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Another thing that mattered — perhaps what mattered most — was that I’d had a secret crush on Mallory Scooter since I was fourteen years old.
I’d never told a soul that I found her outspoken sass and open rebellion against her family and this entire town a huge turn on.
We were the son and daughter of a bitter rival sparked to life decades ago and still burning hot today.
She was everything that every other girl in this town wasn’t. And I loathed that it made me want her so fiercely.
Logan paused. “Is something funny?” I popped my gum, giving him a smile. “Just you. You’re interesting, Logan Becker.”
“You want to read one of my books?” “I do. In fact, I want to read your favorite one. You said we should get to know each other better, right?” I shrugged. “I imagine reading your favorite book is a good place to start.”
That’s the thing about losing a loved one. In one way or another, they stay with us forever. They’re never truly lost, never truly gone — as long as we choose to keep them alive in our hearts.
“There’s just something about a boy with a book in his hands.”
“My point is that a woman should be able to dress how she wants without someone trying to make her conform.”
“Your entire family hates mine,” I reminded him. “Is it really so hard to believe that I share the sentiment?”
“Sorry I grabbed you,” he said, reaching for the back of his neck with an embarrassed shrug. “Acting like a big bad knight in shining armor, protecting you from a cat.”
Mallory Scooter was unlike any woman I knew, and I couldn’t shake her from my thoughts.
I could still remember Dad’s furrowed brows as he listened to me, the calmness in his voice as he explained to me that people didn’t understand people who weren’t like them, and so they lashed out, afraid of the unknown. He told me not to be like them, not to run from what I don’t understand, but to embrace it, instead.
And the last, most important thing, he told me was that I needed to be ready to stand up to those guys at school should they pull any shit with Chris.
“What?” She shook her head. “Nothing. You just surprise me, that’s all.” “Because I’m a nerd who listens to rock music?”
“Did it hurt?” “When I fell from heaven?” Mallory snickered. “Come on, Logan. You’ve got better lines than that.”
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
The way Logan watched me in that moment, I knew he meant every word he said — and he wanted me to believe them as much as he did.
“You want to kiss me, don’t you, Logan Becker?” I whispered.
A pained sound rumbled somewhere deep within Logan — his chest, maybe, or his soul.
My body was reacting to hers in a way it’d never reacted to any other woman’s in my life. It was like two magnets being held away from each other for years, finally being released and clashing together in the middle, touching for the first time, feeling what it’s like to be whole.
I knew it when she took me in completely, when she paused there with me inside her, our eyes locked, her lips parted and my bleeding heart in her fucking hands. She’d taken a part of me, and given me a part of her, and now — without the other — neither of us would be the same again.
“He was always telling us not to shy away from our emotions, that it never made us less of a man to feel.”
I’d been on his mind. And he’d told his mom about me. Why did that make me want to swoon like a fucking Disney character?
“It’s silly, isn’t it?” he asked. “To let some old family feud define what we can and can’t do.”
He took a step. And then I was out of my chair, meeting him in the middle, the two of us crashing together like magnets. His hands weaved into my hair when he captured my mouth with his own, both of us sighing on an inhale, moaning on the exhale, leaning into each other like we could somehow melt together completely.
We were inevitable, me and him. And maybe we knew it from the start.
That kiss was an answer. That kiss was a lie. And distantly, I realized that kiss might be the biggest mistake of my life.
In that moment — that quiet, seemingly average moment — she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“You made me Greek food.” I grabbed the back of my neck. “You said it’s your favorite.” “Once,” she reminded me. “Like… in a passing comment. I can’t believe you remembered that.”
I could cook for you, I wanted to offer. Every night. If we were together.
“And they know nothing about you, either, do they?” A soft laugh left her lips. “Not a thing.” I sighed, swaying to the music, holding her close. “That’s a shame. Because if they knew you the way I do, if they could see what I see, they’d be the proudest family in this whole town.”
I see a voyageur, someone who makes her own path, her own journey, and who gives off a light that draws everyone around her in like moths to a flame.”
“I see the first woman to steal my heart, and the only woman I ever want to keep it.”
Why would he come? Why would he show up for me when I had run out on him?
“I mean, don’t get me wrong. You’re beautiful no matter what you wear. But… you just… you don’t look like you.”
“Logan, I love it. It’s thoughtful. It… it means you believe this place will be around for a while, that it will have history.” “It will,” he said immediately, effortlessly, as if he’d never believed anything to be more true in his life. “It will, Mallory. Because it’s you.”
“I wish so many things.” “What do you wish for most?” “You.”
“You can have me, Mallory,” I whispered. “If you want me, I’m yours.”
Mallory pulled my lips to hers, and the way she kissed me was so desperate, so thick with need, I was sure I was her lifeline.
She was the spontaneous to my well planned, the art to my logic, the unexpected welcome to my day-to-day routine I didn’t even realize was suffocating me.
“Do you think there’s a universe that exists where you could be mine?”
There wasn’t a day anywhere in the future where his family or my family would be okay with us being together. But sometime in the last month, we’d decided it didn’t matter anymore.
He’d asked me if I wanted to be with him, and I’d said yes. I asked him if he was ready for the consequences of being with me, and he’d said yes. And that was all it took.
“Logan, of course I know that. I know so much about you, and I want to know everything. I’m falling in lo—” “Don’t,” he warned, his voice a thunderous growl. “Don’t you dare say that to me — not right now. Not when you just ripped my fucking heart out on that stage in front of everyone in this goddamn town.”
“I was so blinded by you that I couldn’t see,” he whispered, his voice shaking. “All I wanted was to love you. Nothing else mattered. And now…” he swallowed. “Now, I’ve lost everything. Including you — and I never even had you at all, did I?”
I didn’t think of him, of his dreams, of his happiness — when it seemed all he’d done the past month was put my dreams and happiness first.
She was different, and for the first time since Dad died, I was actually fucking happy.”
“I told you not to make me cry, Logan.” “Well, you made me cry first, so I think we’re even.”
“My family was never family to begin with. Family sticks together, no matter what. They love each other and understand each other and they would never, ever, do what my father did to me — not when I was fourteen, not now.”
