Blow (35 page)

I tried not to parallel Logan, the teen, with Logan, the man, but it difficult. Was that what I was to him—a challenge? The thrill of danger?

God, I hoped not.

“I know what you’re thinking. And no, that’s not what this is.” He motioned between the two of us. “I’m not that same lost kid anymore who thought he could rule the world with money and power.”

I pushed my doubts aside. This wasn’t about me—it was about him. “I’m fine. Go on.”

He assessed me for a long time.

I gave him a slight nod to let him know I was okay.

“For a while, I thought I loved her, but then I realized that was my friend James talking, making me think that. Don’t get me wrong; I liked hanging out with her. It made me forget everything else I had going on. But I wasn’t looking for all the shit that would come with telling her father or my grandfather, and she was cool with that until one day when she wasn’t. Out of the blue, she told me she wanted to tell them.”

I could see the confusion in his face, like he just didn’t get women and their changing their minds.

“After that, I started to get nervous. She said she’d keep us quiet, but I wasn’t so sure. Then she started to get more and more serious about us and she was throwing around words like
love
,
marriage
, and
forever
. The day she told me she loved me and she wanted to run away together, I broke it off.”

The words were spoken with such absolute distaste, the sound made me cringe.

He shook his head. “I mean for fuck’s sake, we weren’t even sixteen.”

“I take it she didn’t take the breakup well?”

He shook his head again. “No, she couldn’t accept that we were over. For almost two months, she kept coming over, calling me, crying to me that she wanted me back. She was like a stalker. I did my best to ignore her, but then she threatened to tell her father about us.”

“Did she?”

“Fuck no, I knew she wouldn’t. She was smarter than that.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “Logan, who was her father?”

In a mumbled voice he answered, “Patrick Flannigan.”

Two words that put everything in perspective.

I drew in a sharp breath, not liking where this was going at all. The car was stop and go but I felt like we were flying down the road, ready to crash into anything that got into our way. “Patrick Flannigan,” I gulped.

A slow nod.

“Was that when he was part of the Dorchester Heights Gang?” I asked, starting to wonder if Emily had anything to do with the merging of two gangs.

Another slow nod.

His knuckles were white around the steering wheel. “To say he was an overprotective father would be downplaying it. When he found out, I knew he’d cut my balls off. But I had to call her bluff, so I told her I didn’t really care who she told. As callous as it sounds, I was done with her. By then I’d learned just how selfish and self-centered she was and I couldn’t stand to be near her. Anything I had felt for her was gone. I just wanted her out of my life.”

Trembling, I knew something bad must have taken place. I turned my body toward him and with my voice nothing more than a squeak, I asked, “What happened?”

Logan wouldn’t look at me. “It was a Saturday and the Red Sox were on. I was at my grandfather’s house watching the game. I was the only one home when she came over. I didn’t want to let her in, but she left me no choice when she wouldn’t stop ringing the fucking doorbell. I remember it like it was yesterday. I flung the door open and left her there while I walked into the family room and flopped on the couch with my arms behind my head. She came in and handed me a piece of paper with all these different numbers on it. When I asked what I was supposed to do with it, she told me it was confirmation of her pregnancy.”

The flashing lights in front of us seemed to be getting closer and my eyes darted to the sneakers on his feet and the slamming of his right foot on the brake. His arm jerked in front of me as if he could hold me in place. We were inches from the car, but there was no impact.

He finally looked at me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

We were close to the hotel and I wanted to know what happened. “Logan, please just tell me what all of this is about? And why you’re telling me this story.”

He scrubbed his jaw and resumed driving. “I crumpled up the paper and threw it to the ground. I told her it couldn’t have been mine. We hadn’t fucked in months and I’d always used a condom. She told me she was three months along. That I should know condoms aren’t always effective. When I didn’t blink an eye, she insisted it was mine. I still didn’t believe her. Not that she was pregnant, and not that it was mine. I lost it then. I told her I’d had enough of her lies and to stop harassing me. I didn’t hold back. I told her what I thought of her and that I couldn’t believe she’d stoop to the oldest trick in the book to try to be with me. I couldn’t stand her—why would she even want to be with me? She cried that her father was going to kill her. Send her away to live with the nuns. I didn’t listen; instead I told her to leave and never come back. She ran into the bathroom and I didn’t bother with her. I wasn’t about to play her game. An hour later, I didn’t know if she was still there, but I got up to check anyway. That’s when I saw the blood pooling from under the door. I busted it open and she was lying there. Blood had arced up in splashes on the wall, the ceiling, and the side of the toilet. It was everywhere. It took me a moment to figure out where it was coming from. Then I saw it. She’d cut her wrists open—she’d killed herself, and it was too late to save her. I was too late to save her.”

There was no color. No light. No words. Nothing I could say.

The inflection in his voice told me of the pain he felt. Who was I to judge? And I still didn’t understand how he knew Peyton’s attack was because he’d been seen with her.

I reached over to him as he pulled up to the hotel valet. “Logan, you were a kid. How were you to know what she’d do?”

Ignoring me, he grabbed my bag from the back and got out without a word. My door opened and he stood there waiting for me. We stayed silent until we got to his room. I sat on the couch. He paced the room.

Finally, I spoke. “I don’t understand what this has to do with Peyton.”

He ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t know what to do when I found her, so I called my old man. When he got to my grandfather’s, he called someone to come get me and told me he didn’t want me anywhere near there. I had no idea what he was doing, but found out later that he took the blame for her death.”

“What do you mean, took the blame? She killed herself.”

“In our house,” he muttered.

“But it wasn’t anyone’s fault.” I insisted.

“You don’t understand. A powerful man’s child doesn’t just die. They don’t just get shot, and certainly don’t just kill themselves. There has to be a reason. Always a reason. My father took that blame.”

My heart leapt. “How could he?”

“After he called 911, he called Patrick and told him what had happened. His version anyway. He told him Emily stopped by to see me but he didn’t know why. He knew it was going to get out that Emily and I had been together anyway, and he wanted to be the one to put it out there. He went on and told Patrick that when he told her I didn’t want to see her anymore, she started to cry, and then asked to use the restroom. He finished the story by telling him she’d been in there a while, so he’d gone to check on her, and that’s when he found her with her wrists slit, but it was too late. She was already dead.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“In Patrick’s eyes my father caused her distress. He was the reason she killed herself. And code mandates a life for a life. He thought Patrick would kill him but instead Patrick took his life in a different way. That day my father sold his soul to Patrick to save me.”

I was shaking my head. “But you didn’t do anything. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But it was—and my father knew Patrick would see it that way. I had gotten her pregnant. I was the one who didn’t believe her. I was the one who left her bleeding out in that bathroom.”

“Logan, she took her own life.”

He sat in a chair. Clasped and unclasped his hands before rubbing the back of his neck. “Don’t you get it? It was because of me.”

“Logan.” I said his name only. I could see the pain he was feeling, but I didn’t think worse of him because of this. He was a young teen. It wasn’t his fault. No one makes another person do something like that—people do it to themselves.

It was enough to make him glance up. “I’m getting off track. After everything happened, my parents divorced and I moved to New York with my mother. Patrick never spoke about the pregnancy and to this day, I‘m not certain he ever found out, but Tommy and his sister were close, and he knew.”

“Tommy never told his father?” I asked.

“No. I don’t why. Probably because he knew Patrick would beat the living shit out of him for letting something like that happen to his sister, or maybe because he knew Patrick would kill me and he wanted to punish me in his own fucked-up way. Who knows why? Anyway, a few years passed and I began to distance myself from that painful day, from what I’d done, and get on with my life. One summer, I came back here with a girl, and Tommy saw me with her. He followed me back to my grandfather’s with four other guys and they attacked us.”

“Oh my God, Logan.”

Logan ignored my compassion. He was in a trance, talking with no feeling whatsoever, just citing the facts. “Tommy had a knife and he carved the letter
E
in the girl’s . . . in Kayla’s stomach. He told me if I was ever seen around town again with any other girl, he’d do the same, or worse.”

Shuddering, I sat here absorbing what he’d told me. “Are you certain he attacked Peyton?”

He ran his hand over his stubble. “I’m sure, Elle. He called me a dog that night. I’m sure. Peyton had me go with her to Mulligan’s Cup yesterday and the guy who works there was with Tommy that night so long ago. He must have told him.”

“Declan?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You know him?”

“Yes, he’s a really nice guy. And he likes Peyton. I can’t believe he’d do anything to hurt her.”

Logan stood. “Stay away from him.”

I nodded. I finally understood what he was worried about. Why he wore the hat, the sunglasses, whenever he went out. Why he looked around everywhere we went as if scouting the area. It was because he was. But I also knew I could take care of myself. “Logan,” I said before he walked into the bedroom.

He stopped.

“I can take care of myself.”

At that he turned around and reached into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet. He thumbed through the card slots and removed what looked like a tattered newspaper clipping. It was in color; maybe it was a magazine clipping. He handed it to me. On it was a picture of a girl who bore an eerie resemblance to me when I was younger. The headline read, “Young teen kills herself.”

My hand flew to my mouth. The similarity I bore to her initially seemed uncanny, but a closer look showed that while we shared the same ginger-colored hair and a smidgen of freckles across the nose, that’s where the likeness ended.

Logan gave me an intense look. “Tommy’s a sick fuck. I’m not as worried about what he’ll do to you because you’re with me. I’m worried about what he’ll do to you if he sees the resemblance.”

“Logan, we don’t look that much alike.”

“I know that. But from a distance there are similarities.”

My eyes closed in a subconscious effort to block out the fear in his voice. Out of nowhere, a thought struck. My eyes popped open. “Do you think he did something to my sister?”

An audible intake of breath was his response.

Like it was on fire, and burning me, I shoved the newspaper clipping as far away from me as I possibly could. “This isn’t your fault. I’m involved in this because of my sister, not you. This started before we ever met.”

He dropped his gaze.

“Logan,” I said softly.

His eyes surprised me. “I’ll find out where your sister is, Elle. I have a plan.”

Surprised, my brows raised in question. “What’s the plan?”

Not wasting any time, he stood and started back toward the bedroom. “I can’t tell you right now, but you have to trust me. I will keep you and that little girl safe.”

“And Michael?” I asked.

He just stared at me.

“Logan?”

Without another word, without an answer, he closed the door.

LOGAN

R
eality slapped me in the face.

Even after a shower, my skin still felt like it was bathed in a cold sweat. My fingers continued to tremble with the disgust I felt for what I’d done all those years ago.

I hated that I’d had to tell Elle about it, but she had to know.

As I walked into my father’s law office, my legs were rods holding me up with each step, but I couldn’t feel them. I was on autopilot. I was gunning first for Declan, and then finally Tommy.

Tommy was close, but I had to believe he didn’t know about Elle because if he did . . . I couldn’t even think what that would mean.

Sure, I had a plan.

One that would protect her.