Center left picture, same, except my head was turned and tipped back and Logan’s chin was off my shoulder and he was looking down at me.
Bottom left, my hand was up and curled around Logan’s forearm and my head was still tipped back.
But Logan wasn’t looking at me.
He was kissing me.
I shut the book.
The Field.
Wild Bill’s biker rally.
Every biker from every club in the entire state of Colorado went to that rally every year. It was mayhem, bikes, tents, campers, RVs, sleeping bags, bonfires, a makeshift stage set up for local and not-so-local bands who played loud and deep into the night.
It was bring what you want or hit Wild Bill’s kitchen that he set up in a massive tent at the edge of the makeshift campgrounds. He bragged that the proceeds sent him to Miami for Christmas and supported him throughout the year, except we all knew we hit his field just after he harvested the hay or corn he always grew in it, which was the way he really made his living.
First weekend of October.
Which was two and a half weeks away.
Every breath he took, it was for you.
You obliterated him.
I needed to right that wrong.
He needed to know.
And I was the only one who could tell him.
It was good now. It was safe. He was alive and well, ordering burritos and raising kids and not a fugitive from the law or worse.
And he needed to know.
So I was going to find him.
Then I was going to tell him.
On a blanket by a lake, twenty-three years earlier...
He was on me and in me.
He was done.
So was I.
Logan Judd had just given me my first orgasm.
And it was crazy-great.
We were on our date.
He’d picked me up on his bike.
I had been right. My parents had freaked.
But they did what they always did. They trusted me and didn’t make a big deal of it.
They didn’t like me hanging with Kellie either. She was considered a hood. Her dad had taken off when she was a little kid and never came back. Now her mom and stepdad partied more than Kellie did and didn’t mind it when Kellie had all her many friends over (this was because, I suspected, Kellie, Justine, and I cleaned up afterward and they didn’t have much worth anything to break).
But anyway, I got excellent grades. I was going to college in a few weeks. I’d gotten into a good one. University of Denver. This meant I was going to stay close to home, something my sister didn’t do (she went to Purdue), so this was something my parents liked. I did my chores. I got along with my big sister. We were thick as thieves and I missed her like crazy since she’d gone to Indiana. I loved my family and showed it. I’d never been one of those bitchy, pain-in-the-ass kids who got in their parents’ faces all the time.
Even so, I was a bit of a rebel. I drank and it was illegal. Kellie and Justine and I’d go joyriding. I’d lost my virginity at age seventeen (but it was to my boyfriend of two years, who had broken up with me in his first few months at University of Colorado).
I wasn’t disrespectful. I loved my family.
I was just... me.
And the me I was wasn’t stupid and totally irresponsible.
And the me I was put me on the back of Logan Judd’s bike.
He’d driven us into the mountains and I’d loved the ride. Dad had a friend who had a bike, Dottie and I had been out on it and we’d both loved it.
This was better.
A whole lot better.
Riding wrapped around Logan.
The best.
He’d pulled off the highway and drove to a lake. We’d gotten off the bike and he hefted a backpack out of one of his saddlebags, a blanket out of the other. He’d then taken my hand and walked us down a trail that led to the lake. The sun was just getting ready to set, so we had plenty of light to see the beauty around us and I saw it.
But I felt the beauty of walking with Logan, his fingers around mine, the backpack slung over one of his shoulders, the blanket tucked under his arm, knowing this was already the best date ever and feeling in my heart it was only going to get better.
I’d been right.
He moved us to the edge of the lake and threw out the blanket. We got on it and he pulled stuff from the backpack.
It was nothing fancy. He had four bottles of beer in there. Homemade sandwiches (turkey and Swiss). Bags of chips (that were a bit crushed). A package of Oreos (similarly crushed).
But sitting by a beautiful lake up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with Logan, eating and watching the sun set, it was the most delicious meal I’d ever had.
We’d talked.
From our conversation on the steps of Kellie’s deck, he knew my full name, my age, that I had a sister, what high school I’d gone to, that I was heading to DU for the fall semester, and that Kellie and Justine were my best friends. I’d learned his full name, that he was three years older than me, he was a recruit for a motorcycle club called Chaos, and he was close with his parents and younger sister, even if he’d left them in Durango, where he’d grown up.
On the blanket, we’d talked more and it was cool because it was like a rite of passage. The first real grown-up conversation I’d ever had.
I wasn’t some eighteen-year-old just-ex-high-schooler that he’d met.
I wasn’t a girl.
I was a woman.
A woman he liked.
We talked about the work he did at Ride, the garage and shop that was owned by the motorcycle club he belonged to. We talked about how, when he was finished being a recruit and he was a full member, he’d get a bigger cut of the money made there. We talked about his brothers and how he liked them. We talked about his brothers’ “old ladies,” or the wives and girlfriends, and which of them he liked... or didn’t.