Page 87 of Wicked Devotion
She leans over the counter as if she’s planning to share something highly confidential with me.
“What if I was drooling, and he saw it?”
“You were.”
Logan sneaks up on her, almost making her slip from the bar stool as he squeezes Lily’s side.
“Great,” she says, staring into her drink before she covers her eyes as if it would make her invisible.
“What?” Logan asks, sitting down next to her. “You were drooling all over my cock just a few days ago, sweetheart. I think we’re past the point of being embarrassed by shit like this.”
“Thanks,” Logan mouths upon seeing the cup of coffee Imade for him, and the smell of bacon drags my focus back to the stovetop, where three different pans demand my attention.
I’m not sure if it’s an attempt to court them both, or if it’s my brain’s way to help ignore my feelings instead of feeling, or God forbid, voicing them.
“What are you doing?”
Lily giggles, but when I turn around, a detailed explanation of today’s breakfast already sitting at the tip of my tongue, I realize she’s talking to Logan.
“Nothing,” he replies, sliding his mug back and forth over the kitchen island.
“Because it felt like some weird attempt at holding hands.”
I prepare our plates, and as I put them on the countertop, Lily is holding Logan’s hand, doing some weird acrobatics with his fingers. Presumably the exact same thing he had done a few minutes prior.
Squeezing the halved lemon in my hand, the juice squirts everywhere but in the bowl of mashed avocado where it belongs. Drops of lemon juice land on the still-fresh cut on my lip, and it hurts less than the image in front of me.
“Weird is fine,” Lily says, looking at Logan with eyes full of adoration. But what delivers the final blow is how he looks at her, his gaze softening when her delicate fingers wrap around his rough ones.
“Max?” Lily calls out to me while Logan has already started eating.
“Don’t wait for me,” I say with a forced smile. “I need to take care of the dishes before everything cools down and gets crusty.”
It’s quiet behind me as I walk over to the sink, and once I hear the sound of silverware against ceramic, I breathe in deeply and let my frustrations out on the greasy pan in front of me, scrubbing it so hard I’m glad it doesn’t have a coating.
But then, someone nudges my hip with theirs.
“You spent all morning preparing breakfast. The least I can do is help you with the cleanup.”
Lily smiles at me, dissipating some of the dark feelings inside my chest. I give her a kiss on the top of her head before I show her where to find a dishcloth.
“It’s attractive,” she says while I rinse out the last pan. “The cooking,” she adds. “You’re the first guy who has ever cooked for me. Apart from my dad.”
“You deserve so much more than that,” I murmur, putting my arms around her once I’ve washed and dried off my hands.
“Don’t overdo it, sunshine. You’ll spoil her rotten. In no time, she’s going to demand foot rubs while being fed sushi.”
“And I would do ithappily,” I say, leading Lily over to the other side of the kitchen island before I sit down to her right.
So, she likes Logan, and Logan likes her. Just like it’s supposed to be.
All this time, I expected Logan to cause problems or even Lily to say that this doesn’t work for her. What I didn’t expect was the jealous beast that rose inside of me, and I won’t let it have the last word. Because Lily and I wouldn’t work without Logan, and Logan and I don’t work without Lily.
We do work, but more like a nuclear plant in an unstable country, which will take down more than a village when it inevitably goesboomone day.
Lily showed me how much I crave stability. Unconditional warmth and at least some sort of predictability, and now that I’ve seen how it could be, I don’t think I can go back to how it was.
“You want to check out the lake today, sweetheart?” Logan asks, looking at me with raised eyebrows while Lily stops chewing her bacon in consideration.
