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.

We also talked about how I was kind of worried that Justine was partying too much and getting blasted out of her mind when she did. We talked about the fact that I was worried about this because she’d screwed up on her SATs, refused to take them again, and she’d had a really bad couple of semesters, so her GPA was shot. Then, when the first two colleges she applied to didn’t take her, she’d quit applying. And I’d told him I thought she was lost and freaked about her future and instead of finding her way, she was getting drunk a lot.

“One thing I know, darlin’,” he’d said gently when we were talking about Justine. “You ain’t ever gonna change a person. Stand by their side or be at their back. But do not push change or expect it. Just be there for them while they sort their shit out. But do it knowin’ you might have to cut ties if their shit starts leakin’ and becomin’ yours.”

Thus I’d learned on our date that Logan Judd was wise.

Conversation had while eating changed into conversation had while cuddling and talking and staring at the moon on the water.

Cuddling had gone from just talking to talking with some kissing.

My first kiss from Logan Judd had been a revelation. It, too, was my first adult kiss. No fumbling around. No inexperience. No desperation. None of that feel you’d get from a guy like he knew he was lucky he managed to get his mouth on you and the second he did, he was thinking about what else he could get.

Logan knew what he was doing. Logan took his time doing it. Logan liked what he was getting and Logan knew how to guide me to giving that back.

It was dreamy from beginning to end.

And then the talking stopped and it was just kissing until it turned into Logan making love to me on that blanket by a lake in the Rocky Mountains.

It was slow and sweet and exploratory until it got faster and more urgent and finished on totally explosive.

It was not only my first orgasm.

It was also the first time a man had made love to me.

And I lay under him, feeling his weight, smelling his hair, my body sluggish in a way I liked, at the same time I was crazy-giddy like the night before, except in a quieter way I liked better. All this because I was connected to Logan, feeling complete when I didn’t know I was incomplete and it was crazy, totally nutso, but I knew it to be true.

I was complete with Logan.

And I also knew it was no longer that I could fall in love with Logan Judd.

It was that I’d started doing it at his first “hey.”

No, when I first saw him walk into Kellie’s house.

And I was still doing it and knew I’d keep doing it until the deed was done.

Which, with the rate I was going, would take another date.

This, for some reason, didn’t freak me.

No.

It should. It should freak me. It should feel wrong.

But it only felt right—oh so right...

I... could not... wait.

He pulled his face from out of my neck and I instantly missed his heavy breaths there.

But when his eyes caught mine in the moonlight, I suddenly declared, “I’m not easy. You’re my second. And if you think I am and this isn’t about the fact that we’re good together... if you’ve missed what’s going on with us... if you take this, what just happened, and don’t call again... all I can say is... your loss, Logan Judd.”