Page 43 of Destined for the Cowboy

He looked back at the photo on the wall. He’d been nearly twenty when it was taken, two years out of the system, and had been working with Bud and living here for nearly that long. It was just before he’d left for his military service, and he’d been uneasy about leaving. But Bud had assured him he would still have a place here when he came back, and asked a friend to take the photo for both of them.

He wasn’t sure he could comprehend the depth of her kind of pain, but the passing of the man smiling at him in that picture had been the worst thing he’d ever felt. But the only way to avoid it would have been not to stay when Bud had offered that back room. And if he’d walked away, he would not have the life he had now. It had all been given to him by this man, who indeedhad treated him like no one ever had before. Like he imagined it must feel to have actual family.

“It’s worth the price,” he murmured, focused on the kind, warm brown eyes of the man who had never lost patience with him, even in his most edgy moments. “I’d probably be dead by now if he hadn’t come along.”

“Then I’m very, very glad he did.”

His gaze shot back to her face. There was no mistaking the sincerity he saw there. She was glad he was alive. He didn’t know how to interpret that, but he couldn’t deny the truth of it.

“And,” she added, in that same undeniably sincere tone, “I’m certain he would be very proud of you today.”

“I…I’d like to believe that.”

“Believe it,” she said, almost insistently. “You’re an important part of Last Stand, Logan.”

He had a place here, yes. He didn’t think much beyond that, because it was already more than he’d ever expected or hoped for. Tris tilted her head slightly, in that way that he knew meant curiosity. He sensed a question coming. But then, in the instant before it did, she gave a shake of her head and stopped.

“What?” he asked.

“None of my business,” she said.

“Don’t I get to decide that?” He acknowledged a bit of wonder that he was pushing her to ask him a question when he usually dodged such things.

“But the question itself might be…distressing.”

“I think I can deal,” he said dryly. “Snowflakes don’t generally last long in Texas.”

She laughed. Then, still smiling, she went ahead. “I was just wondering about your name. Is it Logan Fox? Mrs. Baylor said you were very young when they…found you.”

He went still. Wondered at the juxtaposition of the question now, when they’d been talking about the only other person he’d ever explained this to. When he didn’t speak, she did.

“Told you it was none of my business.”

She sounded almost sad that she’d asked, and for some reason that made him answer. “I was somewhere between a year and a year and a half old, they told me.” He grimaced. “If I knew my name, if I even had one, I couldn’t say it. So, I got named by circumstances.”

“Circumstances?”

He braced himself, then went on with what he had no doubt would end her curiosity for good.

“I was found because someone stopped to look at a fox who was digging in a dumpster from a company named Logan Refuse.”

He grimaced again. It still stung, as ridiculous as it was, after all this time. She was staring at him. No doubt trying to think of a way to get away from him now that she knew the truth.

But then she was smiling. And then it was nothing short of a grin. “Someone,” she said, “was both observant and clever.”

He blinked.

“It’s a great name,” she added. “Strong. They must have seen even then what a man you would become. I can’t picture you as anything else.”

“My mother,” he said carefully, “threw me away. Not just because I was a baby she didn’t want, or she would have done it when I was first born. But she kept me for a year and a half, then threw me away. I wasn’t just a baby she didn’t know or want, I was the kid she kept until she realized—”

He cut himself off from finishing with the too painfully familiar “she hated me,” when he realized his volume was growing.

“Until she realized she wasn’t good enough for you?” she suggested. “Now that I can believe. And the loss is definitely hers.”

Logan stared at her, sure he was probably gaping but unable to stop. He’d known it his entire life, that he wasn’t just a baby his mother hadn’t wanted, but that she had kept him long enough to grow to hate him and want to be rid of him enough to throw him in a dumpster on her way out of town. When he was a kid, he used to dream that she hadn’t even stopped the car, but had just rolled down a window and tossed.

Until she realized she wasn’t good enough for you…

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