Neat (Becker Brothers, #2)(52)

I nodded, eyes on the old laminate floor between Mom and me. “Dad would have given that same advice,” I mused. “He was always telling us not to shy away from our emotions, that it never made us less of a man to feel.”

Mom’s eyes glossed over a bit at that, but she smiled past them, shaking her head. “He was the best man,” she whispered. “The best father.”

I nodded, that thick knot back in my throat as silence settled over the kitchen.

“So,” Mom said, swiping at a tear that had slipped free and fallen down her cheek. She forced a smile. “Do I know this girl?”

I frowned. “You do, actually… and that’s partly why I haven’t talked to her about how I’m feeling.”

“What?” Mom shook her head, face screwing up in confusion. “Why on Earth would the fact that I know her be part of the problem?”

I didn’t respond, just watched her with brows folded together, hands gripping the counter behind me. She shook her head again, waiting for me to answer, but then like a cloud passing over the sun, recognition slid over her face, slowly erasing the confusion as her mouth fell open.

Time stretched in that moment, a few seconds feeling like hours as Mom blinked, closed her mouth again, and turned her back on me.

She picked up the knife I’d abandoned for the whisk, chopping the tomatoes on the cutting board with more force than necessary as she shook her head. “No.”

“Mom, hear me out.”

“No!” She spun, facing me again with red cheeks and wide eyes. The knife was shaking in her hands. “Now, I’m sure Mallory Scooter is a nice girl, Logan, but it’s so much bigger than that. Her family is trouble, son. You don’t understand what they’re capable of.”

“Mom, come on…”

“I don’t want to hear another word about this,” she said, turning back to the cutting board with her mind made up.

She chopped away while I stood there with my hands open toward her, my jaw slack in disbelief. Mom had always been the most level-headed of the family, even when Dad was around. When he got up in arms about something, she was the one to cool him down. But now, she could barely cut a vegetable, she was so angry.

All because of me, and the feeling I’d given into after fighting it for half my life for this exact reason.

“Mom,” I tried again, but she cut me off.

“Set the table and call your brothers inside.” She dumped the tomatoes she’d cut into a large salad bowl, turning for a cucumber next.

She wouldn’t look at me.

I swallowed, nodding numbly even though she wasn’t looking at me to see my silent agreement. I set the table as she asked, called my brothers in, and crawled inside my thoughts for the rest of the night.

Dinner was lively, all of us celebrating Jordan’s win at state, but the smile on my face was hollow. The questions I asked felt like they came from someone else’s mouth, the jokes I made were distant and foggy, like I was playing host to a foreign entity running my body for me that night.

On the inside, I was the loneliest I’d been in my entire life.

If I couldn’t even go to Mom about Mallory, I knew for sure I couldn’t go to my brothers. And if I couldn’t go to any of them, that meant I was facing what would happen next with Mallory on my own.

That cold sense of loneliness settled in like a thick fog, and by the time I was crawling back into my truck to head home for the night, I might as well have been in a one-man submarine in the middle of the Atlantic.

I stared at the Chevy emblem on my steering wheel until it blurred — hands on the wheel, mind somewhere far away that I’d never been before. When I finally blinked my way out of the daze and turned the key, bringing the engine to life, my phone lit up in the passenger seat.

And Mallory’s name filled the screen.

You would have thought I was a shortstop diving for a ground ball for how fast my hand shot out, scooping the device into my grasp, fingers typing out my password until her text message popped up.



Mallory: You bastard.



The excitement I’d felt just moments before evaporated in a whoosh, taking my next breath with it. I watched the bouncing dots on the screen that told me she was typing more, and I ran through all the possible messages that might come next.

You didn’t call.

Why did you clean my house, you weirdo?

The sex was awful, don’t ever talk to me again.

But instead, an entire paragraph of text mixed with emojis came through.



Mallory: I told you I’m not good with emotions, and you recommend this book??? Are you an emotional serial killer? Frederick just got beat up, and Werner went home with him, but now they’re saying he’s been lying and that he’s 18 when he’s actually 16 and all because they want him in Berlin to build technology for the Nazis. And then poor Marie-Laure is growing up and losing her innocence because she knows her dad isn’t coming back and Etienne won’t let Madame Blanchard run her rebellion out of his house anymore and… and…



There was a pause, and then a single crying face emoji came through.

I chuckled, relief washing over me at the same time that a powerful ache rolled through my chest again. I remembered those feelings when I’d read All the Light We Cannot See, and the way the story unfolded, the incredible writing, the powerful emotions — they were all part of the reason it was my favorite book.