“I’m glad you’re having fun,” I whisper against the top of her head.

She pulls back in reaction and looks up at me with her eyebrows tight and confused. “You still think…”

She stops, then shakes her head as her eye contact floats to something other than my face.

I’m dying to know what she has to say, but I don’t ask.

“Get some sleep,” I say before I lean in to give her a chaste, quick kiss on the lips that she barely returns. Somberly, she pulls herself away and walks into her building.

On my walk back to the shop to get my bike, I start to notice that my hands aren’t shaking anymore. Even after just two beers, I don’t feel like puking my guts out and can actually focus on something other than my next—nonexistent—fix.

Sierra is my new drug. When she’s around me, I don’t care about smoking anything. Fuck, even the cigarettes I’ve cut way back on. She’s like a fucking miracle cure. As if being around her fills the gaping holes in my life that I used to fill with something else.

11

Sierra

I can’t stay away. I literally can’t. When I wake up in the morning, the first thought that welcomes me every day is the vision of Logan’s taut muscles across his chest and stomach, the feeling of his hand against my skin, and the exhilaration of having a full orgasm right in the middle of the day out in broad daylight by someone else’s hand.

I have never felt more alive, and all I want to do is be around him with his bright smile. And although it’s rare, that’s what makes it so much more precious. When he does smile, it’s for me. Just me.

The feeling of overpowering ownership consumes me. I don’t want to just enjoy my time with Logan. I want him to be mine. I want to call him mine. To know that I am the only girl on his mind, now and every day after.

I’m sitting in the shop the next day, reading a book behind the front desk because Murph says I’m drawing people in with my “wholesome hotness.”

I couldn’t help but giggle at Logan’s growling reaction to that declaration. “She’s not bait.”

“No. She’s good for business.” Then he gives me one of his famous Murph winks before heading to the back to do inventory. That man is an enigma.

Smiling at Logan, he glances up and gives me a knowing look before he bends back over to finish the unicorn tattoo on this girl’s ankle. Her friend glances back and forth between us. I can see the question in her eyes, wondering whether or not we are a real couple.

It’s almost lunchtime, and even though I offer to do a food run, Murph cuts in and tells me to stay while he runs out. Just as he snakes out the back of the building, Logan finishes the unicorn, and I hover over to admire the beautiful work.