hand. One thing you were wrong about last night—I don’t know how to do this. How I feel about Kendall and Anya and Matthew, that’s easy. That just comes. There’s no work to loving a baby. But this kind of love? I see Heath with Gabe, and Emma with Wes. I know how Dad and Mama were. I see they love each other, I see how they are, but I don’t see how they do it. If they have all this confusing shit that’s inside me, I don’t see how they get it straight and know what it means. This need I feel for you—it makes me feel weak, and I don’t know where to go with that. I don’t know where the balance is.”
She let those words swirl around between them for awhile. “Did you mean it? What you said in the elevator?”
“Yes.” He said it again to prove the point. “I love you.” Huh. It was easier the second time.
“Why did you throw the words back at me last night?”
He’d come all the way to Boise to make things right, so there was no point in hedging. “I was hurting, and I didn’t like it. The shit you were saying made me crazy, and wanted to make you hurt, too.”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but you tried to hurt me. And you did.” She shook her head. “That’s … that’s not love.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I spent my life avoiding all this. Being a dick is easier. Last night, I thought making you hate me would be easier. But I was wrong, Honor. So damn wrong. Because I do love you, and it feels like shit that I hurt you. God, I feel like shit.”
“What is it you want, Logan? You run away, and then you follow me around. You tell me to get away, and then you come looking for me. You’re jealous and surly when I’m not curled in your lap crying. I love you, but you are yanking my heart all over Idaho. It has to stop. One way or another. So tell me what you want.”
He came around the corner of the island and halved the distance between them. “You. I want you. I want us.”
Her arms finally unlocked, and she set her hands on the island. He could reach across the corner and touch her, but he wanted to give her the choice to close their distance.
“In what way? What do you see happening between us?”
She was asking a hell of a lot if she thought he was ready to propose here. He was already all but begging for another chance, and he still hadn’t figured out how to manage the light and dark roiling around his feelings for her.
Logan took a long breath and searched his chaotic head for the right answer, one that was true and gave Honor what she needed from him.
“When I look ahead in my life, all I’ve ever seen is the Twisted C. Someday, I’ll lead the family, and the ranch. I’m not looking for that day to come quick, because it’ll mean my dad is gone, but all I’ve ever wanted in my life is what I already have. My family, our home, that life. Like my old man, I am the Twisted C. I am made out of that dirt, body and soul. Heath or Emma, they made lives out of more than the ranch, but I never will. It’s my destiny and my legacy, and that was the first truth I ever knew. But then I met you, and now I can’t see what’s up ahead for me as clear as I always could.”
Her eyes were too intense, he could feel her digging around in his head as he spoke, digging down deeper, into his soul. Unable to face that probing gaze and focus on what he needed to say, he looked down, focused on her hands, the soft sparkle in the red polish on her nails.
“I still want all I ever did, I still need it, but now I want you there, too, and I don’t know how that works. I guess that’s why I’m scared. You said I should know how to love because I see it all around me. You’re right about that. But I know loss, too. I’ve felt it tear me apart. When Mama died, and Ruthie … And I saw what it did to Dad and Heath, too, and it was so much worse for them. Seems like love makes everything more intense and less secure.”
He looked up again and faced her. “Loving you, it’s changing me, Honor. I’m not who I thought I was. I want more than I thought I did. I was happy on my own, before I knew what loving you felt like, and now I don’t think I could be happy without you. If I lose you, that future is bleak, even if it’s everything I wanted for my whole life up to now. That scares me. So goddamn much.”
Logan had worked all that out with his mouth going, and he shut it now with a snap, stunned at himself both for the insight he’d managed and for saying it out loud, handing that part of himself right over to Honor for her to do what she liked with it. If she swiped it aside, that would be the end of his experiment in true love.
She came close at last, ending the distance between them, and put her hands on either side of his face. With a gentle tug, she urged him to bend to her, and she kissed him.
It wasn’t until their lips met that Logan truly understood how entirely terrified he’d been that he’d killed what they had. A sound escaped him that was like a whimper, choked by the clench at the back of his throat. He wound his arms around her as if he could fuse her body to his, and with his body, he tried to tell her things he had no words for yet about what she meant to him.
Too soon, she separated her body from his and leaned back to smile up at him. “Thank you for saying that. It was beautiful, and I believe you. But you didn’t answer my question. What do you see happening between us?”
“I don’t know. I can’t make it out. I think that’s why I’ve been such a dick. It’s not that I want you to be weak. I love all you can do. I don’t want you to change. But when you lean on me, I see it. I know what’s up ahead. You and me, in the big house, me taking care of you. When you don’t need me, I can see you leaving someday, wanting more than I can give you, and it hurts. I don’t want you to be weak, but I don’t want to be weak, either.”
“You know,” she murmured, her mouth only inches from his and her hands still holding his face, “you see more up ahead than I do. Right now, every part of my life is in shambles. I’m changing, too. I had the life I’d always wanted, and now that’s just rubble. Now everything about what I want and what I need in my life is changing. I do need you. It feels good to lean on you. It feels good to know you’re there to lean on. I feel stronger knowing you’re there if I need you. It helps me feel like I’ll be able to make sense of my life again. But if I need you all the time, I’ll fade away. I don’t want that.”
Logan played with a soft tress of her hair. “What do you want?”
“Right now, I just want to love you, and feel loved by you. I want to feel comfortable in that and explore what it means with you. I want to be able to trust you not to hurt me, especially not on purpose. I want to know you trust me not to hurt you. I want to figure out who I am now and let the future take care of itself.”
There was nothing more he could ask for.
Except for one
thing. “Will you come back to the ranch with me?”
Honor leaned back and looked around her apartment. “I love this place, and I need to figure out if there’s anything left of my career but ash. I’m not ready to know where I want to live, or how to work that out with you. I need that to be a future decision. And you and I, we need to work out some things. But the only case I have is Natalie’s, and she’s in Jasper Ridge. So yeah, let me pack some more clothes, and then let’s go back.”
Suffused with brilliant relief, Logan pulled her close, tucked her against his body. She settled in, winding her arms around his neck, nestling her face against his chest, into the space where his shirt was open, so he felt her skin on his.
This feeling was worth the other. And now that he was beginning to understand the dark place his insecurity—he should call it by its name: his fear—came from, maybe he could push it out of his way.
“Let’s not leave just yet,” he said and lifted her up. When he headed to her bedroom, she giggled and wrapped her legs around his hips. Just like that, they were okay.
Everything was going to be okay.
Gabe said that was the Cahill motto. Maybe she was right.
Chapter Seventeen
Logan whistled and turned Ranger, nudging him with his heels to catch a fleeing calf. He headed the little girl off and got her turned around, back into the weaning pasture. She made a frantic screech and tried one more deke, but Ranger stomped his foot, and she veered away.
The air rolled and swelled with yelling cows and their young. It was weaning season, and the time had come to separate the moms and babes. They’d just sorted the cows out of this pasture, and three hands were holding them at bay while Logan fought with Cowdini over here.
This was one of the busier times on the ranch; Logan and all the hands had been putting in full days on horseback all week. For the first time, his father hadn’t saddled up for weaning. The autumn had come in crisp and damp, and the old man’s back and legs had been too stiff to ride.
Someday (Sawtooth Mountains Stories Book 2) Page 21
