Smart, Sexy and Secretive (24 page)

“
I’ll never survive it if
you leave me again.” I swallow the lump in my throat.

“
Can you come home with me?”
she asks.

If I take her home right now, we won’t
get to talk at all because I’ll be all over her. “Let’s go get some
pie,” I say instead.

Her face falls. “You’re mad at
me.”

“
I love you like crazy,
girl. How could I be mad at you?” I drink her in from the curve of
her lips to the way her eyes look almost black in the darkness of
the night.

She squeezes my hands. “Is Matt all
right?”

I nod. “Thanks to you, yes.”

She exhales, and it’s like a balloon
has been emptied inside her. “What do we do now?” she
asks.

“
Pie,” we both say at the
same time. I take her hand in mine and lead her to the diner where
we had our first meal together. Pie is safe. Pie is good. Pie will
buy me enough time to be sure she still loves me as much as I love
her.

Emily

“
I guess I don’t have to
ask you if you ate today,” Logan jokes. When we first met, he felt
the need to feed me all the time. Food was scarce, but I always
made do.

“
I’ve been too nervous to
eat today,” I admit, laying a hand on my stomach, which is suddenly
growling. I’m glad he can’t hear it.

“
Why nervous?” he asks as he
slides into a booth. Sometimes Logan forgets that he’s not signing
and uses the minimum number of words possible. It doesn’t bother
me.

I open my mouth to tell him how scared
I was that he hated me when Annie, the waitress, comes to the table
and asks, “Do you need a menu?”

Logan shakes his head and motions to
me. He’ll have what I’m having. “Two pieces of apple pie and two
root beers.” I say.

She nods and cracks her gum at me. “You
look awfully familiar,” she says, her eyes narrowing at
me.

Logan takes a napkin and
pulls a Sharpie from his pocket. He’s never without something to
write with. He very slowly writes the words
my girlfriend
. It’s slow enough and
the letters are spaced far enough apart that I can read them. Then
he points to me.

Annie’s eyebrows lift. She twists her
mouth into a look of incredulity, but then she shrugs and walks
away.

“
Why didn’t you talk to
her?” I ask. “You do have a voice.”

“
I don’t talk to
everyone.”

“
Mmm hmm,” I hum. “Sometimes
I think you like your silent world.”

“
I like it just fine as long
as you’re in it.” He takes my hand in his and swipes his thumb
across my skin. He flips my arm over and looks closely at my
tattoo. He looks up at me. “You already knew you were going to
leave when you got this.”

I knew these questions were coming. And
they have to be answered. “I had already called my Dad and told him
I would come home if he would take care of Matt. Yes.”

He drags his finger from my wrist to my
inner elbow, and the hairs on my arms stand up as he traces the
letters of his name. It’s not a dainty tattoo. It takes up my
entire inner forearm. “You called your dad from the hospital that
day when they said there was no hope for Matt.”

I nod. “They said he could have a
chance if he had enough money. And I had access to enough
money.”

His brow crinkles. “Why didn’t you just
tell me? You let me wake up alone, and you were gone.”

“
Would you have let me
leave?”

He drags a hand down his face as though
he’s tired. “I don’t know.”

“
I didn’t want to argue with
you about it. It was Matt’s life or my freedom.” I shrug. “I chose
Matt’s life.”

His blue eyes bore intently into mine
as he leans forward and cups my neck in his hand. He pulls me
toward him. His breath touches my lips ever so gently, and then his
mouth slides across mine. I don’t know what I expected, but this
isn’t it. He licks across the seam of my lips, and I lift up to
press myself closer to him, hopping up on my knees so I can lean
across the table. His tongue is a velvet rasp against mine. When he
pulls back, I’m breathless.

“
Don’t leave me again,” he
says.

“
I won’t.”

He squeezes my neck, kisses me really
quickly, and sits back. I want to go and sit on his side of the
table so I can touch him, but he won’t be able to see my lips if I
do that. I tap his arm so he’ll look at me. “I want to show you
something.”

He raises his eyebrows, and he waggles
them playfully. “You had better be ready to show me
everything.”

I choke. I’ll show him that later. “Ask
me something in sign language.”

When I left, I was a novice at speaking
his language. I could follow some things, but not everything. I
took a class while I was gone. Now I’m pretty good at
it.

He narrows his eyes at me
and starts to sign.
I started classes at
NYU on Monday
, he says.

I start Julliard next
Monday.

He grins.

Not bad. You
practiced?

I took a class.

His mouth falls open.
For me?

No, dummy. For
me
. He grins at that. “Dummy” is a term of
endearment in his family. There are a lot more words they use, and
none of them flattering, but they love one another like
crazy.

My brothers want to see
you, especially Matt.

I nod.
I want to see them, too.

I take his hand in mine and flip his
wrist over so I can see my tattoo on his skin. It’s something I’d
drawn when I’d felt hopeless and lost. He put it on the inside of
his wrist, and then he added a keyhole so I’d have a way out. It
sort of goes with the key on my arm. I drag my finger across the
one he wears. It’s beautiful. Just like him.

He shifts in his seat, adjusting his
fly. I raise my eyebrows at him. “Something wrong?” I ask. I use my
voice because I don’t want to let his hand go.

“
Aside from the fact that
I’m horny as hell, no.” He laughs as heat creeps up my face. “Let’s
talk about the snow or the frozen river or I’ll never be able to
get up from here.”

Annie sets two plates of pie and two
root beers between us. Logan grins at her. I tell her thanks,
trying to distract myself. There’s something I need to ask Logan. I
don’t have any right to the answer, and I shouldn’t even care, but
I need to know.

He tilts my chin up with a crooked
finger. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“
Logan,” I begin. I take a
deep breath. “I left you. And I’ll understand if you moved on. I
just want to be sure that you want me now, from this moment
forward. Whatever you did or whoever you saw when I was gone is
none of my business.” Tears sting in my eyes. I’m forgiving him for
whatever he may have done and doing a really poor job of
it.

“
What the fuck, Emily?” he
says. He throws his napkin down on the table. “Ask me the
question.” His gaze is intense, and I shrink inside a little bit.
“Ask me if I fucked someone else while you were gone. That’s what
you want to know, isn’t it?”

“
No. What I’m saying is
that…” Shit. I don’t know what I’m saying. “If you did, I drove you
to it.” I heave a sigh and close my eyes. His gaze is too
passionate for me.

His voice is quiet but clear, and it
reaches me through my closed eyelids. “I haven’t fucked anybody
since the night I made love to you.” He slaps a heavy hand down on
the table. “You really think I could stop loving you like
that?”

“
Was sex ever about love for
you before, Logan?” I open my eyes, and he looks
startled.

“
Not until I met you,” he
admits. His shoulders relax a little. “The last person I was inside
was you, Em,” he says. “You. Only you.”

My heart skips a beat. “There hasn’t
been anyone else for you? That whole time?”

“
How could there be, you
brilliant little dummy?” he asks. He softens the blow of the word
“dummy” because he hurt my feelings with it once. My dyslexia makes
reading hard, and people can be cruel.

“
Just dummy will do,” I say
quietly, and a smile breaks through my waterworks.

“
What about you?” he asks.
His gaze is intense.

My heart is so light that I can barely
follow what we were talking about. “What about me?” I
ask.

“
You asked me if I was
faithful to you,” he reminds me.

“
I wasn’t really asking. I
was just telling you that I could understand it if you weren’t. You
didn’t even know if I was coming back.”

“
I knew. But I would have
done the same thing even if I hadn’t known.” His eyes narrow. “Are
you avoiding my question?”

“
What question?”

“
Dammit, Emily.” He slaps
his hand on the table again. “Did you or did you not fuck someone
else?”

People in the nearby booths look in our
direction, and I place a finger over my lips. “Turn your voice
down,” I say.

He says it more quietly. “Did
you?”

I lay a hand on my chest. “Oh, God,
no,” I breathe. How could he even think that?

“
I’ve seen your picture in
the tabloids with the old boyfriend. A lot.” His gaze is intense
again.

“
My father’s publicity
people set that up. They want the world to think we’re still
happily engaged.” I wasn’t even aware it was happening when I
attended the first event and Trip approached me. The photogs went
mad taking shots of us. “I’m sorry you had to see that and wonder
about it.”

“
You’re not engaged to him,
are you?” Worry furrows his brow, and I feel bad for all I’ve put
him through.

“
No. Not since before I left
California the first time.”

“
And he’s well aware of
this?” Logan asks.

“
Very well aware.” He knows.
I’m not sure he cares, but he knows. “He knows I’m in love with
you.”

Logan smiles innocently. “He knows
about me?”

“
He knows all about you.” I
take his hand. “I love you, Logan.”

“
Good. Because I plan to put
a ring on this as soon as you’ll let me.” He draws my ring finger
to his lips and kisses it gently.

My heart thuds. “A ring?”

He nods. “A ring.”

“
Can you tattoo one on me?”
I ask impulsively. “Because I don’t plan to ever take it
off.”

He smiles. “I’ll think about it.” He
points to my pie. “Eat,” he says. “I can hear your stomach growling
and I’m deaf. Imagine how much you’re offending the other people.
They just want to eat their soup, and your stomach sounds like an
F-350.”

“
How do you know what an
F-350 sounds like?” I laugh. I have missed him like
crazy.

“
Tell me something that’s
loud and groaning, then?” he asks.

“
You will be
later.”

He freezes. “Eat your fucking
pie.”

I lift a forkful of apple pie to my
lips.

I’m home.

Logan

Emily’s hand is tucked securely into
mine, and that’s a good thing because I don’t want to ever let her
go.

“
Can you come home with me?”
she asks for the second time. The snow is falling heavily now, and
her hair is covered in white flakes as soon as we step out the
diner door. I take my hoodie off and put it on her, pulling the
fabric over her hair. I wrap a lock of it around my finger, letting
the silk slide against my fingertip. I’m wearing a long-sleeve
thermal shirt and jeans, but nothing else. I hunch my back against
the wind.

Emily lifts my hoodie up to her nose so
she can smell it. “You might not get this back,” she
warns.

“
I don’t care.” I’m just so
happy she’s here.

“
So, do you want to come
home with me?” she asks. Her head is tilted to the side like an
inquisitive puppy. There’s a question in her gaze, one that’s full
of misunderstanding.

“
Where’s home?” I
ask.

“
I have an apartment a few
miles from here.”

“
Why so far away?” I
ask.

She shrugs. “My mother chose it. It’s
near campus.”

“
Would you rather go home
with me?” I ask. I know my brothers want to see her. They’ve missed
her almost as much as I did.

She shakes her head. “I’d rather have
you all to myself.”

“
You live alone?” I’m not
sure that’s safe.

She nods and tugs on my fingers. “Come
with me.” She holds up a hand to hail a cab. It stops, and she
looks at me with a question in her gaze.

“
All right,” I say. I help
her into the cab with a hand at the small of her back and slide in
behind her. She rattles off an address, but I can’t see her lips in
the darkness.