He grunted, and she wasn’t sure if she was meant to take that as an agreement or not. “We’re going on The Loneliest Road for a piece and then heading south.”
“Well, good thing I packed my swimsuit.”
“Like you weren’t going to buy clothes along the way.”
Fair.
“I hear Florida is one hell of a drug,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s a song… Never mind.”
It was going to be another fun trip. Except of course she and Logan were right back at hostile square one.
Though this time they had actually kissed, instead of just almost kissed, and he was the one who seemed to want to push it to the side.
They cut east instead of heading straight south, going toward Lake Tahoe. It was a desolate drive, the landscape becoming increasingly volcanic as they drove on. They essentially didn’t speak to each other.
It was icier than the very first road trip.
She just wasn’t having it. Maybe she felt too impatient. Maybe the fact that there were only a couple months left of this weird period of time, this time where she didn’t have any certainty, any idea of what would happen in her life, made her feel like she was running out of time. Maybe she was conscious of the fact that if she was going to live another life, she needed to start it sooner rather than later.
But whatever the driving reason, she was over this.
She wasn’t going to let the silence keep going.
“I started writing,” she said. “About this.”
It took him a moment, but he responded. “Really?”
He sounded actually interested in spite of himself.
“Yeah. I was getting tired ofthinking. I mean, I know there’s a fair amount of thinking involved in writing. But it’s a different way of processing it. I don’t know what to do with it, though. Like you said, my organization tips were helpful to you, but I don’t know if my messy thoughts about my fragmented twenty-two-year marriage and my make-out session with my husband’s best friend are going to be useful to anyone else.”
She wondered if she’d gone too far there.
“You’re really all about that make-out session.”
She shifted, trying to ignore how tight her stomach had gotten. “I’m all about facing things. I’ve been sitting in it for a few months. I didn’t expect you to be the one that wanted to run away from it.”
“What do you want me to say? It’s not news to me that you’re a fantasy of mine, Samantha.”
She reached out and gripped the handle on the passenger side door, like it was going to keep her from melting into the floorboards. “What?”
“I’ve known that,” he said, like she hadn’t asked a question at all. “You might have been blindsided by your attraction to me, but I haven’t been in denial for the past however many years. I’ve known that you were inconveniently attractive to me for a long time. So you can see how I take a dim view on being used as a path of exploration. If you want to have sex with a new guy, go to a bar.”
Anger tangled around the attraction inside of her stomach. “You would be fine with that?”
“Hell no,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Then you can’t be pleased.”
“I’m used to that. That’s kind of part and parcel with having a thing for your friend’s wife.”
“Right. Right.” But her cheeks were hot, and her body felt unsettled. She wanted to know more. About why he felt that way about her.
He could have any woman he wanted. So why fixate on her? Her self-esteem wasn’t so low that she couldn’t imagine a man wanting to sleep with her, she just didn’t understand why Logan of all people had been carrying any kind of torch for her.
