Then again, she couldn’t seem to win, she thought as she headed for the lockers to retrieve her bag. Her head was now swimming with thoughts of Logan, despite her best intentions.
She didn’t feel strong enough to face him again, and yet this last week had been horrible without him there.
To talk to, to share a laugh, or simply to go for a run.
He’d called her and texted her. And she still didn’t know how she’d had the strength to delete each and every one of his messages.
To pretend that she didn’t care when everything in her was screaming to go to him.
She hadn’t been able to bring herself to attend the ball, afraid that she would crumble and fall back into Logan’s arms if she saw him. Not that she knew he’d have wanted her.
Sorting her uniform out and gathering up her belongings, Kat headed for the atrium, calling out greetings on autopilot to various colleagues, even as her head swam with thoughts of one man.
She’d steeled herself for the gossip the day after the ball, of course. Telling herself that she was prepared to hear he’d left with someone else—she’d known from enough other nurses that they’d been intending to make a beeline for him that night. And Kat had told herself that her heart hadn’t lifted when she’d heard instead that he’d left early. Alone.
It made no difference to her. Whatever she and Logan had had, or hadn’t had, was over—and that was certainly for the best. There was only a finite number of times she could repeat that last part to herself without her brain finally realising it wasn’t true.
She missed him. So badly that it made her lungs hurt to simply breathe.
So much for coming to Seattle to keep her distance from memories of Carrie. Of loss. She’d ended up meeting Logan and letting herself get attached all over again. But it could only end in hurt.
Even if he wanted more from her, too, ultimately he would want things she could never give him.
Like a family of his own.
Thrusting aside the stab of pain, Kat hauled open the door to the atrium and shot through...only to practically collide with a large, well-built, painfully familiar figure standing just off to one side.
‘Logan?’
Half an exclamation, half a whisper. Her mind raced whilst her internal organs appeared to be playing a frenzied game of musical chairs.
‘Kat.’ He looked up, his expression lighting up for just a fraction of a second before he began to distance himself.
And she hated it. She hated it with a vengeance.
‘You’re not on duty today, what are you doing here?’
He eyed her strangely and, too late, she realised that she’d given herself away. That he would realise she’d been tracking his duties, moving her own shifts so that they didn’t coincide with his.
For a split second something flashed in his eyes, chasing away the guarded expression. It told her far more than she wanted to know, that she revelled in that fact.
‘I’m helping out at the grotto.’
‘Oh?’
‘They saw me in that tutu at the Christmas dash so I’m playing an elf,’ he deadpanned.
‘Oh.’
Belatedly, it occurred to Kat that he was teasing her. Her lips seemed to want to curve up at the corners of their own volition. All her carefully repositioned armour crumbled in an instant.
‘You’re not going to the grotto at all, are you?’ she challenged, chuckling.
‘I am,’ he assured her. ‘But I’m playing Santa Claus.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know. You never said.’
As if she had a right to know what went on in his life. So much for trying to keep her distance.