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“I’m so sorry, dear,” Sam murmured. “It must’ve been tragic.”
Paige nodded once. “The boy who killed him never saw the inside of a jail cell. His father was some rich, fancy lawyer who got him off without a trial. He convinced everyone who was there that night, even a couple of my brother’s friends, to say Trace had started the fight and thrown the first punch. My poor dead brother couldn’t defend himself, so they made him out to look like some kind of hot-headed delinquent.”
Logan couldn’t decide what was worse: Paige Zukowski publicly condemning him to everyone in the group or his waiting for her to publicly condemn him. Yet, with each word she spoke, his name didn’t cross her lips, and he decided the anticipation would take him long before the revelation would.
Why wasn’t she pointing at him already and telling everyone he was the murderer?
“After that, my entire family fell apart. My father started drinking, more and more each night until he became a mean drunk. He lost his job within a couple months of Trace’s death. My mom disappeared into some dark place inside herself.”
She paused with a ragged shudder. For a brief moment, Logan thought she was going to start crying. He panicked. He wouldn’t be able to handle seeing her cry.
But then she fisted her hands and gritted her teeth before she snarled, “She killed herself. Two years after Trace died, she put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.”
Say what?
Logan jolted, ready for her to laugh and say Gotcha, but the dull agony in her eyes, the icy whiteness of her skin let him know this was no joke.
He’d had no idea her mother had committed suicide.
Forget merely puking, he felt as if every particle of his being was going to explode.
But to learn he had not just one death on his conscience now, but two, was more than he could take. And there was no way he could deny culpability for the death of Trace’s mother. No way would she have killed herself if he hadn’t taken her son away first and destroyed her family.
Paige sat stone still across the circle from him, staring a hole into the back wall. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through. Losing two people so terribly in the space of three years was simply unbelievable.
Beside her, Kevin reached out to take her hand in a sympathetic squeeze. Logan stared hard at their connection, hoping she found some measure of comfort from the contact. But Paige politely slipped her fingers out from under Kevin’s and folded them in her lap.
Silence echoed through the large Crimson Room. Logan wanted to shout for someone to console her already. He couldn’t handle watching her hurt, knowing he was the reason.
“I sense a lot of anger still in you, Paige,” Samantha finally said. “You sound mad at your mother for deserting you as much as you sound upset with the boy who fought with your brother.”
Logan held his breath as he watched Paige meet Samantha’s stare. “I am,” she said simply. Her shoulders shuddered as if it took everything she had to contain her rage. He closed his eyes, unable to watch.
“And if this boy or your mother were here right now,” Sam pressed softly, “what would you say to either of them?”
Oh God.
Opening his lashes, he glanced up and found her looking directly at him, dooming him with her glare.
Here it comes.
Chapter Eight
THIS WAS HER CHANCE. Paige could tell him whatever she wanted. She could say she hated him, she wished he’d gone to jail for what he’d done and been gangbanged by a crazed group of tattooed skinheads every night, or that she wished it had been him instead of her brother. She wanted him to pay for hurting her. She wanted him to hurt as much she hurt.
But when their gazes met, all she felt was sick.
He knew what she could do to him, what she planned to do to him, and he just sat there, accepting it, his expression bleak and so freaking desolate, she could only shake her head, confused. This wasn’t how he was supposed to react at all.
“I don’t know,” she choked out, her voice barely a whisper. “I don’t know what I’d say.”
Across the circle, Logan Xander’s chest heaved. Looking up at the ceiling, he blinked repeatedly.
“Would you tell them you forgive them?” Samantha asked.
She shook her head, making a tear slither down her cheek in a crooked trail. “No.”
Lurching upright, Xander startled the two girls on either side of him. “Excuse me.” He lifted an apologetic hand to them. “I need to…” His voice cracked. “Bathroom.” Stumbling to the exit, he slapped a steadying hand against the wall just as he turned and disappeared from the doorway into a hall.
