Page 3 of Unmistakably Us

“Fuck that shit.” Logan cursed himself for even entertaining the idea of getting in deeper than he already was or some shit. When they were both at the Reids, they gravitated toward each other, but to take it beyond that was a fool’s mission.

Yes, she would fuck him, and they’d both enjoy every single second of it, but Logan liked his ladies a little less, well, ladies. Zero maintenance was ideal. January Thorne…Domino, as she went by at the club, was certainly not low maintenance.

She would be slummin’ to do Logan. That truth didn’t bother him one bit; it was simply a fact. Logan Chapman was not the “take home to the family” type. He was the more of the “let him ride you to the best orgasms of your life in a cheap motel and part ways” type. But that was not how he should play it.

He needed to be more “boy next door” instead of “All American Nightmare.” Which was where he took a wrong turn tonight. But January short-circuited some important part of his brain. Domino, he could handle. Raunchy, cynical, and best of all, disconnected. Just like him, a perfect fractured match. But January, she was a different story all together.

The second she dropped the heels and stepped off stage, she was none of those things. Instead, she was wholesome with wide-eyed innocence, adorkable, and hopeful. That was the one that threw him off his game.

Hopeful. This chick was doffing her clothes and gyrating on stage for fucking truckers, but when she put on her street clothes, there was hope and wonder in her eyes. The fractures were still there, he was sure of it, but her hope overrode all that. There was something about it that he wanted to touch…and taint, at the same time.

Every word he spoke to her was the truth, but it wasn’t the best way to achieve his end goal. Actually, my mid-goal. I don’t even have an end game yet. Hell, I don’t have any goal at all except, fuck if I even know. That bothered him. He thought for sure by the time he made it to a Reid family barbecue and tasted Mrs. Reid’s famous pecan pie, he’d know exactly what he wanted, and how to get it, but he was wrong.

Both Michael and John had been inviting him to one gathering or another; that’s how he’d met January. But he viewed the big ones, the barbecues, differently. He wanted a genuine invitation, and John’s and Michael’s were only because they worked together.

While he wanted an in, an in like that wasn’t really an in. It was an obligation brought on by social convention. Everyone would know it, and he would be viewed differently than everyone else. Been there, done that, and got the fucking broken bones to prove it.

Logan wanted to be accepted and embraced by them, and that’s where January came in. If she invited him too, well, that wasn’t a social obligation but a genuine invite, and the vibe would be different. Then, he would get to see everyone with their guard down and maybe that view would help him know where he was heading and what he was doing.

He was sick and fucking tired of always being on the outside looking in. Everyone seemed to have such perfect lives. Perfect women, perfect jobs, perfect…everything. Not him. Nothing in his life had ever been perfect. Perfectly horrid maybe, but never picture-perfect like the Reid’s extended family.

Hell, look at Michael.The man was born into perfection. Taken in by parents who treasured him. He had a few bumps in the road but had a smoking hot wife, and he played in a rock band, for fuck’s sake. How? How does someone luck out like that when I had to live with a monster? Monsters. No one was there to save me but me.

The more Logan thought about it, the angrier he got. Why didn’t someone care enough about him to get him away from a shitty situation like Michael’s mother had?

Anger made him want to fuck even more, but looking at his watch told him January would be long gone by now. “Guess I’ll need to handle it myself,” he breathed as he unlocked the door to his weekly rental. It was basically a hotel room with a mini kitchen, but it served his purpose.

Tossing his keys on the dresser, he was practically naked by the time he hit the bathroom. Logan stroked his cock slowly while waiting for the water to heat up. After testing the temperature, he stepped in and let the lukewarm liquid soothe his tense muscles.

The pictures running through his mind of January had him pumping his fist harder and harder, dragging his hand all the way off the head and wrapping around the heavy gage piercing there before returning to the root. Faster and faster, he pumped.

He gritted a “fuck” through his teeth when he realized his thoughts were of January and not Domino. That didn’t slow him down. He just twisted harder as he came up toward the piercing. He dropped his head and practically dug his teeth into his own shoulder to dull the intensity that was barreling down on him.

“January,” her name escaped his lips despite his efforts to the contrary. He grunted as he came into his own hand in a sleazy hotel room shower.

“Fuck!” Logan cursed himself and her and his no-good sperm donor and Michael and John and Florida and everything that led up to this moment in his life. He cursed his biological mother for leaving him with the poorest excuse for a father a boy could have before he was even a week old. And he cursed Lucinda for not squirreling him away with another family the way she did her biological kid. I guess I was only her son for as long as she was his wife.

But mostly, he cursed himself for thinking poetic shit about a chick who probably wouldn’t give him the time of day and would likely spit on him if she knew who he was and how he ended up in the Panhandle in the first place.

---