Page 46 of Winter's End

I can’t honestly say how long we sat there, still and silent, as he held me tightly to his chest. The beat of his heart, strong and steady, thrummed through me like a Tibetan meditation bell.

Before I could get lost in his hold for the rest of the day, I stood from our protective cocoon and moved to grab my coat from the bar stool.

The peaceful moment couldn’t last forever. I had to work a shift at Bourbon & Blues, and Logan had his own life to tend.

“I have to work tonight,” I explained as he followed me to the door. “But thank you. This was really … helpful.”

He crowded my space in the doorway, tilting my head to look up at him. He brushed the hair back from my forehead and placed a tender kiss in its place.

“We’ll do it again soon,” he said seriously, before that obnoxious smirk stitched back into place. “You don’t have your shit together yet, Princess Peach.”

A flush heated my cheeks at his insinuation, the not-so-distant memory of him tasting me on his fingers heating my core.

Instead of giving him the satisfaction, I scoffed and playfully pushed him out of the way, reaching for the doorknob to leave.

“If you guys do all go out again …” After a long silence, Logan finished. “Let me know.”

A small smile traced his lips before he closed the door behind me. Our afternoon of mutual trauma and solidarity put a fresh spring in my step as I traipsed down the hall.

CHAPTER 13

SHANE

All my love,

Brenda.

I stared at the words that had all but shattered my faith in my father.

Love letters, about twenty of them, laid scattered across my coffee table, their forbidden words taunting me with a pain I’d never felt before.

Unless there were multiple Brendas in Dad’s life, the woman who had hit Mom in the car accident—losing her life and ruining Mom’s in the process—was my father’s secret lover.

The letters spanned across years—as far back as when Shiloh had been a baby. If I hadn’t had known who’d written them, they would have captured a beautiful love story.

Instead, the pretty words on paper were tainted by the ink of betrayal.

I wondered if Mom knew. If the sadness and pain she had been carrying all these years wasn’t the result of a shattered femur, but from the infidelity of my father.

My heart felt like it was being blendered in my chest, and I fought the urge to throw up and cry, not necessarily in that order.

I didn’t know whether to burn the letters in a massive bonfire at the cabin, or to have them copied and framed and leave them in Dad’s office to expose his poor choices.

I had been in the middle of studying for my finals when curiosity got the better of me and I took out the box I had left in my truck a few weeks before. At first glance, I had thought they were letters between my parents; they met in university and had been in a long-distance relationship for a few years before Mom moved to Cascade Falls.

I nearly fainted when I read the signature at the bottom.

My father, the man I’d looked up to as a guide my whole life, was a cheating son of a bitch.

I felt a newfound empathy for Winter. Her parents disappointed her constantly; mine never had. If this is what it felt like regularly, I would have left that family long ago.

Hope was something I usually had in spades, but I was losing it. Graduation was less than a month away, and my primary job prospect was a company sure to burn to the ground in the next couple of months, if Kellan and his team had anything to do with it. The secure suburban family existence I had always known was now just another foundation built on nothing but lies.

My feelings for Winter were getting stronger by the day, and I couldn’t find a way to take that step with her; not without the fear my only constant tether in this fucked-up world could be snipped. Snow was getting better with being vulnerable, but would she be that way with me?

Did she even feel the same way about me?

Drew’s solitary presence brought some peace to my world, at least. I’d call him the Batman to my Robin, but he was so much more than a sidekick. Winter, Drew, and I could be a trio, like theThree Musketeers,but as … more.

---