Page 57 of What It Means To Be Found

I didn’t catch all the words he signed, but thankfully I could get the gist.

“What do you like to read?” I asked him vocally while also signing my question the best I could. Beck smiled brightly at my sentence in ASL but didn’t make a big deal out of it. Logan’s gaze smoothed a little bit at the movement of my hands before he started responding.

I didn’t know the signs he used, though.

The pinch in my brow gave me away.

“Adam likes science fiction too,” Beck spoke up, helping me out, “You and he have probably read some of the same stuff.”

I nodded along and, after a couple of minutes of listening to Beck and Logan chat about some science fiction book they read, we made it to the shop. I walked inside without hesitation, determined to find the romance section in hopes of replacing the book I lost. Thankfully, the romance section was large and in the back of the store. It was a cute little shop, with clean lines and feminine plants and art, clearly intending to target women.

I sighed a breath of relief when I found the book, pulled it off the shelf, and flipped through the pages before tucking it to my chest. Now that I had what I needed to replace, I decided to browse and see which copies I wanted to buy for myself.

“Anything good?” Beck asked, catching up with me. I glanced behind her to see Logan following behind, and I could feel the blush stain my cheeks as I stood in front of the smutty romances.

“Always,” I replied, holding up the book I grabbed first. “I lost Courtney’s copy of this, so I need to replace it.”

Beck’s eyes widened, “Oh no! That one is so good, too. That’s nice of you to get her a new one.”

“She hasn’t asked for it back, so I don’t know if she knows I lost it—” Logan’s dark eyes staring pointedly at the book I held up made me pause my sentence for half a second “—But I still feel bad for losing it.” His ears started to turn pink before he tore his gaze away and started to look around at all the spines we stood in front of.

Odd.

“I should just get my own copy of that too,” Beck agreed, finding the book, and grabbing one for herself. She then pulled her phone out of her back pocket, which was buzzing with a call. After tapping on her phone, she held it in her hand and spoke without placing it near her ear.

“Hey, Gram,” Beck spoke. It was so cool that she could Bluetooth her phone to her hearing aids like that. “What’s up?” Soon, she was mindlessly wandering off as she spoke on the phone to her grandmother, and Logan and I were left alone.

This was the first time we had been alone since the night he snuck through my window. Since we kissed for the first time. Since we slept together.

The image of him on top of me and gripping my waist made heat scorch my veins. I didn’t have time to try to mask it before Logan’s dark eyes landed on me, as he pulled a random spine off the shelf. He gave the back of it a quick glance, before shelving it and looking at me again.

I swallowed, clutched Courtney’s book to my chest, and promptly turned to face away from him to stare at the books. I wasn’t reading any of the spines, but I was too embarrassed to try to talk to him when it was painfully obvious from my blush that I couldn’t look at him without thinking about sex.

A couple of moments of silence passed, where I only felt his presence next to me but didn’t look at him, and my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out and glanced down, before seeing a text from Logan. I looked up at him because he was less than a foot away from me, only to see him pull a romance novel off the shelf and read the back of it. As if he didn’t just send me a text to read.

I glanced back down at my phone.

Logan: I want to feel you underneath me again, Eloise.

I sucked in a sharp breath at the words, my face hot with what I was sure was a bright red blush. He still didn’t look at me, as if he didn’t just send me a very spicy text with our friend nearby.

I just stood there, reading the text again and again, trying way too hard to regulate my breathing.

Then my phone buzzed with a second text, making my heart thump in anticipation as I quickly tapped on his next message.

Logan: I want to hear the sounds you make when I’m inside you.

I gasped and squeezed Courtney’s book in my other hand. I barely lifted my head to finally look at him when suddenly, Logan was crowding my space. I blinked as I backed away from him. My butt hit the corner of the bookshelves in the romance section, and I held my breath when Logan reached up behind me to pull another book off the shelf, making it look like he was genuinely interested in the spines and not trying to drive me insane with his presence. He took another step, our legs brushing against each other as he rested one of his large arms on the shelf beside me, while the other held the book for him to browse.

He caged me in with his arms.

Logan had trapped me in an arm cage, a move that was tried-and-true in any romance novel ever.

“Beck will be back any second,” I whispered, inhaling Logan’s deodorant or cologne or whatever it was, and struggling to remember that others were nearby.

Logan nodded his head once, putting the book back as if he wasn’t the one who sent me those texts moments ago.

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