Page 98 of Left In The Dark

“Just to feed the animals. Sleep okay?”

He nods, yawning. “What was that all about?” He gestures to the phone in my lap.

“It was my friend Hector from work. He pulled my dad over for driving drunk again.”

He sits up higher. “So that means he won’t be coming by anymore, then?”

“Hopefully not for a while at least. It will look worse on him in court if he does.” I move the blanket down my legs and he covers me back up, sliding closer.

“I feel like that calls for a celebration.” He runs his fingers down my hip and traces the seam of my underwear leading to my groin.

“We might be celebrating too soon with my luck.”

“You think you have bad luck?”

I tilt my hand from side to side. “About fifty‑fifty. My dad, Hayden, your car being found is one half, and you’re the other.”

“So I’m on the good side?”

“Yes.” I cup a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him in for a chaste kiss.

“I wasn’t always . . . was I?”

“No, but luck has a way of changing.”

“Exactly,” he says pointedly. “And if I have that potential, then so does everything else.”

“Yeah. I guess it does.”

“It’s already starting to with your dad. I’m sure Hayden will get his too.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of losing hope with that one. He’s spreading all kinds of lies about me lately, and when he finds out my dad has no more money left to give, he’ll only get worse.”

“You don’t know that yet. He could do something that’ll have him arrested too soon based off the track record he’s had lately.” Something darkens in his eyes.

“He could, but he somehow always manages to get out of it.”

He looks ahead, flexing his toes out of the blanket. “He has so far, you mean.” When he looks at me again, his smile holds something sinister in it. He’s talking as if he knows something I don’t, but I’m probably just reading into things. I have to be. He’s been more hopeful lately and that’s probably all this is.

“Yeah. I should get to those chores,” I say before my mind can run too far ahead of me. We have been moving away from the dark lately, but out of nowhere a terrible feeling comes over me as he yanks at my arm when I try to leave the bed again. A feeling that tells me I might have mistaken it for moving away, when we were really only taking a small break.

Thirty-Five

Blake

I can’t stop thinking about how Logan looked at me days ago, with a mixture of confusion and worry. He might think he knows my plan, but I’m not sure he has the slightest idea. We need a solution for more than one problem and the idea that came to me after Logan’s dad got arrested again could mean us turning his good luck from fifty to one hundred percent. It could mean a lot of good for us.

I want to move forward like he does, but my idea of moving forward might look a little different from his. The thing is, we can’t be the same people we were before he brought me to his barn. Those two men are gone. The good and bad parts of them. I don’t know if that makes us better or worse now, but it does make us different.

I’m okay with how we are now, though, because we’re together, and I won’t let anyone take me away from something I’m certain I can no longer live without. I refuse to be without the man who makes it easier to breathe in every room I walk into. No one’s ever tried this hard for me, and I’m enjoying spending each day seeing how far that goes.

Logan walks into the room in his uniform, giving me a once‑over as I lift the blanket, spreading my legs and stroking myself.

He licks his lips, walking closer as he removes his utility belt, setting it on the edge of the bed. “What do we have here?’

He unbuttons his shirt and kicks off his pants, and I’m not sure which part of him to focus on more. He’s easily one of the sexiest men I’ve ever seen, and it’s hard to look anywhere else anytime he’s in the room with me.

“Why don’t you hurry up and get naked so you can come over here and find out.” I spread my thighs wider, bending my knees so he can get a better view of my hole.