Loving Logan - Sammi Cee Page 0,11

“Tomorrow is Saturday.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, you’ve never given me your phone number, you told me you don’t work tomorrow, so I won’t see you, and we can’t let the day pass by without at least texting. It is a day to celebrate, after all.”

“Celebrate what?” he asked suspiciously.

“Our one-week friendaversary, of course.”

“You do know you’re ridiculous, right?”

I nodded cheerfully while picking up half of the massive sandwich in front of me. I closed my eyes and moaned as the intoxicating flavors of onion and cheese hit my tongue. When I opened them back up, Logan’s metallic gray eyes had darkened to steel. Before I swallowed my bite, he cleared his throat and walked away, adjusting himself as discreetly as possible as soon as he was in front of the register. Which, in turn, made it necessary for me to adjust my own plumping dick.

I dropped my gaze before he saw me spying on him and happily finished my sandwich. Logan continued to avoid me the rest of my lunch, chatting with others and running out into the dining room to help the waitress. I’d have left annoyed if not for the number stapled to my receipt. Game on.

Chapter Five

Logan

“Mom, Jakey, where are you guys?” I yelled out as I entered my parents’ house after work.

Little feet pitter-pattering down the hall met my ears like the sweetest melody. I’d adored my nephew since the minute he was born, and if you had asked me before if I could possibly love him more, I’d have said no. How wrong I’d been. As he rounded the hall corner, his stumbling legs launched him into the air, but I’d already crouched down in preparation of his full body assault. I knew he loved his grandma, but our connection had strengthened into something special through all the long nights where I held him as he grieved. “There’s my big boy.”

He smiled up at me as he wrapped his little hand around my beard and tugged it in greeting.

“Hi, honey,” my mom said as she passed us, headed for the kitchen.

Based on the direction they’d come from, they must have been playing in the room Mom and Dad had set up for Jakey when Haley found out she was pregnant. Mom’s excitement had bordered on ridiculous, but I’d been thankful that J.J. and Haley had taken the pressure off of me. My parents hadn’t even batted an eye when I told them I was gay—although, given how protective J.J. and I had been of each other, I’d always suspected he’d given them a heads-up to make sure they handled it correctly. He knew how scared I’d been to tell them.

However, as cool as they’d been, Mom had started sharing every story she heard with me about gay couples and children as soon as I’d turned twenty-five. J.J. used to tease her that I needed a man first, but I didn’t have his protection anymore, and these days she’d become obsessed with the idea of me getting married.

“Were you playing in your room, buddy?” Jakey nodded. I stood up with him in my arms and strolled back to a room that I didn’t have to see to know would be pure chaos. Sure enough, toys were strewn about the room. “Let’s clean up so we can head home, okay?” The little guy nodded again and kicked his legs out to be set down. As soon as his feet touched the carpet, he carefully picked up one toy at a time and set them in the containers lining the room. I followed behind him, organizing the blocks into one, the toy boats into another, and the trains into their plastic bin. I figured the little guy cleaned up so well without prodding, so the least I could do was not fuss about where he dropped them.

“Do you and Jakey want to stay for dinner, Logan?” Mom asked from the doorway. From where I hunched on the floor, I turned to politely thank her and decline, but the affectionate way she watched Jakey as he picked up one—always one—toy at a time, I bit back my response.

My parents hadn’t had me until my mom turned thirty, but they’d been trying since they were married at twenty-one. After years, she’d sought the help of a doctor, and then had several pregnancies that resulted in miscarriages. My dad had told her the last time she got pregnant that this was it; if she lost another child, they were done trying. He couldn’t stand