Page 67 of Kilt Trip

Logan laced his fingers through hers. “Want to tell me about it?”

She took a constricted breath. He looked at her like he understood how much barbed wire was tangled up with these memories, and he’d do whatever it took to ease the pain. That somehow made it easier, even as her eyes began to water.

“He’d tuck me in every night and let me ask one question about anything in the world. He was a scientist, so he’d explain thermodynamics or the planets or whatever complicated thing I came up with to delay bedtime.” People said their dads knew everything, but hers really did. “When I got older, he’d tell stories about marrying my mom under a red arch in the desert or the time I cut a triangle into my bangs when I was three.”

Logan toyed with the end of her hair, a smile on his lips and softness around his eyes Addie wanted to curl into, like a buffer from the sting of her memories.

Her dad had driven her to school on cold days so she didn’t have to wait for the bus and had taken her to minor-league baseball games on firework nights. That a foundation like that could be ripped away had been inconceivable.

“Then my mom died... It was so sudden, you know? One minute we were living this perfect life—one we completely took for granted—and the next, everything crumbled.” Addie searched for words on the slope of the stone archway. “He retreated so far into himself, he stopped living. And he shut me out. He should have gone to therapy—he should have put me in therapy...” Addie picked at her cuticle in a spot close to bleeding. The biting sting hurt. She should stop, but this heartache needed somewhere to go. “He chose his grief over me.”

She resented him for letting her stand in the middle of that field in her cleats and soccer jersey with no one to clap for her but her friends’ parents. For the weighty feeling of fumbling with a self-timer in a prom dress because there wasn’t anyone to take a picture of her and her date. For the emptiness of looking into a sea of people while moving a tassel from one side to the other, knowing no one would remember that moment but her.

Forgotten.

A resounding answer to the question Do we still fit together without her here, our two irreparably broken pieces?

Addie tried to flash a reassuring smile, to prove she wouldn’t cry. Not that Logan would react the way most people did—stumbling through uncomfortable apologies, eyes darting around frantically looking for a distraction. Instead, Logan’s wide stance bracketed her, creating a safe little bubble.

She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “He missed every important moment back then. The one person who should have been there for me wasn’t, you know? I needed him.”

“Addie.” Logan’s voice broke low on her name, and she looked up at the emotion on his face, the hurt he felt for her. Pressing a rough kiss against her temple, he pulled her into his arms. She tucked her face into the hollow between his shoulder and neck, focusing on his hand skimming up and down her arms instead of the bile creeping up her throat.

Tears slipped down Addie’s cheeks. For a mother’s enveloping hug she could no longer curl into. The questions she could no longer ask. What’s your peach crisp recipe? Would I look good with pink hair? How was your day?

For her dad, lost to her in grief and then in miles. For how deeply he’d hurt her with his silence, his retreat, his absence.

She cried for herself, too—the naive child who hadn’t seen it coming. Who’d been too angry to reach out.

Too angry to go home.

Too angry to forgive.

For everything that had been snatched away from her that day. For the growing up she’d had to do all at once. The family she was no longer a part of.

The home she could no longer claim.

Suddenly, Logan’s body encircling hers was too intimate, her heart too exposed. She stiffened and pulled back. He now knew more about her past than anyone besides Devika; the significance was not lost on Addie. The panic of this admission, this slip in her otherwise solitary existence, rose up in her, leaving her disoriented and wrung-out like she’d been tossed around by the sea.

Logan moved beside her and leaned back against the rough rock wall, respecting her need for space. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve lost. For how strong you’ve had to be on your own. But the way he handled things—that’s not a reflection on you. It’s his great loss.”

Sometimes, she thought she should go back there and demand answers or accept that her dad dealt with his grief the only way he knew how. That it wasn’t personal and forgive him. But it was much easier to be hostile and bitter.

Logan hooked his pinkie finger through hers. “I’m here for you.”

The sensation of plunging through open air was worse than any turbulent flight she’d ever been on—one gust away from a crash landing. Relying on Logan was more terrifying than the prospect of reaching out to her dad.

“Enough of this.” She waved at her surely puffy and splotchy face. “Didn’t you promise me dinner?”

“Aye.” He placed one last, lingering kiss on her forehead. “Besides, a dreich evening in moody Edinburgh calls for sheltering inside,” he said and pulled her back into the rain.

While Logan bought food, Addie shut herself into a red phone box. Closing the door dulled the outside street noise, but not the blood pounding in her ears. The lingering smell of urine hung in the air and did nothing to slow Addie’s quick breathing; even if she’d been able to draw in a deep breath, now she really didn’t want to.

Breathing through her mouth, she called Devika on her cell, toying with the damp end of her braid.

“Hey, Ads.”

“I slept with Logan.” Addie’s voice was about three octaves higher than normal. She winced at the panic in her voice. Having sex with him wasn’t concerning. Inevitable, really. But sleeping with him? Staying the night? Telling him about her dad?

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