Keeping Score

by Shannon Stults

  Her fingers crept up to his shirt, crushing the cotton fabric in her hands. And then they were in his hair, pushing their kiss further, until their tongues found each other. She moaned.

  He gripped her hips, and he lifted her up to straddle his lap. She obliged, placing her legs on either side of his and slowly settling in. His lips left hers, and he started placing a trail of kisses across her jaw and down her neck, tearing another moan from her. The sound stoked the fire deep in his gut.

  Her hands snaked under his shirt, and her fingers traced over the hard muscles of his abdomen.

  Logan shifted on Cole’s lap, and his entire body tensed. He groaned and drew her lips back to his. His tongue caressed hers before she nipped his bottom lip with her teeth.

  His lips curled beneath hers, and he pulled back to look into her eyes. They were bright, like some of his fire had escaped into her. He ran his hand through her short hair. “I really don’t want you to go now.”

  She laughed and placed a quick kiss on his jaw. And then another. “It’s just a plane ride away. I’ll be home for every school break.”

  Cole wrapped one arm tightly around her waist while the other hand traced lightly over her bare thigh from her knee to the edge of the jean shorts. “It’s not enough.” He kissed her again, slow and gentle as he savored the moment.

  How had things between them changed so drastically in a matter of minutes? One second he’d felt like a man preparing to never see the sun again, and now it was blinding and burning and just within his reach. He’d never felt so light, so free.

  Christ, he wanted to feel this way forever. But she was leaving. Was there any chance for a relationship that started with so many miles between them? Was that even what she wanted?

  “Hey,” she said, her eyebrows drawing together. She placed a hand on his cheek. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He brushed his hand through her hair again and placed a featherlight kiss on the tip of her nose. “I should take you back before Carly and Cowboy start worrying.”

  “Or…”

  Cole stilled, and his eyes fluttered when she shifted on his lap. She stared down at him, her eyes dark with need. “Or?” he asked breathlessly.

  Her lips parted in a wicked grin. She brought them to his ear. “Or you could take me back to your place.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Logan drove aimlessly for hours as if she could outrun the memory of that night four years ago that played over and over in her mind. The smell of bonfire smoke embedded in his cotton shirt, the way Cole had looked at her in the cab of that Bronco—like he was seeing a sunset for the first time. No one had ever looked at her like that. Her walls had crumbled, and the next thing she knew, she was kissing Cole Tucker.

  It had been unlike anything she’d felt before, better than what she’d had with Ryan Baker. Better than anything she’d ever imagined. And she’d imagined it more than a few times—not that she ever would have admitted it back then.

  She’d been so nervous the next morning. Had last night changed as much for him as it had for her? Was he as impossibly elated as she was? What did it mean for them going forward?

  And then he tore apart everything she thought she knew about their night, about him.

  It was just sex. The memory still turned her stomach to stone.

  Four words completely snuffed out her internal glow. None of it meant anything to him.

  She thought of the initials he’d gotten tattooed on his ribs. They weren’t there in her memory of that night, which meant he must have gone back to get them sometime after she left. But why?

  She was so deep in her own thoughts when she finally pulled up to her parents’ house that she didn’t even notice the black Lexus parked in the driveway until she was out of the truck. She looked around, her eyes landing on a tall figure pacing across the front porch.

  “Jacob?” He went still, and even from this distance, she could see the tension in his shoulders. She stopped in front of the steps. “What are you doing here?”

  His forehead creased. “I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “Seeing as you were supposed to be at my apartment five hours ago.”

  Shit. “Oh God. The dinner.” She’d completely forgotten. The San Francisco spot, the future they’d planned, it all hinged on that dinner, and she’d missed it. She’d hoped tonight they would be able to get past the issues they’d been having about the wedding, and now she’d just made everything worse.

  She stepped closer and squared her shoulders, shoving thoughts of Cole Tucker and that long ago night far away. If she didn’t fix this now, she could lose everything she’d spent years working toward. She took his hand in hers. “Jacob, I’m so sorry. Please, just let me explain.”

  “I’ve been calling for hours. You, your parents, Carly. Everyone I could think of, but no one would answer. I jumped in the car, thinking you might be hurt or something.” He gave her a full once-over. “Clearly, I worried for nothing.”

  “I had no idea. I never even heard my phone ring.” Logan searched her jeans pockets and came up short. She tried to think back to the last time she remembered having it. It was when she’d called her mom as she rushed to the house in the Bronco.

  She let out a groan as her head fell back in defeat. “I’m sorry. I must have left it in Cole’s truck.”

  “Cole? That guy from the bar?”

  “Yeah, we were over on County Line Road when there was this call on his police scanner—” Jacob was down the steps and in front of her in an instant.

  “You mean to tell me that while I’ve been going crazy thinking you were dead or seriously injured, you were with another guy?”

  Logan hesitated. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like?” he asked.

  “We were racing dirt bikes.”

  “Racing? Don’t you know how dangerous that is? Not to mention illegal.” He was almost fuming now, and she fought to keep her own calm. If she lost her cool at this point, she could kiss it all goodbye: Jacob, the wedding, her new life.

  “It’s not a big deal,” she assured him. “I used to do this kind of thing all the time.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I didn’t mean that. I just—it was all part of this stupid bet. A bunch of challenges and the first one to lose five loses the whole bet.” A torrent of words started to rush from her mouth. “There was a poker game, a hungover eating contest, a paintball game. We were just trying to see who was better.”

  “Trying to see who was better?” he asked incredulously. “You realize how juvenile that sounds, don’t you? You’re a grown woman. You shouldn’t be running around with another man racing bikes and playing stupid games.”

  “It’s nothing. We’ve got this thing from when we were kids and—”

  “I asked you that first night how well you knew that guy, and you told me you barely knew him at all.”

  “Technically, I told you we weren’t friends. Which we weren’t. I hadn’t seen him in years, and we could hardly stand each other half the time growing up. I know the whole thing is stupid, but it’s just what Cole and I do. That’s all it is. It’s just a bet. I shouldn’t have even agreed to it in the first place.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “I was drunk. By the time I realized what we’d started we were already onto the next game.”

  “Since when do you drink!” Jacob shouted, making Logan flinch. He turned on the spot, hands tight at his hips. He took several steps across the yard before coming right back. “How long has this been going on?”

  Logan was silent a minute. The look in his eyes told her Jacob was barely keeping his anger at bay, and she didn’t know what would set him over the edge. She looked down at the ground, not wanting to see his reaction. “It started the night I moved back home.”

  “So, you’ve been lying to me. And not just for the last six weeks when I asked what you’d been doing out here. You’v
e apparently been lying to me throughout our entire relationship.”

  “It’s not—”

  Jacob held up a hand.

  “You’ve lied to me, you’ve put off setting a date for our wedding, and then tonight you made me miss the most important dinner of my life because you were out playing games with another guy.”

  “That’s not why—”

  Jacob took a step toward her, bringing his face very close to hers. “These games are going to stop. It’s time for you to grow up. I will not have my future wife going around making bets and getting drunk like some wild woman.”

  “Would you just let me explain?”

  Jacob shook his head. “No, I don’t want to hear anything from you right now. That’s why I am going to leave, and you are going to decide if this relationship is worth anything to you. Because I’m not going to keep wasting my time if it’s not.”

  Without another word, he crossed the lawn and opened the door to the Lexus. Logan stood stunned as he backed quickly out of the driveway and drove off.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Logan sat on the porch swing, listening to nothing but the sound of crickets chirping from the bushes. The porch light was on while the rest of the house stood dark and silent. She should go in and get some rest before she went to get her mom and dad from the hospital, but sleep was the last thing on her mind at this point.

  How had she managed to make such a mess of her life? She was engaged to one man but realizing she had feelings for another. One made her feel loved and safe, the other lit a fire in her veins at the mere thought of him. One had asked her to spend the rest of her life with him, the other had said it was just sex.

  She loved Jacob. She loved who she was with him. And she knew that picking him would be the safest choice. But Cole was such a big part of her. In a way, his presence in her life had become like a piece of herself.

  With Jacob, she knew she could be the person he wanted because she’d already been that girl for two years. With Cole, there were too many unknowns. In a way, she knew him better than anyone, but she still didn’t know what would happen if they tried to be together.

  And then there was the question of who she was around Cole. He’d always brought out the worst in her. Sure, she had fun when she was with him, but how long would these games satisfy them? How long until their antics escalated and someone was seriously hurt? What if Cole got hurt because of her?

  Logan pulled her legs in close and wrapped her arms around them, resting her forehead on her knees. She knew what she had to do, knew the choice she had to make. And worst of all, she knew how much it was going to hurt.

  Several minutes later she lifted her head as the sound of a familiar truck coming up the gravel road filled the air. She watched as the Bronco pulled into her driveway and parked behind her Chevy.

  “I was hoping you’d be here,” he said as he came up the porch steps. He stopped in front of her, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a slim cell phone. “You left this in my truck.”

  She took the phone from his hand. “Thanks.”

  “There’s a lot of missed calls and texts from Jacob,” he said quietly. “I didn’t read any of them. But I’m guessing he really wants to talk to you.”

  She laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, he was actually here when I got home. Said what he needed to say and left.”

  “I take it he wasn’t happy you missed dinner.”

  That was an understatement. She put her hands through her hair slowly. “I completely forgot about it until I came home and found him. And even then he had to remind me.”

  “He can’t blame you for that. I’m sure he understood once you explained the situation.”

  Yes, she imagined he would have understood if he’d ever given her the chance to tell him.

  Cole shifted on his feet. They were silent for a while before he sat on the swing next to her. She had to fight the urge to curl up in his side and let him hold her.

  “Do you want to talk about the tattoo?”

  Not really, but she was tired of running. “Okay.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his hands together. “How much do you remember about that night?”

  “All of it. The tattoo parlor, the truck, your place. I remember waking up and you coming in and telling me it was just sex to you.”

  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Then why did you? Why tell me that what happened between us that night didn’t mean anything when clearly it did?”

  “I was scared. After all those years, I finally told you how I felt, and you seemed to feel the same way. I can’t even put into words how it felt waking up next to you that morning. How right it was. I thought I finally had you, that it was the start of the rest of our lives,” he said, his voice rough, as if the words were razor blades in his throat.

  “But then I heard you on the phone with Carly, and you sounded so upset. You begged her to come get you, told her you’d made a huge mistake. I couldn’t risk hearing you say that you didn’t mean any of it.”

  “So instead you said it to me,” she said softly.

  “After you ran out, I was miserable for weeks. I’d finally gotten the girl of my dreams, only to lose her within a few hours.” He scratched the nape of his neck. “I felt so lost. I think I just wanted some piece of you to keep with me, so I got the tattoo. I told myself it would be a reminder of how it felt to get rejected, that it would help me get over you. And after a while I thought I had. But the second I saw you at Wade’s, I knew you were still as much a part of me as ever.”

  “You could have talked to me. You could have called or something.”

  “And have you laugh in my face? For all I knew, none of it had been real and you were only with me that night because you were drunker than I thought. I couldn’t stand to hear you call me a mistake again.”

  “You weren’t the mistake.” She sighed, hugging her knees closer. “When I woke up that morning, I realized I had only an hour before I was supposed to leave for the airport. I asked Carly to bring me my truck so I could go home without my parents knowing where I’d been all night. It had nothing to do with you.”

  There was a flicker of something in Cole’s eyes, and his shoulders lifted as he took a deep breath. He took her hand in his, running his thumb gently over the road rash on her palm. “So it was all real?”

  Hope, Logan realized. And she’d seen it in his eyes before, though she hadn’t recognized it until today. It was the same look she saw when he first kissed her that night. If tearing her own heart out meant she could spare his, she’d do it in an instant because she knew what she had to do next.

  She had to extinguish it.

  Again.

  She couldn’t keep doing this to him. She couldn’t keep stringing him along. And as long as there remained any hope for the two of them, Cole would not be able to let go. He wouldn’t be able to settle down and start the family he wanted with the big house and the picket fence.

  She strained to keep her voice calm and even. “I don’t know,” she said, praying he couldn’t hear the lie in it. “Maybe, but it was so long ago. And things are different now.”

  “Why?” he pleaded. “Why can’t we just give this a shot and see where it goes?”

  She shook her head, fighting the tears that wanted to come. “I’m marrying Jacob,” she said for the last time. “I made him a promise, and I can’t back down from that. I won’t.”

  “You haven’t promised him anything until you’ve said I do.”

  “I’m sorry,” Logan said, closing her eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you.” But I know I have to.

  Cole sucked in a long breath beside her. “Hey.” He placed his hand on her chin and used it to gently turn her face toward his. When she opened her eyes, she was met with a kind smile. “All that matters is that you’re happy. And if you really think he’s the one who’ll do that, then I won’t try to stand in the way.”

  “Thank you,�
� she barely whispered. Her lungs felt frozen, aching as he placed his lips on her forehead for the second time in as many days. It took everything she had to not melt into his touch.

  He stood from the swing. “I’ll see you around, Lo. Try to stay out of trouble in California, okay?”

  She nodded, watching as he crossed the porch and walked to his truck. “What about the bet?” she called out. She’d won the dirt bike race that morning, which meant they were tied. “There’s still one more challenge left.”

  Not that it mattered much now. Jacob knew about her reckless past, and she was sure Cole would keep the secret about the night she got the tattoo. But still, in the ten years since they’d started their games, they’d never left one unfinished.

  “Consider this my forfeit,” he said with one last glance over his shoulder. “Bye, Lo.”

  Logan forced herself to take long, slow breaths and willed the tears not to come until the red of his taillights disappeared.

  *

  August—Five Days After the Bonfire

  Cole sat on the sofa in the living room, his right hand wrapped in puffy white bandages while the other held a beer he’d just taken from the stash Keith replenished for him the day before. His eyes were trained on the Braves game playing out on the TV screen in front of him, but his mind was fixated on a memory of angry blue eyes.

  He took a long drag from his bottle. It would be another four drinks until those eyes started blur, at least seven before he could erase them completely.

  Cowboy came around the corner of the sofa, his hair still damp from his shower. He’d put on a nice shirt and dark jeans in preparation for a night with yet another random girl.

  “I’m heading out,” he said. He stared at Cole, eyes scanning over his sweatpants and stained shirt. They landed on his bandaged hand. “Why don’t you come with us? I’m sure Nina can find a friend. We could all hang out, the four of us.”