The Relationtrip, page 13
He never opens the drapes until I’m ready to get up, a fact I’ve noted and appreciated but not vocalized. Today, the curtains fall a little askew, like they’ve been caught between the jaws of the slider as it opened and then got closed, catching their threads in the track.
I get up and pull on a pair of biker shorts that go halfway down my thighs, my eyes glued to the sliding glass door in case Logan comes back inside suddenly. In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and pull on a sports bra, note the room door is still locked from the inside, and rummage through my drawer of clean things to find a tank top I haven’t worn yet.
No luck there, and I pull on a bright blue one that will hopefully help the search and rescue team find my broken body if I fall to my death on our hike today. Logan must’ve forgotten to set his alarm, because he’s the one who’s kept us on schedule for our excursions on this trip.
All our trips, actually. Logan handles the details on all of our trips, and we still haven’t chosen next year’s destination. We always have it before the mid-winter trip ends, and I slide open the door and start to fight with the curtains which have immediately been sucked outside to find my way through them.
Logan says, “That’s great, Alicia, thank you so much… Yes, send the paperwork over. I’m home on Sunday, and I’ll have it signed by Monday morning.”
I emerge onto the balcony just as Logan turns toward me. He’s instantly guarded, though his voice had just held a great deal of vibrancy. When he was talking to Alicia.
“Good news?” I lift my chin, almost daring him to lie to me.
He nods, and then the party explodes onto his face. He yells as he swoops me into his arms, causing me to cry out too. “Okay,” I say, shrieking as the world spins. “Okay, big fella.”
He puts me down and says, “I’ve had to go to the bathroom for ages. Give me two minutes, and I’ll come tell you everything, okay?” He doesn’t wait for me to confirm. He muscles his way past the still-flying curtains and goes inside. He slams the door closed, some pieces of the drapes now stuck painfully in it.
I move to fix them when his phone rings again. He’s left it out here, and a quick glance tells me it’s Alicia. He’s going to tell me everything anyway…
Without thinking too hard about it, I pick up the phone and answer it with, “Logan Murphy’s phone. Can I help you?”
“Oh,” a woman says. “Yeah.” She laughs a little, and I can’t tell if it’s flirty or not. “Can I really leave a message with you for Logan?”
“Of course,” I say. “He’s just… He just stepped out for a moment. I can have him call you right back?”
“No,” she says. “I know he’s roaming. Just tell him that Heartfelt Desires has approved his release date for Beachfront Property. June first, just like he requested.”
“Release date for Beachfront Property,” I say, drawing out the words like I’m writing them down as I do. “June first. This is for…”
“They want him to do a release day party for the book, which I know is his sticking point. You know what? Why don’t you have him call me if he gets a minute?”
“Will do,” ghosts out of my mouth and chatty Alicia laughs again as she ends the call.
Release day party for the book. Beachfront Property.
I practically throw his phone back onto the built-in bench seat where he’d left it, and then I yank out my device. I can do an Internet search of three words—book Beachfront Property—in less time than it takes to do one inhale-exhale cycle, and I’m staring at a beachy cover to a romance novel with the name L.M. Ryan on it within ten seconds.
My heart pounds beneath my breastbone in a way I can’t contain. It’s going to burst through the bone and flop onto the balcony like a fish out of water. It’ll die out there, the way said water creatures do when they don’t have the environment they need.
“All right.” Logan comes back out onto the balcony and claps his hands, smiles for miles. “We better get going, or we’re going to be late.”
I look up from my device, the pristine, pale yellow house on the cover imprinted on the backs of my eyes. In slow-motion, I hold it up and turn it toward him. He looks from my face to the device and falls back a step.
“You write romance novels for a living?” My voice comes out rusty, like I haven’t used it in a very long time.
“How did you find out?”
“You’re L.M. Ryan?”
He puffs out his chest. “I was going to tell you.” His voice comes out strong, but there’s vulnerability in his eyes, and the two war with each other mightily.
My brain shuts down, but not before sending one last pulse of a sentence to my mouth. “You’ve been lying to me for years.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sloane
I have become my mother. Led to believe one thing when the opposite is true. Not for a week or two, and not something that doesn’t really matter like a nickname or how long a person has disliked sushi but has never admitted it until now.
But over the course of years—years! I should’ve seen this coming. I’ve kept everything at arm’s length until this past week when I opened a door for Logan that no one has been through since the wedding-that-wasn’t precisely so this type of thing wouldn’t happen to me.
So I wouldn’t become like my mother.
In the blink of an eye—Logan Murphy’s eye, to be precise—I’m transported back five years.
My wedding dress was pure perfection. The white satin hugged every swell and dip on my body, the fabric falling in full waves from my hips to the ground.
I’d bought bright pink heels, because pink is the color of love, and I’ve been oh-so-in-love with Leon Burgiss.
I thought he’d loved me too.
His tie matched the shoes—and the lacy bra I wore beneath all the lace and satin. But no one knew that except for me and Leon. Fine, my mom and sisters knew too, but that was all.
When I’d walked down the aisle without my father, with every eye in the world focused on me, I didn’t wear the pink heels.
I wore the dress, because I’d literally been tied into it from my butt to my shoulder blades. It would’ve taken a half an hour to get off, and the wedding was already twenty minutes overdue to begin.
I blink and see Logan standing in front of me. His fingers curl and uncurl into fists, and he’s probably asked me something I haven’t answered.
He blinks, and I see my dress modeled exquisitely in the window display at the consignment shop where I’d gotten rid of it. I certainly couldn’t keep it, though in the history of every wedding, in every country, in every clime, across all ages—that was the one dress meant for and fitted perfectly to a person.
Me.
It sold in a day, and I took the two thousand dollars and opened an online savings account. Because that’s what a responsible, put-together woman does. She brushes herself off, puts on a sunny smile and sells houses day after day, and she keeps a pair of pink heels in a box in the back of her closet and wears them on special occasions.
I’ve worn those heels three times in the past five years, and after the last time, I vowed not to wear them again. They simply hold too many memories I don’t want.
Now, Belize will too. This mid-winter trip is forever ruined.
“Sloane,” Logan says, unblinking. “You’re gone again.”
My phone rings, saving me. There are so many things stewing inside, I need time for them to mingle and blend together before I can extract the words I want to say to him.
“It’s Rose.” I don’t want to talk to her, but because I’m one breath away from breaking down, I slide my thumb over the green icon to answer the call.
“Don’t answer it,” Logan says, but the deed is done. He rolls his eyes—rolls his eyes!—and turns away from me. “Are we going hiking or not?”
“Sloany?” Rose’s saying on her end of the line. I feel tied to so many things, so many people. I’m the thumbtack in the middle of a huge cork board, with those colored threads going out to pictures of my mother, my father, each sister, my co-workers, my assistant, my boss, my house, the dog I want, and Logan.
So many strings go to Logan, and most of them are in shades of red. It can represent the color of love, but right now, I feel nothing but heated anger for him.
“Rosy,” I say as Logan slides open the glass door to the room. “I’m on my way out right now. You get two minutes.” Surprised by the even, calm tone of my voice, I move to follow Logan. Maybe I won’t break down over this.
I blink, and I see my mother standing on my front stoop. Her eyes that day had been bloodshot, her face puffy, her voice the kind that can only be achieved by inhaling copious amounts of helium.
Or finding out your husband of thirty-three years has never loved you.
That he’s been cheating on you for at least five years, but probably longer, with a high school girlfriend he’s regretted breaking up with for thirty-five years.
Oh, but he’s not moving out, and your mother can’t stand to sleep in the same house as him, so she needs your guest room “for a day or two.”
Which turns into two weeks.
I will not be my mother.
She fell apart and wouldn’t talk to my younger sisters until she pulled herself together slightly. The job of keeping everyone informed fell to me, which is why I know all the sordid details I wish I didn’t.
I follow Logan inside as Rose says, “This won’t take long… Now, I don’t want you to freak out, but…” Her voice borders on manic, and if there’s anything that can get my sister more animated than a rock, her usual state, it’s her boyfriend.
My heart sinks through the floor, down all the levels of this building, and all the way to the beach.
“You got engaged,” I say. My tone in no way suggests that I’m excited about this. Rose is twenty-six, which is the same age I was when Leon asked me to marry him. I want to rage at this Spanish-style room. Rip up all the red-orange tiles and scream as I launch them over the balcony, watch them drop three floors, and shatter into pieces below.
I see myself ripping the abstract paintings off the wall and bashing them through the TV that Logan watches soccer on most evenings.
He’s waiting for me at the doorway that leads out of the room, and I attempt to brighten as I get closer. “That’s so ex—”
“I got engaged!” Rose screams on her end of the line. Thankfully, she doesn’t have great lungs. Asthma and all that. So after only two or three seconds, she takes a breath, and she’s off to the races.
“I know this will be hard for you, but I need you, Sloany. You planned the absolute perfect wedding for yourself, and I can’t even tell the difference between rose and pink. Not that there will be any pink in my wedding.”
“Of course not,” I say, moving past Logan without truly looking at him. I don’t turn back to see if he follows. He had my pack and his on his shoulder, and I can feel him behind me. I feel him everywhere, all the time.
It took me a year to stop seeing Leon everywhere I went. How long until I can’t feel Logan with me anymore? And why does that make me so, so sad?
He’s been lying to you!
My righteous anger fires up again, and Rose’s now saying, “We won’t get married until August, so that’s lots of time. I know you think I’m too young, but I’m not. I’m done with college. I have a good job, and so does Spencer. It’s going to be so great, Sloane. You’ll see.”
The fact that she has to justify her engagement to me makes my stomach twist. “Of course it will,” I say. “Spencer isn’t anything like my loser fiancé.”
I’ve always been glad I didn’t marry Leon. That didn’t make how the relationship ended any easier or any quicker to get over. It also didn’t change the fact that I wanted to get married. I wanted that close companionship, the inside jokes, the smiling face when I walk in the door, the implied date on birthdays and Friday nights.
The elevator arrives, and I say, “I’m so sorry. I’m about to get in an elevator. I love you, and we’ll talk more tonight, okay?”
“Okay,” Rose says, pure sunshine in her voice. “Love you, Sloany!”
Logan holds the door for me so I can lower my phone and get on the car. I smash myself into the corner of the elevator and fold my arms. When the door closes, I’m instantly suffocating, the scent of Logan’s skin—like jungle rain and male goodness—and his cologne—all that leather, cider, and musk—closing in on me.
Choking me.
“Sloane,” he says. “I write romance novels for a living.”
Not just romance novels. The very romance novel I was reading on this trip. The one I just had to finish in the hot tub the other night.
Foolishness pulls through me. He’s teased me about my reading material in the past. How dare he?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I study the numbers in front of me like they’ll rearrange into the MegaLotto winning combination by my sheer will alone.
“It’s…not something I’ve wanted a lot of people to know.”
I switch my glare to him. “So I’m just ‘some person’ now. Okay, got it.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You didn’t tell me!” I’ve told him everything. I open my mouth, that part of my thoughts solid now. “I’ve told you everything, Logan. Everything. I’ve bawled in your arms and laid awake with you so many times, spilling my guts.”
“I’m aware.”
The doors slide open, but I don’t move. Those two words, spoken in his deadpan tone, cause ice to flow through my veins where my blood should be.
Logan gets off the elevator, seemingly without knowing I don’t go with him. The door starts to slide closed as he turns back. “You’re not—?” His voice gets cut off as the door seals.
I lift my phone. Go without me, I text
No, he texts back. Today is our day where we do what the other one wants.
I grit my teeth. “I don’t want to be with you right now.” I grunt each word as I type it.
And I want to explain, he says. You have to give me that much, Sloane. I’ve been meaning to tell you what I do for months now.
“Months?” I scoff.
Another message pops up. Besides, you’ve never asked what I really do.
“I’ve never asked?” He has to be kidding. That’s going to be his excuse for mountains of lies? Should my mother have asked my dad if he’d been emailing and calling his high school girlfriend? Do those questions have to be explicitly asked?
The door slides open again, because I haven’t pushed a button to go anywhere. Logan stands there, and he sticks his foot out to stall the door from closing again.
“You’ve never really asked,” he says, those eyes firing blue sparks at me. Then shots. Then flames.
My chest feels like someone has put a hinge in it in the wrong place. I don’t know what to say, and that unnerves me the most. I always know what to say. I’m the one who calms down anxious clients and crying mothers and sisters who’ve just failed their psychology class.
The elevator starts to sing, and I practically jump off of it. I say nothing as I march past Logan, but his legs are literally twice as long as mine, and he catches up to me easily.
We endure a tense golf cart ride down to the spot where we’re meeting the hiking tour group, both of us saying nothing. The silence is thick, like someone has made Jello out of it and encased us in it. I can still see around me, but everything is warped and the color of strawberries.
Only two other people wait in the excursion area, and Logan grabs my hand and pulls me away from them as the golf cart drives off.
“Let me go,” I say.
He doesn’t, not for a few more steps, and then I manage to wrench my hand away from his. I’m panting, with a pulse that’s sprinting from ventricle to ventricle and back. I’ve never been afraid of Logan Murphy, not even on our first trip. I made a big show out of checking his identification and calling his boss, but he has a trustworthy face.
I keep that to myself right now. “So?” I ask. “Start explaining.”
“I’ve always liked to write.” He swallows, and I watch the movement of it in his throat. “I wrote a few novels, and none of them went anywhere. I was in a critique group, and one of the women there said she loved my romance subplot and had I ever considered writing a straight-up romance novel?”
He paces away from me, but when he turns back, his gaze is ironclad. His voice that strong, commanding timbre he uses to get what he wants as he says, “Not sci-fi with a romance thread. All romance. So I gave it a try. I liked it. No, I loved it. I created a new identity, sold a couple of books to a publisher, and then, when they went out of business, I started self-publishing.”
“That woman—Alicia—was from Heartfelt Desires.”
“Actually, she’s my literary agent,” he says. “You know like in Jerry Maguire, he’s a sports agent for athletes? Authors have agents too.”
“I know what a literary agent does,” I say dryly. “I’m a real estate agent, for crying out loud.”
He glares at me, but he honestly has no right. He’s mansplaining to me, and he hasn’t even gotten to anything good yet.
“My self-published stuff did great. Enough for me to quit that awful job at that textbook company.”
“Is that the boss I called five years ago?” My ribs hurt I’ve been clenching them so tightly.
“Yes. I got a new agent. She sold some more books for me. I still publish quite a few myself. I built a business out of it.”
“This is all great,” I say, a frown right between my eyes. “I don’t understand why you haven’t told me.”
“For the very reason I witnessed on the balcony,” he says. “You were horrified.”
“I was not.”
“I saw your face. In fact, you still look a little peakish. Your face is gray now instead of white.”
“I wasn’t horrified because you’re an author. I was horrified that you’ve been lying to me for years.”
