What a complete, freaking idiot she'd been for coming here. She should have just gone to the gala, avoided him as best she could, and gotten on with her life. What was Logan Grant?
Everything, her mind whispered back, and she slouched against the cement wall, hoping that if she hit her head hard enough she'd be able to crush out the thought altogether.
She kicked out her feet, but something rolled beneath her heel and after rustling under her skirt for a minute, she found a worn, white ball, coated in orange dirt.
How had the janitors missed this?
With another stab to the heart, she realized that they most likely hadn't. Logan had probably left this here, a calling card of his trespassing.
She brushed the dirt from the ball’s surface and channeled her inner twelve-year-old, bouncing the ball against the metal cage and catching it again. Over and over, until the shaking of the metal rungs was the only sound playing over in her m
ind.
Swish, clunk, swoosh. Swish, clunk, swoosh.
Plunk.
She looked toward the foreign sound. It was muffled, but she knew she hadn't imagined it.
It didn't stay a mystery for long. With those broad shoulders, Logan wasn't much for staying hidden. He was striding down the steps, dressed to the nines in a penguin suit more fit for Bruce Wayne than for a sports star.
She closed her eyes and listened to his plodding steps as he rounded the stadium and finally jumped onto the field.
It was a long moment before she willed herself to open her eyes, though it didn't stop the rest of her body's traitorous response. Her heart thundered behind her ribs, her head pounded, and other, less mentionable parts of her body responded in kind.
Wasn’t this what she'd wanted? Hell, what she'd expected when she walked through the stadium gates? Still, she wasn’t sure if her gut was twisting in anger or excitement, but the end result was that she felt sick.
She would be angry, beyond angry, really, for everything he'd done.
But even now, she didn't care. And maybe that's why she felt sick. Because, despite everything, she was just happy to see him.
At last, she opened her eyes and faced him. Whatever was going to happen here, she was going to face it head on.
"You're not at the gala," he said, leaning his hip against the chain link fence and crossing his arms over his chest.
"Neither are you," she said.
"No. I'm not. I went, but I didn't stay."
"Did they have those little shrimp puffs?"
"What?" He looked for a moment like she'd caught him off guard, but then he nodded. "Yeah."
"I love those things." She tossed the ball at the fence again, but when it bounced back, her hands were shaking too hard for her to catch it. Instead, it plopped into her lap and sent a cloud of dirt over her gauzy, black skirt.
She stared at it for a moment, waiting for him to take the lead and explain himself. When he didn't step up, she said, "So what are you here for?"
He walked toward the bench and sat beside her. "You."
She wanted to scoot away, to spit at his feet and tell him that he'd had his chance. He'd had more than enough chances. But she let herself down. She sat there, breathing in the spicy smell of his aftershave, and didn't move an inch. Not turning to stare him in the eye might have been a small victory, but it was miniscule, at best.
"I came to make things up to you. And to apologize. But you weren't at the gala or your house, or the hospital, or at Shay's." He paused. "Why'd you come here?"
She wasn't the one who needed to explain herself. She didn't have to tell him a damned thing. She didn't have to...
"I've been coming here a lot. To think things over."
Was every shred of dignity in her system a thing of the past? Seriously, why could she not keep her shit together?