Page 23 of The Summer Fling
My Logan.
In my lobby.
In my city.
My purse slides off my shoulder and hits the floor with a thud. My keys scatter. Logan looks up at the sound, and those eyes find mine across the small space.
We stare at each other for what feels like a year. He looks the same—that jawline, that slow smile starting at the corner of his mouth—but there's something different, too. Something tired around his eyes, like the past two weeks cost him the same thing they cost me.
"Why are you here?"
Logan stands, well, more like unfolds all six-foot-five of his masculine frame in my tiny lobby, as if showing up fifteen hundred miles from home is perfectly normal. He bends down to pick up my things.
"I told you I'd follow you anywhere," he says. "I just took time to make sure the bar could run itself. Longer than I hoped, but still, here I am."
"You're crazy."
"Yes. About you."
Suddenly, I can't breathe properly. He's here. He's actually here, looking at me like two weeks of silence didn't happen. Like, I didn't walk out on him. Like, I didn't call what we had 'vacation sex', and mean it as the cruelest possible truth.
"Logan..." I don't know how to finish. How do you apologize for being a coward? How do you take back words that have been rotting in your chest? "I need to tell you something."
"Okay."
"I was wrong. Not about being scared—the fear was real. But about running. About calling it vacation sex when I knew it wasn't. About walking out instead of staying to figure it out."
He takes a step closer. "Hannah…"
"I missed you. Not the island, not the ocean, not the vacation. You. The person who makes me funnier and braver and lighter. The version of myself I forgot existed until you found her atShore Thing."
"I missed you, too," he says quietly. "Every damn day."
"I don't have all the answers. I don't know how this works, or where we live, or what happens to my job, or your bar. But I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering what if. I'd rather be an idiot who tried than someone who?—"
"Hey." He reaches out and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, the gesture so familiar it makes my throat tight. "Those are my words."
"I know. You were right, and I was too scared to admit it."
"I wasn't right about everything. You were right to be scared. This is terrifying." His thumb traces along my jawline. "But I'm not here to pressure you into anything. I'm here because I meant what I said. I arranged things soShore Thingcan run without me for as long as it needs to. Eli's in charge—he's been ready for years. I didn't abandon anyone. I just made room to choose you."
"I'm still scared."
"Good. I'd be worried if you weren't. But I'm not going anywhere, Hannah. Not unless you tell me to."
"Don't go anywhere," I whisper.
"Never."
When he kisses me, it's like coming home and starting an adventure at the same time. His hands frame my face, and I can taste two weeks of missing him, two weeks of regret, two weeks of wondering if I'd ruined the best thing that ever happened to me.
But also relief. Joy. The bone-deep certainty that this is right, this is real, this is worth every risk we're taking.
"I love you," he says against my neck. "I've been going crazy not being able to tell you that."
"I love you too. I think I have since that first night atShore Thing," I whisper back, and the words feel like coming up for air after drowning. "I have something to tell you. I got a job offer today from an old client. I can work from anywhere—just a video call once a week."
Logan's hand stills in my hair, and one eyebrow flips up. "Anywhere?"
