After I got off the phone with Harper, I dressed for my date with Logan. I wasn't someone who owned or wore a lot of formal clothes, okay, none at all, but a quick stop at Charlie and Wes' left me with a few of Charlie's mini-dresses. They hung down to my knees, hung off me in the worst areas, and I felt like a child who wore my mom's dresses.

Since I also knew we'd be outside, I changed into a pair of comfortable, navy blue skinny jeans with a flowy, long-sleeved, paisley-patterned shirt. Feminine and pretty weren't in my usual wardrobe vocabulary, but the light pink and bright aqua colors gave the shirt a girly-enough feel.

"Not a dress, but at least I can do my hair," I mumbled at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Normally my hair hung long and straight, but after a few grunts and slightly burned fingertips, I set it in curlers. Once I removed them and clouded myself in hairspray, my long, dark brown hair fell in soft curls.

"Let's see if this lasts through my library shift." I crossed my fingers because while the rain had stopped, the air was still very humid.

I slipped on comfortable tennis shoes since no height of heels changed my and Logan's height differences. A new, small group of people clustered on the sidewalk outside the exit doors, but I brushed through since I obviously wasn't who they looked for.

Probably in anticipation for tomorrow's game.

Once at the library, my heart rammed into my rib cage while I counted down the time before our date. My fingers tapped against the information desk and I kept getting up, paced, then sat back down until the other desk worker Sarah rolled her eyes at me. She sent me off to restack books, which kept me busy but the time dragged by endlessly.

Finally, my tall, handsome date arrived at the information desk. Even in jeans and a long-sleeved graphic shirt that brought out the blue in his eyes, my lips parted and tongue dried at the sight of him. I was thankful for the chair I sat in down because the way his mouth curled upwards and eyes focused on me, my knees probably would've given out.

"Hi Ellie." His eyes sparkled at the sight of me, well the top-half of me he probably saw from the other side of the desk. "Your hair is pretty."

My lips quirked up as his interesting choice of a compliment, but I was glad he'd noticed my extra effort, since my clothes were casual and makeup minimal. "Here for the library tour?"

"I'm actually here to check something else out," he replied in a cocky tone, leaned his elbows onto the desk, then roamed his eyes over me.

My skin warmed under his attention, particularly my cheeks, but I just flashed him a quick smile. "Tough, you're getting one anyways."

"That's our date?" He pulled back slightly. Thankfully, he didn't look disappointed, but smiled when I shook my head.

"Nope, I just need to kill some time before we need to leave for our reservation," I replied and hopped off my desk chair.

"Reservation?" His gaze intensified the closer I walked towards him, which thumped my heart louder. "Still not going to tell me where we're going?"

"To the library, duh," I teased, threaded my fingers between his, then tugged on his arm. While no part of me moved his gigantor frame, he followed silently behind me and indulged my self-guided tour.

He'll be happy with the end.

"Isn't it great?" I gasped around at the upper library space. Every time I came in here, I was enchanted. The soft filtered light under the black iron circular light fixture filled the space in a quiet, revered ambiance.

A few students studied at the big, rectangular wooden tables, but tonight the library was pretty empty. Mostly everyone here looked like tourists or graduate students, so I was thankful when Logan showed up at four today.

I'd led us upstairs to the main study room. Logan tipped his head back and looked around the enormous, revered space silently with a soft smile on his mouth. I stood and just silently watched as he took in the expansive space around us, which dwarfed even his 6ft5 height.

The longer I stood next to him, the more a calm reassurance filled me. While none of me enjoyed the emotional discussion part we'd agreed on for tonight, I felt lighter and happier that I had finally apologized to him.

"It's a great place to study," I remarked casually. "I do my tutoring sessions here, if you ever need to find me."

"Study huh?" His head tilted down and a gleam appeared in his eye. "We didn't bring our books, Ellie."

"Books all around us." I swept open my arms, then stepped down the central aisle. Past the end, we walked into a hallway, where I grabbed Logan's hand and dragged him behind me. My heart thumped in anticipation while I snaked through a few rows of stacks, through the lovely smell of books, and made some comments about whatever spaces we walked through until we came to the private study rooms.

"Ellie?" Logan's confusion was obvious when I dragged him into the third room on the left, then gently shut the door behind him.

There was absolutely nothing of interest here, just a round table with four chairs, except for the fact that I knew the security camera for this room was currently broken. Before Logan reacted, I stepped forwards and ran my hands up his hard chest, then gently clasped behind his neck. He stilled at my forwardness but the shift in his eyes when he realized my intentions encouraged me forwards.

"Private room," I murmured before I stood up on my tip toes and gently pressed my lips against his.

With a sharp breath in through his nose, Logan's arms wrapped around me. The graze of his lips over mine tingled the soft flesh with warmth and familiarity. We took our usual position, with his large hands grasped tightly onto the side of my hips while my fingers threaded gently through the soft hairs on his neck. His hair was shorter but just as velvety soft as I liked and I opened my mouth and deepened the kiss with urgency.

Logan responded with a slight groan, but his mouth met mine press for press and pull for pull. With a tight clench of his fingers into my hips, Logan parted his mouth and his tongue grazed gently over my lower lip. A soft whimper left me at the contact and I pressed myself tightly against him, practically pinned Logan against the door, and welcomed a more intimate kiss.

He held more restraint than me with the soft strokes of his tongue against mine. My knees slightly weakened but everything else lit up inside me when his hands moved back, cupped around my ass, and pulled me closer. Goosebumps sprung up my forearms, but my shoulders relaxed and I stood flush against the hard muscles of his chest and abdomen.

I flinched slightly when his fingers traced up under the edge of my shirt and stroked suggestively into the skin on my waist. With a gasp, I broke off and we both stood, our hands clutched tightly onto each other and panted for breath. My cheeks felt flaming hot but I pressed one more kiss into his mouth, light and sweet, then pulled back.

Logan's lips were slightly swollen pink but they curled upwards faintly. "Is this on every tour?"

I took one step back, dropped my hands from his neck, and pressed my palms into my molten-temperature cheeks. "No, this is the first time I've done this with anyone."

More like I haven't wanted to do this with anyone else.

At the hint of sadness that inadvertently slipped into my voice, Logan stepped closer to me. With one lift of his arm, his hand cupped around my jawline and his thumb stroked softly over my cheek. "What is it, Ellie?"

"This is so stupid," I averted my eyes but melted my cheek against his palm. "When we talk, I wasn't sure if we kiss because you try to make me feel better since I'm all crazypants emotional and -"

"I'm not going to try to understand what you mean by crazypants," he interrupted my senseless rambles with a slight upward lift in the corners of his mouth. "But if this doesn't convince you how you affect me then I'm open to suggestions."

His hand lowered down to my shoulder, where his fingers traced a trail down my arm until they reached my fingers. I watched, entranced as my eyes tracked his hand's movement and lifted mine up to his chest, where he palmed it flat. The faint but steady, fast beats of his heart pulsed reassurance into my palm as his hand pressed it against him.

His lips curled upwards in a devious smirk that matched the gleam in his eyes. "I mean, I could show you other spots that are just as affected..."

"I believe you." Feeling a little silly about my insecurity, I looked up at him from under my lashes. His hair was slightly messed up around his ears from my hands, the blue in his eyes sparkled like sunlight on the ocean, and his thin lips were ridiculously distracting because all I wanted was mine pressed against them again.

I rolled my lower lip under and held it there with my teeth. "Sometimes I just don't believe that you're actually here, that you don't hate me."

"I could never hate you, Ellie." His hand curled around mine still on his chest and the other opened the door. "As much as I want to kiss you again, I don't want you to get in trouble while at work."

"My shift ended two minutes before you came up to the desk," I confessed with a small giggle.

"In that case..." With one push of his hand, he palmed the door shut and gave me a wicked grin.

Twenty minutes later, Logan and I left the library slightly breathless, both our cheeks pink, and lips slightly swollen. I'd seen that look on hundreds of couples I'd pulled out of their makeout sessions in the stacks, but now I understood the appeal. Since the conference rooms had no door locks, we'd only made out and groped each other like clumsy teenagers.

Logan had just lowered his mouth down the side of my neck while one of his hands grabbed one of my breasts over my shirt when a door knock separated us like we'd been doused with cold water. Thankfully it was just Sarah, who couldn't have been more surprised to see me as the culprit but still read us the 'making out in the library riot act' I'd memorized from saying so much myself.

Logan laced his fingers in between mine while we walked down the library steps and back over to where he'd parked his truck. While we walked in silence, I thought about what I'd planned next, what I wanted to talk to him about, what he deserved to hear, all of which spiked up tiny nerves in my stomach.

"Still not going to tell me?" He asked thirty minutes into our highway drive. Fairly quickly the Seattle downtown buildings got smaller, then more spaced out, until the sky opened up and we drove with an evergreen backdrop on one side of the highway and open air and land on the other.

I just shook my head, then pulled out my phone. "We have about ten more minutes, that's all I'm giving you."

"Are we going... hiking?" His eyes darted at the dark evergreen tree backdrop on either side of the highway as we continued south.

"Nope," was all I gave him, then turned my head out the passenger side window in an unspoken sign that he wasn't going to get any more hints out of me.

Fortunately, despite his grumbles and further prompts of where we headed, our exit for Burien appeared quickly. "Turn here," I directed him, so he pulled off on the side of the road. I directed him, turn for turn, through the adorable, sleepy-looking town of Burien, then out the other side into flat, square, emerald-green farmlands.

"This is it?" he asked with a huge sense of doubt in his voice because farms now passed us on both sides. "Are you making me ride another horse?"

"No." I cupped a hand over my smile and gazed out the window. We looked in a completely different area than downtown, like the sky had grown bigger.

"Okay..." He looked down at the map on his GPS. "If I drive any further then I'm going into the water. Is it another boat tour?"

"Not exactly," I confessed in a deliberately slow voice, since we had one more turn then we arrived.

Once we made that exact turn and our destination's sign greeted us from the side of the road, Logan's eyes widened at me and his hands clutched the steering wheel tightly.

"You've gotta be kidding me."