AllFreeNovel
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I hold the biscuit on my blade for a moment, along with my thoughts, then pass again. “Or I could take away her leverage.”
Logan steadies the puck and gazes at me. “That’s a bold move. You’ll tell Fletcher yourself?”
“It’s the only solution I thought possible before Jolie told me she doesn’t want in this mess.”
He tilts his head. “Is that what she said? She doesn’t want part of this? That doesn’t sound like my sister to me.”
I shrug. “She didn’t want to make the decision. She said she couldn’t choose to tear down Fletcher just to build us up. Pretty much her words verbatim.”
He nods. “That’s fair enough, though. She doesn’t want to be the one to decide or be the reason for the mess. Most women wouldn’t be strong enough to walk away for someone else’s good. I know. I’ve met more than my fairshare of selfish people.” He cocks his eyebrow. “Myself included.”
He hits the puck back again. It catches on a ripple and glides to the edge. I skate to fetch it and turn sharply back, facing Logan.
“I wanted her to fight, though.”
Admitting this out loud to another man makes me feel weak, but right now, I’m so rock-bottom I’m not sure there’s anywhere lower to go.
He flaps his lips. “You think Jojo won’t fight once you make the decision? It sounds more like you’re having a pity party and dodging the hard stuff. Look, it’s your decision to make. It sucks when we come to those crossroads, where nobody else can decide for us. I know you can be decisive. Hell, you already said you pretty much decided you have to tell Fletch. But you’ve always had another problem altogether.”
“What’s that?”
Logan always comes across playful and happy-go-lucky, but he gives me that other part of him right now that has always made him my best friend. Somewhere under his layers of party animal is a man with true maturity and wisdom and the guts to say what needs to be said. “You think every decision is either right or wrong, Ashton. You think there’s some reward for one thing and damnation for the other. That’s not how life works. You make a decision then you work around that decision. There’s no right or wrong, bro, just a series of possibilities.”
“And consequences.”
“Fine, Negative Nancy. And consequences. My point is, you’ll work it out either way. First you need to decide if you want freedom. And Jolie.”
My words tumble out. “There’s no life worth living if I’m not with Jolie.”
Logan stops dead. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
We stare at the brown ice for a moment while it sinks in that I’m in love with his sister.
I let out a long, slow breath. “I need to figure out the right time to drop the bomb.”
Logan scoffs and shakes his head. “You’re a slow learner.”
I laugh lightly. “You’re telling me there is no right time, Jedi Master?”
“Wrong.” He picks the puck off the ice and points it at me. “The right time is always now.”
“Says the most self-indulgent person I know.”
“Hey. I got a smile onmyface.” He skates backward, his cocky, charming grin on full display. He’s so damn carefree. But when he gets to the end of the glorified puddle, he skates back toward me and snows me when he stops. “I’m not making light of this, bro. I know it’s going to fuck things up for your family. But in the infinite possibilities of decisions, I typically choose the truth.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder, and that’s what I’ve always liked about Logan. He brings light to everything he touches. He acts aloof and devil-may-care but he is one solid man. I’ve known what I needed to do since the minute Jolie and I kissed. I have known that hiding and waiting for Chloe to forget about me and her pride was not only stupid but cowardly. And I’m anything but a coward.
I know I can support Fletcher if this all goes public. Hell, my own media disaster is still recent news, so I have experience with it. But there’s still a doubt in my mind now, now that Joey dumped my ass. “What if Joey doesn’t wantto be part of it? What if I do all this and she doesn’t come back?”
“Well then, dude, you at least have freedom. And so does your brother, even though he might not at first believe it.” He steps off the edge of the pond. “And once you clear this up, I amsotelling the press that Chloe nailed that nasty old fucker.”
A grateful laugh leaves my lips.
Logan and I wrap up the bromance and head back to our families for turkey. Even though Logan propped me up, I still have to drink a lot to numb both my urge to pull my parents aside and the pain of not seeing Jolie at all today. I text her to say Happy Thanksgiving, and she texted me back a pumpkin pie meme. It felt flat.
After my cousins and aunts and uncles and I wash up all the dishes, we sit down to watch the Thanksgiving football game my brother happens to be playing in. My eyes sting considering how much his life is going to change. How the man on the screen is about to turn inside out. Not even my straight bourbon dulls the sick feeling I have or quiets the demons in my head telling me I’m being selfish.
