Heartbeat

Twenty-Seven

Whoop... on time this week!

Here it is...

*

JORDAN

I should have known the answer before she even said it.

“Logan,” she bit her lip and turned away from me. Her body tensed under my touch and I knew that she was too afraid to look at me directly. “Sorry.”

I shook my head and told her she didn’t need to apologize. In the last week I had come to understand Emma and Logan’s relationship, and I knew that he was the closest link she had to Alex, making him the most important person in her life.

I didn’t like the idea that she put him above me in her list of top five people, especially when I was meant to be her boyfriend, but at the same time I had reconciled myself with the prospect of always being second best compared to him.

I didn’t dare tell Emma all this, though. I was too scared that she’d choose Logan over me, and that I’d lose her because of my stupidity and jealousy. But now that I was hearing that she put him above Holly and Zoe, too, I felt slightly less putout.

“You two are really close, aren’t you?” I can’t help but ask. I see the corner of Emma’s lips curve upwards, and when she turns to me her eyes are bright with that smile I recognize.

“Yeah,” she answers simply. She doesn’t need to explain, but she does anyway. “He’s always there for me. One time when I was really at rock bottom, Logan was away at college and all it took was one phone call before he came home and was at my side to pick me up off the floor. Not many people would do that for you.”

I would do that for her.

For Emma, I’d do anything.

“Don’t you ever worry what people say about you two?” I mumble, trying to hide my embarrassment.

“Why, what do they say about us?” Emma asks, jerking away from me. I can sense that this could go either way here and I need to tread carefully. “I’ve heard most of the rumors. After Alex died I almost became a ghost so people became a lot more loose-tongued in front of me, thinking I wasn’t there. You heard the one about me having sex with him, right?”

My head snapped around quicker than I ever imagined possible.

Sex? With Logan?

I hadn’t heard the rumor, but now that I had I couldn’t help but wonder how accurate it was. There had been locker room talk about Emma since I’d joined the hockey team, and last year I was pretty sure there had been that rumor about her and a guy named Robert Hannigan from Portland High’s hockey team. I hadn’t paid much attention to what they’d said, until now. Now I was worried.

“It’s complete bull,” Emma shrugged. “Like I’ve already told you, that’s not what Logan and I are like. He’s my pseudo-brother and it would be incestuous.”