Page 74 of Ruined

Sometimes, I believe Kim let me into her family simply because she needed someone to take care of the boys and the home while she got her career off the ground. A pragmatic and convenient choice rather than a choice driven by any sort of love. It doesn’t bother me now, but it used to.

Oliver rings the bell, and she opens the door in the process of pulling her blonde hair into a bun. She wraps it tightly and pins it into place, giving a quick smile at the sight of her son.

“Oliver. Good to see—” Her gaze lifts to me, and her light blue eyes flash with recognition, then narrow when she connects the dots.

We’re not holding hands, but I suspect she sees the same thing Mason saw. The invisible tension in the air—just a feeling—of two people who love each other.

“What is this?” she asks, piercing me with an icy glare. In the six years since last I saw her, she’s barely aged. She’s a few years older than me, but I never noticed our age gap when we met. That wasn’t why we broke apart. If I choose to, I can see the beauty in her that I saw then, but other than that, our relationship feels utterly foreign, like a different life that wasn’t my own.

“Mom.” Oliver straightens his shoulders, steeling himself. “Like I said, um, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

Kim’s hard gaze shifts from me to Oliver, then back to me, and when Oliver grabs my hand—lightly, like he’s afraid I’ll pull it back—her mouth tightens into a straight line.

“Can we come in?” I try not to think about how bizarre it feels to see her after all these years, let alone the gravity of what I’m asking. I’m asking her to let me into her home, holding her son’s hand—not as a father, but as a partner.

She hesitates for a beat, then sends a glance behind us and ushers us inside. Like I anticipated, she’d rather keep this private than make a scene on her front porch.

While the exterior hasn’t changed much, the interior of the house has been upgraded with a new, larger living room couch and new kitchen appliances.

Kim stops on the other side of the kitchen island and crosses her arms. “I’m going to assume I’m misunderstanding something here.”

“You’re not mistaken.” Oliver gives my hand a squeeze. “We’re together.”

Kim shakes her head, and there’s nothing joyful about her smile. “No, you’re not.”

“It wasn’t planned,” I say, letting go of Oliver’s hand to make things a bit less overwhelming. “It just… happened.”

Her glare shifts from Oliver to me. “Is this payback, Logan? Playing this trick on me?”

I shake my head. “It’s not a trick; it’s the truth.”

Her gaze flits between the two of us for a while as I see her mind working. Finally, she gestures upstairs. “Oliver. Go to your room.”

I put a hand on his shoulder, trying to shield him from her glare. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“I want to talk to him alone,” she tells Oliver.

I shake my head. “Anything you want to say, you can right here.” I won’t allow her to send him away. Oliver hesitates for a moment, then he pulls his shoulders back, staying by my side.

Kim sighs. She places both hands on the kitchen island counter, head down for a while before she tilts her gaze back up to me. When she speaks, her voice is terrifying, ice-cold and furious. Above all, it’s quiet—silent disbelief and rage rolling off her in waves.

“You were in our home. You knew him as a child. And now I’m supposed to believe this is… what, exactly?”

I grimace, her words dredging up my own guilt, the way I’ve felt ever since Oliver showed up on my doorstep on that rainy day.

“I know it’s complicated.”

“Complicated?” She gestures sharply with her hand. “This isn’t complicated. It’s wrong, Logan. Nothing you can say can make this right.”

“Right or not, it happened.” It can’t be undone, and I don’t want to undo it.

“Why didn’t you tell him no?”

I sigh, dropping my shoulders. “I tried.”

“Well, you didn’t try hard enough,” she sneers, gesturing sharply in the general direction of Oliver. “And now look what’s happened. You have a lovestruck, delusional nineteen-year-old on your hands—the very same nineteen-year-old you used to call your son.”

“He was,” I say calmly. “But he’s not anymore. I’ve let him make as many choices as I’ve been able to give him, and he’s still chosen me every time.”