For the life of him, Logan couldn’t figure out why he and Marie had done what they had. In the past six months, he had never let anyone as close as he had let Marie. Logan was very big on the “no attachments” way of life. It was practically his motto. Yet, in less than day, he’d let Marie closer than anyone else he could remember.
A part of it scared the shit outta him.
The rest of him just didn’t know what to think.
For the first time in six months, Logan was actually considering trusting someone. He had already trusted Marie with more information about himself than anyone else. Besides the nurses and the doctors who had treated him, no one else knew about his amnesia. Logan still wasn’t even sure why he’d told Marie about what had happened to him. Logan was a very private person. He didn’t like sharing himself with anyone yet still Marie had found a way to worm her way into his life after such a short time.
“It’s gotten weird now, hasn’t it?”
Logan looked over at Marie who was bundled up in layers of clothes. While holding a bowl of ice cream. For someone that he was willing to trust, Marie was certainly a walking contradiction. A self-proclaimed Southern belle, Marie was completely out of place living in the far north of Alaska. The part that Logan found the most confusing was what had happened in her bathroom. For a virgin, Marie wasn’t the least bit shy about fondling men she barely knew in her bathtub. Not that Logan was complaining. He just hadn’t expected Marie to do something like that.
“It’ hasn’t gotten weird,” Logan assured her, smiling at her as she sat down on the chair next to him. “I’m just not entirely sure what to make of you. You’re a very confusing girl, Marie.”
“Well thanks. Ah’m glad that ya noticed,” Marie teased, scooping some ice cream into her spoon. As soon as she put the ice cream into her mouth, Marie shuddered, an all over body tremor.
“If you’re cold, why are you eating that?” Logan asked, wanting to figure out the reason behind this strange quirk.
“Because Ah like chocolate,” Marie whispered, almost too quietly for Logan to hear.
“You get cold because you like chocolate?” Logan inquired with an arched eyebrow.
Marie’s cheeks turned beat red and she scooped another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. Logan couldn’t help but grin as he watched her shudder from the cold of the desert. Marie’s face was very expressive and he could tell, just from watching her expression, how much she loved chocolate.
“Come on, Logan, ya can’t tell me chocolate’s not t’ die fer,” Marie cried, tossing a throw pillow in his direction.
Logan glanced down at his lap, bobbing his head from side to side. “Well, it’s not usually on the menu in the bars I eat at. And they always stick all sorts of weird shit in the chocolate bars at the gas station. So I’ve just never got around to having any.”
Marie looked at Logan as though he’d grown a second head. “Ya’ve never had chocolate? Please tell me Ah’ve heard ya wrong.”
“You didn’t hear wrong. I’ve just never had chocolate,” Logan admitted.
“That’s it! Sit right there! Yer havin’ some ice cream an’ that’s it,” Marie declared, bounding to her feet and towards the kitchen.
From his position in front of the fireplace, Boris lifted his head and seemed to roll his eyes. Logan chucked at the dog’s expression before turning his attention back to the hockey game on TV. It hadn’t taken Logan long to decide that he liked hockey. The sport was to die for! He had picked it up real quick and watched it whenever he had a chance.
“How could the ref not see that? The guy obviously tripped Yzerman! What an asshole!” Marie cried as she came back into the living room.
Logan grinned at Marie over his shoulder and accepted the bowl of chocolate ice cream she handed him. “Getting a little into this, are we?”
Flushing slightly, Marie walked over to the other side of the couch. After carefully lifting up Logan’s legs, she sat down and pulled his legs across her lap. “Ah grew up watchin’ mah two brothers play hockey. It kinda grows on ya after a while.”
Logan rolled his eyes and groaned, something which earned him a glare from Marie.
“An’ just what, may Ah ask, do ya find so amusin’?” Marie inquired, arching an eyebrow.
“Your brother’s are southern hockey players?”
Marie’s glare didn’t waver one bit. “Yer point bein’?”
“That hockey shouldn’t be allowed in places that snow doesn’t form naturally,” Logan informed her, making absent patterns in his ice cream with the spoon.
Marie gave him an exasperated look and went back to her ice cream. “Just shut up an’ eat yer ice cream.”
Still grinning, Logan brought the spoon up to his mouth. He could see Marie glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, trying her best not to make it look like she was watching him. Grin planted firmly on his face, Logan brought the spoon inches from his mouth and parted his lips only to lower the spoon back into the bowl as something in the game caught his attention.
Marie’s growl of frustration only made Logan grin wider. He did the exact same thing another five times before Marie finally snapped.
“Will ya just eat the damn ice cream!” Marie shouted, throwing her spoon into the bowl. “Ah know that yer just doin’ this t’ piss me off. So just eat the damn stuff ‘fore Ah’m forced t’ hurt ya!”
Logan couldn’t help but laugh at Marie’s outburst. In order to appease her, Logan scooped his spoon full of ice cream and held it up for her to see. After a few moment’s hesitation, Logan shoved the entire thing into his mouth. A few seconds later he let out a garbled scream and squeezed his eyes shut tight.
“What’s wrong? Logan, what happened?” Marie demanded, tightening her grip on his thigh. “Did ya bite yer tongue or somethin’?”
“My brain hurts,” Logan whined, unable to figure out what had caused the sudden pain in his head.
It couldn’t have been that bad because Marie started laughing. “Oh, Logan. You’ve got a brain freeze.”
That didn’t help one bit. Logan had never heard of a brain freeze and, whatever it was, he didn’t like it one bit. He opened one eye a tiny crack, enough to glare at Marie through. Much too slowly, the pain began to recede. As soon as he was able to open his eyes completely, he set the bowl of ice cream on the ground, gesturing for Boris to eat it. With a contented bark, Boris bolted for the bowl of ice cream and quickly gulped it all down.
“Why do you eat ice cream if it hurts your brain?” Logan asked, leaning his head against the side of the couch.
Marie began to massage his thigh, slowly trailing towards his damaged ankle. “It doesn’t happen every time. Mainly just when ya eat too much too fast.”
“How about warning me next time,” Logan grumbled, nuzzling his face against the side of the couch as Marie continued her massage.
“Awww, poor baby,” Marie teased. “Did the mean ol’ ice cream hurt yer head?”
Logan merely scowled at her and kicked her leg with his good foot. He was unable to ignore Marie’s broad grin, however, and ended up smiling back at her.
“So far this chocolate thing doesn’t seem to be all that great,” Logan told her as he turned his attention back to the hockey game.
“That’s just ‘cause ya don’t know how t’ eat ice cream. When Ah head inta town tomorrow, Ah’ll pick us up some normal chocolate. An’ yer gonna eat it,” Marie informed him, pointing a finger in his direction.
“If this stuff hurts my head too, I’m not eating anymore chocolate.”
Rolling her eyes, Marie went back to the hockey game.
Things got real quiet between them then. Marie continued massaging Logan’s right leg while Logan was lightly nudging Marie’s feet with his left one. They were both completely relaxed, something Logan hadn’t felt in a very long time. Since the time he’d woken up in the hospital, Logan couldn’t remember a time when he’d been completely relaxed. First he’d been trying to come to terms with what had happened to him. Later, after setting out on his own, his problem had been providing for himself. Logan had needed to figure out a way to survive without any remembered work experience. Once he had joined the fight circuit, Logan had been constantly on the move. He’d been fighting, avoiding conflicts with the veterans who were annoyed with the fact that he had appeared out of nowhere and was consistently beating them. Logan found it completely ironic that the only reason he was able to relax was because he’d been beat up by a group of veterans who had been pissed off about him winning.
Oddly enough, Logan was grateful for what they had done.
If it hadn’t been for them, he would never have met Marie. In the barely twelve hours that they’d known each other, Logan felt much more compatible with her than anyone else he’d met in the past six months. He’d told Marie things that he’d never told anyone, and had done it without any regrets.
For some reason that he couldn’t comprehend, Logan felt safe to trust Marie with information that he had refused to tell anyone else.
“Do ya wanna stay up fer the late game?” Marie asked once the game had ended. She was yawning a great deal and Logan could tell that she wanted to sleep.
“I’ll watch some of it,” Logan confirmed, nodding his head. “You don’t hafta, though. If you wanna go to bed, you can. I’ll be good on my own.”
Marie nodded her head, shifting out from under Logan’s legs. “Good ‘cause Ah’m exhausted. Ah’ll see ya in the mornin’.”
Logan smiled up at her. “Good night, Marie.”
“‘Night, Logan,” Marie returned, leaning over to press a kiss against his forehead.
The intimacy that he and Marie were sharing was staggering. The closest thing Logan had experienced to intimacy in the past six months was the slut who’d given him a blowjob behind a bar. When she’d been pulling his pants back up, she’d slipped his wallet from his back pocket and would have made off with it had he not noticed right away. From that night on, Logan hadn’t let any other woman around him.
Marie was different, though. She was after some quick fuck behind a bar in the middle of nowhere. Marie had literally picked him up off the side of the road and taken him into her home. Logan knew that he would never be able to figure out why Marie had done what she did, but he’d always be grateful. If it wasn’t for her, he’d probably be dead by now.
That thought shocked the hell out of Logan.
If it hadn’t been for Marie, he could have very easily become a frozen corpse on the side of the road. If the elements hadn’t killed him, the three men with the crowbar easily could have. They’d have taken off with his Harley and his three thousand dollars as well. Not that it would have been much use to him dead.
“Is Marie always this confusing?” Logan asked Boris who was absently licking at the remnants of chocolate which lined the bowl Logan had given him earlier.
Boris looked up at Logan and sneezed, nodding his head in the process. Rising from the carpet, Boris trotted across the room and wrapped his jaws around a book on a lower shelf of a large bookcase. The rotweiler brought it back over to Logan and dropped the novel in his lap.
Picking it up, Logan scanned the cover. Freedom Fighters by Marie Fraser. The illustration was of a blonde man with way too many muscles. He was wearing a pair of camouflage pants with so many rips that they revealed more than they covered. In one hand he held a huge machine gun and in the other was a woman in equally tattered clothes. To give her credit, the was wearing a shirt. More correctly, a scrap of cloth that barely hid the nipples of her obviously enhanced boobs. There was a battle going on in the background, but the pair seemed to find enough time to lock lips.
“Marie wrote this?” Logan asked the dog.
Without even waiting for an answer, Logan flipped the book over and opened the back cover. Sure enough, on the inside was a picture of Marie. For a long time, Logan sat there staring at the black and white picture of Marie.
Finally, shutting off the TV, Logan opened the book to the first page and began to read. He had just finished the first page when he heard Marie on the stairs. He didn’t look up from the book, but continued reading, figuring that she had forgotten something downstairs. Marie’s gasp caught him off guard and his head shot up.
Logan had expected Marie to be in dire trouble. Instead, she was standing at the opposite end of the couch, staring at Logan in disbelief.
“Y-yer readin’... readin’ mah book?” Marie stammered, pointing to the paperback that Logan held in his hands.
Logan glanced from Marie to the book and back again before nodding his head. “Sure. Boris brought it over so I thought I’d read it. Looked interesting.”
The shade of red that Marie’s face turned was one that Logan hadn’t seen before. As though sensing he was going to be in trouble, Boris quick scampered into another room of the cabin. That left Logan all alone to face an extremely embarrassed Marie.
“Yer gonna laugh at me if ya read that book,” Marie whined, lowering herself onto the arm of the couch.
“Why would I laugh at you?” Logan asked, once again very confused by Marie.
“‘Cause Ah’ve never done most o’ the stuff in that book,” Marie mumbled.
Having discovered that shrugging his shoulder hurt, Logan jerked his head slightly, his eyebrows arching momentarily. “Your point being? You think I’ve done most of the stuff in this book?”
Marie’s eyes got real wide then. “Ya mean ya haven’t... ya’ve never.... Ah don’t believe it.”
“Marie, I can remember exactly six months of my life. In that time I’ve been fighting and avoiding women who only wanted to fuck me and steal my money when I wasn’t paying attention,” Logan told her, confused by Marie’s surprise.
“So what we did earlier...?”
“Was a first for me,” Logan admitted, not the least bit ashamed.
That got Marie smiling real big. Without saying another word, she nodded her head and got off the couch. Marie glanced at Logan real quick then turned and headed back upstairs, her reason for coming down completely forgotten.
Once she was upstairs, Logan slumped back against the pillow, furrowing his brows. He stared at the book for a few moments before carefully maneuvering himself so that he could turn off the lap.
Enveloped in darkness, Logan allowed oblivion to take him.