Beyond Layers: Layer Series Book Four (Layers Series 4) (29 page)

Joel smiles. “I remember. But the Chevelle you two fixed up, that was pretty awesome.”

Logan shrugs and looks down at his half-eaten lasagna.

“Sorry, man,” Joel says. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Wasn’t thinking?

“It’s okay, man.”

Sandy huffs. “You’re all so pathetic; you can’t even talk about it, about him.”

Talk about it? Talk about him?

“Sandy,” Carol warns, shaking her head.

“Oh, come on, Carol. You’re going to sit there and act like the wrong son didn’t die. Welcome his latest bitch into the family.”

“Enough!” Ray says, slamming his hand on the table; our plates vibrate like Jell-O.

“We all know Luke shouldn’t have been driving that day. He had the flu. He was on cold meds. But this selfish bastard,”—she points to Logan—“he couldn’t be bothered. He was too busy fucking in the backseat.”

“You’re right, Sandy,” Logan says. “It was my fault. He shouldn’t have been driving.”

“I wished it was his and not yours.”

Logan stiffens.

“Logan, what’s going on?” I ask.

He shakes his head but remains silent.

“Let it be, Sandy,” Jared warns her.

“No. I won’t let it be. Sam should know what kind of man Logan is.”

“What the hell is she raving about?” Steph asks.

“Nothing,” Logan tells her.

Sandy laughs. “I’ll tell you what I’m raving about. Your precious Logan and I have a kid.”

We all look at Logan. He doesn’t look up from his plate.

He has a kid! What the fuck?

“What’s she talking about, Logan?” Carol asks.

“Tell them, or I will,” Sandy says. “I’m done with the lies, the secrets.”

Logan remains silent.

“Logan?” Ray says.

Logan looks up at me. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper back.

“Holy shitballs!” Steph says. “You have a kid.”

Sandy smirks. “Go on, Logan, tell them.”

He sighs. “Sandy told me she was pregnant and I told her to get an abortion. I would take her and pay for it. I begged her not to tell Luke. I knew he’d marry her, ruin his life. But she told him.” He pauses, looking at Sandy; his eyes filled with… hate? Regret? “She told him, and he was furious with me. He was sick that weekend but insisted we go home and work things out with her. But we didn’t make it home, and…”

“I wanted to tell everyone, all of you, that I was pregnant,” Sandy whispers, looking off in the distance. “But Luke was dead and Logan was in the hospital in critical condition.” She pauses, looking at Logan. “I loved you so much. I was pregnant with your child and you refused to see me. I went to the hospital for weeks, but you told the nurses to keep me away. You blamed me for Luke’s death. So I went away, had the baby, and gave her up for adoption.”

“I never meant to hurt you, Sandy,” Logan whispers. “I lost my brother, my best friend, my other half, my everything. I wasn’t thinking straight, but you and I both know the truth. It wasn’t my baby, it was Luke’s.”

“You’re lying,” she shouts.

He shakes his head. “I’m not lying, Sandy.”

“You told Jared Sam was the one, you wanted to marry her. You can’t marry her. I love you, Logan. I’ve always loved you.”

Jared stands, throwing his napkin over his plate. “What the fuck?”

“I never loved you, Jared. I only married you to stay close to Logan.”

Holy shit!
Thank God, the kids are downstairs watching a movie. This is crazy.

Jared looks at his wife in disbelief, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. I want to comfort him, tell him I am so sorry. But I remain silent knowing it’s not my place. In fact, I’ve never felt more out of place. I feel as if the man sitting next to me is a complete stranger.

Logan shakes his head. “The baby wasn’t mine, I swear. After I got out of the hospital, Allie and I took Sandy to see a doctor, a shrink. He said she couldn’t accept Luke’s death and she’d turned things around in her head. If you don’t believe me, ask Allie or Matt, or call Janet, she knows what happened. They’ll tell you Luke was the one sleeping with her. The one with her last.”

“You’re lying,” Sandy says. “Why are you lying?”

“Wait a minute,” Carol says, looking at her son. “With her
last
?”

Logan looks at me, and then his mother. “We… Luke and I shared girls sometimes.”

“What the fuck!” Ray yells.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I know what we did was, is, wrong. But we didn’t see it that way. We were young and stupid.”

Ray closes his eyes briefly, calming himself. He opens them and looks back at Logan. “I don’t even know what to say to you, son.”

“I’m telling you the truth, Dad. We shared Sandy once. Luke continued to…be with her, I never did. I swear it was only that one time.”

Jared kicks his chair and storms out of the room.

“Sandy,” Logan says, softly. “Luke was the one you loved, not me. I am so sorry I didn’t help you more. I should have, for Luke’s sake, for his daughter’s sake. I couldn’t get past it, couldn’t let it go. Every time I looked at you I wanted to…” He shakes his head. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“He was mine,” Sandy says, wiping her eyes. “You took him away from me. You should have been driving; he was sick. I hate you, Logan, so fucking much. When you had your heart attack, it was a sign from Luke, a sign from God that you didn’t deserve his heart; you didn’t deserve a second chance. You weren’t worthy of it. I wanted you to die. I still want you to die. You ruined my life,” she yells, as she stands, nearly knocking over her chair. She looks at me. “He’ll ruin your life, like he ruins everyone’s life. He’s a selfish prick,” she yells and runs out of the dining room.

His heart?

“She told me the baby was yours,” Jared says, standing just outside the dining room, as if afraid to come in. “All these years,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve hated you for not taking responsibility. I’m sorry, Logan.”

“This is so fucked up,” Steph says.

“You can say that again,” Regan adds.

I look at Logan. “What heart attack?”

Carol stands and looks down at her son, tears running down her cheeks. “I told you to tell Sam everything. You don’t keep stuff like this from those who love you, Logan. You don’t keep a grandmother away from her grandchild.”

Logan gets up from the table, tosses his napkin on his chair, and marches out of the room toward the back door. It slams shut, rattling the pictures on the wall.

I remain seated, trying to digest what just happened.

“I’m so sorry, Samantha,” Carol says, sitting down, wiping at her tears.

I nod. “So am I, Carol.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Steph asks me. “You’re shaking.”

“I am?” I look down at my hands. Shit! I’m quaking like a leaf. I stand. “Please excuse me. I think I’m going to be sick.”

After I ralph up all my dinner, I lie down. An hour passes and there’s still no Logan. So I get up and go in search of him.

I find him thirty minutes later in the woods behind his parents’ house, sitting on a log, a bottle of scotch in hand.

I sit next to him and he hands me the bottle.

I hesitate, but take it. I take a healthy swig and pray it stays down.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“I’m sorry too, Logan. I’m sorry about Sandy, and the baby. I’m sorry about Luke. Why didn’t you tell your family?”
Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?

He shrugs. “I couldn’t. I felt like I’d be betraying Luke somehow. Sandy knows the truth, but she forgets, mixes it up in her head. Her doctor told me she just couldn’t accept Luke’s death. I thought I was protecting her, in a way. I thought by letting her live the lie, she could go on.”

I hand him the bottle. “I’m confused, Logan. Start from the beginning.”

He nods. “Allie’s friend worked at the drug store near campus. She told Allie when Sandy bought a pregnancy test. So when Sandy called and asked to speak with Luke, I asked her what was going on. She told me she was pregnant and it was Luke’s baby. I didn’t believe her.”

“Why?”

“Because Sandy was a fucking whore.”

I cringe.

“I’m sorry Sam but she was. She slept with half the guys on campus. She was in love with Luke and everyone knew it. She swore it was his, but I didn’t believe her. I still have my doubts. I begged her not to tell Luke because I knew Luke would step up, even if it weren’t his kid. That’s just the kind of guy he was. She promised me she wouldn’t tell him, but she did. When Luke found out that I’d told her to get an abortion, and that I’d even pay for it…” He pauses, running a hand through his hair. “You should have seen the look on his face. He hated me. My other half, my twin brother, couldn’t even look me in the eye. It broke me.”

He takes a long draw from the bottle and continues. “Luke was the good twin, the smart one. He’d earned a scholarship to Harvard Law. I knew if he stayed with Sandy, married her, she’d suck the life out of him, and he’d give up his dream. He wanted to be a defense attorney. He wanted to defend the defenseless. He had the biggest… heart.”

He pauses taking another healthy draw from the bottle. “He felt sorry for her, wanted to take care of her and the baby. He couldn’t look me in the eye but I couldn’t let him throw his life away.”

He looks off in the distance. “After I got out of the hospital, I was… I was in so much pain. I know it’s no excuse for what I did, but I couldn’t deal with what had happened. I refused to see the truth, to admit I was responsible for Luke’s death. I blamed Sandy for everything. I lied to her, told her Luke was in love with someone else. I said we’d used her like we had so many; she was nothing, just another pussy. I didn’t realize how fragile she was, how broken. I pushed her, and her mind shattered.”

“What happen to the baby?”

“She lives in Idaho, somewhere. It was a closed adoption. Two years ago, Sandy petitioned to have the records opened. But the judge refused, due to her mental state.”

“Tell me what happened that day, the day of the accident, and about… your heart.”

“Sandy was right about the accident, it was my fault. Luke was upset about the pregnancy, and he had a bad cold. He’d taken some cold meds and shouldn’t have been driving. But I asked him to, so I could fuck some girl we picked up at a gas station. Her car had broken down and she needed a lift home. She was hot and I was horny, as always, so I told her we’d give her a ride if she let me fuck her. We would have given her a ride regardless; I was just messing with her. Luke was so pissed at me for taking advantage of her and I was so mad at him for giving in to Sandy. It was like a tug-of-war, neither one of us taking the advantage, getting ahead. All our arguments played out that way. It was as if even in disagreement we shared, gave half. He was drugged, mad, preoccupied, and driving too fast. When the truck crossed the median his reaction time was impaired.”

“The girl?”

A lone tear runs down his cheek.

I wanted to get up and wipe it away, to kiss him better. I also wanted to hit him, yell at him for being such a selfish jerk, and for lying to me. Playing my own game of tug-of-war in my head, I do nothing, take no action, except to sit and watch the tear roll to his chin and fall to the cuff of his button-down.

“Decapitated,” he whispers.

“Dear God.”

“She had a two-year-old son.”

I say nothing to that. Not able to move my lips, to form words.

He takes another swallow of scotch. “I’m sorry.”

Finding my voice I ask, “Your heart?”

“My heart was damaged in the accident. Luke suffered severe brain damage but his heart and the rest of his vital organs were undamaged, healthy.”

“A heart transplant. You have his heart.”

He nods. “He saved me. He was always saving me. Sandy was right. It should have been me. He was the good twin, I was the bad.”

“Why, Logan? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I tell the woman I love, the only one who could save me, why I needed to be saved? I didn’t think you’d forgive me, and I wanted to be loved, to be saved. So I did what I do best—I took.”

“You had a heart attack?”

He nods. “Yes. I lost consciousness during a game. Scar tissue from the transplant caused a blockage of my right ventricle.”

“The Outer Banks? You were recovering?”

He nods.

I wipe tears off my cheek. “How many times have I run my lips, my fingers, over that scar, and you said nothing? Did you think you could keep this from me? I’d never find out? I felt terrible for not telling you who I was, about my past. You told me you were an open book, had nothing to hide.”

He shakes his head. “I wanted to tell. I just…”

“Just what, Logan?”

He turns and looks at me. “Did you know you have nightmares? That you cry out in your sleep, beg Lane, and sometimes Lex, not to leave you?”

I blink more tears away. “No. I didn’t know.”

“A few days after I moved into the loft, you started dreaming about me. You’d say things like ‘don’t leave, don’t die.’ It’s as if you were waiting, expecting something to happen to me, something bad. I wanted to tell you; I was going to tell you, but I knew you’d freak out. I knew you’d worry even though I’m fine; I’m healthy.”