6. Logan

6

Logan

T he longer we drive, the more the clouds in the sky become dark and angry. Soon those clouds part, and rain like we haven't seen in years opens up above us. It pours down in sheets, setting me on edge. Crew shifting in his seat doesn't help. He pulls his hat off and tucks it onto the dash giving me a side view of the sharp angles of his jaw.

I sit up a little higher, my eyes glued to the road. It feels like another hour before we see any other signs of life and when we do, every hair on my body stands on end.

The blue and red flickering lights fill the cab of the truck.

"Shit," he mutters beside me, slowing the truck to a stop as the barricade comes into view.

"What?" I ask.

An officer steps up to the window, tapping it twice. I sink lower into the seat as Crew rolls down the window just enough to make out the man in front of him. A bright white light fills the cab as the officer inspects the both of us.

"Accident?" Crew asks plainly and way too calmly for my liking.

I don't like cops. Of any kind, for obvious reasons, but this one doesn't spare me a second glance as he shakes his head.

"Road's flooded up ahead sir. Won't be open till tomorrow mornin'."

Panic starts to build in me, shaking my head. "That's not going to work, there has to be another road."

This time the officer does look at me with a raised brow. "There ain't."

"It's fine we'll just—"

I shake my head, "I have to get home. I can't leave Ash."

"Logan," Crew's voice is low and soft as my glare shoots daggers at the man outside the window. "Hey."

With knitted brows I glance at him.

"Is Ash safe with Julie?" He asks.

"Yeah of course. " I'm confused by what he's asking. It doesn't make a difference if he's safe with her or not. I'm getting home tonight.

"I'm not risking that horse on bad roads and I sure as shit ain't risking a boy's mother." His eyes burn into mine and I feel the heat of them from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes. He takes my silence as agreement. "Call Julie, talk to Ash and let them know we'll be back in the morning."

I fish my phone from my pocket but it's dead. I toss it against the dashboard with a huff.

"Where the hell are we gonna go?"

"There's a motel, one town back," the ever so helpful Officer Asshole offers.

Crew glances at the man and nods, "thanks."

"I'm not staying in a motel with you, Crew," I frown, sitting back in my seat as he rolls his window up and begins to turn the truck around.

The man actually throws his arm behind the headrest of my seat like he can see behind the giant trailer attached to us.

"You gonna sleep with the horse then?" He laughs. "Actually that's a great idea. We'll call it therapy."

"At least I don't have to hear him talk." I mutter under my breath while he straightens out on the roadway, headed back the direction we just came.

"Think of it like a vacation." He chuckles and glances at me before looking back to the road.

I bark out a laugh. "A vacation would be somewhere sunny and preferably on a beach. Not stuck in a truck for six hours with a grizzly bear towing a horse I'll have to sleep with tonight."

Crew's fully laughing at this point. His head is tilted back against the headrest though his eyes are still on the road but his shoulders are shaking and I hate that I smile at the view.

"I'm glad you find this situation hilarious." My smile feigns into a frown.

He rolls his head to the side to look at me and I swear for just a brief moment I forget how to breathe. He's still smiling but it's lazy and crooked.

"The situation isn't making me laugh, Shepard."

Our eyes meet for a brief moment before he turns his gaze back to the road. The cab of the truck feels suffocating now as I look out of my window, watching the rain beat down on the world around us. I'm more comfortable when he's being a pain in my ass and I'm giving him shit. This weird silence and joking back and forth between each other is stifling and yet the air between us is electrified.

It's only another twenty minutes before we make it into town. The rain hasn't let up and I'm guessing from the lightning flashes illuminating the hills in the distance that it doesn't plan on quitting anytime soon. I worry about leaving Ash with Julie overnight. Not because I don't trust her but because this is the first time since everything happened that Ash has been without me for a night. It's about this time that he'll usually crawl into bed with me.

Our nightly routine has changed now that Tommy is gone. He no longer sleeps in his bed, not for lack of trying. Ash is fine for an hour or so before he crawls into mine. At this point, I don't mind it. I would rather have him kicking me in his sleep than be too scared to sleep at all.

I don't notice that we've pulled into the motel lot until the truck stops and Crew's door opens. Glancing over at him he's pulled his hat back onto his head and is scanning the parking lot.

"Stay put," he commands, shooting me a look, but before I can make my usual comment about not being a dog, his door is already shut and he's headed towards the front office.

Crew stops and glances back at the truck. I think he's about to come back until his hand raises slightly from his side and I hear the doors to the truck lock. He turns and heads inside the office. I'm instantly annoyed.

If he thinks I'm going to run, he's wrong. Where the hell would I go anyway? There's no reason to lock me in the car like I'm a child but he clearly doesn't think that. By the time he makes it back to the truck and climbs inside I am already fuming. He mutters something about the horse but I'm not listening. All I want to do is get into the room, call Ash and go to sleep. The faster I can get this day over with, the faster I can get home to him.

Crew parks the truck sideways in front of a row of doors and glances at me.

"What?" I cock my head to the side. "I listened."

"Shocking," he sighs. "Here," he hands me the set of keys for number 102 before he climbs from the truck again and disappears into the rain.

Without a clear order to sit, stay or roll over I flip the keys around on my finger and climb from the passenger seat out into the deluge. It comes down in sheets that bite into my skin and set a chill into my bones before I'm able to tuck under the awning and slide the key into the door.

As I step inside my eyes take in the small room. Yellow tinged wallpaper is peeling at every corner. The owners tried to hide the stains with murals of ranches and faceless cowboys. Just another tiny reminder of why I was stuck here for the night. I spy the bathroom and can only dream of a scalding hot shower right now until I spin to face the bed. The only bed.

Panic fills me as I step into the door frame, "there's only one bed."

"It was the only room left," Crew steps into the threshold, rain dripping from his furrowed brow.

In the tight confinements of the doorway his chest brushes against mine and I feel the air rush from my lungs. Water rolls off of him, streaming down from his soaked hair against the tightly corded muscles in his neck. His once dry shirt sticks to every rigid muscle of his torso and shows off the dog tags beneath the fabric. I can see every constricted breath he takes as his eyes scan the room and return to me.

My fingers itch to reach out and touch his chest. A small and currently adamant part of me wants to know how it feels to have him under the weight of my palm.

"Cat got your tongue?" His lip curls at the corner as I struggle to find words that express all of the intense sexually frustrated thoughts in the back of my mind. He reaches around and pulls something from his back pocket, "here."

Hesitant to reach out he shakes his hand at me and clears his throat, "it's just a shirt, Shepard, it ain't gonna bite."

When I don't respond he tilts his head to the side and water shakes loose from his blonde hair. "If we stand here any longer you're going to catch a cold and you aren't any good to me sick."

"There's a first time for everything."

He chuckles, "you think you're that invincible that you can't get sick?"

I grab the shirt from his hand, annoyed that it's his first thought. My life isn't just mine anymore. "No, Crew, I think people like me can't afford to get sick."

Pushing past him I make my way into the room but before I can get far his hand wraps around my upper arm stopping me. I don't turn to him. The exhaustion from the day is starting to hit and I don't know how many more of his jabs I can take before I lose it.

"Logan," his voice is soft and it almost calms me but I can't let it. I don't need Crew to be my cowboy in shining armor.

I wind my arm out of his grasp and step away from him, daring a glance back at the man still dripping wet in the doorway. "I need to call Ash."

Before he can stay anything else I make my way to the cheap hotel phone that sits on the bedside table. Crew doesn't give me another glance as he kicks his soaked boots from his feet and wanders across the dim room toward the bathroom. He doesn't bother to close the door and as I bring the receiver to my ear he peels from the soaking wet t-shirt. He rolls it up and over his stomach and chest, every damp muscle on display under the dingy bathroom light.

I expect him to struggle as he comes to his shoulders but the shirt flakes off his carved freckled muscles and over his head to flop into the sink in front of him. His jeans hang low on his hips, too low for me to ignore, and my eyes trail down the hardened lines of his pelvis beneath the waistband. It's an entire minute of slow motion, rain-kissed, soft abs, rattling dog tags, and dial tone before I realize I'm staring again.

Get it together Logan.

"Phones are out," I slam down the receiver and kick my shoes off toward the door.

The shirt still in my hand I grip the fabric and shake it out to find one of his classic Crew, plain white shirts. I peel out of my own wet clothes, angling away from his sight and drop the enormous shirt over me.

The hem lays gently against my thighs and without my jeans I can feel the cold creeping in. I shiver and wrap myself up in my arms as I stand, just trying to get warm.

"I can't get ahold of Ash," I say, avoiding his naked torso as he wanders from the bathroom.

"He'll be alright for the night, Julie will take care of him like she always does. You should get some sleep," he notes without looking in my direction.

He pulls the pillows from the left side of the bed and drops them to the floor before opening a tiny jacket closet near the bathroom that houses a few extra blankets and an iron that looks like it's from before the war.

"Stop telling me what to do," I snap.

My emotions are strung out, pulled so tightly that I can feel them dragging and vibrating beneath the surface of my skin. I don't need to be taken care of or babysat. I'm not some project for him to fix and sculpt into a model citizen.

"I'm not a child, Crew Cassidy. I've been taking care of myself long before you came around and I will be long after you leave. "

Ripping back the sheet on the bed, the musty smell of all the other people that have slept in it, and all the people that didn't, flood my senses. I close my eyes and crawl in bed but I can feel the sins of the past itching at my skin as I pull the sheet up and over my knees. Crew folds out a base for his bed on the floor, not flinching at my outburst as he sinks to his knees and rolls over onto his back.

I flick the lamp off and the room fades into darkness except for tiny streaks of lightning that pass over the walls periodically. I roll over and tuck into the pillow, wrapping my arms around it and curling into a ball. The bed is too big and without Ash to keep his half warm, all of my body heat seeps out through the sheets. I miss him so much my heart aches and nothing I do to try and sleep is helping.

"What about the horse?" I ask as thunder explodes over the hotel room.

"The horse is fine, Shepard," he mumbles back.

"Are you sure?"

"If you aren't you can go out and sleep in the trailer; won't be comfy though."

I can hear the frustration that laces his tone as he shifts on his floor bed. I wiggle my toes beneath the blankets, trying to keep warm but nothing is helping and no matter what I do, sleep doesn't find me.

"Logan," Crew's voice blanket's over the thunder, "you're letting your thoughts win, turn them off and go to sleep."

Maybe I was but that was none of his business. "Sorry I forgot myself, Mr. Perfect. You must never get scared or nervous."

"You ain't either of those things right now, you're angry ."

"I am not!"

"You're angry that it's raining, you're angry that you can't stop it, can't go home to Ash, that you're stuck here with me. You're angry about everything all at once."

"Quit acting like you know me," I snap.

"I'm trying to figure out who you are under the anger," he says with certainty and, after a long pause, he adds, "I'm angry too Logan," he inhales between flashes of lightning. "It's okay to be angry, but don't let it be who you are."

I open my mouth to argue but realize that would only prove the point he's making. I curl back down into my blanket, all the fight in me deflating the second it feels like I'm pounding on a brick wall. I've spent my entire life being angry, I don't know anything else.