Page 76 of Cruel Summer

The idea of putting her honest feelings out there made her feel so…

Ugh.

Her feelings were messy, and she did not present as having a messy life.

She didn’t want to…admit that her insides didn’t match the outside, and writing more than just a breezy article would force her to do that.

Logan seemed bound and determined to force her to do that.

It wasn’t just the attraction that she had been forced to acknowledge, but the intensity of the way that he forced her to examine things. The honesty with which he approached it all.

She’d spent the night at Elysia’s the night before she was set to leave with Logan, and she hadn’t even come to terms with the reality of all that time with him. Again.

They were taking the Oregon Trail route, heading all the way from Willamette Valley to Boston.

It wasa lotof him. A lot.

When he pulled up with the gleaming red car, she felt determined, and also a little bit apprehensive.

The time that she had spent by herself seemed so much less intense than the time on the road with him.

She’d had a little bit of reprieve. While she had been working on certain things, she hadn’t felt quite so steeped in the most intense of the emotions.

Suddenly all of the emotional intensity seemed to hit her, and the conduit seemed to be Logan’s blue eyes.

What was she doing reacting to a man’s gaze like that? Like a middle school girl.

“You ready?” he asked.

No. Not really.

“Yeah. Ready.”

He gave her first driving shift. The Ferrari was much smaller than the previous car, with tan leather seats, a spindly gear shift and the kind of power that made her heart race.

This experience might turn her into a car person yet.

There was something wildly unsettling and exciting about that thought. Because it was admitting this was going to change her.

That it already had.

He set the map for Multnomah Falls, and they drove up I-5 for five hours, mountains turning into fields of sheep and clover before becoming mountains again, the Columbia River flowing broad and slow beside them.

It was impossible to miss the falls from the road. Even from the parking lot across the street, the sound was thunderously loud, the water spilling down over a sheer rock face into a pool below, which spilled over again, cutting through lush ferns and moss-covered stones.

There was a restaurant and lodge near the falls and the hiking trails. It had the look of a storybook cottage with a steep pitched roof and walls made of gray stone. They went into the dining area, the back wall all windows and sunlight pouring in, counteracting the heaviness of the stone.

They sat and ordered, and when their food arrived, Logan looked at her.

“How’s Ethan doing?” he asked.

“Good.” She nodded. “He’s doing good. Probably doing things I wish he wouldn’t do, but every time I talk to him, he’s happy.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“And Chloe?” she asked.

“I hope not partying too much. But she is my kid. So it’s hard to say, and I can’t be too judgmental.”

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