Page 28 of Left Cold, Wolf Owned
Logan is in the kitchen, coffee already made, two mugs out, and a look on his face that is doing its best to be neutral and mostly succeeding. My bag is by the door—borrowed clothes, my phone charger, the things Nora pressed on me over, and thewedding dress folded as well as eleven pounds of destroyed silk can be folded at the very bottom. It felt wrong to leave it behind. It also feels wrong to have it, but that's a problem for a different day.
"You eat yet?" he asks.
"We're stopping somewhere, aren't we?"
"Yeah."
"Then no," I tell him, picking up the mug. "I'll wait."
He accepts this without comment, which is one of the things about Logan I have come to appreciate unreservedly.
Logan holdsthe driver's-side door open when we get to the garage, which I clock immediately.
"I know how to drive my own car," I inform him.
"I know the mountain," he replies simply, already moving around to the driver's side in a way that suggests this conversation has already concluded as far as he's concerned.
I consider arguing on principle. I get in the passenger seat instead.
He adjusts everything—mirrors, seat position, and the steering wheel—with the efficiency as if he has driven every kind of road in every kind of condition and is simply making sure this one goes well. Then he looks at me.
"Don't touch anything on the dashboard," he tells me, and his mouth does something small and contained that I have learned to read as the full version.
I turn to look at him. "Excuse me?"
"Last time you drove your car without supervision, it ended up stranded on the side of a mountain."
I open my mouth. I close it. "That was a coolant hose."
"Mm."
"I didn't do anything to the coolant hose."
"I didn't say you did." He starts the engine, still with that almost-smile, and pulls out of the garage into the pale morning light.
I face forward and hide the fact that I'm smiling too.
"How are you getting back?"I ask, somewhere around the fifteen-minute mark.
"Mateo's meeting me in town later," Logan replies, eyes on the road. "He had some business in the area anyway."
"You planned that."
"I planned for the possibility," he replies. "There's a difference."
I look at him. "There really isn't."
"Sure, there is." He takes a curve with one hand on the wheel in the unhurried way he does everything. "One is logistics. The other is an assumption."
"You assumed I'd make it to town without the car breaking down again."
"I had reasonable confidence," he replies, and I catch the movement at his mouth that means he is amused and has decided that's for him to know.
"High praise," I tell him.
"Highest I've got," he agrees.
The mountain roadin the morning is a different thing from what it is at night.
