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“I actually have somewhere to be,” he said curtly.
I shrugged. “Fine. Then I’ll walk with you and we’ll talk on the way to wherever you’re going.”
Logan’s mouth flattened, which told me he didn’t really have anywhere all that urgent he needed to go. “What’s so important, Madelyn? We don’t know anything else about your car yet, but of course you could have just texted about that.”
Well, he’d just given me the perfect opening. I folded my arms over my chest. “That’d be a little hard considering you have me blocked on every form of communication I’m aware of.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. Oh, was this topic of conversation irritating to him? Too fucking bad.
“You have the other guys’ numbers,” he said. “You don’t need mine.”
I stared him down, drawing my spine as straight as I could. “But I do need to know what the hell happened with us?”
“With us?” A hint of a sneer crept into his voice. “There’s no ‘us,’ and there never was.”
My teeth set on edge. He got under my skin way too easily.
“We were friends,” I said. “Or at least friendly. We got along in school and after our parents started dating, for years. And then all of a sudden you just put all these walls up. And then there was—two years ago—and then youcompletelyshut me out like I’d done something awful to you… And you’re still treating me like that. I don’t get it. Why are you being like this? Whyhaveyou been like this?”
My voice was raw by the end of that tirade. I hadn’t meant to say so much all at once, but once I’d started, it’d kept spilling out. I clamped my jaw shut and held Logan’s gaze, daring him to finally give me a straight answer.
But of course that was wishful thinking.
“Not everything in the world revolves around you,” he said, his voice getting even terser. “And you don’t have the right to know everything that’s going on in my life just because our parents got married.”
Fury blazed through me at the brisk dismissal. “Oh, yeah? And what about what happened in the basement bathroom back home? Do I have a right to know aboutthat, considering I was there and all?”
“All that happened was a stupid mistake,” Logan bit out, the words hitting me like little knives. “I moved on. It’s obviously time that you did too.”
Something in me crumbled even as I held myself steady on the outside.A stupid mistake. Was that how he thought about it?
“I just don’t get it,” I said, quieter now. “If you have some problem with me or with something I did, you could just tell me about it. We used to talk. I thought you liked me, as a person. It seemed totally out of the blue. And then— Something must have happened, Logan.”
He shook his head, his eyes flashing, his shoulders rigid. “You only see what you want to see. And you obviously can’t take a hint. I’m not into you. I don’t want anything to do with you. I can’t wait until we find your car and we can go our separate ways again. But youhadto follow me all the way to the same college… Do you have any idea how pathetic that is?”
I flinched as if he’d slapped me. It felt like he had. Was that really what he thought of me? That I was some clueless girl who’d transferred over a hopeless crush?
“I didn’t come here because of you,” I shot back, my hands clenching as they dropped to my sides. “This school has an amazing life sciences program, way better than the college back home, and—”
“And a dozen other schools in this part of the country have good programs too. If you had the grades to get in here, you could have gone anywhere else in the country too. But no, you had to come to the same school as me.”
“I liked not being too far from home.” My voice wobbled, my emotions fraying both in the wake of his hostility and because I knew he wasn’t totally wrong. I’d come here for the science program first, but the fact that it’d meant I might see Logan again, might find out what was going on with him, had been there in the back of my mind. I hadn’t really considered applying anywhere else.
Logan ignored my protest. He jabbed a finger in my direction. “You’re nothing to me except a temporary client, and you can forget about becoming anything more than that. So get over yourself and find someone else to obsess over.”
He whipped around and stalked off without giving me a chance to say anything else. Not that I had any idea what I could have said. My throat had constricted so tightly it ached.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around how he’d gone from my defender and friend to a guy who seemed to hate me. It wasbecauseof him that I’d become the crusader Summer had referred to me as. I’d been so downcast after Dad’s death that I’d become an increasingly easy target for the kind of kids who liked to poke fun and pull cruel pranks, and I hadn’t snapped out of that haze until I’d watched Logan put those bullies in their place on my behalf.
Hearing him talk them into submission, leveraging his popularity to my advantage, had made me want to be stronger. To be able to stand up not just for myself but for other people who needed it, like Logan had for me. That was what Dad would have wanted too—not for me to end up withdrawn and eaten up by guilt.
But somewhere in the last few years, something had changed. Logan clearly wasn’t interested in telling me what. Maybe there really wasn’t any reason to do with me at all. Maybe he had simply changed into a total asshole.
I swallowed thickly and gave myself a shake, pulling myself together. Whatever. It didn’t change anything—I’d never thought we’d actually become friends again, let alone anything more. I could live without an explanation.
But it did tell me that no way in hell did I trust him to keep me in the loop about the investigation. Had they really not made any progress, or was he lying about that so he could shut me out there too?
I walked back to the law library, gathering confidence as I left the conversation behind. Screw Logan, and screw his fucked-up attitude. He thought he could go around doing whatever and treating people however he wanted? I could take a page out of that book.
I brushed past the main desk and hustled onward to the Vigil’s office at the back of the room. The doorknob turned with a twist. I peeked inside, a little surprised that it’d actually worked, and found Dexter sitting at the computer, typing away. He paused to glance over at me, his eyes catching mine for just a second before veering away. “Hi, Madelyn. Did something come up about your car?”
I guessed there really wasn’t anything new if he’d ask me that instead of assuming I’d come to him for information. But a strange calm settled over me as I looked back at him. Dexter had given me straight answers so far. He didn’t try to push my buttons like either of the other guys in their very different ways.
Between the three of them, he was the only member of the Vigil I trusted to treat me fairly and to put the investigation and my stake in it first.
I walked over until I was a few feet from his seat. I stopped there, biting my lip. “No news on my end. But… do you think you could do me a small favor?”
