Page 38 of The Lost and the Found

Hayden

A routine was establishedafter that.

Logan drove me everywhere. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he didn’t have a job, considering he was spending so much of his time playing my chauffeur. But then I remembered him mentioning his last name at the law firm he worked at, and even if I didn’t know much about how that worked, I knew enough to know that he was higher on the corporate ladder than most.Maybe he set his own hours. I didn’t know, and I didn’t ask.

All I knew was that when I got out of school, he was there. And when I got off of work, he was there. A constant presence, so reassuring that it was hard to keep my walls up around him.

Logan was slowing gaining my trust, and by the time we got through the second week of our routine, I finally worked up the courage to asked him in for coffee. I recognized his hesitation in the enclosed space of the car, and it was on the tip of my tongue to retract the invitation when he turned off the ignition and turned to me.

“I would love to.”

I smiled in the dark, thankful he couldn’t see how him accepting the invitation had made me happy. We got out of the car and walked quietly to my apartment. Logan waited patiently while I fumbled with my keys, trying to find the correct one. I almost dropped them and that would have been embarrassing. I didn’t want him to know that having him back to my apartment was making me nervous.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that we would be doing more than drinking coffee. Logan hadn’t kissed me in almost three weeks, and I missed him. I missed his kisses. I kept expecting he would do it again when he picked me up from school, or when he dropped me off at my apartment, but he remained so polite throughout the whole exchange, I was left wanting.

If his goal was to drive me crazy, he succeeded.

When I finally got the door open, I waited for him to walk in before I closed it and locked it behind us. Then I proceed to do my nightly routine of checking the place out, and I didn’t stop until I had all the lights on and confirmed that everything was exactly as I had left it this morning.

I could feel Logan’s eyes on me the whole time, making my movements awkward. I wished he wouldn’t look at me so intensely. Or that I didn’t feel his gaze on me so earnestly.

“Sit,” I said, pointing to my old couch. He did as I asked, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

I didn’t want to know the meaning behind his amusement. I walked into the kitchen and started a pot of decaf. I stood there and watched the brown liquid drip down, while the smell of coffee wafted in the air.

This apartment was old, so there was no such thing as an open-concept floorplan when it was built. The kitchen was closed off from the living space, so he couldn’t see me from the couch—a small reprieve, because I had never felt so unsure of myself, so clueless, than I was when I was in his presence.

Logan looked like the kind of man who dealt with women with a world of experience. And even though I had been on my own since I was sixteen, in front of him, I felt a bit naïve.

I didn’t like it.

And I was hoping for him to kiss me again.

I pulled two mugs from the cabinet, one chipped, the other perfect, and poured the steaming hot coffee in each mug. “Do you take cream or sugar in your coffee?” I called out.

“No, black is fine.”

I walked out, one mug in each hand. I handed him the one without the chip. He took it, his hand touching my hand, his eyes meeting mine.

I sat down on the couch next to him, leaving at least a foot of space between us. “There’s a function this coming Saturday,” Logan said after some moments of silence.

I looked at him, unsure if he was just making conversation or whether he was asking me. “Okay?”

His lips twitched. “Will you come with me? It’s a work thing, so I can’t get out of it. Having you there will make the usually boring event… less so.”

I scowled and he grinned. “Are you saying you need me there as entertainment?”

“If that’s how you want to look at it, then sure.” He playfully poked my side. I glared at him, and his smile widened.

“Hmm, sounds tempting. But I have to work on Saturday. You know that. And besides, I don’t have anything to wear.”

“Work the morning shift.”

I frowned. “I work at a bar. There is no such thing as a morning shift. We don’t open until three.”

He set the mug down on my thrift store coffee table and turned to me. We were touching now, his shoulder touching mine, his face inches away. So close that if I moved forward even an inch, I could kiss him. I didn’t think he would be opposed to that, considering he had been initiating all the kisses we shared before.

He slipped a strand of blonde hair that had fallen from my ponytail behind my ear, his eyes soft. “It’s okay to take some time off and do something fun, you know.”

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