Magic Kiss (Hope Falls Book 11) (27 page)

“No, he can’t. I was going to say Drew’s not feeling well. So today’s not a good day for me.”

“Oh, all right.” Charlie’s face fell, but he immediately tried to cover his reaction. “Well, you tell Drew that I hope he feels better and let me know if he, or you, need anything. I’ll just be across the street.”

“I thought you were going fishing?”

“Nah, I think I’ll stick around here.” Charlie lifted his hand then headed back down the driveway.

As his father walked across the street, his shoulders slumped, and Logan felt a moment of guilt and had the passing thought that he might’ve been too hard on him. Then the words Charlie had spoken to the lawyer at the will reading played in his head and the guilt vanished as fast as it had appeared.

“Sorry,” a small voice came from the door that led into the house.

Turning, he saw Drew standing in the doorway. He was wearing the same sweats he’d had on yesterday, and he was rocking serious bedhead, but he did have more color in his face.

“Hey, bud. You feeling better?”

“Yeah.” He nodded and then looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry that you didn’t go out on the boat because of me.”

“What? No. That’s not why I didn’t go.”

When Drew’s head rose, confusion replaced his guilt. “Yeah, it is. I heard you tell your dad that.”

Shit.

Walking across the garage, Logan tried to figure out how to explain what had just happened. Shockingly, the five seconds it took before he was standing in front of the kid didn’t afford him the opportunity.

Big, brown, trusting eyes stared up at him, and he decided to go with the truth. Yes, he’d just lied to Charlie. But that didn’t mean he was a liar. And the last thing he wanted was for this kid to carry around some misplaced guilt over a missed boat trip he had nothing to do with.

Leaning against the workbench, Logan crossed his arms. “I didn’t know Charlie growing up. I only saw him one time, when I was twelve, after my mom died. Then the next time I saw him was a couple of months ago. I didn’t go out on the boat with him today because I’m not sure I want to spend the day with him.”

Turning his head towards Charlie’s cabin, Drew seemed to ponder what Logan had just told him. Finally, after a long pause, the kid directed his attention back towards Logan.

“Did he say he was sorry?”

Logan wasn’t sure what he had expected the kid to say, but that sure as hell hadn’t been it. Nodding, he said, “Yeah. He did.”

When he’d come back into his, Levi’s, and Lucky’s lives, not only had they received letters with seemingly sincere apologies, Charlie had also apologized in person to each of them several times.

Drew lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Then you should probably go fishing with him. I would do
anything
to be able to go fishing with my dad.”

And with that, the kid walked back inside, closing the door behind him.

Levi and Lucky had basically told him the same thing. They’d been encouraging Logan to give Charlie a chance for a while now. Somehow, hearing it from Drew was different.

Maybe the exchange had reminded Logan of his and Andrew’s relationship. Andrew had been a talker. Drew had definitely inherited that from his dad, but when it came to advice or serious topics, Andrew had always taken a few beats, just like Drew had, before getting to the heart of the matter.

In fact, if Andrew had been there, he would have been telling him to give Charlie a chance too. Of course, if Andrew had been there, then Drew and Emma wouldn’t have been staying at his house. He never would’ve had the night he’d spent with Emma, and he wouldn’t have had to get Drew medicine or keep his mind off his stomachache by putting
Ghostbusters
on.

And the thing was, as wrong as both of those things should’ve felt…they didn’t. If anything, it was the exact opposite. Being with Emma felt more right than anything ever had in his life. Taking care of Drew felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing.

If that didn’t make him the world’s biggest asshole, he didn’t know what would.

*

Emma tiptoed out of Drew’s room and shut the door as quietly as possible. She’d meant to just peek her head in to make sure he was asleep, but since she couldn’t tell from across the room, she’d had to go in for further investigation.

When her eyes had adjusted to the light and she noticed the drool on his pillow, she had known she was in the clear. She’d been waiting in her room for the last hour and a half until she could know for certain that her son was really out.

Standing stock-still in the hallway, Emma had two choices. Turn to the right and go to her room or turn to the left and knock on Logan’s door. All day, she’d been telling herself that she needed to apologize for how she’d been acting, but now, she felt like she had no choice.

While she had been making dinner and Logan had run to the store for more butter, Drew had told her about an incident that had happened in the garage and then that, about an hour after it happened, Logan had thanked Drew for his advice. And Logan hadn’t stopped there. He had also told him that it was exactly what Andrew would have said. Logan had told Drew that he was a lot like Andrew. She’d never seen her son as happy as he had been while relaying that story to her.

Thankfully, she had been chopping onions at the time, so she had an easy scapegoat to blame the tears on and her son had not picked up on how emotional it had made her. Not just because, now that Logan had pointed it out, she did notice a lot of similarities between her son and Andrew, and it had hit her all over again that Andrew would never witness that. But it also made her face the fact that she’d pushed down so many memories of Andrew that she hadn’t even noticed the way Drew had basically become his mini-me.

The way he told stories. The way he held his fork too high on the neck. The way he got really quiet when he was being introspective, but the rest of the time, she couldn’t shut him up.

She’d repressed all of that. Which in and of itself was not that upsetting. She’d barely made it through dinner and then bowed out of watching a movie, claiming she had to work. Really she just needed to process the guilt she was feeling about not noticing Drew taking after her late husband. She’d forgotten all the little things that made Andrew…Andrew. It wasn’t because she missed him. Maybe, at first, it had been, but now, it was something else. And when that truth had struck her, the missing piece of the puzzle titled “Why I’m Being Mean to Logan” snapped into place and the picture was clear as day.

Knowing that she needed to face this sooner rather than later, she lifted her hand to knock on Logan’s door, but before her knuckles hit the wood, the door opened.

“Hey,” he said, his brow raised.

Well, at least she didn’t have to worry that she was waking him up.

“Hey.” Emma awkwardly lifted her hand. “Sorry to bug you. Can we talk?”

“Yeah.” He nodded and turned to the side so she could enter—unlike the first time she’d shown up at his door in the middle of the night and she’d had to push past him.

She felt nervous about being alone with Logan. Not nervous because of him though. No, she was more nervous like Tina was at the door with Kade. She didn’t want Logan to see that all she really wanted to do was
research
. But as with Kade, she knew they needed to talk. Unlike with Kade, it wasn’t going to be first. Emma was sure that their fooling around had been a one-night-only special event.

Especially since she’d donned a Super Brat cape immediately following the event she so desperately wanted to reenact. After the way she’d been treating him, she wouldn’t be surprised if she had even burned their friendship bridge.

Turning towards him, she started with, “I’m sorry.”

At the exact same time, he asked, “Are you okay?”

They both laughed a little at their déjà vu moment.

Continuing in that spirit, Logan smiled as he said, “Ladies first.”

Thankfully, after that, the ice she’d been sliding on had been broken. That or she had better skates to navigate on it.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry for how I’ve been acting the past few days.”

“It’s okay.” Crossing his arms over his broad, bare chest, he asked. “What’s been going on? Are you okay?” His questions were borne out of palpable concern, making her feel even worse for how she’d behaved.

“Yes… Or no. I’m not sure, but either way, you don’t deserve to deal with it. I’ve been a brat and you’ve been doing nothing but going above and beyond for me and Drew.”

A hard look crossed his face. “Don’t do that.”

Emma was taken aback. This had been going so well, and this bump on her Road to Redemption had come out of nowhere. She had no idea what he was talking about.

“Do what?”

“Put yourself down.” Logan’s tone was flat. The only emotion she could read on his face came from the tense set of his jaw.

“I wasn’t, I was just say—”

“Yes you were,” Logan interrupted. “And you do it all the time.”

If this conversation was a teeter-totter, all of the weight had somehow just shifted to her and she was flat on her rear. So she pushed back.

“No. I don’t—”

Again, Logan cut her off. “Yes you do. Sometimes you do it when you’re apologizing for something. Sometimes you mumble it under your breath to yourself. And sometimes you do it when you’re joking around, making yourself the butt of the joke.”

When he stepped forward, closing the space between them, she tilted her head back so she could maintain eye contact.

“You are not stupid. You are not an idiot. You are not a klutz. You are not flighty. You are not ditzy. You are not dumb. And you, Emma Locke, are definitely not a brat.”

Now that he’d put it like that, she could hear herself saying those things about herself.

“You are smart. You are the best mom there could ever be. You’re funny. You’re creative. You are strong. You are resilient. You are a single mom raising a preteen boy and yet you never complain. You are selfless. You are giving. You are beautiful. That word is overused, but you are truly the epitome of beauty inside and out.”

Emma was floored. Speechless. Logan wasn’t the kind of guy who just said those things. If he said something, he meant it.

He brushed a hair behind her ear, and a shiver skittered down her spine.

“Will you promise me something?” he asked.

After all the amazing things he’d just said, she would’ve agreed to anything. “Yes.”

“Promise me you’ll stop doing that. That you won’t say one more negative thing about yourself?”

Okay, maybe not anything.

Shaking her head slightly, she said in a breathy voice, “I can’t promise I never will, but I’ll try. I’ll really try.”

“Good.” Logan smiled a satisfied grin.

She didn’t know why he cared so much, but apparently, he did.

“So, what’s been going on? I know that it upset you when I insisted on going to pick up Drew with you. I’m sorry if I crossed the line. That being said, if the situation presents itself again, I would do the same thing.”

Emma loved the fact that he stood by his convictions even when he was saying he was sorry. Scrunching her nose, she tilted her head to the side as she teased, “My apology was better.”

“Okay,” he easily conceded, making her heart expand. “So, talk to me.”

Blowing out a puff of air, she sat on the bed as exhaustion swept through her. Dipping her chin, she stared at her now bare left ring finger—the one that, up until two days ago, held her wedding ring. Tears welled in her eyes as she lifted her head and met Logan’s gaze.

“Tonight, while I was making dinner, Drew told me about the talk you and he had. He said that you told him that he was like his dad.”

Logan nodded.

“He really is, right?” She smiled through the tears slipping down her cheeks. “The thing is, I didn’t see it. Not really. I mean, I knew that
physicall
y he resembled him, but the personality stuff, the mannerisms—I’d blocked all of that out.”

“That’s understandable—”

“No.” She shook her head. “It’s not. Not for the reason I did. It would be understandable if it was because I missed him so much that it was just too painful to think about, but that’s not it.”

There was a very good chance that, after she told Logan the reason that she’d repressed her memories of Andrew, his glowing opinion of her would be tarnished. But…it was the truth, and wasn’t that supposed to set her free?

Emma wanted to be free.

“The reason I didn’t see how much Drew was like Andrew and the reason I’ve been treating you so badly the past two days is that I’ve been mad.” She took a shaky breath as tear after tear spilled down her face. “I have been
furious
at Andrew for leaving me. For dying and leaving me alone. And I didn’t even realize it. For some reason, when you said that I wasn’t going to go out at night alone, it brought all the anger I’d been suppressing right up to the surface. Then when you…when you…”

Sniffing, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand and closed her eyes, taking a moment to compose herself. When she looked back up, Logan was handing her a handkerchief.