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Chapter Twenty
Logan spent the next two months trying to get over Jeni Bishop. One would think it would have been easy, especially because he barely saw or spoke to her and when he did, Andrew was there too.
Also, work was insane and should have provided ample distraction. The Chiefs went all the way to the AFC Championship playoffs, so December and January were nonstop. A missed field goal cost them a spot in the Super Bowl, and Logan was just now getting over his grief. The Broncos were out too, and he wondered how Jeni was holding up.
But most of all, he should have been able to get over her because he never even had her in the first place.
Why, then, was it so damn hard? How could his heart hang on so tightly to something that never belonged to him?
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t ignore it when he saw her name flashing on his screen at ten p.m. on a Friday night the first week in February. If this was a booty call, God help him—he’d be in his car and on his way to her house in five seconds flat. He missed her enough to take whatever part of herself she’d offer him.
“Hello?”
“Logan?” Her tone immediately tipped him off that this was serious. She sounded like she’d been crying.
He sat straight up in bed. “Jeni? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I’m okay. I just…I need your help.”
“Anything. Where are you? What can I do?” He put his phone on speaker and laid it on the bed to put on his jeans.
“I’m at the office. I was on call tonight. The police had to remove a child from his home tonight, and I can’t find an available family for him until tomorrow. I’ve been on the phone for three hours trying to find someone. The only person available is in Texas and won’t be back until tomorrow. I don’t have anywhere to take him and he’s just sitting on the floor underneath my desk, and I can’t let him sleep like that. He’s four years old, and he can’t sleep on this musty, sixty-year-old carpet. I tried to get him to our holding room where we have cots, but he won’t budge. I want to at least offer him a bed. Maybe I could slide a single mattress under my desk or something, I think—” Her breath hitched. “He feels safer under there.”
“Yes.” Her quiet sobs tore him open. “Jeni, it’s okay. I’ve got exactly what you need. I’ll be there as fast as I can, okay? I just have to run to the storage facility to get it, but it’s close to your office. It will take me twenty minutes, tops. Okay?”
She sniffled. “Okay. Thank you.”
“I’ll be there soon.” He slipped shoes on and grabbed his keys, the phone now pressed tightly to his ear. “And Jeni? Just let him be. If he wants to be under your desk, don’t try to bring him out. Let him stay where he’s most comfortable.”
“All I want to do is hug him and tell him it’s going to be okay.”
“I know holding him would make you feel better. But you don’t know it will be okay. And it’s not about what you need right now. It’s about what he needs.”
She paused, and he listened to her uneven breath through the phone. “You’re right.”
Logan prayed no cops were out with radars tonight because he pushed his truck well over the speed limit to get to the storage unit he rented. Once inside, he cursed the lack of organization in the space. He had several single mattresses, as they were the most commonly donated, but they were stacked in the back, and it took him a while to shift things around. The space was too small to contain his inventory, but he’d been too busy to do anything about it. He was making do with what he had, but once again he thought about how badly he needed help with the foundation. Someone to keep better track of things, keep it organized, and find a better location for storage.
He focused on the current task and loaded the bed then drove to the CPS offices.
Logan texted Jeni when he pulled up out front. He parked on the main street, not concerned about being in the way at ten-thirty on a Friday night. He was unloading the mattress from the bed of his truck when she unlocked the door. He wanted to drop the bed and pull her close, to feel her arms around him and kiss her hair.
But there was a child inside that needed them more than they needed each other. “There are sheets in the passenger seat,” he said. “Can you grab them?”
He followed her through the dimly lit office space until they reached her desk. Not speaking, they made quick work of putting simple white sheets on the bed. He wished he’d had superhero or cartoon character ones instead. Jeni seemed to have composed herself between their earlier phone conversation and now, though her eyes were still red-rimmed.
When they finished covering the mattress, he handed Jeni the stuffed animal he’d grabbed at the last minute. He had a shelf of them at the garage and tried to give one out with each bed the foundation gave away.
Logan had the urge to peek under Jeni’s desk and talk to the terrified boy within. But he didn’t know what the boy’s situation was, and a strange man coming at him likely wouldn’t help matters. He also technically shouldn’t be here, and Jeni could get in trouble if he tried to involve himself with the child.
She took the bear with a shaking hand. She tried to keep her face stoic, but Logan knew her heart was breaking.
Little did she know, doing this was the only thing that fixed his.
He walked to the edge of the room and leaned his back against the wall to wait while Jeni crouched at her desk, speaking in low tones. He wanted to make sure she didn’t need anything else, and he didn’t really like the idea of leaving her alone in this office downtown. Maybe he’d sleep in his truck outside, just in case.
He listened to them, mostly Jeni at first, but eventually came the tentative voice of the little boy. He said he had a brown teddy bear at home that looked just like that one. Its name was Brown Bear.
Logan smiled, remembering a toy solider he’d carried in his backpack as a kid. He’d apparently also been into unoriginal names and called it Army Man.
