“So what’s with the glum face?” Angela let go of his hand and hoisted herself up to sit beside him on the bed, her short legs dangling, leather high-heeled boots knocking together. Logan was only wearing thick socks, but his feet brushed the linoleum floor.
“Dunno. I’m worried about Connor and Seth. Jenna said they’re fine. She’s been going back and forth. I tried to stay with Connor, but he didn’t want me there.” Logan ached from it, but it wasn’t about him. If Connor needed Jenna right now, that’s who he’d get.
“Yep, just getting their walking papers like you have.”
“Good. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I’d say it’s a touch of shock.”
“Yeah. That’s what the doc said.”
“Taking an unexpected ice bath will do that. Not to mention seeing your son and your man go under. That must’ve been the fright of your life.”
His son. His man.
A thick, sticky burst of emotion punched him in the gut. Logan wanted it to be true. He wanted a family. This family with Connor and Seth.
“I never thought I could love a man like this.” He flattened his hand on his chest, almost able to feel the scars through the cheap cotton sweatshirt. “With—with my whole heart.” He had to watch his mouth and not give the game away to Angela.
But it didn’t feel like a game at all anymore.
He shuddered violently. “I thought they were gone.”
Angela slipped her arm around his shoulders with a surprisingly strong grip, and Logan let himself lean into it. Then he found himself talking again, his brain shouting to be careful.
“I can’t get it out of my head. Seeing them disappear.” He rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, nervous energy pinballing through him. “They were there, and then they were gone. I don’t think I was ever that scared before. Even fighting in the desert. Maybe that’s just faded over the years. But this was like I was choking. Sometimes I have trouble breathing because of the accident I had, and it was like that, but so much worse. I thought I was gonna die too if they were dead.”
Saying it out loud was fucking scary, but it felt good at the same time.
“You yanked out your man and jumped right in after your boy like a big darn hero.”
His brain replayed it: Connor being gulped up by the lake, Seth running after him—not knowing to drop to his stomach to spread out his weight since he grew up in Georgia without ice. The bone-deep relief when he’d pulled Seth out and the terror that Connor would be out of reach.
He snorted. “I’m no hero. I’m the reason Connor ran out there in the first place. I messed up. Again.”
When Logan had taken a huge breath and plunged into the water to get Connor, part of him had thought it must be a nightmare. The idea of losing Connor—of failing him so badly, of never having a chance to be the dad he needed—was un-fucking-bearable.
Angela squeezed his shoulders. “Show me a parent who says they never messed up, and I’ll show you someone crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”
Logan had to laugh, which felt good. Then the guilt crashed in. He’d fucked up and Connor and Seth had almost died. He shouldn’t be laughing.
Angela said softly, “That poor boy, crying for his momma. That’s a hurt you can’t fix.”
“If I’d been there the night she died, maybe I could have saved her. We were breaking up, and…”
Angela sighed. “Life sure can be a kick in the crotch. You wish you could turn back time and make it right somehow. But the only thing you and Seth can do is be there and give him all the love in the world. And I know you will.”
Will we? Can we? Logan wanted it so bad, the constant ache inside him surging and taking his breath away. It wasn’t only that he didn’t want to be alone. He wanted Seth—and Connor. He wanted to make a family with them.
A real one.
“We haven’t known each other that long,” he blurted, because he was an idiot.
But Angela didn’t seem suspicious and only shrugged. “So? I knew my husband was the one the first time I met him. Rosebud county fair, nineteen-eighty-four. I was sweet sixteen.”
“Rosebud?”
“Yep, south of Waco. Paul was taking tickets at the Ferris wheel—rickety old thing, let me tell you. My girlfriends refused to ride it, so I went on my own. I was always the adventurous one, and Paul was just too cute to pass up. He was a shy one, but he stammered out a few sentences, and every time I came around the bottom, I waved to him, and he waved back. When my time was up, he let me keep going. I rode that old wheel for an hour, and then the fair was closing, and he took a spin with me. His buddy stopped it at the top, and we sat up there talking—mostly me talking and him listenin’—and I never wanted to come down. When you know, you know.”