vulnerable and nervous. But Logan wasn’t nervous, and he told me not to be silly as he threw my dress back on the floor and knelt next to my naked body in the back seat.
“You’re gorgeous.” He kissed my breast again. “So freaking gorgeous.”
I closed my eyes and cried out as he moved his lips slowly down my body.
“Once a year is gonna be hard,” he said into my heated skin.
“You’ll date other girls,” I panted as his mouth went lower. “And they’ll help you to forget about me.”
I drag my gaze to his now. “See? Already forgotten.”
Logan doesn’t laugh like I meant for him to. He just starts running his thumb over and over the heated skin just above my knee.
And my traitorous body reacts. God, how it reacts. My nipples feel like they’re going to break through my shirt.
I duck my head and keep reading.
Logan laughed and moved my thighs apart so he could make me come undone again, this time with his mouth. “I doubt that.”
But just because we had sex didn’t change anything. We parted afterwards just as we always had, with hardly a good-bye. Exactly like we said would be best for us.
I thought about Logan all week. I fantasized about his body, and his mouth, and his hardness that made me feel so good inside.
But I was proud of myself. For staying independent. And strong. The exact opposite of Mama and what she’s put me through my whole life.
That weekend, Logan and I met up in town. I fell in love with a ruby ring at the Jane Austen-themed auction thrown by the Darcy Museum. I had no money because I’d used up every ounce of my savings to bail Daddy out of jail that awful night he got caught speeding with an open container next to him in the truck. So I told Logan “Let’s just leave,” because I didn’t want to see who won what I wanted so badly.
But Logan told me he had this. And he used his savings to beat out all the Jane Austen-obsessed women in town, including Mama, and he won me the ring. I became famous for a summer—“Logan Wild won Macey Henwood that beautiful ring at the auction. I think it looks too old for her myself, but I suppose she’ll grow into it when she’s matured a bit. And what a romantic that boy is. The ring could pass for an engagement ring if they were older.”
I smile over at Logan. “Or a wedding band,” I say as he grins.
Two weeks passed with nothing more than a hello between us. But then, Logan’s father had a riding accident, and he went to the hospital. Logan called me, and we made love again. In his father’s barn amongst the haystacks that hadn’t been taken out to the fields because everyone was all distracted. Logan cried afterward. And we slept there all night.
Then his father got better. Mindy Pfeiffer asked Logan to the Christmas Formal. Skyler Atkins asked me. Logan and I both said yes. We went with our dates, and I kissed Skyler afterwards, but I was thinking of Logan’s truck and wondering if Mindy was in it.
“Did you ever stop wondering who was in my truck?”
I stare at his hand on my leg. “I don’t have to wonder anymore. Everything is very, very certain now. Gigi will always be the girl in your truck.”
His thumb stills on my skin. “Mace…do you…”
“Let’s keep reading.”
The words come out shakily despite my best effort to sound strong and neutral. And I return to my diary.
Skyler and I have been dating off and on since. So have Mindy and Logan.
But I’m still wearing the ruby ring. It reminds me of Logan and of our night together.
And out of nowhere, just last month, Mama made me go on the pill. She said if she does nothing else right, she will not let her daughters end up barefoot and pregnant before they’re ready. “Not like me,” she added when I glared at her.
So, off we went to the gynecologist, and I endured the humiliation of the doctor asking me if I was sexually active and me having to say yes. Mama was out in the waiting room, but it was still way too close. I felt like she could take a tube of lipstick and stick it up to the wall and hear my entire conversation.
On the way home, Mama went on for about fifteen minutes about how sex is not