Page 18 of Bittersweet

She finished in the kitchen and retrieved an extra blanket from the closet for Kayla. As she moved slowly down the hallway toward her room, the sound of little giggles and water splashing came from the bathroom. It was not something she imagined hearing within the walls of her apartment. Not anytime soon, anyway.

She grabbed a T-shirt and laid it out for Kayla, then sat on her bed, listening to Logan taking care of his daughter. Hearing him sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” with Kayla was the cutest thing ever, and Harper’s heart warmed toward him in his role as a daddy, despite the underlying jealousy over the fact that he had a child with another woman.

When the gurgle of water draining from the tub alerted her that they were finished, she stood and moved just outside the room.

The bathroom door opened, and a tiny little human wrapped head to toe in a towel darted past her into the bedroom.

Logan rolled his eyes as he passed Harper, chasing after his daughter, who had since dropped her towel and was dancing around Harper’s room in the buff. He grabbed the towel from the floor and scooped Kayla up in it, dropping her onto Harper’s bed with a soft bounce.

“I left a shirt for her.” Harper pointed to it.

“Thanks.” He grabbed it and tossed it over Kayla’s head, which had her giggling and trying to find her way out from under it.

She peeked out from beneath it and smiled. “Are the police going to come here too, Daddy?”

Logan glanced over at Harper then back at his daughter. “Nope. You’re safe here, Kay. Daddy won’t let anything bad happen to you.” He helped her pull the shirt over her head and her undies over her bottom, then folded back the covers for her. “You just close your eyes and rest and feel better, sweetie pie.”

When Logan tucked his daughter in and planted a tender kiss on her forehead, Harper’s heart squeezed. It was the sweetest display of love. If only it was their own daughter he was tucking in rather than some old girlfriend’s.

At that crazy thought, she swiftly returned to the kitchen, the smell of Lysol cleaner heavy in the air, and put Kayla’s soiled clothes in her stackable washer and dryer unit. Once that was running, she retrieved a blanket for herself from the small closet in the hallway and laid it over the couch. When she turned around, she jumped at the sight of Logan in the hallway, back against the wall, watching her.

He chuckled softly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Is she okay?”

“I think so. She’s been sick the past few days. That was why I had to leave so suddenly from the restaurant. Our new babysitter, Tanya, wasn’t prepared to deal with a sick child.”

Tanya. The name she’d seen on Logan’s phone. Babysitter, not live-in girlfriend. This fact filled her with a sense of relief.

“Today was the first day Kayla started to feel better, and she was keeping food down … until now.”

“Poor thing.”

“Thanks for letting us stay. I swear, we’ll be out of your hair by sun up.”

Harper took a few steps toward him. “You don’t have to rush out or anything. Have some breakfast before you leave. I don’t mind.”

Logan moved to her, stopping a mere foot away.

The air was crackling between them. Harper’s heart was beating faster, and she tried to will her breathing to slow. She thought for sure her chest was heaving for as fast as her breaths were coming.

He leaned a little closer, his eyes searching hers, his breath caressing her cheek. “We should talk.”

8

He had thought about this moment so many times over the past four years—what he would say, how he would explain—but the words wouldn’t come at first. He wanted to get it right, to make her understand. Sometimes he didn’t quite understand why he’d handled things the way he had, so how would she?

“I don’t know where to start.” He shifted from leaning back on Harper’s couch to sitting forward, trying to think of the best place in the story to begin.

Harper was seated beside him, forearms resting on her knees. “At the restaurant, you started to say you got a call from the women’s prison.”

He nodded. “I think I should go farther back.”

She stared down at her clasped hands. “Okay.”

“My relationship with Naya—that’s Kayla’s mom—was never good. From the start, it was pretty toxic. The only time we weren’t fighting was when we were high.”

Logan paused to gauge Harper’s reaction, but her expression remained the same, so he continued.

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