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She frowned right back. He wasn’t going to make this easy on her, was he? “But you wouldn’t have left if I hadn’t—”
He lifted his hand to stop her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to—”
“No,” she pressed, remembering Einstein’s scars, not just on his skin but on his soul. She didn’t like the thought of someone else suffering that way too. Not even Logan Xander. “I do have to. When you said the group had really helped you, I didn’t get it. Not then. But I know what you mean now, because the group’s really helped me too.” She flushed. “I mean, I haven’t been able to talk about my issues with my mom’s death yet or anything like that, but I just…I can tell that it’s working…somehow.”
She bit her lip, hoping that made some semblance of sense to him.
Logan gave a slow nod. “Yeah, I can tell too.” When she looked up, he was the one to glance away and flush. “I mean, you’re definitely different than you were at the beginning of the semester.”
She smiled. “As in, I don’t run wailing from the room whenever I see you now?”
His lips did that crooked hitch in one corner, as if he wanted to smile but wasn’t quite capable. “Among other things.”
His low voice moved through her, spreading a strange heat into all her limbs. Looking down at her hands, she pushed at her cuticles.
“Well, I feel different,” she announced. “In a good way.” When he didn’t answer, she dropped her hands. “I guess we don’t have to stand around here all night if we’re done.” Spinning away, she reached up to turn off the clock radio, except she couldn’t reach it.
“Let me.” Awareness curled up her spine as he stepped in close behind her. His arm brushed hers as he reached past her. She dropped her hand and lowered her face. The radio fell silent and her own thoughts seemed to echo around the quiet shop like a sonic boom.
When Logan stayed directly behind her, she swallowed and shut her eyes, hoping and praying he wouldn’t do what she actually wanted him to do.
“You found her, didn’t you?” he said. When she frowned and turned around, not comprehending, he winced. “Your mom.”
He stepped back as if to give her space to run if she wanted to, but she didn’t move. His face was now flushed. “It’s just…I assume it has to be something even more traumatic than what happened with Tra—with your brother, since you still can’t talk about her.”
“Yes. I found her.” She’d never told anyone that. “Why are you asking about this?”
“Because I need to know.” His throat worked as he swallowed. She knew exactly what he was thinking. He wanted the details so he could share the pain with her. He felt responsible. She had no idea how she knew that just by looking at the bleak desolation in his blue eyes, but she was more certain of it than she was of anything.
“It must’ve happened on some big day,” he went on, his voice hoarse. “A holiday, or…or the anniversary of your brother’s death?”
“New Year’s Eve,” she whispered, closing her eyes, reeling in the fact she was sharing this…with Logan Xander of all people. “She left a note saying the thought of suffering through another year of life was more than she could handle.”
“I’m sorry.”
His quiet, heartfelt words didn’t even reach her. She’d shifted to the past. “I’d just spent the night at my best friend’s house. When I came home, she was…in the kitchen. I saw her as soon as I opened the back door.”
Logan nodded. “Where was your dad?”
“In the living room, passed out on the couch. I don’t know why he hadn’t found her yet or heard the gunshot, but when I screamed, he came tearing into the kitchen, an empty beer bottle in his hand. After…after he saw her, he roared out this sound like an enraged animal, and he threw the bottle against the wall. But I was standing too close. Some of the shattering glass ricocheted and caught me in the arm.” She rubbed the side of her shoulder where the half-moon scar was hidden under her long sleeves. “So much happened that day, I didn’t even realize I’d been cut until late that night when I changed into something to sleep in.”
With a sad sigh, Paige kept talking, the words spilling from her without her permission.
“Sometimes I wonder if she thought of me at all when she put the gun in her mouth. And I can’t decide which would be worse, that she did consider my feelings in all this and hated me so much, she didn’t care how it would affect me. Or that I meant so little to her, I didn’t even cross her mind.”
A sudden anger rose in her throat. “I mean, how dare she do this to me? To my dad? To herself? She planned it, probably for days. It was purposeful. It was even worse than what you did.”
She knew she’d gone over the line when Logan wrenched back, his face saturated with pain and shock. And guilt.
Opening her mouth to instantly apologize, “Logan, I—” she stopped when he shook his head.
“No. I don’t know if it was worse or not.” He ducked his face as it flushed with color. “Maybe it wasn’t. I definitely meant to hit your brother.” Just as abruptly as the color had highlighted his cheeks, it fled, leaving him shaken and wan.
Reading his expression, she knew he was remembering. He was seeing Trace die at his feet all over again.
“But you didn’t mean to kill him.” She kept her voice low. Apologetic.
He closed his eyes and shuddered. “No. From the bottom of my heart, no. I didn’t mean to kill him, I swear to you. I never meant it to go that far.” When his lashes lifted, his piercing gaze begged her for forgiveness. “I never meant it to go that far.”
