She went over to the window and pushed it open.

“You’re not climbing out the window,” he said, his voice hard.

“You want me to take the stairs?”

“Don’t break your neck on top of everything else, please.”

She was going to argue, but he had a point. The window had been a gesture.

She walked to his bedroom door and opened it, walking out into the hall. And as she closed the door behind her, she felt the sense of change settle over her.

Because Sammy, his friend, would’ve always climbed in and out the window.

He was sending her out the door.

Like a lover who was on a walk of shame. Like someone altered, changed and broken.

Broken.

She felt broken.

She walked slowly down the hall, down the stairs. And she heard the clicking of nails on the hardwood floor, and suddenly the three farm dogs were swirling around her, silly, excited beasts barely able to contain themselves.

They didn’t bark. She had a feeling Ryder had trained them to keep quiet at night.

But she could tell that they wanted to bark, curious about why she was here when it was so late.

She patted them on their heads.

“At least you still like me,” she whispered. “But you’re dogs. So I suppose you always will.”

She wasn’t sure what their owner would think of her right now.

As he lay in bed.

He hadn’t tried to talk her into staying.

She didn’t know what that meant.

And it was good, because she didn’t want to. Because she didn’t think she should.

Because they needed to regroup and think, or at least she did.

She gave the dogs one last pat, then sneaked through the living room and out the front door. And when she saw a figure out of the corner of her eye on the front deck, she startled.

So did the figure.

He looked at her, and when she could see him more clearly, she recognized that it was Logan.

“Huh,” he said.

Oh, screw him and his speculative sounds.

“Don’t make that noise at me,” she said.

“Rose doesn’t know shit.”

Sammy rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

“I figured you guys would eventually. And based on the way he’s been acting the past few days... I thought it might be soon.”

“I’m the one who instigated it,” she said.

“I’m not really that surprised by that, either.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Thinking.”

“What about?”

“All the shit I shouldn’t do,” he said, leveling her with a look.

Only a few months ago Iris and Rose had introduced the idea that Logan might have feelings for her, but she had been certain that he didn’t. She didn’t know why she was so certain. Only that she was.

And something about the way he was sitting out there brooding confirmed it.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not any more than you want to talk about it.” It being her current parade of shame, she supposed.