22. Heidi
Logan kept the positive momentum going after we helped release Honey and his mother. He took me back to his brother’s house and we played with Hope and Lily-Jade, then Callie gave us the card-key to her boarding stable and a bottle of merlot to take with us. Logan stopped at a deli and left me in the car with my little fluff-ball, who was content to chew my fingers until they throbbed from the abuse.
Paper-wrapped package in hand, he jumped back in the truck and headed out to the nearby stables. I hadn’t been riding in so long, and the moment I climbed up on Dotty, Callie’s gentle old mare, everything inside me seemed to click. I still felt the aching pain in my lower back, but it stayed at baseline, so I ignored it. My brain and my heart were humming, and when I glanced over at Logan, with Hope sticking her face out of his shirt where he’d stowed her, I felt completely content.
For the first time since I’d felt the pain on my spine, I felt like things might be okay after all. Logan promised to stick around until he knew I was okay, and if the X-ray and MRI were clear, Hope and I were going to surprise him by joining him up in the Dakotas. I wanted to stay involved with his work in nature. If I had to, that could be working for Dr. Seale. But what I really wanted was to do what I’d always done at the park. Teach people about the world around them. Shine a spotlight on the things we were doing wrong and support all the people who were trying to make a difference.
I would never be an artist like Logan. But I could support him and everyone like him. I’d done okay talking to the reporter about Honey and his mother, and how the damage done to the forest by the illegal loggers had been so extensive it had put the deer in harm’s way. I flushed and felt my face split into a grin when I thought about how Logan had encouraged me to talk about the camera I’d helped him plant. It seemed ages since our first date, setting up cameras to deter or catch the loggers who’d been skimming trees without permits to save themselves money.
My thoughts seemed to bounce every direction as we rode, from my interview to my examination and back again. Logan was quiet, too. Aside from asking which way I wanted to go whenever we reached a fork in the path, he seemed content to simply enjoy the afternoon sun and the sounds of the birds and the breeze through the trees.
Finally, he came to a stop next to a large oak tree, big enough that we and the horses could rest in the shade. He laid out a blanket from his truck and offered me some food and wine in a red solo cup. I snickered at the inelegant drinkware, and he started to sing the country song that I’d been thinking of. Hope watched him for a moment, then started to sing with him, tipping her head back and howling like she was baying at the moon.
We ate in companionable silence while Hope pranced around our feet and teased the patient mares, yapping and pouncing at them before running away and hiding in my lap. She’d wait a few seconds and repeat it, and the horses barely registered her, except to look at me balefully with big brown eyes, chiding me for bringing along such a noisy little creature.
I picked up Hope and snuggled her into my chest. The air was warm, even with the breeze, and with a belly full of bread and cheese and wine, I got sleepy quickly. I closed my eyes and laid back with the puppy curled up on my chest.
“What’s up, shorty?” Logan asked as he laid next to me. He pressed up against me, lying on his side and wrapping his long-fingered hand around the puppy to stabilize her and keep her from tumbling off me.
“I don’t want you at my tests tomorrow.” I kept my voice low and steady, but I felt him stiffen beside me. “I just want to keep my time with you separate from whatever this is, until I know what to call it.”
“What good does that do?” he asked with a dramatic sigh.
“I love being here, right now, with you. You’ve been my escape for as long as I’ve known you.”
“All four weeks that I’ve been harassing you and stalking you.”
I giggled and tapped his foot with my toe. “If it’s even been four weeks.”
He laughed, and I opened my eyes, looking up at the sun through the thick leafy branches. “I’m not kidding, though, Logan. I want to feel whole with you for whatever time we have together. Before I find out that what I’m hoping is nothing turns into something. Before you have to go away and leave me behind.”
“You always say that like I won’t come back to you. I know what I want, Heidi. I don’t just let it go because life gets in the way.”
“I waited a long time for you.” I could hear water somewhere below us in the riding park, under the calls of chickadees and quail. The little hill we were on wasn’t tall, but lifted us just far enough that I felt removed from the world.
“I’ve never been here before, but it was the first place both Callie and George suggested when I told them I wanted to impress you.”
“It worked,” I sighed. “Someday, if I get my little hobby farm, I’ll ride every day. You think that’s silly, don’t you?”
“No. I think it’s the perfect life. If I could travel and still have that, I’d have bought a parcel on my parents’ ranch years ago.”
I turned to face him and met soft, thoughtful eyes. “So, you’re saying traveling the world and coming home to your woman is your perfect life.”
“Heidi, I’ve seen the world. I just need to find a place to settle down that’s mine. Not my parents’ ranch, or my brother’s company.” Logan sighed and sat up with his arm balanced on one knee, looking down at me. “You go to your appointments and I’ll go get that camera and find a new home for it. Then, I’m going to talk to Boyden about your interview and see if maybe there isn’t another job option for you we hadn’t considered.”
“Okay, but I thought you didn’t trust Boyden.”
“With the girl I like? Hell no. But with a beautiful, articulate woman who can do amazing television interviews and who’s passionate about the environment? Well, he loves an asset more than ass, and he’d never bring a workplace harassment suit on himself.”
I cackled gleefully. “Loves an asset more than ass, huh? You’ve been waiting a while to use that, have you?”
He snickered and bumped my hip with his leg.
“You dropped into my life, and now it’s in complete upheaval,” I continued, watching the leaves above dapple the sunlight on Logan’s face. “It took you weeks to turn me upside down. I just need a minute to get my legs under me, do things on my own.” I sat up and slid the sleeping Hope into my lap. “Have you drive to my house to pick me up for a date and have butterflies wondering if you’re going to stay the night.”
“I rushed you.”
“Well, yes. Half the time it feels like an exhilarating roller coaster ride. The rest of the time, I wonder exactly how far over my head I’m in. I’m a solitary person, with a quiet life. I feel like I fell off the ride and I’m being dragged behind it.”
“Wow. That sucks.” He pulled away from me, and instantly I regretted saying anything at all.
“It does. Because I have feelings for you that I’ve been afraid to allow myself before. I know how these things end, at least for me. But no matter how hard I push you away, or what dumb, insecure thing I say, you’re sticking around. We don’t have a history that obligates you to stay.”
“Nope. But, you’re mine, and I don’t give up what’s mine.” His voice had gone dark, and my body reacted instantly, as heat built between my thighs.
He bent his face to me and kissed me, his lips teasing and gentle, coaxing my mouth open so he could slip his tongue in and explore. I tasted wine and flicked my tongue over his lips and into his mouth, and he groaned and pressed his hand to my chest, blindly seeking out the edge of my top and sliding his warm, rough hand over the globe of my breast and massaging it in his palm until I made little sounds of pleasure.
I moved Hope to my folded jacket next to the blanket and laid back, tugging at Logan’s shirt so he’d roll on top of me. He slid his leg between mine and pressed his thigh into me, grinding his hip on me while he kissed my neck and played with my breasts.
Even fully clothed, he was building a fire between my legs, with impulses of pleasure shooting down like electricity from my lips, my neck, my breasts, all coming together in that heat between my legs. I rocked my hips and pressed harder against his thigh.
“I wish you were inside me,” I gasped as he pulled my shirt up and kissed and sucked my nipples. He groaned and sucked harder, until he drove me over the edge. Undoing my jeans and pushing his fingers between my legs as his mouth worked at my breasts, sucking and biting at my nipples until my breathing came in harsh gasps and it was all I could do to keep from crying out.
“I will always come back to you, Heidi,” he said as I came with his fingers inside me. He kissed me gently and thrust again, as I whimpered and lifted my hips to push him deeper into me. “I stumbled onto something special. You can’t deny that this is fate at work.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my hand against his, running my fingers over his skin to feel where he disappeared into me. Slowly, he pulled away, and I sighed in disappointment that suddenly, I was alone in my body.
“How is this real? It shouldn’t be,” I asked. “The first boy I loved spent weeks making me think he liked me, only to serve me up on a platter for humiliation and pain. The next man I trusted tried to force me to give him what he wanted, without caring what it did to me.”
“Then there was me.”
“Then, there was you. Hotter than hell, even covered with dirt and blood, carrying that tiny fawn, and asking for help with the most adorable look of helplessness.” I pushed him away from me and onto his back. I straddled him and rubbed the damp spot on my jeans over the bulge in the front of his pants before lying down on his chest and nipping at his jawline.
“Be careful what you start. We’re in a public place, and we could get caught,” he warned.
“You looked shocked when your eyes met mine,” I continued, reaching down to undo his zipper and push the heavy denim out of the way. His erection burst out of the jeans, pressing against his boxers and throbbing under my hand.
I kept my hand between us, stroking him as I kissed him. His full lips parted in a panting breath, and I slid my tongue over his lips, sending shock waves through my own body. He pulled my face to him, and his kisses deepened as he used his teeth and tongue to tease more sounds from me.
His breathing ragged, he glanced around us and found the denim jacket he’d been wearing. He threw it over my hips and tugged my jeans down my thighs, and I pushed them to my knees, desperate to feel him inside me. Under the shelter of the tree and obscured from the path by the grass and our horses, I shoved my jeans down to the tops of my boots and straddled him, gasping as he slid inside me in a long, wet thrust that made my muscles instantly tighten around him. I rocked my hips and he held me on him by the edges of the jacket that was wrapped around me until I crested the wave of pleasure and cried out, biting off the sound and leaning forward to kiss him.
He came as I sucked on his tongue, holding me in place and throbbing inside me until I felt hot liquid gush out of me onto his torso. Laughing shakily, I held myself up as he wiped his stomach clean and laid me down on him, still sheathed in me.
“We’re going to get arrested,” I panted, bouncing when he laughed underneath me.
“We should probably get dressed so that doesn’t happen.” He laughed again, and as he pulled out of me, a shock went through me, making me gasp. Instantly, he was on alert, worried that I was hurt again.
I shook my head and laughed humorlessly. “I’m not made of glass, Logan. I’ll tell you if it hurts, okay?”
He nodded and tugged his pants up over his hips. I reached for him, teasing him, but the mood was ruined. He brought the horses closer as I dressed and collected the still sleeping Hope and tied my jacket in a sling so she could cuddle against my chest.
He held the jacket while I mounted my horse and handed my makeshift baby carrier up to me. When his hand brushed my leg, my body tingled, and I shivered, making him look up at me.
“Are you all right?” he asked, holding the reins of my mare.
I nodded dumbly and took a deep, cleansing breath. “It’s been more than five minutes since we made love, and I’m jonesing.”
He laughed.
I shrugged. “It’s clear that I will never get enough of you. Thanks for that.”
“Well, then, tomorrow, after your appointment, we should get together. Dinner, six-ish?”
“So, we’ve graduated to dates where you pick me up?” I teased, and he gave me a wide grin.
“I think we’re serious enough to have a predictable dinner date. Considering we’ve done this almost completely backward, I’m not really sure where we can go after this.”
I slipped the reins out of his hand and backed Dotty up a couple of steps, careful not to jostle Hope. “The way we’re going, the next step would be to find a house together, raise some children, and after ten or fifteen years, get married!” I laughed, then shushed myself as Hope shifted and yawned before rolling over in the sling and going back to sleep.
“Oh, honey. One thing I can guaran-damn-tee is that all of those things will happen, just maybe not in that order.”
It was my turn to grin as his words made my face split into a goofy smile that I couldn’t hide if I wanted to.
A young girl at the stables said she’d get our mounts brushed and back to their stalls for five dollars. Logan gave her ten for being an entrepreneur, and I gave her another ten when he walked away, because she was sweet and offered to get them oats as well.
It was another long, quiet drive back to my house, and when he dropped me off, he came in and gathered the things he’d left behind. It felt empty and lonely when the door shut behind him, and irrationally, all I wanted to do was call him back. I’d been alone all my life, in one way or another. Only my own sheer stupidity could be to blame for choosing to be alone when the alternative was a rock-hard body to hold and an artist’s mind to share with.
I picked up my phone, and as I unlocked it, it rang. I picked up and said cautiously, “Hello?”
“Are you done being alone yet? Because I walked out the door and realized that it sucks to be away from you.”
My heart gave a little bounce, and I sighed. “We haven’t ordered pizza yet. There’s this place about five minutes away. It has great ambiance and loud ‘60s rock. We could go there. The Pie is amazing, I’d stake my reputation on their ‘Wise Guy’ deep dish.”
“I’ll be back in two minutes.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I let Hope out into the backyard and quickly changed my top and pulled up my hair, grinning like an idiot the entire time. My heart ached from how happy it made me that he’d called. I’d never felt the way I felt about him. Knowing he felt the same seemed to erase so many hurts from my adolescence and childhood.
I wasn’t just some skinny little kid so sick on chemo that she looked like she was already half in the grave anymore. I hadn’t lied when I told Logan I didn’t want to fight or to live for anyone else. Tomorrow, I’d still go into the hospital alone and learn whatever there was to see about my strange pain and fatigue, and I knew the news wasn’t going to be good.
But I knew that I could handle whatever they had to say. Then, after it was all done, I’d give Logan the chance to stay or go with no hard feelings. It was still nice to know there was a chance that maybe, just maybe, he’d choose to stick around. It had been a long time coming, but it was time for me to realize that everything I’d hoped and prayed for had finally found me.