Chapter 22

Brooke ran down the steps to the rectory’s basement so quickly that she almost slipped. Wouldn’t that just be a kick in the behind by Fate? So excited about her new project that she ended up in a cast for a month? Maybe it was the opposite. Maybe it was Fate intervening, keeping her safe. Reminding her that anything in excess was dangerous. A measured life, a balanced life, kept away heartburn, heartache, and hangovers. Wouldn’t that be funny painted along the top of a wall in the new office?

Funny to her, maybe. Geeky boringness to everyone else who came in. Yup, she was running on fumes of giddy delight. Definitely not the time to make any decorating decisions. Or even motto decisions, come to think of it. Or maybe it was the third mojito she’d downed, while slathered in an apricot mango mask, which had reminded her of the breakfast she’d enjoyed in Dominica. The first breakfast she’d truly enjoyed in so many months.

She’d savored the sweet juiciness of every bite if the exotic fruit salad. And had vowed, right then and there, never to check out of life again. Good or bad, sweet or devastating, Brooke refused to let herself zone out emotionally no matter what happened to her. Life was for living. For immersing yourself in the moment.

It was exactly why she’d let herself seize every day possible with Logan, even knowing that he’d walk away from her. Because it was a million times better to have a handful of truly great days than to have dozens of humdrum ones.

Besides, there was always the chance Logan might stay. This wasn’t based on Brooke’s love of fairy tales. His father wanted him to stay. Had, in fact, offered Logan a challenging, interesting job. One that would keep him here. It wasn’t so far outside the realm of possibility that he’d actually take it. Especially…maybe…possibly…if he loved Brooke, too.

She was getting ahead of herself. Just like her feet had gotten ahead of themselves on the stairs. Tonight was simply about sharing the exciting news of her partnership with Katrina. And hopefully celebrating with some very hot and imaginative sex—Logan’s particular wheelhouse.

“Jerry told me to come on down. Hope that’s okay,” Brooke hollered as she skidded into the basement. Well, the man cave. Game room. All of the above. It held an immense black leather sectional, stationed in front of a wide wooden table that could easily hold two pizzas and all the beer five grown men required at the same time while watching the enormous plasma TV on the wall.

But Logan wasn’t there. She went farther back, past the wrought-iron gate that guarded a room lined with wine bottles and filled with club chairs. Past two pinball machines and a pool table. Then she skidded to a halt in the hallway as he backed out of a room. Backed out as he shut the door because he was squeezing a big blue duffel bag through the doorway. A duffel bag Brooke recognized.

It was the same oversized one he’d carried in Dominica.

He was leaving.

For all that she’d known, and braced for it, the thought hit Brooke with the force of one of D.C.’s ubiquitous three-story duplexes landing on her.

Not that she could let Logan see that.

It would violate the unwritten code, the unspoken rules she’d agreed to when jumping with both feet into their guaranteed-to-end relationship.

“Hey.” Logan dropped a wonderful-in-its-casualness kiss along her temple as he kept walking back to the sofa.

“Sorry for barging in. Jerry said I should come straight down. He was in the kitchen making ice cream.”

“Yeah. He always does when I come back. He claims that he spends all the time I’m gone coming up with new flavors. Tonight’s are cinnamon graham cracker and Mexican chocolate with chilies.”

Brooke crinkled her nose. Tried really hard to come across as casual and normal to her boyfriend-for-now. “I don’t think I want chilies in my chocolate.”

“Don’t knock it till you try it. I’ve had chocolate-covered crickets. And grasshoppers. Melt enough of that cacao bean and you can hide the flavor of pretty much anything that’s underneath it.” Logan sat down, but instead of leaning back, he propped his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on the heels of his hands and stared at the television.

“Well.” Brooke balanced on the edge of the sofa. Totally deflated now, she knew she still had to tell him why she’d popped by unannounced. “I, uh, wanted to share some good news with you. I found a new job.”

“Way to go. How’d you find one when you didn’t know what you were looking for?”

“Sometimes what you’re looking for is right under your nose. You just ignore the obvious until somebody points it out to you.”

“Good.” His gaze stayed riveted on the television.

Brooke glanced up, expecting a soccer game, but saw only dense vegetation. Was he ignoring her to watch a nature documentary? “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“Of course.” He shifted diagonally so his knees touched hers. With an obvious effort, he slapped a look of interest on his unshaven face. “What’s your new dream job?”

“Katrina and I are going into business together. Life Hacks. Or maybe…do you think…that’s too trendy and millennial a name? Life 101. It doesn’t matter right this second. We’ll come up with a good name. I’m going to teach adults everything I used to teach my students.” As she spoke, Brooke’s excitement crescendoed again. Because it was such a darned good idea. It’d be fun. Useful. Practical. Terrific.

With her best friend right by her side, it was bound to succeed.

“You’re going to teach adults how to do a hurty gurty?”

“No, Logan. Not the cheerleading moves. Everything I taught in the classroom.”

“That makes more sense. You’ll be a natural at it. Won’t have to go on unemployment, either. Total win.” After patting her thigh, he turned back to the television.

“Logan.” His name was barked out, more harshly than Brooke intended. It had nothing to do with the realization that he was leaving. It had everything to do with the fact that the man she loved, the man who’d listened to her better than anyone, had tuned her out. Almost entirely. Not. Okay.

“What?”

“You seem distracted.”

“Did you see this? A seven-point-nine earthquake in Colombia. Only one person dead so far, but plenty unaccounted for, and I’m sure just as many trapped. They only show footage of it at the top of the half hour. Thirty-second snippets of people reeling from having their lives literally crumble beneath their feet. You’d think a twenty-four-hour news station could devote more time to life and death news and less time to boob implants on the latest reality star.”

“To be fair, they spend as much time on the sports I know you love as they do on Hollywood.”

“Hell. Then I guess I’m lucky they managed to squeeze in a full thirty seconds on earthquake devastation. How silly of me.”

“You’re in a mood. Don’t worry, I get why.” Brooke stood. “Now is clearly not the right time to celebrate finding my new life direction.”

He picked up the laptop from the corner of the sectional. “I’m supposed to uncork the champagne while I’m searching for flights for a team I’m not even joining?”

Hope surged in her chest. “You’re not going down there?”

“I’m itching to go. But I promised my dad I’d be here for the Marsh Foundation board meeting on Friday. I’ll send the rest of the team off first thing tomorrow. Then I’ll head down on Saturday, after filling this bad boy.” Logan hauled the duffel up onto the couch.

And hope sucked back out faster than low tide. “I need to break this down into manageable pieces. You’re going to the Board meeting. Does that mean you’re taking the promotion?”

“Yeah. It does.” The corner of his mouth curled downward into an honest-to-goodness snarl. “I get to be bored and miserable and useless for the rest of my life. The only good part is that I have a year to keep making a difference out in the real world before I actually take over.”

Nope. Brooke wouldn’t be able to keep her feelings buttoned up after all.

She could be sympathetic and understanding and even supportive of his heroic traipsing off around the world. But the least he could do was acknowledge that her being in his life while he was in D.C. was worthwhile. He owed her that. No, he owed himself that much.

She looked behind him at the console table filled with framed photographs of the ACSs. Even though Knox was engaged and Griffin practically lived with Chloe already, there weren’t any women among the crowded pictures. Maybe there just wasn’t room to squeeze women all the way into this tight group, after all.

“The only good part? You can’t think of any other good parts to your promotion aside from being able to roam the world for another year?”

“If the doctors are right, my taking over the Foundation will give the old man at least a full decade before his health takes a serious turn for the no-return zone. It’s why I decided to do it. Hell if I’ll condemn myself to that life a minute before I have to, though.”

Brooke’s heart fell to her feet. It was amazing Logan couldn’t hear it go splat. Life here in D.C.—a life filled with the friends he loved and the woman who loved him—evidently wouldn’t ever be enough. “Then what? Will you stay in Colombia for three months digging them out, and then spend another month hiking in the Andes to shake it all out of your system?”

“Maybe.”

She had to ask. She might hate herself in the morning for exposing this much vulnerability. But Brooke knew without a doubt that she’d hate herself for months to come if she let him get on that plane on Saturday without asking the question.

“What will happen to us?”

That caught his full attention. Finally. Logan clicked off the television. Tossed the remote over onto a leather wing chair. He paced down to the pool table. Rolled a ball beneath his palm on the deep red felt. Head down, in profile to her, Logan said, “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

Suddenly, his utter honesty regarding their lack of a future didn’t go nearly as far as it had when they first started dating. In fact, it only angered her more.

How could he feel so little for her that he couldn’t even spare a fleeting thought that he’d miss her when he left? Or heck, even something so insulting and basic as missing the regular sex? Or—equally insulting and basic but still better than zero thought at all—looked forward to maybe seeing her once his whole horrible life sentence here in D.C. began for good?

No. Even if they had no future together, he didn’t get to devalue her memories of their past. They’d been having a wonderful time together since the island. And it wasn’t rose-colored, one-sided glasses that made her see it that way. It was fact.

Brooke could read people pretty darn well. It was a survival tool for teaching at high school: being able to see past the mask of indifference, hormones, or both, to the true and truly interesting person beneath. Logan might not be ready or able to admit it yet, but she knew that he cared. He’d come out and said it in his confused and halting way several times. He cared, and he’d miss her.

That last morning in Dominica, when Brooke basically rebooted her mind-set, she’d vowed no more hiding. Logan had been the one to give her the strength to do so. No more hiding from the world. No more hiding in her apartment from friends and fun. No more hiding from the fact that she dated men who cared more about their careers than about her. So there was no way she’d hide the fact that his leaving would suck for both of them.

Brooke curled her hands over the edge of the pool table where the soft felt and polished wood met. “Well, guess what, Logan? You need to think about it. Right now. Because I matter. I deserve to know that I mattered to you, even for just a few weeks.”

“Where is this coming from?”

Mmm. An evasion, rather than an answer. “Your crappy attitude.” There. She did it. She’d hauled out a curse word and thrown it in his face. That ought to make clear just how bad things were—suddenly—between them. “You have so much, Logan. I spent the last few months in a fog, ignoring everything in my life, good and bad. Operating on autopilot. You know what? That’s no way to live. You showed me that I needed to embrace life. To choose to be happy. Otherwise, it’s a complete waste and a dishonor to those poor souls who aren’t on this earth anymore. Plenty, I might add, whom you’ve buried with your own two hands. You should know this better than anyone.”

“I do know it.” He pushed the ball, and it cracked against the perfect triangle of the other fifteen at the opposite end of the table. It sent them into a spinning frenzy that mirrored her inner turmoil with uncanny accuracy. “Damn it, don’t you think I want to be happy? I know exactly what makes me happy. And I’m getting pulled away from it.”

“Because there’s only one path to happiness? Because nothing else in the world will ever satisfy you other than being elbows deep in rocks and mud? It feels like you’re saying you care more for a cause than you do about people.”

Logan spun to face her. Deep grooves bracketed his eyes and mouth. And those melted caramel eyes were as dark as dirt. “I have to.” He choked out the words. “It isn’t a choice, it’s a responsibility. If I can make a difference, I have to. If giving every bit of myself to a rescue operation can save someone, I have to. Anything else is selfish. Giving in to feeling good about anything else is selfish. Simple as that. Or it was.”

Ah. So he was scared. That’s what this all boiled down to—the big, brave hero was scared of not living up to his potential. It made her want to cover him in kisses and murmur that everything would be all right. But coddling wasn’t called for now. Tough love was.

“You’re looking at life through a single lens. As though there’s only one possible outcome, instead of an endless myriad of ever-shifting options. One of which is to put on your big boy boxers and be happy here. With your father and your blood brothers, your surprise half sister, and, yes, even me.”

“You can’t tell a person how or what to feel.”

The way things were spiraling out of control, Brooke saw no downside in throwing caution to the wind and opening up to what scared her. “Maybe you shouldn’t. To be polite. But I am. You know how you feel, Logan. About your father and the ACSs and me. You’re too scared to admit it. Too scared to admit that you care for us more than about being the hero. That you’re tired of missing your life here. And for once, somebody, some man in my life who claims to care about me, needs to put me first. God, I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but yes, I deserve to have someone choose me over saving the world.” It was selfish and horrible and one hundred and ten percent true. “Stay. Don’t go away on any more missions. Stay here. Stay with me.”

“Don’t fucking put me on the spot like that. I’ve already got one major life decision weighing me down. I can barely suck in a breath for how it’s crushing me. It’s too damn much to even process. Everything else in my life is on autopilot. There’s no way I can begin to plan for the future. Not when all I can think about is how soon I can get on a plane and start making a difference for what might be the last time ever.”

Why couldn’t she get through to him? “You have made a difference. And you’ll keep doing so. You changed my life. Not by using your muscles or your money, but just by being you.” This was the absolute last piece of ammunition Brooke had. It was also the biggest. “You’re an amazing man. Not the hero part of you, but the man who listens and laughs and cares. That’s how you make a difference. I could fall in love with you.” It was a lie. Brooke knew she’d fallen all the way down that rabbit hole. But something—pride, embarrassment, fear—kept her from admitting the full extent.

His jaw clenched so tight that the muscle along the bone ticked discernibly. Logan stared at her for a long moment. “In that case, I should leave before you do. Less painful that way.” Then he took two long steps, picked up his duffel, and went up the basement stairs two at a time.

Away from the future.

Away from her.