Page 20 of Cruel Summer


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“This may come as a shock to you,” Sam said. “But I don’t think he’s thinking clearly.”

Logan laughed then, but it sounded hard. “Yeah. Obviously.”

“I saidimmediately,no,” she told him. “Okay, that isn’t true. I said no like twelve hours later, because I…you have to think about it, right?”

“I didn’t require any thinking time to come to the conclusion he’s being a dick.”

It was cathartic to hear someone else say that, because as much as she was on a whole emotional roller coaster—where she was sad, mad and wistful or some combination of all of it with every new breath—she felt like she had to be fair.

Because he had shared with her. Because he loved her. Because she loved him.

“It’s just, I felt like… I had to actually try and see if I felt anything more than that. Or if I could give him what he wanted. But I can’t. I mean, I can’t hate him for being honest with me.”

“So he asked you for an open marriage, because he wants to sleep around but he doesn’t want to risk losing you. He wants things to change, but he also wants to keep things the same. That’s what I got out of talking to him.”

“Well… I guess.”

“I can’t respect it,” Logan said. “If you want to do something big, do it, but to put it on your wife like he did to you…that I can’t respect. If you said no, you were denying him. If you said yes, you were denying yourself.”

Was Logan actually…taking her side? “I did say yes. Well. Kind of.” She cleared her throat, but it still felt tight. “The thing is, I don’t want to lose him. I don’t want things to change, either. What I want is for him to get thisstupid fucking lunacyout of his system where I can’t see it. Then I want to come back here, and I want to go on with our lives like this summer didn’t happen. I know he’ll want this back,” she said. “We have a good marriage.”

“Do you?” he asked.

She hated him for saying it like that. It wasn’t fair. “Yes. I’m committed to him. To us.”

“I know.”

Silence fell between them. “He told me he’s planning to travel,” Logan continued.

“Yes.”

“He said you didn’t have your plans made yet.”

“No. Not all of them. Though I know… I’m not going to be sleeping with anyone else. Because I took marriage vows.” She felt instantly hot over having said that in front of him. Really, it was only then she realized howpersonalall this was.

She’d been cushioned by her rage, and in part by her certainty that he actually knew something about what Will was thinking.

That he seemed as blindsided as she’d been was comforting at first, but now she was just standing in her living room raving at her husband’s best friend about their sex life. So there was that.

“’Kay,” he said, short and tight, his mouth set into a firm line.

“If I wanted to mess around, he and I could just do it together, mutually, high-five on our way to the bedroom with our new partners. But Idon’t. I just want my life to go back to the way it was before. So I’m just… I want to wait it out away from him. I didn’t ask for this. I just want… I want to be happy again. Like I was.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Well. That I can understand.”

She knew he could. He hadn’t asked to lose Becca. The love of his life. The mother of his child. Not that this was the same, really. Will was still alive. She had hope of being with him again.

Logan cleared his throat. “So other than being a beacon of purity, you have no plans for the summer?” he asked.

“I want to travel,” she said. “We were supposed to… But you know, I was pregnant. Before all that, we’d planned to take this big cross-country road trip. Do all the cheesy things. Then we couldn’t. Then we had more kids…”

“But you don’t have plans yet.”

“No. I just…feel defeated whenever I try to make them.”

“That’s actually why I’m here. You said you wanted to go with me on one of my car delivery trips.”

She blinked. “I did?”