Giving It All

by Christi Barth

  “Escarlata, I was eighteen.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her knuckles and then led her across the street. “Yeah, there was kissing. And more.”

  Shooting him a sideways, sultry look, Brooke asked, “How much more?”

  Logan leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I plead the Fifth.”

  “Or maybe you could show me later?” Brooke needed to load up the big flirting guns. Make up for no perfume, minimal makeup in the sticky summer heat, and the utter lack of flirtation for the last fifteen minutes.

  “Like I said, that’s the idea. Here’s the deal: I thought about bringing you here back then. For our first date. So tonight I thought I’d take you on the date I wanted to take you on in high school.”

  God. So romantic. Maybe her flat sandals were a wise choice after all, because she’d have fallen off her wedges in surprise at his inherent sweetness. “Logan. That’s just lovely. Thank you.”

  Except…now they stood on the U.S. Capitol grounds. A black uniformed Capitol policeman cradled his semiautomatic rifle mere steps away. “I’m confused. The Capitol—it’s more of a field trip than a date.”

  “Right. Because I’m all about sitting in the gallery watching a bill get filibustered?” He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the reflecting pool. “Look straight ahead. Down the Mall.”

  Brooke stared down the rectangular expanse that connected the Capitol to the Washington Monument. It was jam-packed with people sitting on the lawn, sprawled on blankets and low beach chairs. Then she spotted the reason why—the giant movie screen in the middle. Everything clicked into place. “You brought me to Screen on the Green?”

  “Yep.” Logan jammed his hands in the pockets of his khaki cargo shorts. Kept his head down but looked up at her through those too-long-to-be-fair eyelashes of his. “Is it too corny?”

  Oh, yes. In all the very best ways. Like a Gidget movie from the fifties (which Brooke watched whenever she was sick), or parking at a drive-in movie theater (which she’d never done—yet). “It’s iconic. A classic summertime District tradition that I’ve always wanted to attend. But only with a handsome boy.”

  Logan turned in a circle as though looking for one. Shrugged his shoulders. And then he popped a bicep that made Brooke’s eyes pop, too. “Would you settle for a hot slab of beefcake?”

  Sometimes, sometimes, reality turned out to be a million times better than the fantasy. “I guess I could…” Brooke swung her arm, extending her hand in invitation, which he seized before she hit the downward arc.

  “Great.” An excited smile lit up his face. It gave him a boyish eagerness that was like jumping in a time machine and suddenly being with the boy she’d known in high school. “I’ve got a picnic waiting for us down on the lawn.”

  Well, that was…crazy. “You mean you just left a picnic basket and a blanket in the middle of hundreds of people and expect it to be there when we arrive? I think all your time in villages the size of a shoe box has softened your city smarts.”

  “Wrong. Just the opposite,” he said with an in-your-face smugness. “I’m so citified I have people to take care of it.”

  “You hired a blanket-sitter? Or did you make your butler do it?” God, it cracked her up every single time she was reminded that these five rugged guys had a butler. And she’d darn sure keep teasing Logan about it at every opportunity. No matter how much sense it actually made.

  “Nah, I’d never drag Jerry into this swamp. Talk about below his pay grade. Friends are the ones who do your dirty work. Riley and Josh are down there on guard duty. After we show up, they’re hitting the bars. And maybe taking with them whichever women they talk off the Mall in the next ten minutes. They both saw this as a big pickup opportunity.”

  “We get dinner and they get sex. A win-win.” Ironic, though, how one couple’s sweetly romantic date would feed into a no-strings hookup. “So what happens for the next ten minutes?”

  A hard tug on her hand spun her into his body. Brooke felt all of his muscles through the thin material of her outfit. Corded biceps. Rippled abs. Thick thighs. And, of course, the hardness just above his thighs pressing into her abdomen. Logan secured her—needlessly, since Brooke was exactly where she wanted to be—by dropping his fists at the small of her back. Then he smiled down at her, those golden-brown eyes melting with a heat that took her breath away. “Kissing, hopefully.”

  Oh, she wanted to do exactly that. Just…not here. Brooke took a lot of things for granted in her hometown. She didn’t freak out at every car with diplomat plates. Didn’t squint to see if every chopper overhead was Marine One. But the seat of government demanded at least a little bit of decorum. Not to mention the policeman who probably wouldn’t be thrilled with adult PDA right in front of him.

  Laughing, she pushed out of his embrace. “Logan, I’m not going to stand on the front steps of the Capitol and make out with you for ten minutes.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. We’re going to do it in here.”

  Taking her hand again, Logan hurried her down the path, past some overgrown bushes, and through a thick brick archway. The red-tiled roof dipped low and the brick walls of the hexagonal structure were patterned with a basket-weave design. A fountain burbled in the center. Benches lined the walls between all three doorways, and a tiny grotto was visible through ornamental grating.

  It was pure, fanciful romance. Brooke loved it. “What is this place? How have I never seen it before?”

  “Lots of stuff gets ignored in the shadow of the Capitol dome,” he teased. “Equal rights, fair wages…”

  “Cut it out. If this is truly a date, there’s definitely no talk of politics allowed.”

  “It’s the Summerhouse. Added by the original designer of the Capitol grounds himself. Remember, this was a pain-in-the-ass swamp when they built up the city.” Logan gestured to the fountain. “The idea was to have a place for people to stop on the long walk up Capitol Hill and grab a drink.”

  Brooke dipped her fingers in the burbling water, then hitched herself up to sit on the fountain’s wide stone lip. “It’s charming.”

  “It’s secluded,” Logan stipulated. He positioned himself between her legs. “Before we join that mass of humanity on the Mall, I need to be alone with you. I need you, Brooke. In fact, I find myself needing you all the time.”

  “Really? Me, too, you.”

  “Honestly? I don’t know what to do about all this need. What it means.”

  “Mmm-hmm. How to deal with it,” she added in a low murmur, lightly tracing the rim of his ear, and then along the strong, sharp line of his jaw.

  “Yeah. How it’s even stronger than when I wanted you in high school. It’s like having the flu.”

  “Watch it, Marsh,” she warned. “You’re dangerously close to backtracking out of romance land.”

  “When I have the flu, I feel totally out of control. Like something else has taken over my body. No matter how hard I work or wish, I can’t affect it. Just gotta ride it out. That’s how my need for you feels.”

  Okay. That ended up being what she now recognized as Logan’s version of romance, which was totally him, totally sweet, and more than good enough for Brooke. “Well, there is one thing you can do. To feel more in control.” In the most serious tone she could muster—which completely belied the smile she felt teasing up the corners of her mouth—Brooke said, “I prescribe kissing. It’ll cure whatever ails you.”

  Logan wrapped her braid around his fist, over and over until he’d tilted her head back. And then he took her mouth. Poured all the need he’d mentioned into the deepest, hottest kiss of her life.

  It bent Brooke backward to where she almost lost her balance. To where there was nothing beneath her feet and only the sky in her sight line, and the intensity of Logan’s kiss made her feel like she was floating. The spray from the fountain cooled the back of her neck. Just before Brooke was sure to hit the water, Logan cinched her in tight at the waist. That move stole her breath away. Except that
she was pretty sure she’d forgotten to breathe as soon as his lips touched hers.

  Suddenly swollen and tight, her breasts were mashed against his pecs in a way that made her wish they were naked again. So that she could feel his chest hair, rough and manly and so darned much a turn-on, scratching against her skin. Naked again so that they wouldn’t have to stop after a few kisses.

  Logan let go of her braid to skim his palm over her back, her arm up to her shoulder, down the curve of her breast. Almost as if he was trying to touch everywhere at once. Funny, since her hands were doing the same across his powerful lats and down the inverted vee of his ribs, to his narrow hips, right above where her legs curled around his.

  They were scarfing each other down. Nips at his wide lower lip. Quick nibbles at her earlobe that raced shivers up her spine and back down again. Gulps of air in between kisses like scuba divers surfacing from the deep, and then more long, wet, hot tangos with their tongues.

  If they had enacted this particular scene back in the day, Brooke thought the potency of Logan’s attraction and desire might’ve taken her aback. Now all she did was mirror it. Because this man—gorgeous to look at, self-sacrificing and noble on the inside, with a dry humor that popped out just often enough to keep her grinning no matter how serious the situation—brought her to life. He lit a fiery torch of joy and yearning and lust and appreciation and sheer happiness in her.

  Logan shifted so that she sat flat on the edge of the fountain once more. Eased off with a final long lick along the line of her lips. “There. That’s what I wanted to do to you back in high school,” he declared.

  “For the record, I would’ve been on board with all of this.”

  “Guess I can check it off my to-do list. Only other thing that’s been on there as long is learning how to pop a wheelie on a motorcycle. Since I’m in no rush to crack my head open, I think I’ll leave that one unchecked. It got added before I became acquainted with the fleetingness of my mortality, tumbling down a cliff in the Alps.”

  She’d heard stories, seen social media mentions over the years. Logan might not want to somersault onto asphalt, but he had plenty of daredevil in him. Cliff diving, hang gliding, skydiving…he’d still pushed the envelope a bunch of different ways. Evidently, that fateful trip still shaped him, though.

  “I guess you’re not the boy you were back at Roosevelt Prep.”

  “Hell, no. But nobody is. Life happens. It sends you in unplanned directions. Even how we were friends but had to skip the dating thing left an imprint. Don’t you think life is different than what you pictured it’d be?”

  “You mean if we’d gone on this date ten years ago, would we accurately have predicted who we are now?”

  “Yeah.”

  If only…“God, I wish I could’ve seen the future. Not even the whole thing. Just a week, a day, even an hour. Five minutes,” she said fervently. “Five minutes would’ve made all the difference.”

  “In what? Picking the winning lottery numbers? Running into a movie star when they taped House of Cards?”

  “I could’ve saved a life. I could’ve saved Sarah’s life. I could’ve stopped her.” The words tumbled out, unbidden. Definitely unwelcome. Darn it. Brooke had gone days without the memory poking at her. Now was sooo not the time to have it reemerge.

  “Hey. What’s this about?”

  Rats. Way to spoil what had promised to be a really fun evening. “It’s not really a first-date topic.”

  “We’ve known each other for almost fifteen years. I already know your favorite movie and that your favorite candy bar doesn’t exist because you’d rather have cheddar and sour cream potato chips anytime, day or night. So everything’s fair game.”

  “I don’t…I can’t…Talking about it isn’t good for me.”

  He frowned at her. “Says who?”

  “My parents. My therapist. The other teachers at Roosevelt Prep. They claim that talking about it, over and over, keeps it fresh in my head and stops me from moving forward.”

  “It sounds like it’s already popped fresh into your head tonight. So tell me. That’ll sweep it the rest of the way out.”

  “Logan, you’re essentially here on a layover. You don’t want to get tangled up in my knotted life.”

  “Screw the future. Be in the moment. I’m here now. So I want to be here for you, just like you’ve been here for me these past few days.”

  It wasn’t just the quietly caring tone. It wasn’t just the grounding of his hands surrounding hers. Those were superficial salves to her deeper wound. The bigger revelation, the thing that changed her mind in a blink, was the unassailable truth to Logan’s offer. How could Brooke argue with that logic? Why not live in the moment? Shouldn’t that be the biggest takeaway from the story she’d now share with him? That the future came with zero guarantees—so be present?

  Chapter 14

  Making the decision to tell Logan the story, while hard enough, was only half of it. Actually telling him was something else altogether. She’d never told it before. Never needed to. All of her friends, family, even her therapist had seen it covered on television. Read the news reports. She’d filled in details, but never had to share everything from scratch. Which meant she had no idea where to begin.

  Brooke sucked in a long breath. The air all of a sudden seemed much muggier. Thicker. Harder to actually drag into her lungs. Cicadas buzzed rhythmically in the bushes ringing the structure. She bit her lip. Toyed with a stray piece of hair that had worked its way out of her braid. Contemplated pulling off the elastic and rebraiding the whole thing just as a means to postpone starting the story by even one minute.

  “Escarlata?” Logan let the endearment hang in the air for a moment before prompting her, “Just talk to me.”

  Right. This wasn’t like lying on the therapist’s hard black couch—and she’d done that only once because it felt so stupidly clichéd. This was a simple conversation with an old friend. A friend whose presence gave Brooke the idea for a starting point. “Back at the airport in Dominica, I convinced you to come with me because my parents had paid for the super swanky hotel.”

  He gave her the same look she gave her students when they couldn’t remember that two cups equaled a pint. The This is so simple, how could you possibly get it wrong look. “I went with you because you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Logan might not always rock romance in the conventional way. But when he did pop out a compliment like that, it put a quiver in her heart. “Either way, the resort in Dominica wasn’t a vacation I’d planned. My parents sent me on it to jolt me out of a kind of funk. I was stuck in a rut. I’d freeze-framed on a single day, a single event in my life, and I couldn’t move past it. They hoped getting me away from that environment would do the trick.”

  Sitting on the fountain, sitting still at all, didn’t work. Brooke wouldn’t be able to get this out unless she was moving. Moving kept the words, the feelings, from weighing on her chest. She’d paced God knows how many miles since April. Circles around her living room. Laps up and down the condo hallway. In a square around the desk, chairs, and coffee table in her therapist’s office. So now, even though it deprived her of Logan’s touch, she paced the inner perimeter of the hexagonal folly.

  “On the island, you told me that you needed an escape. To work through some things,” Logan prodded.

  “Just one thing, really.” Okay. This was it. “Last spring, one of Roosevelt Prep’s students committed suicide. She was one of mine. In my class. Second year of being on my cheerleading squad.” To Brooke’s surprise, the words came out evenly. Steadily. “I know we’re not supposed to ever admit it, but Sarah was one of my favorites. She was always helpful setting up for practice. Never complained if we stayed late to nail down a routine. She made a point of helping people who were lagging behind, or saying something positive when a girl messed up a formation.”

  Rather than chasing after her, Logan eased into one of the green bench seats built into an alcove. �
��Sounds like a sweet kid.”

  “Sarah Jamison was sweet to her core. She was so busy sharing that sweetness that none of us ever looked any deeper. We never looked behind the quick smile and the cheerful tone.”

  “You saw what she wanted you to.”

  Yes. And that was what was so galling. What was such an epic breech of responsibility. Brooke whirled to face him. “Sarah was only seventeen. It’s my job to see through a seventeen-year-old.” She stabbed her fingers into her sternum. “But I missed it.” Another stab. “I missed everything.”

  Brooke started pacing again. Faster this time. The words rushed out faster, too, in keeping with her pace. “All the warning signs of abuse, that were right there to be seen, I missed. I chalked her bruises up to the rigors of being on the squad. Chalked up the sudden dip in her grades—which I questioned three of her other teachers about, and we all came to the same conclusion—to hanging out with a different group of friends. I didn’t bat an eye when she was always the first to show and grabbed at any excuse to help to be the last to leave. Even though it happened so often that I should’ve wondered what she was trying to avoid at home.”

  “I don’t think so.” He stretched his legs, crossed them at the ankles. “Everything you laid out sounds reasonable.”

  “Sure. Reasonable.” It all flooded back. The pain. The shock. The fear. The utter helplessness. And that physically hit her like a cannonball to her stomach. Brooke’s muscles tightened. Her hands fisted.

  “Let me tell you, Logan, there’s nothing reasonable about the way you feel when you walk into your gym fifteen minutes before practice to discover the sweetest girl on your squad hanging from a basketball hoop. There’s nothing reasonable about the panic when you know you can’t get her down. Or about choosing between taking the time to call 911 or running into the equipment room for the ladder, because what if there’s still time to save her, since her legs are still swinging a little? It wasn’t reasonable to climb that ladder and pull all her weight onto me so I could untie the rope. It was even less reasonable when we overbalanced and I put out my arm to cushion the head of an obviously dead girl as we fell to the basketball court. And reason flew out the window when I kept doing CPR on her with my broken wrist until the paramedics showed up and pulled me off of her.”