GEORGIA! CAN YOU COME down here?”
I left my room and descended the stairs, assuming Mom wanted help with dinner.
When I stepped in the living room I noticed my sister’s face first. Jeremy was with her. They’d been watching a movie, but the big screen was frozen on pause. Pity gleamed in her green eyes, which I didn’t quite understand until my gaze shifted and collided with Harris.
For a moment, it felt like déjà vu with Harris standing in my living room, Mom beaming beside him, Dad sitting on the couch with an absent expression on his face as he read the latest Clive Cussler novel.
I opened my mouth, but words wouldn’t come. They were there, trapped in my head but couldn’t get past my lips. What are you doing here? Go away. Go away. Go away.
“Hi, Georgia.” He stepped forward and touched my elbow as he leaned in to kiss my cheek. My skin shivered. “Good to see you. You look great.”
I didn’t look great. I hadn’t washed my hair in two days and I had pulled it tight in a slick ponytail to try to hide the fact. As for the rest of me. I wore yoga pants and a Dartford T-shirt. Yes, the former me was making a silent protest.
“Isn’t it nice Harris decided to drop by? He’s home for a visit.” Mom stared at me with wide, almost pleading eyes, willing me to say something nice.
“Hello.”
There. That was civil.
Awkward silence filled the air. Mom jerked her head toward Harris, looking at me meaningfully, trying to convey only God knew what she wanted me to do.
Suddenly she clapped her hands together. “Well, it’s almost dinnertime and we haven’t made any plans yet.”
Um. Liar much? Any fool could smell the roast that was cooking in the oven.
“Oh.” Harris glanced between me and my mother, reading her unsubtle maneuvering. “Maybe we could all go grab something to eat?”
Mom waved a hand. “Oh, no! I’m not dressed to go out.” And I was? “You two kids should go to dinner.”
I glared at her. Was she really doing this? It wasn’t going to work. The ploy might have worked in The Parent Trap, but forcing me alone with Harris wasn’t going to get us back together.
Maybe I needed to let him know that. No matter what our mothers plotted, I wasn’t interested in reconciling. For all I knew, neither was he and he was only here because his mom had pressured him. I knew something about pressuring mothers, after all.
Harris lifted an eyebrow and grinned suggestively—a grin that used to make my heart melt but did nothing for me anymore. “How about it, Georgia?”
I held silent for a long moment, considering him, and then, “Sure. Give me a minute to change.”
IT TOOK THE WALK to Harris’s car to confirm that our mothers had arranged the night’s impromptu dinner date.
“I have a reservation at Guido’s Kitchen.” It was the only establishment in Muskogee that could be considered fine dining.
I nodded, pissed, even though I had surmised as much. “So when did you get in?”
“Yesterday,” he replied, backing out of my driveway. “And it took five minutes for my mom to inform me that I had to take you out tonight.”
“Nice.”
“I kind of knew it was coming though. She’s been on my case ever since we broke up.”
“Same here with my mom.”
“Mom never liked Tiffany.”
I didn’t really care to talk about the girl who had briefly replaced me. I supposed I should be curious. Weren’t ex-girlfriends always curious about their replacements?
Shaking my head, I looked out the window at the passing lights of the Muskogee’s main street, aptly named Main Street. It was a short ride to the restaurant. It wasn’t very crowded. We probably didn’t even need a reservation. They seated us near the large brick-oven fireplace that they cooked their pizzas in and the heavenly aroma of rosemary and olive oil and bread washed over me.
Harris didn’t even open the menu. When the waiter brought our water he ordered his usual, chicken picatta, and my usual, baked ziti. It was my old life again. Harris in the driver’s seat. Ordering for me. Shit, how did this happen? I hate this life.
“Wait,” I said, stopping the waiter and quickly glancing over the menu. “I’ll have the small Hawaiian pizza.”
Nodding, the waiter took our menus and left.
“Pineapple on your pizza?” He wrinkled his nose. “Since when?”
“I do a lot of things now I didn’t use to do.”
He stared hard at me for a long moment. “Yeah. So I’ve heard.”
Ah. Facebook. Suddenly, I was thankful for my life being plastered all over social media. I was glad he knew that I was different now and not the girl he broke up with all those months ago. I smiled thinly and took a sip of my water.
“So let’s talk.” He flattened his hands on top of the table like he was about to discuss some important business negotiation.
I shrugged. “Let’s.”
He frowned. “You sound bitter, Georgia.”
“Oh, why would you think that? I’m on a date with you against my will. My mother is doing everything in her power to keep me here instead of going back to Dartford.”
“Maybe it’s for the best. Those friends of yours . . . I never liked them.”
I laughed harshly. “Pepper and Em? Oh, they’re bad influences, are they?”
“Yeah.” He looked me up and down, and then leaned across the table to hiss, “You went to a sex party.”
I laughed even harder, indifferent to the stares swinging our way from other tables.
“Who would have ever thunk it, right?” I took a savoring sip of water. “Boring Georgia getting kinky. An old dog can learn new tricks.”
That succeeded in pissing him off. His face flushed. He always got splotchy when he got mad. But behind his anger there was something else in his eyes. A light of interest as he looked me over. Like the things I might have learned without him intrigued him. Pig. Suddenly I had no appetite.
When he reached for my hand across the table, I tried to slide it away, but he tightened his grip and squeezed my fingers. “I missed you.”
“Did you?” I angled my head, the end of my ponytail sliding over my shoulder.
“Did you miss me?” he asked, sticking out his bottom lip. I knew he thought he looked adorable when he did that because he had told me so.
I studied him, thinking, trying to feel inside whether even a small part of me had missed him. That first month after the breakup I had been crushed. Hurt. Angry. But had I really missed him?
The last couple years of our relationship had felt like a lot of work. It had been a long time since I’d felt relaxed and enjoyed myself around him.
Kind of like how I felt here with Mom. Tense and unhappy. I didn’t enjoy myself. I never felt relaxed or at ease in my skin. I felt like an imposter, trying to be someone else—the person who made them happy and not me.
I only felt like myself at Dartford. After Harris and I broke up, I’d finally uncovered myself. And then I met Logan.
I thought about the way he made me feel . . . the things we did and shared. Being with him . . . it felt like freedom. I never knew it could be like that with a guy.
I remembered how easy it was to be with him—when I wasn’t pushing him away.
I met Harris’s gaze. “No.”
“Huh.” The sound escaped more like a grunt than a word, and his expression revealed every bit of his disgust with me for confessing that bit of truth to him.
“Look, Harris, I know our mothers have this grand plan for us. But I’m not going to marry you. I’m going back to Dartford.”
It was his turn to laugh harshly. “Really? Without Mommy and Daddy supporting you?” He snorted his skepticism.
“Yeah. I like it there. No”—I stopped to correct myself and shook my head—“I love it there. I love my friends. I love . . .”
Logan. I love Logan.
Something ugly flickered in his eyes as he stared at me. “You’re kidding me, right?” He stared at me for a long moment. “There’s someone else. Was it that guy you were arrested with? The one with you in the pictures?” So he had seen the photos. He inhaled. “I forgive you, Georgia. Whatever you did, we weren’t together then. I can forgive you.”
I laughed lightly then. “You’re really incredible.”
He grinned, mistakenly complimented. “I know. I can be generous and admit that we both made mistakes.”
“No, Harris, I don’t want to get back together with you. Even if there wasn’t someone else . . . but yeah. There is.”
His nostrils flared. “You little . . .” He stopped himself short, showing some restraint. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching us. “We’re going to finish this dinner, Georgia, and then I’m going to take you home and give you some time to reconsider.”
I stood. “We don’t really need to finish this dinner.”
He looked up at me, his mouth gaping like a fish. “We ordered already—”
“You can eat. I’m going home. I’ll get my sister to come and get me.” I dropped my napkin on the table then and marched across the restaurant. In the lobby, I stopped and pulled my phone out. I’d had it on vibrate, but I immediately saw there were several texts from Amber and even a missed call. Hoping everything was all right, I clicked on the voicemail first. Her breathless voice filled my ear.
“Georgia! Georgia! Oh. My. God. I can’t believe—”
“Georgia.”
The deep voice hit me like a punch to my solar plexus. Breathing was impossible. I lowered the phone from my ear, my heart a painful thump in my chest. I turned, forgetting about my sister.
“Logan?” He looked amazing. A little rough. Like he hadn’t shaved in days. His clothes were wrinkled against his tense body. But that only made him more beautiful. More dangerous looking. “What are you doing here?”
“Did you mean what you said? In your text?” he demanded.
I moistened my lips and took a step toward him, trying to remember what I had texted, but I couldn’t think beyond the sight of him.
“You said you wish you could do things over,” he supplied, the blue of his eyes washing over me.
I nodded, remembering.
He continued, his voice deep and raw and hitting me in places that I never knew a voice could touch. “Because I don’t want to do anything over. Every minute . . . I’d do every fucking minute of it again even if that’s all I could have. But I gotta know. Is it? Do you want more?” He lifted a hand, motioning vaguely to where I stood. “Or are you staying here?”
“I don’t want to stay here,” I said in a rush.
“Good. Because I drove all this way hoping to hear you say that.”
The air released from me in a whoosh. Home. Dartford. Him. Yes. YES. Tears welled up in my eyes.
“Is everything all right, miss?” The hostess, an older lady, looked Logan over in his faded jeans and T-shirt disapprovingly.
And I didn’t care. I nodded dumbly, happiness rolling through me.
Logan watched me closely, his blue gaze intense, peeling away my layers.
“Everything is . . . great.”
Logan closed the distance between us then. He seized me by the face, his touch all at once gentle and rough. His need was palpable. I knew it, recognized it, because it was the same for me.
His hands cupped my cheeks. His fingers splayed wide, each finger a burning imprint. “People wait their whole lives for this. Sometimes half their lives pass before they find it. Sometimes they never do. They settle for something else. Or nothing at all. But we found each other now, Georgia. Do you know how lucky that makes us?”
My chest tightened, emotion clogging my throat, but reality was there, biting at the edges of this beautiful moment, threatening to burst the bubble with the question of how I could make this all work. Love wasn’t going to feed and clothe me and get me through school. “I know, but . . . my parents—”
“What do you want, Georgia?”
He was the first person to ask me that. To care what I wanted. My mother never once asked me what I wanted. She never asked what was important to me.
“I came here for you, Georgia, but if you really want to stay here . . .” He released a deep breath and dropped his hands from my face. “I’ll go.”
A sob burst from my lips. “No. I want you! I want to be with you.” I reached for him, grabbing hold of his head and tugging his face down to mine. “Don’t you dare stop fighting for me now. For us.”
I couldn’t let him go. I chose him. The rest I would figure out.
He kissed me, swallowing the sound of my sob. His hands flattened against my back and hauled me against him.
The hostess sputtered from where she stood a few feet away, but we ignored her.
“I won’t,” he muttered between hot, fevered kisses. “Never.”
“You little whore.”
I tore my mouth from Logan with a gasp to see Harris standing just beyond us with hands balled at his sides. “I came here tonight willing to give you a second chance and you’re ready to spread your legs for this loser who got you arrested.” Logan’s arm tensed under my fingers.
“Harris, enough!” Words burned on my tongue. I wanted to hurl insults at him—and not even for calling me a whore. I wanted to hurt him for calling Logan a loser.
“No, this was good,” Harris continued. “I needed to see this. Like I would even want to put my dick where this punk has been.”
Logan slipped from my grasp before I could even snatch hold of his arm again. He was across the lobby in quick strides and struck Harris in the nose.
Harris flew back into the hostess stand. He shook his head as though to clear it and then charged Logan, wrapping his arms around him and tackling him to the floor.
They went down with a crash on the floor, limbs flailing, fists connecting. The terrible sound of bone on bone filled the air. The hostess screamed.
I danced around them, trying to look for a way to separate the two of them, but they were a tangle. Logan landed more hits, but Harris wouldn’t give up. Somehow they managed to get on their feet again. Locked together, they rammed into a wall, rattling pictures depicting the Tuscan countryside. The hostess danced around them, screaming for them to stop.
I grabbed Harris’s shoulder. “Harris, stop it!”
He twisted halfway and gave me a push that sent me careening into the wall. I slipped down to the ground, a frame falling with me, shattering glass everywhere.
Logan shouted my name and rushed to my side, both hands gently closing on my arms as he lifted me to my feet.
“Georgia! Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” My voice trembled past my lips, a warble on the air. My hands shook.
Logan frowned, his forehead knitting with concern. He didn’t see the sucker punch coming, but I screamed as Harris’s fist connected with his cheek.
Logan slammed into the wall and I forgot all about my fall and shaking limbs. I attacked, jumping on Harris like a monkey. I clawed his face, leaving bloody scratches. I didn’t stop there, raining my fists on any part of him I could reach. Face, shoulders, chest.
I was still cursing him when Logan peeled me off. Gasping, I looked around. The lobby was suddenly full. Waitstaff, gawking restaurant goers. And two uniformed Muskogee police officers, their steel-eyed gazes fixed on me.