Tailspin (Better Than You) (27 page)

              “Danny’s up for parole,” I finally say. I’m expecting tears, or for her to turn into my chest and cling to me like she needs me, but there’s no reaction. She just stares into the distance as if she hasn’t even heard me.

              “The hearing is on Friday.”

              Still, no reaction.

              “It’ll probably be granted.”

              Finally, she turns and looks at me, eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

              “Just that you should be careful,” I say, confused. Why is she acting like this isn’t a big deal?

              “I’m not scared of him.”

             
Is she serious?
“You should be, Lo.”

              “Why?” she says, voice raised. “I’ve been scared of him my whole life. I’m tired of being afraid of him, Nathan. I’m tired of being
afraid
.”

              Mouth open, I stare at her, unsure of what to say because I know she’s right. Being afraid doesn’t solve anything, but I don’t want her to be caught off guard, thinking that she’s safe when she really isn’t. “Just be careful, okay?”

              “I’m always careful.” The way she says it, full of resentment, worries me. Is she talking about more than Danny? I’m afraid to ask.

              One of the straps on her shirt slides off her shoulder, catching my attention as it slips free. She sees my eyes flicker towards it and uncurls herself from the self-saving ball she was wrapped in, slowly moving her body so that she’s straddling me. I’m surprised, but not so much that I don’t take the opportunity to run my lips along her bare shoulder.

              “You’re always afraid,” she whispers as her head falls back, opening herself to me. With a finger, I slip the other strap off of her shoulder and pull down her whole top in one quick motion. She isn’t wearing a bra which I somehow didn’t notice, but instead of letting myself get wrapped up in the surprise of that, I press my cheek into her bare chest, listening to her heart beat wildly.

              She continues talking, her voice vibrating against my ear. “You’re afraid for Emily and Joshua, for me. You’re afraid of Danny. And you’re afraid of me, too. Maybe even yourself.”

              This isn’t what I want to be talking about right now, but her words sting. They hit too close to the wound. “I’m not afraid of you,” I insist.

              She pulls away and stands so quickly that I almost fall off the bed, pulling her shirt up in the process. “You are. You’re afraid that I’ll fall apart. You’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing. You treat me like a piece of blown glass. Like the tiniest push might destroy me.”

              “Am I wrong? Is it so bad that I’m trying to protect you? Maybe you’re having a hard time remembering, but I’m not. I remember
everything
.”

              Logan backs away, and I suddenly realize that I’m standing over her. I step back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

              “Jesus, Nathan, that’s what I’m talking about! I’m not going to fucking break just because you raised your voice! You wanna know what’s killing me?”

              She pauses, as if waiting for an answer, but when I open my mouth to respond, she speaks over me. “
This
is killing me. You over there and me over here. There’s this line and you won’t cross it.”

              “And that’s a bad thing, how?” I’m frustrated. Annoyed. Angry. I don’t even know what’s going on.

              “Because I’m over here!” she yells. “I’m on the other side of the fucking line!”

              We stare at each other, at least three feet of floor separating us, Logan breathing heavy and a finality seeping into the crevices of this moment.

              “Why couldn’t you look at me today? In the furniture store.”

              She continues to stare at me, eyes wide, defiant. I asked the question sincerely, but the answer is slowly appearing, forming in my mind as I fit the pieces together. “It was my uniform, wasn’t it? Does it bring back memories? Do
I
bring back memories?”

              “Of course you do,” she says dismissively. “How could you not?”

              “You can’t even look me in the eye right now, and you want me to believe that you won’t break?” My asshole streak is emerging again. It happens when I’m frustrated, confused, and I’ve never felt more of either than right now. “How long have you been in here sleeping?”

              “What the fuck does it matter?”

              “How long!” I yell.

Her head snaps back in surprise, but then she retaliates, spitting back poison. “Since this morning, okay? It’s either sleeping or getting fucking high.” She stalks forward again, points a finger at my chest. “You’re right. I’m weak. I’m faking it. Are you happy now?”

A tear slips out of her eye, the first I’ve ever seen. “No, Logan. I’m not happy,” I say softly, bringing my hands up to cup her face. She lets me, her chin shaking from the effort of keeping more tears at bay.

“I thought it would be different,” she says, burying her face in my chest.

Me too
. Wrapping my arms around her, I take a deep breath, fill my nose with the scent of her. Again the image of her dancing through a field of burned flowers flashes through my mind. I wish I could make it disappear. “What do you need from me?” I finally ask.

“I just need you to be here,” she mumbles into my shirt.

I squeeze her tight. “I can do that.”

I hope.

35

December 13, 2010

              Just as we thought, Danny was granted parole, with a few conditions and probation, but free none the less. I took the necessary steps to put a restraining order on him in my name and Logan’s, but I know it won’t be enough. When someone wants revenge, a piece of paper can’t keep anyone safe.

              Logan and I are lying on top of my bed, both of us quiet and staring at the ceiling. Times like this is when I wish I could read her mind, find out what’s going on in there and how I can help. Even though she’s better about being honest since the fight last week, she’s still hard to read and somewhat closed off. Most of the time I’m debating whether I should pry it out of her or wait until she speaks willingly. The other times I’m wondering why she’s still so unwilling to talk.

              Swallowing my pride, I turn to her and ask, “What are you thinking about?”

              She bites her lip, opens her mouth but says nothing. Then: “Have you ever wondered what it would have been like if we’d met under normal circumstances? Like a chance meeting in a coffee shop, or a run in on a college campus.”

              It plays in my head like a movie, Logan sitting by a large window in a downtown coffee shop, watching the cars drive by. As I walk by the window, the way the sun glints off of her hair catches my attention and I can’t help but stare. Our eyes meet, thick glass between us, and I smile. She smiles back. And we live happily ever after.

              Or we cross paths on a crowded college campus. Some asshole bumps into her and sends her books and papers flying. One flutters around my feet and I scoop it up, slowly picking up more pieces as I make my way towards her. We stand at the same time, our eyes meeting, hands stilling and hearts pumping. Love at first sight.

              “Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if my mom never took me away, if Amelia and Ralph would have stayed in my life,” she says, eyes still fixated on the ceiling. “Or if I’d never have met Danny or Sam.”

              “I always wonder what would have happened if I didn’t call my parents that night. If I just sucked it up and took care of Joshua myself.”

              She turns her head, meets my eyes, holds them steady. “It’s not your fault.”

              “It kind of is,” I argue.

              She shakes her head vehemently. “If it was raining like you said, the streets still would have been wet two hours later when they came home on their own. You had no control over it.”

              “Yeah, well, maybe you should tell yourself that.”

              Sighing, Logan looks back up at the ceiling, my eyes left to stare at the scar on her temple. I look away. “It’s different for me. It’s my fault because I stopped fighting. I gave up,” she says.

              “You didn’t know any better.”

              “I wish that was true, but I did. I just realized that being better was hard and I decided I wasn’t strong.”

              “What about now?” I ask carefully. We’re still walking on a thin sheet of glass, careful to place our feet in exactly the right spot lest it shatters and plunges us into the unknown below.

              “I don’t know. Some days I’m strong, other days my cravings are stronger.”

              “But you fight it, right? That makes you strong.”
Please tell me you fight it.

              She sighs noisily. “Yeah, I do. But it’s tiring, you know? It feels like I’m always playing tug of war with myself.”

              “Do you think you did the right thing by coming back?”

              I hear her moving and look over to find her curled on her side, facing me, a small smile curving her lips and cheeks. “Yeah, I think I did.”

~~

              After Logan left, I got ready for work, slowly pulling on all of the layers meant to protect me from the world. Her words kept running through my head, distracting me from the simplest of tasks. My shirt buttons were misaligned, my socks mismatched, my badge upside down. It took twice as long to get ready, which forced me to rush to the station to get there on time.

              Derek is leaning against the building when I pull up, his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face. “You’re late,” he says, standing tall.

              “Sorry. You ready?”

              He walks to the car. To the driver’s side, in fact. “I’ve been ready. And I’m driving.”

              Knowing better than to argue with him when he’s in a bad mood, I walk around to the passenger side and get in. We’re on patrol today, so our job is to basically drive around and wait for trouble. Sometimes it finds us, other times we find it. In Miami, there’s no shortage. Derek is still silent, which is unusual, even if he is in a bad mood.

              “What crawled up your ass today?” I ask, hoping to diffuse the tension, but he doesn’t take the bait. Seeing his hands tighten on the steering wheel, I change my approach. “You alright, man?”

              He blows out a short breath. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

              “You don’t look fine right now.”

              “Are you saying you think I look fine sometimes?” And he’s back. “You know, you hit on me a lot.”

              “Me?
You’re
the one who’s always making jokes about me being a woman. Maybe it’s your deepest, darkest desire.”

              Derek laughs. “I just call it like it is,” he says, switching the car into the farthest right lane. As he’s doing so, a car runs a stop sign and cuts us off. Derek slams on his brakes. “What the fuck!” he yells, quickly throwing on the lights. The car doesn’t stop right away, possibly unaware of being pulled over. Derek hits the sirens and finally the car slows down and pulls into a side alley.

              It’s obvious Derek is mad as hell, so I turn to him and say, “Let me handle this,” before stepping out of the car. I place one hand on my gun and keep the other by my side and approach the driver’s side window. It rolls down slowly, revealing a young, Hispanic guy.

              “Are you aware that you ran a stop sign back there?” I ask him, slowly sweeping what can I see of his car. He doesn’t answer. A wary pressure starts to build in my chest. “License and registration, please.”

              While he reaches over the seat to the glove compartment, I tighten the hand resting on my holster, ready for anything. It’s one of those moments, when the world stops spinning; when life stops moving. From a distance, I hear Derek yell something. I turn my head, ready to find out what’s going on, but in the next second the world explodes with a pain deep inside of my skull. I can’t hear anything except the pounding of my blood. I can’t feel anything except the warm trickle of wetness seeping into my hair. It feels as if someone has replaced the blood in my body with lead, making everything feel heavy and stiff. I fall to my knees facing Derek, watching as he struggles with a group of guys that are trying to contain him. There’s three of them and one of him, if my eyes can be trusted; terrible odds, no matter how trained we are.

              I’m helpless, eyes transfixed in a half-state of consciousness, idly wondering how I’m even staying upright. I can feel the blood leaving my body with every pump of my heart. Each breath becomes harder to take. Suddenly my vision is obstructed by a pair of legs. Slowly travelling up the length of him, I finally see what’s going on. I understand, a little too late, that we’ve been set up.

              Danny’s eyes meet mine, so much darker and crueler than I remember them being. There’s a slick malice there, an emptiness that raises the hair on the back of my neck. When he smiles, it’s deranged, full of pleasure and the promise of pain.

              “Got you,” he says coldly, adjusting the brass knuckles on his bleeding hand. There’s a split second between when he raises his fist and when it comes crashing down on the side of my head. In the time it takes for me to fall to the ground, my cheek pressed against the dirty asphalt, I hear Derek screaming and cars honking and birds chirping and dark, evil laughing and then…nothing, except for my breathing. In and out.

In. Out.

              In…Out…

             
Logan’s face pops into the darkness of my mind, her long hair swirling around her face, hands reaching for me as she falls into an endless pit of black. I want to reach for her, save her,
hold
her, but I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t feel.