Chapter 3

I’m still shivering, but there’s something warm inside of me, as if I threw back a hot toddy. Because it smells like Logan in the truck, like pine with a hint of engine grease, and because I called him and he came. Without hesitation. I’m conscious of the pendant around my neck, the slight weight of it against my skin. It’s only adding to that hot toddy feeling.

He’s not yours, you idiot, the voice in my head reminds me.

She’s right, of course, and I need to steel myself against him. It’s easier in the bar, with all that space around us and other people clamoring for my attention. Here, it’ll be just him and me, with only inches separating us.

My heart starts beating faster at the thought.

I look in the side mirror, hoping to watch Logan get my car attached to the tow, but he’s too close, I guess. But I do see my face, pale and red-eyed, even with my eye makeup. I look a heck of a lot worse than I did a couple of hours ago.

“You don’t need to worry about them boys knocking up Brittany,”I heard one of my mom’s friends telling her once. “She’s as plain as a pot of old porridge.”

Anyonewould look plain next to my mother, blonde and beautiful, with tits that would sail a thousand ships. But those words wormed into me like I was an apple, and even though I pride myself as the kind of woman who knows there’s more to life than being pretty, they came back to life after I found out about all of Tommy’s ‘friends.’

Worse, when she found out, she gave me a pitying look and said, “What did you expect, honey? Men will be men. Maybe he would have stuck around home more if you weren’t always at that bar…if you’d given him babies. It’s unnatural for a woman not to want babies.”

I could have argued that it’s unnatural for a woman to have a child and treat them the way she’s treated me, but there’d be no point. She’d see things her way; I’d see things mine.

I hate that squirming, unhappy part of myself that still wants to be her.

My mama might be pretty, but she’s not strong. Or kind. Or any of the other things I’d like to be in this life.

Sighing, I lean back and listen to the electric whine of my car being lifted, feeling the truck shift with it.

When Logan finally comes back around to the driver’s side, his face is ruddy from the work. Something about tonight has dislodged whatever sense God gave me, because I lift a hand to touch his cheek as he slides into his seat and shuts out the cold. Snow is still coming down around us, and it’s formed a film on the windshield.

His cheek is cold under my hand, so I keep it there to warm him.

“You’re cold,” I say stupidly.

“Was the heater up high enough?” he asks, leaning toward me, reaching around to dial it up higher. “Did you stop shivering?”

“You can feel I’m warm,” I tell him, because my hand’s still there, cupped around his face as if it has any right to be there. I let it drop.

His expression turns severe. “You should have closed the brewery when the snow picked up. Cole would never have wanted you to take a risk like that.”

From the way he says it, I have to wonder—hope—if he’s the one who wouldn’t want me to take the risk.

“It was a mistake,” I admit, something that’s not easy for me. “But those old guys wanted to finish their Bingo game. They seemed…happy. It’s important to make connections over the holidays.”

“What about you?” he asks. “Is it important to you?”

There’s a squeezing sensation in my chest, and I reach up to touch the necklace. “It’s beautiful, Logan. Thank you. I feel like an asshole for not getting you anything.”

“You get me beer all the time,” he says with a smirk. “That’s not nothing. And don’t think I don’t notice that you avoided my question.”

“I’m okay with being alone,” I say, even though it’s not what I’d like to say. I’m a coward, I guess. A little, shrinking coward. I don’t want to be one anymore, though, which drives me to course correct and say, “Besides, I enjoyed dumping Mike a couple of months ago. He was a dickhead.”

Mike was the last in the string of losers I dated after Tommy and I broke up. Each one took a little more of my optimism, my hope that things would get better.

“He was a dickhead,” Logan says, the muscles in his jaw working.

I laugh. “You think they’re all dickheads.”

“So do you.”

I shrug, glancing out at the snow falling on the windshield, building up a layer. He hasn’t suggested that we leave, and neither have I. It’s nice, sitting here with Logan in the toasty truck, pretending that the cold, brutal world out there doesn’t exist for a few minutes. “Yeah, but he really took the cake,” I say. “He told me I’d be really pretty if I tried harder to look like a woman. I guess he was hoping I’d take a page from my mother’s book.”

His expression tightens with a rage that shocks me. “That motherfucker.”

“It’s fine,” I say, even though it’s not. “He’s right. I guess I come across as a bit…severe.”

He leans in closer, and this time he’s the one who runs a hand along the side of my face, ending at the point of my chin, which he tips up. It’s dim in here, lit only by the glow of the dashboard and the small light above our heads, but I can see his eyes well enough, and there’s an almost feverish intensity in them.

“Don’t you let someone like that affect how you see yourself. You’re beautiful, just as you are, and if that dick was too stupid to see it, he didn’t deserve you. Hell, I knew he didn’t deserve you before you said that.”

“Logan,” his name escapes me almost as a gasp. Does this mean? Is he saying…?

My mind flits again to earlier in the month, and the way he punched that asshole out-of-towner with the wandering hands. I might be making mountains out of molehills, but this man has defended me with his hands, his words. He bought me a beautiful gift, more thoughtful than anything my ex-husband ever gave me.

Maybe…

His hand is still on my chin, his eyes boring into me. “You’re beautiful. Any man would be beyond lucky to stand beside you, to call you his own.”

My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. My lungs feel like the air has been sucked out of them. Everything in me is attuned to him—to the dark press of his eyes, to the feeling of his hand on my chin, to the smell of him. To the dreams I’ve let myself have over the last few months. To the way I’ve let myself notice him as if he’s someone new, and not the same beautiful bastard who’s been flitting around the corners of my life for years.

And I’m the one who does it, I lean in and press my lips to his.

I let myself believe.

A surprised sound escapes his lips, entering mine, and I swallow it, and then he’s kissing me back, his hand moving around my jaw to the back of my neck, spearing into my ponytail as he pulls me closer. His lips are hungry and soft but hard, and they feel so impossibly good against mine—good in a way I can’t ever remember feeling. The divider of the seats is between us, but he’s a big man, and it poses no true barrier as he parts my lips with his, his tongue seeking out mine and weaving with it. My senses are dazzled and full, and the hunger with which he’s kissing me feeds me. I want more of him, I want everything, but then suddenly he’s gone. His hand pulls away from my hair first, and then he edges back, his eyes full of a different emotion now: regret.

Horror winds through me. He doesn’t want me. He didn’t mean it. I took what he said and painted it with the brush of my own need.

I lift my hand to the amethyst pendant, suddenly desperate to take it off. To throw it into the snow.

“Brittany,” he says, leaning back in his chair, like he can’t get far enough away from me in the tow truck. “I shouldn’t have—”

A bitter laugh escapes me as I reach down to secure my belt.

“You didn’t. I did. I think you’d better take me home now.”

He swears under his breath, then runs his hands through his thick dark hair. “You’re special to me. You’re—”

Too special for him to want to fuck, I guess. Pretty enough as a person, but not pretty enough to tempt him.

“I’m tired. I want you to bring me home now, please.”

We don’t say a word to each other for the rest of the drive, but I’m deeply, painfully aware of him sitting next to me. And I’m aware of the phantom press of his lips, the slight burn on my skin from his short beard.

He left a mark on me, damn him, and now I’m only going to feel worse.