“I know. I’m so sorry, Millie.” Was he crying?
My adrenaline spiked. “Logan, it’s okay,” I whispered, not wanting to wake my parents. “I’m glad you called. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hung up the phone and grabbed the keys to our family SUV from the kitchen counter. I knew it would be parked in the driveway and not in the garage like my father’s car was, and I didn’t want to risk any unnecessary noise by opening the garage door.
As quietly as I could, I unlocked the sliding glass door to the backyard and slipped outside into the cool night air. I went through the side gate, out to the front of the house, and got into the car.
I didn’t turn the headlights on until I was about five houses down the street, and then I floored it.
It tookme twenty-three endless minutes of driving before I saw the neon sign for Jackson’s. It was almost two in the morning, and the bars on the busy, downtown strip were no doubt about to close up for the night. I needed to find Logan before the street became crowded with foot traffic from the night’s patrons as they headed home.
I slowed the car down to a crawl and searched the shadows along the sidewalk, assuming he would be outside waiting for me—but I didn’t see him anywhere. I decided to pull over so that I could check inside the bar, and had just parallel parked into an empty spot along the sidewalk when I noticed a figure ahead of me, illuminated by the SUV’s headlights. A man was sitting on the ground against the brick building with his head between his knees.
Logan.
I jumped out and walked over to where he was sitting. He didn’t look up at me until I was standing at his feet.
His face was filthy. There was dirt smeared under his nose and across his right cheek. “Millie?”
“Hey, Logan. Let’s get you home, okay?” I held out my hand to him to help pull him up, but his attention was caught somewhere along my thighs. Looking down, I realized I’d left the house in nothing but one of my brother’s old, oversized T-shirts—the hem of which fell about four inches above my knees.
But worse . . . I wasn’t wearing any pants.
I felt the flush of embarrassment as Logan’s gaze raked over the shirt before they rose and met mine. He looked so sad, and yet . . . there was something almost predatory that flashed in his eyes.
“Come on, Logan. It’s late.” My hand still hung in the air between us. His eyes flitted back to my hemline, caught on the fabric’s edges for a few seconds before he reached up to wrap his fingers around my wrist as I pulled him up into a standing position.
I was tall for my age, taller than most of the girls I knew at school, but Logan stood at least six inches taller than me. He peered down at me in the darkness of the night, swaying a little, and smiled. His teeth were a flash of white in the dark. “Thank you for coming for me, Mills.”
I rolled my eyes in mock annoyance, a smile forming wide on my own face. “Of course I came to get you, dork. Come on, let’s get you to the car.”
His hand was still attached to my wrist, so I used my other arm to steer him toward the SUV.
After I got him into the passenger’s seat, I moved to the other side of the car and got in. With the dome lights on, I took another look at Logan and was horrified to find that the dirt smeared on his face was actually dried blood. I could also now see that his left eye was swollen, and a bruise was forming around it. I couldn’t stop myself from gasping.
“Logan, what the hell happened to you?”
His face fell. He turned his head and looked straight out of the windshield. “Just drive.”
My heart started thumping in my chest as I stared at his profile. Something bad was happening. Or had it already happened? Either way, I could feel adrenaline sliding through my veins like ice.
“Okay,” I replied, mostly to myself. I put the key back into the ignition and pulled out of the parking spot just as a crowd of people burst out of Jackson’s.
We drove for fifteen minutes in silence. Logan stayed focused on the road ahead, but I could tell he was lost in thought. Thenot-knowing what happened was killing me, but I knew that pressing him about it wasn’t going to work. “So, where am I taking you?” I kept my voice light.
I could feel his gaze shift over in my direction. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t look away, either.
“My dad’s dead.” It was almost a whisper.
I turned to look at him, meeting his eyes. They were full of so many emotions, and he was giving me every single one of them. Anger, hurt, guilt, disappointment. He was letting me see it all. I’d never talked to Logan about his dad before—not directly. But I’d known enough. “How?”
His gaze stayed locked on me. “Drank himself to death. His liver gave out. He was dead for a week before anyone even found him.”
“Oh.” I released a breath, not knowing the right thing to say. An apology or condolences seemed natural, but his relationship with his father was anything but. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, Amelia.” His lips were tight as his eyes bore into mine. “Am I?” His voice cracked.
He was genuinely asking me. I felt my heart break wide open for him, shattering into tiny pieces as it became so clear to me that hewasn’tokay. He was hanging on by a thread. Desperate for hope. And I realized altogether that he had been for a long time.
