Sophie started to leave the floor, but a very bleary-eyed drywaller stepped in front of her.
“You’re the most alive person I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Sophie had thought she’d heard all the two a.m. come-ons. Hell, she’d fallen for plenty of them way back when, but this was so corny she could only blink with bemusement.
“Has that ever worked? Ever?” she asked.
“No dice, champ.” Logan slid his arm around her and turned her into his chest, drawing her into the lazy rhythm of the song. “Unless you wanted to dance with him?” he asked as he created a small space so he could see her face.
His shirt was damp from all their dancing. His hands on her waist were heavy and hot enough to scald.
“No, but I should get home.” Her feet shuffled into the slow beat, though, so she swayed in time with him. Their bodies brushed and she let herself lean a little closer.
The band sang a lyric about the gates of love budging an inch and she kept her gaze pinned on the hollow at the base of his throat.
Leave, she told herself, but she stayed in a state of heaven and hell, thinking of all the times she had left with the wrong guy, wishing Logan had been the one taking her home. He would be tonight, but not in the way that mattered. Not forever.
He had called his life in Florida hollow. Hers had been so full all these years it was often too full, but there was a pocket of emptiness in it, too. It was a Logan-shaped hole that she had packed with graveled resentment and hostility, then papered over with Never Again.
Those sorts of patches never stuck, though. It was splitting and spilling and she could feel that empty space growing inside her again.
The last notes petered out and the lights went up and all the couples broke apart.
Sophie felt sweaty and melancholy as they trailed outside to begin walking home by the flashlights on their phones.
“Did you get your credit card?” Emma asked Reid.
“I told them to put all our drinks on Logan’s tab. They’ll settle up with him next time he’s in.”
“Joke’s on you. I’m going to expense it,” Logan said.
“The joke is on them.” Sophie thumbed at Reid and Emma. “They have a houseful of kids to wake up to. Thank you for that, by the way. Oh wait. The joke is on me,” she realized with a groan. “I have a nine-year-old’s birthday party tomorrow. That’s going to be loud.”
“We have played this so smart, Em.” Reid looped his arm around his wife. “It’s Logan’s day with Storm. See you at seven, bro. Oh wait. I’ll still be in bed.”
“We promised the kids you’d make pancakes,” Emma said over her shoulder. “But Imogen is a great helper. She hardly ever gets eggshell in the batter anymore.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Logan said as they reached the spot where the Fraser driveway split off from the lane that led to Sophie’s driveway and the rest of the houses along the flats behind the bluff. “You kids go home and have some of that loud sex you like to have. I’m sure Delta has learned to sleep through it.”
“Why does he have to ruin everything?” Reid asked Emma as they started up the hill.
She said something that made him chuckle, but Sophie didn’t catch it.
The night closed in around her and Logan as they continued along the lane.
Despite the glow off her phone, Sophie staggered when her foot turned on a small, round rock.
“Okay?” Logan caught her elbow.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not as drunk as me?”
“I outweigh you by fifty pounds and I train for nights like this.”
He didn’t actually drink that much. He often had a beer with Gramps at the end of the day, but not always. If he did, it was usually just the one. As far as she could tell, he didn’t drink at all if it was his shift with Storm.
“How drunk are you?” he asked in a tone that instantly made her cautious.
“Not sober enough for whatever you’re thinking about suggesting.”
“I don’t want sex.” He sounded insulted. “I wondered if you were going to remember something if I say it.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
He stopped and turned off his flashlight. Her own glowed in a circle around her feet as she stopped to look at his silhouette.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was low, but firm and sincere. Powerful enough to shake the ground beneath her feet.
“For?” She braced herself, not sure she wanted to know. Not sure she wanted to go all the way back to that. Not now. Not ever.
He drew a breath and slowly blew it out. His head turned so he looked out to where the wind was coming in off the water and the sound of waves washing against the shore was a steady rush.
“For hurting you. For taking advantage of the way you felt about me. It’s no excuse to say that I needed to reinvent myself away from here, but that’s what it was. That’s why I didn’t want you to come with me. My screwed-up relationship with my father—with my whole family—was never yours to fix so I shouldn’t have turned to you when I was looking for ways to avoid him back then. That was childish and selfish.”
“It was.” She folded her arms, trying to tamp down on the ache that was rising in her chest like a breaching orca.