My feet steered me to the left, and Logan jumped out from behind yet another clothes rack, arms raised and his hands forming claws, causing me to stumble backwards with a scream that made several other shoppers jump and glare at me.
I would have felt bad if I hadn’t been laughing so much at the expression of delight on Logan’s face from scaring me. His eyes and smile were wider than I’d ever seen them, and I wiped away tears of laughter, even though my heart was banging from the fright he’d given me.
“We need to get out of here before we get thrown out,” I said. “And FYI, I may need to buy a few extra pairs of knickers now!”
“So does that lady over there.” Logan nodded in the direction of a woman who was still glaring at us, her hand over her chest as if we’d nearly caused her to have a heart attack.
I mouthed “sorry” to her, trying to at least appear apologetic.
Logan and I had tapped into each other’s inner child, and it made all the drama of our earlier rain-soaked run melt away. As we laughed like idiots on our way to pay for our things, Logan reached for my hand again, pulling me along. It was all part of the silliness, of course, but his touch shot tingles up my arm to my chest, where the tingles settled around my heart, nestling there and filling me with warmth.
Isn’t that what everyone wants in a relationship? Not only someone to trust, to confide in, to talk to when times get rough, but someone you can be an absolute twat with, with no concerns they’re going to think you’re a weirdo? I never realised that was what I wanted before, but messing around in such a way made me see what had been missing from my other relationships. Sure, I’d had fun with my past boyfriends, but not this kind of fun. Not outright, carefree fun that made my stomach ache from the giggling. Again, I wondered if the reason we could be this way was because we’d known each other since we were kids. Maybe we’d regressed together. Logan always reminded me of being a teenager – the strength of my crush on him was strong enough that, even as an adult, it still had the power to make my insides ache as I remembered how many times I’d felt despair because he didn’t even know my name. And even when that changed, the despair never left because I thought he’d never see me as anything special. When he’d revealed he remembered me earlier, little fireworks went off inside me. Yeah, I really had gone back in time.
After another taxi ride back to the B&B, Logan and I dumped our bags in our room then collapsed on the bed again. Now fully clothed, I wasn’t afraid to sit a little closer to him. I let my foot brush against his, and when he didn’t move away, I rested my hand close to his. Not close enough that they touched, but close enough that the option was there, should one of us want to make that move.
While we’d been full of chatter earlier, rushing around so much had taken its toll on us both, and after a short time, Logan fell asleep beside me. Once again, I allowed myself to take in the sound of the rain and Logan’s gentle breaths. I smiled to myself, thinking about the fact that this trip wouldn’t be over for a long time yet. We had the whole night. A whole night together.
I glanced at him, watching his chest slowly rising and falling. I missed being able to see his beautiful eyes, but I loved how his hair had fallen slightly across his face, and how peaceful he looked. My own eyes grew heavy after a while, and with a grin on my lips, I drifted off to sleep too.
**
An almighty rumbling sound caused my eyelids to lift wide open. I shifted my gaze left and right, trying to get a grip on reality. Where was I? What the hell was that noise?
“Sorry.”
I blinked a few times at the sound of the voice. Oh right. Yes. Logan! B&B. Got it.
“Was that your stomach?” I asked, turning onto my side to face him, where he was still lying beside me. He had a similar look to the one he’d had when he’d picked me up. Hair messy, brown eyes a teensy a bit sleepy-looking.
Still gorgeous.
He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah.”
“Jesus. I guess I’d better get up if you’re so hungry that your stomach is rumbling loud enough to wake me up.”
Actually, I was kind of hungry too. I glanced down at my watch. Apparently I’d been asleep for two hours, and it was now six o’clock.
“You should have woken me up sooner,” I said, shifting into a sitting position.
“I’ve not been awake long myself. The stomach rumbling woke me up too.”
As I looked down at him, I chuckled at the fact that he hadn’t moved yet, in spite of his hunger. If my stomach had made that sound, I’d have been headed for the nearest Pizza Hut in seconds.
“Where do we eat around here?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I wondered if we could charm Mrs Kay into cooking for us.”
“No chance. The ‘old bird’ might have a sense of humour but I reckon she’s strict with dining rules. And this is a bed and breakfast. No dinner included.”
Logan groaned. “That means I have to get up and go out in the rain again.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” I mocked. I looked to the window, squinting to see through the ugly net curtain. “Looks like the rain has slowed a bit now.”
There was a lot less thunder and lightning too. The rumbles sounded more distant. Technically, we could have waited it out and still arrived home at a sensible time; more sensible than if we’d stayed for the festival, but I wasn’t complaining. Even though we’d both slept for a couple of hours, and I’d expected to mourn the time we hadn’t spent talking, mostly I was happy we were so comfortable with each other. An early start, plus a change of plans, minus some clothes, plus a shopping trip would have equalled tiredness for a lot of people.
“Ha ha.” Logan smiled as he sat up. “I saw a pub down the road when we came back earlier. Shall we give it a try?”
The pub Logan had spotted was literally at the end of the road, and it looked as worn as the B&B we’d just left. It even smelled a little musty inside, though there were more than a few people in there, drinking. Some sat by the bar, some sat in booths around the edge of the room. The old jukebox in the corner pumped out dreary tracks from the sixties; not even the fun ones that created a good atmosphere. However, Logan’s stomach still sounded like a wounded cow, so we had no choice but to look over the menu instead of hunting elsewhere. We both ordered British pub classics – steak and chips for Logan, and pie and mash for me. With our orders placed and our first round of drinks in our hands, we slipped into one of the booths to wait for our meals.
The Truth-Telling Stage aka And It All Comes Down To You
In spite of the aged look of the pub, the food was particularly good, even if the music choices hadn’t improved much. Two hours after finishing our food, Logan and I remained in our booth, knocking back the bottles of beer we should have been drinking out in the open air.
“All in all, it hasn’t been a bad day,” Logan said, placing his bottle on the table.
“Were you expecting to have a bad day?” I asked. It wasn’t with the nervousness that had accompanied every other question that had the potential to break my heart, though. My confidence had soared with the alcohol. I was by no means drunk, or even close, but the beer had knocked the edge off any lingering doubts I had about whether Logan truly wanted me there.
“No. But… I didn’t think it would be this good considering everything we were supposed to do got ruined.”
I nodded. “It’s been fun.”
My stomach was still hurting from it all – I expected rock hard abs after the amount of exercise they’d had from laughing.
“And it’s not over yet,” Logan added. “You do realise I plan to drink you under the table?”
With a cocky eyebrow raise, I said, “Good luck with that. I have Irish blood in me and we absorb alcohol like a sponge. You will be drunk way before me!”
“We’ll see. Don’t forget I train for this most weekends!”