Walk Through Fire (Chaos #4)(5)

I felt my eyes get big. “You mean, the motorcycle kind?”

He put pressure on my knee as he gave me another grin. “I’m the kinda guy, Millie, who doesn’t acknowledge there is another kind of bike.”

Absolutely for sure, my parents would not approve of this guy.

And absolutely for sure, I so totally did.

“So you have a bike?” I pushed.

“Harley,” he told me.

“Do I get to ride on it tomorrow?” I went on, not bothering to filter the excitement out of my question.

He stared into my eyes.

“Absolutely,” he answered.

I smiled at him and I knew it was big.

His gaze dropped to my mouth and when it did, my legs started tingling again. But this time, the tingles emanated from the insides of my thighs, out.

I looked away and took a sip of beer.

“Millie,” he called.

I kept my gaze to the yard and replied with a, “Hmm?”

“Safe with me.”

My attention cut back to him.

“Never won’t be, babe,” he went on softly. “Not ever. Hear?”

Again, it was like he read my thoughts.

And he knew. He knew he was exactly what he was. That guy parents would freak if their daughter ever said yes to a date with him.

But I knew something else, looking at him.

My parents were wrong.

“Hear?” he pushed when I just stared at him, not feeling tingly.

Feeling warm.

“Yeah,” I answered.

He pressed his knee into mine again and looked to the yard.

“So, you wanna go to Paris,” he noted. “What else you wanna do?”

I looked to the yard, too, and told him.

We stayed out there, sitting on the steps of the deck, our knees brushing, for what felt like minutes at the same time it felt like hours, talking about nothing that felt like everything before the guy he came to the party with stuck his head out the back door and called, “Low, ridin’ out.”

To that, he told me he had to go and we both got up.

He didn’t kiss me.

He walked me into the house straight through to the front door.

There, he ordered somewhat severely, “Your girl is totally shitfaced, so you go nowhere with her and you let her go nowhere. Hear?”

I nodded. “Staying here, Logan.”

He nodded.

Then he lifted a finger as his eyes dipped to my mouth and he touched my mole.

More thigh tingles.

He looked back at me. “Tomorrow, babe. Call you.”

“Okay, Logan.”

He grinned and walked away.

I watched him, feeling a crazy-giddy that had nothing to do with beer, strangely not disappointed he didn’t kiss me.

He’d touched me in a way that felt way sweeter than a kiss.

And the next day, he called me.

CHAPTER TWO

Every Breath He Took

Millie

Present day...

WHAT I WAS about to do was ridiculous.

And possibly insane.

But there I was, about to do it.

It had been a week since I saw Logan at Chipotle.

I still had that bin of spinach and bag of shriveled carrots in my fridge and they were still the only things there. Except that bin of spinach was now not wilted but instead spoiled.

I should throw them out.

I didn’t throw them out.

I worked.

I got fast food (or ready-mades, though no salads).

I slept.

I watched TV.

And I thought about Logan.

I couldn’t get him out of my head. I even dreamed about him.

And these were not good dreams. They were dreams of him walking away. They were dreams of him shouting at me that I was a coward. That I’d thrown my life away. They were dreams where he was pushing a faceless little girl on a swing, smiling at a faceless woman who, even if faceless, I knew she was beautiful and she was definitely not me.

In other words, bad dreams.

Dreams that haunted me even when I was awake.

So now I was here and it was ridiculous, stupid, insane.

Dottie would be pissed if she knew I was here. Twenty years she’d been struggling to pull me out of Logan’s snare, a snare I was caught in even if he didn’t want me there and wasn’t even in my life.

She wanted me to move on. She’d even begged me to move on. At first she’d wanted me to go back to Logan (and she’d begged me to do that too). When she realized that wasn’t going to happen, she’d wanted me to go on a date, to go see a shrink, to go get a life, any life without Logan.

None of this had worked.

Now I couldn’t get him out of my head.

So I was there.

“Shit, damn, damn,” I whispered, looking at the façade of the roadhouse.

It was run-down, near to ramshackle. The paint peeling on the outside. The sign up top that said SCRUFF’S was barely discernable considering it was night and only the neon u and the apostrophe worked.

Strangely, Scruff’s looked much the same as it had twenty years ago when Logan and I used to come here all the time.

Except back then the c also worked, though it had flickered.

There were bikes outside, less of them now than back when this was Logan and my place because it was Chaos’s place, but it was still clearly a biker bar.