Blow(87)

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 f*cked-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.”