What was she supposed to do with this information?
“Don’t you enjoy seeing a hot guy doing sweaty work?” he challenged.
“Find me a hot guy. I’ll let you know.”
He gave her a very watch-me look as he replaced his mask and came to take the saw. He gave the cord a rippling snap to bring it with him to his end of the wall. The tool whined and, oh damn, his biceps flexed. His snug Raven’s Cove T-shirt strained across his pecs and shifted across his shoulders. His blue jeans were faded along the top of his thighs and the demin clung to his ass as he bent.
He was undeniably hot as he worked.
He turned off the saw and cocked a brow at her.
“Maybe if you were in a bikini?”
“Budgie smugglers? That’s what does it for you?” He set aside the saw, and his muscles bunched while he pulled away a huge section of drywall. He snapped it in half across his knee so it would fit into the bag.
She swallowed. “I’m more about good posture and legible penmanship.”
“Really,” he challenged pithily.
“No.”
“What then?”
He shouldn’t have to ask. He had been the strongest influence on her sexual interest during her formative years, practically imprinting her to only desire him.
“I don’t know how to get turned on anymore,” she dismissed, taking up the saw. “Nolan was the last guy I slept with. That was four years ago and very forgettable.”
“Sophie.” Logan paused, hammer dangling from his loose grip. “Are you serious?”
“Why is that shocking? Once a slut always a slut?”
“Do not call yourself that. You don’t really believe that, do you?”
She turned on the saw, finding satisfaction in the effort required to push horizontal and vertical lines through the wall, but any toughness she felt in those moments dissipated with the noise when she turned it off. Now she just felt flimsy and transparent again.
“What is the appropriate amount of sex that I should have, Logan? And why would you even care?”
“I don’t care how much sex you have. I mean, I care. I think you should have exactly as much sex as you want and that it should be great every time, but I hope you don’t judge yourself over your own history. I hope you’re not denying yourself so you can punish yourself. You shouldn’t.”
Was that what she was doing? Maybe a little.
“If a guy comes along who is worth wrecking my life over—and wrecking my son’s life—I might consider it. I haven’t met anyone worth the risk, though.”
“That’s how it seems to you? That sex would wreck your life?”
“It did before. Are you paying me to talk or work?”
His brows went up at her snark, but he picked up the saw with a pensive expression and got back to work.
Chapter Twelve
They worked well together, not that it surprised Logan. They had both trained under Art so they had common principles and knew how to stay out of each other’s way. Before quitting for the night, they got the wall removed and the area cleaned up.
He went home physically tired, but didn’t sleep well, thinking too much about Sophie.
Was this part of his father’s legacy, too? Wilf had come from an abusive, neglectful home. Logan didn’t know a lot about it, but his mother had told him that much in the past. Wilf had never been overtly cruel to Glenda or anyone else, but he’d been deliberately obtuse to how much he was hurting others. That’s why he had led with monetary generosity. He had wanted to be loved, but he didn’t know how to earn it or reciprocate it.
He hadn’t loved himself.
Neither did Logan. It went deeper than his self-contempt for treating Sophie so callously. He had told her he hadn’t believed she could love him and that was true. Who would? His mother had, but she had loved a man like Wilf so that only told Logan how low her standards were.
Logan had done his best to play the field once he left for university, feeling empty doing it. He’d met smart, pretty, funny girls who should have held more attraction for him, but he hadn’t understood them, and they hadn’t understood him. He kept waiting for something to feel right and nothing ever had.
Then, when his mother had had enough of his father’s infidelity, he came back here to help her leave him. He had wanted to hurt his father by helping, not that there’d been much evidence he’d succeeded.
Logan had been hurting, though. He’d still been resentful of his upbringing and there had been Sophie, soothing the beast inside him. She did understand him and made him laugh at himself as much as every other aspect of this miserable journey called life. She’d been thoughtful and ambitious in her modest way, and he had felt connected to her in a way that was different from anyone else.
That connection had scared the hell out of him. That was the truth. He could look back and admit that it wasn’t just that he hadn’t wanted to bring traces of his childhood into the life he was building away from it. It was the heavier sense that she could pull him back into something he was determined to leave, something that would anchor him to this place forever.
So he had cut things short with her and left, treating her heartlessly in some bizarre effort to prove what an unlovable shit he was.
Just like his father.
He had never felt good about it. Never looked at another woman without comparing something about her to Sophie. He had never let himself get truly close to anyone since. His few long-term partners had always pointed that out when they ended things. He was inaccessible and incapable of real commitment.
He was. He had kept his focus on work, thinking it would bring him the fulfillment that otherwise evaded him, but even that success had failed to bring him any real satisfaction or any sense of true pride in himself.
Outside, the dawn light was increasing. Ravens started making their racket, coaxing their fledglings to fly. He gave up on sleep and rose to see one young raven on the lawn, letting out helpless, prehistoric screeches that roughly translated to I’m lost. Where do I go?
