“You can’t say that. Not when he’s dead,” Emma said, swallowing against something hard and painful in her throat. What was wrong with her, that she wanted to hear those words? What was wrong with her, that she wanted more than that ghost of a touch? But it was gone already, Gabriel’s hand withdrawing.
She turned toward him, breaking the fragile moment of intimacy. The shadows across his face made his expression difficult to read.
She thought for a moment of stepping forward. Of putting her hand against his chest, of kissing him—here in the dark where no one could see, no one would ever know. Where for the space of a few seconds it wouldn’t matter that her husband was dead, that she should be—was—grieving. If Nathan had been alive, she would have. But with Nathan dead, the betrayal was more stark, more unthinkable, than it ever could have been if he had lived.
“We can’t,” she said instead, and took a step backward, out of the shelter of the shadows and into the light.
42
JJ
Now
Vic was fond of reminding JJ that whatever she had done, she couldn’t change the past. But she could be drawn back into it, and as she pushed through the door into a bar she’d never stepped foot in, she was somehow back there, dragged through the years by the simple knowledge of who she was about to see.
He ought to have been a footnote to her history. A distraction she used for a time to endure her last few years at home. Instead, what had happened meant their dysfunctional courtship was trapped in amber along with everything else from those final days.
There was something perverse about finding Logan here, in dingy unremarkable environs with no signs of success or suffering hovering obviously about him, proof that the world had lurched along without apparent regard for the importance of their tragedy. Logan looked like any other middle-aged man you might find in a bar like this, and whatever image she’d built up in her head of him crumbled immediately as he caught her eye.
There was another employee inside, a woman with slate-gray hair and a thick neck. She caught JJ’s eye as she entered, but JJ walked deliberately toward Logan.
“Juliette,” Logan said. “Of all the gin joints, et cetera.” He smiled but it had no warmth to it. JJ made herself walk forward, take a seat at the bar. She was breathing too quick, prickles of sweat at the base of her neck.
“He said he never saw you after the Saracen house, but he was lying, I could tell,” Emma had said.
His eyes tracked the curl of a vine up her arm.
“Logan. It’s been a while,” she said.
“That’s an understatement,” he said. He cocked his head. “You’re not here for a drink.”
“No,” she answered, though, God, she wanted one. She had a rule with Vic. No drinking alone, no drinking before five o’clock, never more than one drink. She’d broken them just about every night since she got back to this godforsaken town.
Logan took a survey of the bar. JJ had hardly noticed the other patrons when she entered—a couple having burgers and beers in the corner, a woman in a pink T-shirt and work boots. “If you’re not going to drink, I’m going to take my smoke break,” he said. “You can join me, if you like.”
A dip of her chin in a nod, and she was following him toward the back door. Behind the bar was nothing but an empty lot. The air stank with indistinct sour smells from the dumpster nearby, but Logan didn’t seem to notice. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one unhurriedly.
JJ reached out. She’d quit years ago, at Vic’s insistence, but she still snuck one now and then. Logan offered a light, and she leaned in. His fingertips were calloused and stained. He met her eye as he held the trembling flame up to the tip of the cigarette, his own dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“Long time,” he said again, like it was the only thing to say.
She leaned back, weight on her back foot. She took the cigarette from her lips and let the smoke spill from her mouth slowly, savoring the familiar flavor and sting of it. It wasn’t a thing she’d ever liked, exactly. It was more like a ritual or a talisman, a way to mark in the moment who she was. Who she wasn’t.
“Miss me?” she asked, the trace of a smirk in the corner of her mouth as she remembered who she meant to be.
“Now and then,” Logan allowed with a half smile of his own, relaxing a fraction. He gave her a look that encompassed her scuffed-up boots, her skintight jeans, the loose blouse that did nothing to conceal the bright purple bra she had on underneath, the tattoos she’d accumulated over the years. “You look good. You look—I dunno. I would say you’ve changed, but I feel like this is what you were always supposed to look like,” he said.