“I didn’t mean with you in here. Get out.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he takes a step closer.
“Rose Monroe. It’s been awhile,” he says, his eyes traveling up and down my body, stopping at my chest. Everything is on display. My cheeks heat under his gaze.
I remember when I was under the spell of that very gaze. Whenever he looked at me I would swoon.
The last time we saw each other we were making out. What we had didn’t last long. We were over before we even had the chance to get started. It was the night of prom. My sister was out with his brother, Sam. It was the same night she found out Sam had cheated on her. I was at home with Thomas and had gotten a text from her, and when I met her out on the football field she had been sobbing. She started the night looking like a princess and by the end she had black steaks of makeup smeared down her face. It was awful. That night I learned that Logan boys cheat and we made a pact never to trust one. I ignored Thomas after that and I haven’t seen him since. Not until this very moment.
“Not long enough,” I say.
He screws up his face, a look that’s a little confused and a little defiant. “If I remember right, you’re the one who ditched me. So what’s with the attitude?”
“I’m late meeting my sister,” I say and try to push past him, but he puts his large body in front of me, blocking the way.
God he smells good. My body wakes up at the scent of him and reacts in a way that’s a total betrayal to mine and Fiona’s pact. I try to pretend like he has no effect on me, but my chest is heaving—and it doesn’t go unnoticed. Thomas flashes me an infuriatingly confident smile.
“Missed a spot,” he says, and rubs his thumb across one of my breasts as if trying to scrub something off my shirt.
I should step away from him. I should slap him. But instead I gasp and just stand there and let him do it. The scrubbing becomes a caress and then he stops and we are both looking into each other’s eyes.
When I hear pots and pans banging together in the back of the building, the spell is broken and I step away from him.
“I think I got it,” he says in that cocky way of his.
I roll my eyes and push past him, as I finish buttoning up my wet shirt. When I get to the front of the store I look out the window to see if my sister has shown up. She hasn’t. But parked right out front is a shiny blue sports car with a personalized license plate that says T Logan.
My jaw drops. “You’re the douche-canoe who ran me off the road?” It’s the same car that cut me off this morning, spilling coffee all over myself, leading to this rather exposed situation right now.
He chuckles. “I’ve been called a lot of things by women, but I have to say that’s a first. And you’re the person who was driving so slowly in front of the high school that a snail could pass you. What were you doing?” he asks, raising an eyebrow suggestively. “Reminiscing on old times?”
I flush, the memory of his lips and hands all over me the night of prom coming to my mind. Lips and hands and pure pleasure. Except for what came after that. “Remembering the bad ones actually.”
The most potent memory from those times is one that still haunts me. Picking up Fiona while she was crying so hard she could barely breathe, wrecked after being cheated on by her then boyfriend. The Logans are an institution here in Hawthorne—rich, handsome, and they own half the town. None of that mattered to Fiona, and she and Sam were so head-over-heels in love it was a little gross. At least she thought they were, until she caught Sam and Lacy together behind the school gym.
Fiona still doesn’t know this, but that night I was with Thomas. We’d been flirting for a while, and that night we took the next step. I’d snuck out to see him and we were together when I got her call. I’d driven to get her even though I didn’t have a license, which landed me a grounding that lasted for pretty much the rest of the year. But it was worth it. If I hadn’t left to pick up Fiona, I might’ve gone too far with Thomas and fallen in love the way she had. I might’ve suffered the same fate as my sister, broken and miserable.
Him standing here is a reminder of what we almost had, what we almost did. It’s the icing on the top of this shitty day. “And thanks to you, this shirt is probably ruined.”