“Logan, I…”
“I let it go. Like you do when the girl that you liked in high school ends up with someone else. That’s all it is. You let it go. You find somebody else. You move on. I did that. I fell in love, I got married, and I had a child. That was real. Butattraction, wanting someone, that doesn’t just go away, and that has been the single biggest source of guilt and regret in my life. That no matter what, I always wanted you. To touch you, kiss you. Have you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. It was shocking. She took in a breath, short and shaky, and then tried to take a longer one. It was almost impossible. Logan had feelings for her. Logan had had feelings for her for a while. Well, maybe not feelings, but attraction.
“Oh.”
That response was not really as articulate as she would’ve liked it to be. But she didn’t feel articulate. She didn’t feel anything but blindsided. Wholly and completely.
“Yeah. Well,” he said. “You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”
“I am not saying I don’t like the answer. It’s just a lot.”
“I’ve waited for a long time. I can keep waiting.” She watched as he adjusted his hands on the steering wheel. He had such nice hands. “I figured it might never happen.”
She had to wonder if he was sort of comfortable with thenever. There was something about that that resonated inside of her.
That when there was something complicated, it was easiest if you just didn’t have to ever face it.
This was so complicated. Not just by her marriage to Will, but by the fact that his feelings had been a preexisting condition to even his marriage.
“You loved Becca,” she said, not questioning it, affirming it.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I chose her. I love her still. She was the mother of my daughter. My wife. I was never in danger of straying in our marriage. I was committed. My feelings were real.”
She nodded, thankful for the clarification, but not fully certain it was a clarification.
“I loved her. With everything I had. That didn’t mean I ever stopped thinking that you were beautiful.”
Because they were two separate things. Feelings and desire. But Logan was the only person she’d ever experienced that with. Still, she knew in the moment she’d nearly kissed him in Hawaii, she’d wanted him.
Had been tempted to break her moral code and her vows with him.
And had loved Will at the same time. Had loved their life and not wanted to lose it, and those feelings combined had been stronger than her attraction.
But it didn’t make her desire for Logan less real.
Though she had feelings for him. But they were different. Different than her feelings for Will had ever been. Not love like that, but also the attraction was sharper. More intense.
Maybe it was age. Experience. A knowledge of what you wanted, and what you hadn’t had, and might like to try.
She couldn’t say for sure. She could understand complicated. So, there was that.
She was beginning to understand that feelings for someone else, different, complex feelings, didn’t erase other feelings.
She knew that this admission didn’t take away from his love for Becca. Or his grief at her loss.
In the same way that just wanting to kiss him three years ago hadn’t made her want to leave her husband. Now it was out there. This truth. It felt glorious and hideous all at once. Because she was consumed with it. Her desire for him, but she also understood that…there were just things he wasn’t willing to do. She wasn’t willing to lie. Or to shortchange anybody. Least of all him. Well, and herself.
She was trying to be okay with sitting in difficulty so that she didn’t go shortchanging herself.
He turned up the music then, and she didn’t even object to it being Springsteen.
She endured classic rock as her penance for hurting him. Had she hurt him? She wasn’t really sure. She didn’t know how to classify this whole thing. She felt a little bit hurt. Bruised. Preoccupied by these new revelations, and building certainties about old truths.
The motel they rolled up to was rustic, on the Nevada border, boasting coin-operated beds.
She wasn’t even sure what to do with that. It might have made her feel embarrassed, but she was basically filled up to the top with embarrassment. Or maybe it wasn’t even embarrassment. It was something else. Something less juvenile. It was just a sort of unsettled feeling.
