Page 45 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

I grab Logan’s arm, and his forearm is tight under my fingers. When he looks at my hand, I don’t pull away. “They shouldn’t have left you alone with that. Neither of them.”

He nods, jaw tight. “Yeah, I figured that out later. At that time, I blamed her for all of it—Dad checking out, Andrew’s problems in school, how hard it was to pay for everything. But that stuff was his fault, too. It was unfair to blame her alone for so long.”

I tighten my grip. “No. You were a kid still, basically. You had just lost your mom. Nothing you did or felt was unfair. None of this should have been on you to handle in the first place.” I squeeze again, then let go. “I learned that one the hard way.”

“How so?”

“My mom—” I cut myself off. I shouldn’t. “You know what? I don’t want to compare our situations. My mom might have her issues, but she didn’t leave me. And I might have grown up without a dad, but that certainly wasn’t his fault. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

Logan catches my wrist with his fingers, smooths a thumb against the soft skin on my forearm. His mouth firms. “Ali. We’ve talked about this.”

“What?”

“These comparisons.”

Warmth radiates outward from the spot where he’s holding me, and I tell him: “You’re going to say your scars don’t erase mine.”

He smiles softly. “I don’t mind being predictable. It’s a good quality, I think.”

“Criminally overlooked, as far as qualities go.”

A chuckle shakes loose. “So, then, tell me. About your mom. I already remember some, anyway.”

If his memory is as good as it seems, then I guess it’s true, he does. He knows about the moves. The tears. He knows my dad died in a car accident when I was in diapers and that everything I know about his face comes from a set of evenly spaced photographs in matching frames—one of the rare decorations Mom bothered to haul around the country. He knows that, once, when I asked for a hamster, she gave me a mouse-shaped plush instead. He knows I cried every night in Anchorage and she pretended not to hear.

But that was then. A different Logan who listened to my whispered pain. And I am most definitely a different Ali. One who should be stronger, more resilient. One who should not feel a twist like a corkscrew through her gut when she talks about her mother.

And yet. Logan’s focused gaze feels steadying instead of off-putting. It’s the same look he gave me outside the barn when he put out his elbow and said, “Together?”

The rippling jewels of early-fall sun run across the creek beyond his face, encouraging me with their winks and divots. There’s a reason, I think, that my uncle used to visit this spot at the creek for his late-afternoon “thinking sessions” as he called them. There’s a calm—a space—here that’s downright comforting.

Maybe that’s why I clear my throat, brace myself. “It’s hard to explain, but did you ever know something your parents expected of you, even if they never said it out loud?”

“Yes,” Logan says without hesitation. “Like taking over the family carpentry business.”

“Right.” I smile. “Well, with my mom, I was expected not to feel things.”

He tilts his head in wordless question.

“Like, she’d get tense when I’d cry during a movie. Or when I got upset about a fight with a friend. Or worst of all, if I reacted when she said that, yet again, we’d be uprooting our lives and moving somewhere new. We were always leaving something behind, rejecting some place that wasn’t good enough and moving on to the next place that was surely also not going to be good enough. But I was supposed to just lift my chin and tighten my shoulders and take it.

“But I was so bad at that, you know? I was that kid whose parents expect A’s but they’re still getting C’s. Except in my case it was that Bridge to Terabithia made me sob and I still wanted to watch it over and over. Or how I’d cry when saying goodbye to some new friend. She didn’t yell or tell me off or anything. But she’d get this look. I always knew when I was disappointing her.”

My fingers curl before I realize why.

“That’s why you started smiling when it hurt,” he says.

My breath trips, one over the next, and there’s a tremble in the walls around my mental attic.

“Yeah. I—” Honestly, I had never connected those dots before. “Yeah. Maybe it is.”

Logan hooks my chin with a forefinger to lift my face. Our eyes connect. His gaze is sharp and settled, and a flush of warmth spreads through my chest. And, shit.

What I’m feeling isn’t nostalgia or emotional residue.

My attraction to Logan—this Logan—is very real.

“You get to feel whatever you feel,” he says.