Counting Stars (A Donnelley Brother's Novel) (15 page)

“Logan,” I whispered his
name as I tilted my face to the side. At my late rejection, I felt
his body stiffen against mine.

His arms dropped from
around me and I found my feet on slippery rocks. Suddenly, I felt
the cold of the water seeping into my bones as Logan stepped away
from me. “I’m sorry, Reese.”

“Logan wait,”

He paused mid-turn.
“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

A muscle in his cheek
twitched as he clenched his jaw. “I get it, Reese. You’re not the
cheating kind. I just don’t understand how you can be so loyal to
someone who hurt you so bad.”

“Logan, that’s not it .
. .”

“Then what the hell is
it?” He roared and I flinched. I felt the tears welling in my eyes
as I stared into the water around my waist. “You know what? Never
mind. I don’t want to know.”

I didn’t say anything
else as I watched him storm through the water. My heart was
breaking with a new kind of pain in my chest. For the first time, I
wasn’t crying for me, and the loss of my husband. I was crying for
my inability to tell a man I cared about, a friend, of my pain.

I cared for Logan.
Deeply. That was why I had to grow a pair of balls and tell him
about the most painful moment of my life and the agonizing year
that followed. I would have to tell him about my biggest regret and
how it led me to this place—to Logan himself.

I killed my husband—the
love of my life—with a kiss. There was no going back for me. I had
to live with that morning, every day, for the rest of my life.

I didn’t want to talk
about it. I didn’t want to talk about the pain or the regret or the
self-mutilation I subjected my emotions to for the last year. I
didn’t want Logan to look at me in the light of pity. I didn’t want
him to tell me, like so many others had, that I didn’t kill him.
Because I did.

. . . They all said you
were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, I put you in that
place, Derek. I know you would disagree with the blame I’ve carried
for this year, but I can’t seem to shake it. If you hadn’t poked
your head back in the door for just another kiss—and if I hadn’t
walked so teasingly slowly toward you—if I hadn’t kissed you again
and again—you would have been on the road at your usual time. You
never would have been in the intersection when the welding truck
missed the stop sign. You never should have been there, Derek. You
should have been a few minutes from work. You should have walked in
through the door that night. I never should have had to open my
door to two policemen. I never should have had to arrange your
funeral.

But I did. Because of a
kiss. You’re gone . . .

Dunking my hair into the
water, I wet it a second time before I rubbed the soap into my
hair. Tucking the brick into the band of my swimsuit bottoms, I
leaned back to rinse my hair.

Logan was nowhere in
sight. I knew he’d gone back to the camp, and I knew he was
irritated with my inability to let him in, but for now, I couldn’t
help it. I would tell him. I had decided that much already. But I
just needed some time. I needed time to rethink this. I needed time
to consider how I was even going to begin. Because I didn’t
know.

As I stepped from the water onto the rocky shore, I
plucked my towel from the ground before wrapping myself tight in
the warm sunbaked cloth. The fact of the matter was I had to tell
Logan. Over the last seven days, I had grown to care about him
despite all his rough edges and abnormal views. He was
real.

If I didn’t tell him the
truth of my reasoning for being here, he would never understand my
pain. He would never understand what drove me or even what pulled
me to a screaming halt. He would never understand the painful beats
of my heart—the ones that stopped me dead in my tracks.

I wanted Logan in my life
and I knew it was only fair that I tell him a little about me—even
if that little bit of information hurt like hell.

Staring down
at my rings, I twisted them around my finger. They were beautiful.
A large round Canadian diamond shimmered in the center of a
white-gold band imbedded with smaller diamonds. The wedding band
matched the band of my engagement ring. I remembered when Derek had
proposed. We’d been hiking through the Maligne Canyon in Jasper.
I’d been taking a picture of the waterfall to turn and find him
holding the shimmering diamond in between two fingers. Down on his
knees, he’d asked me to marry him and I’d just stood
there—completely speechless.

The way his green eyes
had glittered in the sunlight as he stared deep into my eyes made
me feel a certainty I had never before experienced. And I knew, he
was the man for me. Diving into his arms, I’d agreed to become his
wife. In that moment, I believed he would be my very last.

Now, sitting here as I
twist his rings around my finger, I know that won’t be the case. At
twenty-three, I’ve loved deeply and lost terribly. Some might say
I’m lucky. And in a way I know I am, because I had him. Even a few
years with a man who possessed a spirit of such beauty is more than
most ever find. So, I suppose I’m selfish, because a few years with
him wasn’t enough.

An eternity with Derek
wouldn’t have been enough. That was how much I loved him. I still
love him.

And maybe that’s why I
couldn’t seem to find the will to pull the bands from my finger.
When Derek had placed them onto my hand, I had believed that they
would live there for the rest of their days. But I knew now that
they couldn’t.

One day I would have to
slip them from my finger. One day, I would have to accept the
chilling fact that Derek is gone and he’s never going to come back.
If I don’t, I’ll spend the rest of my life alone, mourning him.

I knew what Derek would
say to such a foolish thought. He would tell me I was being
ridiculous. He would tell me that I was a beautiful woman with a
beautiful soul. He would tell me I had a light inside of me that
needed to be spread around and shared with the world. He would tell
me that bottling up inside of myself is wrong.

And I knew, he would be
right. But doing what I knew I had to do was harder than I ever
thought possible. Letting go had never been in my nature and I was
finding this far from easy, but the simple fact is that Logan has
been unknowingly helping me step forward with my life. A week ago,
I never would have even considered taking my rings from my finger.
And now I was. I wasn’t there yet, but I was considering it. And
that was good.

In the time I’d spent
with Logan, I had smiled so much more than I had in the last year.
My laughter, so rusty, was beginning to sound normal again. There
was a reborn weightlessness to my steps that died the day Derek was
taken.

I owed it all to
Logan.

Little by little, Logan
was healing me. He was sowing up my gaping wounds, and although
there was a scar, the pain was bearable. Logan was making this
bearable for me. He was a blessing in rough disguise and I couldn’t
lose him. He deserved to know the truth about my pain no matter the
difficulty I faced in telling him. And I would.

Straightening my wedding
rings, I stood. Filling my water bottle with river water, I walked
slowly back to camp. All the while, my heart beat faster with every
step.

Logan had changed from
his swim trunks into a pair of black shorts and his chest was bare.
I had grown used to staring at him shirtless. I think, that after
our time together, seeing him with a shirt would be odd.

I passed him without
saying anything. I felt cold and vulnerable as the heavy weight of
my confession grew inside me. I needed all the comfort I could get
and I wasted no time in darting inside the tent to change.

When I emerged, I was
wearing a gray pair of leggings and a soft pink flowing work out
top. I had my wet hair pulled back into a messy bun on my head. As
I moved across the camp to hang my bathing suit and towel on the
tree branch with Logan’s, I felt his eyes on me.

It wasn’t unusual that
he hadn’t spoken to me yet. Logan had this silent way about him
that emerged when he was in thought, frustrated, or confused. It
was funny how I knew that in only one week. But when you spent
twenty-four-seven with another human being, you kind of got to know
them pretty well. Or, I felt I knew him well, anyway.

With my wet suit and
towel hung, I turned to face him. He was sitting on his sleeping
bag in front of the fire, staring at me. Sometimes, I felt as
though those black eyes could see right inside of me.

I moved to sit beside
him, hugging my knees to my chest. “His name was Derek.” I heard
his intake of breath, but I continued. If I didn’t get it all out
now, I wouldn’t. “We’d been together since I was sixteen. He was
the only man I had ever been with—the only man I wanted to be with.
I contacted Gracie, your mother, on the anniversary of his death.
May twentieth.”

“Reese,” Logan’s voice
was thick with emotion, but I simply stared into the fire. It’s
flickering orange was like an orb of light granting me courage for
the tough journey ahead. Just like the orb of light that had
hovered over Derek’s head that morning—the morning I last touched
him, kissed him, told him I loved him.

“That morning was like
every other. We had a routine and it was beautiful. Our life was
beautiful.” I paused and a tear slid from my eye. “That was the
morning I killed him.”

I expected Logan to say
something then, but he didn’t. He simply waited for me to continue,
and I did.

“I killed Derek,” I
covered my mouth with a shaky hand. “He should have been gone for
work. The man was always irritatingly on time—but that morning he
was late. It was all my fault,” I sobbed, my body shaking
uncontrollably. Logan placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, rubbing
me, lending me his strength. “He wanted another kiss and I should
have sent him on his way, but I didn’t. I teased him. I made him
late when I should have told him to leave. I should have made him
go to work—if I had, he wouldn’t have been in the accident.” I
blinked, sucking in a gasped breath for the painful words I needed
to speak. “He never made it to work.”

“Baby,” Logan breathed
the word he’d never called me before as he pulled me onto his lap.
Cradling me against him, I finished my confession against his
throat.

“I was a widow before we
even made it to our one year anniversary of being married. I chose
August to come here because I couldn’t fathom being alone during
the month that should have been a celebration of my life with
Derek. We were married in August last year. He was so bright and
wonderful, Logan. And I lost him. It’s all my fault.”

“Stop saying that,
Reese.” Logan commanded desperately in my ear. His palm cupped the
back of my head, holding my face against his shoulder as I cried
and he rocked me. “It’s not your fault. Life happens. Accidents
happen, and sometimes people are late. You could never have known
and blaming yourself for his death isn’t fair. Derek wouldn’t want
you to blame yourself, Reese. He wouldn’t want you walking around
punishing yourself.”

“You didn’t know him!” I
cried, curling my fists against his back. I wanted to pound my
fists into his flesh—I wanted to hurt him for his words, but at the
same time, I couldn’t imagine releasing him. I just couldn’t let
him go, because without him, I feared I would crumble. “You don’t
know what he would want!”

“I know you loved him,
Reese. I know you love him still, and I know that a man who had
your love, this kind of love, was worthy. A worthy man wouldn’t
want you to alienate yourself of happiness.” He coiled his hands in
my hair, pulling my head back to force my eyes to meet his. My lips
quivered as I cried. “Can you honestly sit here and tell me that he
would want you to hurt like this? How would he feel if he knew you
were blaming yourself for something that was so fucking out of your
control?”