Heartbeat

Ten

As promised, here's Chapter Ten.

*

EMMA

Logan kissed my forehead as we walked to the kitchen, releasing me only to grab a couple of drinks before he pushed me out the door and back towards the terrace.

There were fewer people out here now and I settled myself on one of the wooden chairs from the outdoor dining set as Logan sat next to me.

Logan Bowman was exactly as I remembered him; tall, blonde haired, green eyed and very well defined. Any other girl would find him very attractive, but I wasn’t like other girls. For a start, I’ve known Logan since I was born, and I’m pretty sure he’s seen me run naked in the paddling pool once or twice. Logan was my pseudo big brother and the way he watched Jordan from the corner of his eyes, I knew he was going to warn Jordan to keep away from me.

“Logan,” I kick his leg gently with my foot. “Stop it.”

He looked at me innocently, but he knew what I was talking about.

“I don’t like the way he watches you,” Logan said a little too loud for my liking. “Does he have a crush on you, or something? Because if I looked at a girl the way he’s looking at you, well…”

He trailed off.

“‘Well’, what?” I probed, but I already knew how that statement would end. “Not every guy’s mission in life is to get laid, Logan,” I say before making a joke of the situation. “Although, it could be his.”

Logan’s eyes flew to mine, a rage building behind the soft green. I rolled my eyes at him to tell him he was exaggerating, but he was still tense. I shuffled in my seat so that I was leaning towards him and I placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Nothing is happening with me and Jordan,” I tell him seriously. “You don’t have to worry about me, Logan. I’m grown up now.”

“I know,” he watches me with sad eyes. “I made a promise to look out for you, that’s all, and I take my promises seriously.”

I move my head up and kiss Logan’s cheek. “Thank you.”

We sit quietly and watch as drunken boys lead drunken girls down to the lake front. Logan plays with the neck of his beer bottle and begins to peel away the label as he starts a new conversation.

We talked about my parents, whom he was on first name terms with, and he wasn’t shocked when I told him that I hadn’t had a proper conversation with my mother in almost six months. Then he laughed and told me that I had always been a daddy’s girl anyway. True, I nodded.

I filled him in on last year’s hockey team, especially when he admitted that the State Championship last season had been the first Final he’d missed since he left for college. I joked that he’d been lucky that Dad was too highly strung that night to notice. Every other Final, Logan had jumped into the player’s bench and had assumed the role of assistant coach, so you’d have thought that Dad would have noticed, but he didn’t.