A More Deserving Blackness (29 page)

             
The sun is too bright and the air is too cold when I push through the doors, and I drop my head and cross my arms over my chest, missing the warm barrier of Logan’s leather coat.  I step off the curb and out into the mostly empty parking lot, and that’s when I hear it.  A familiar voice, laughing one row of cars over.

             
I stop dead and look to where Dylan is surrounded by a group of friends, all of them gathered around a bright blue Ford Ranger I assume must be his by the way he’s perched on the back, brown boots propped on the rear bumper and his hands gripping the closed hatch.  He’s laughing, his tanned face almost perfect in his merriment.  Not like Logan’s; not bruised or discolored or broken open.

             
And all the sudden I’m not afraid.  I’m not disgusted or ashamed.  I’m furious.

             
I head straight for them, straight for him, not even bothering to scan their faces, to see if I recognize any of them.  I don’t want to see them, don’t want to remember.  They don’t matter.  Even Carter, who’d held me while they’d beaten him, and that chuckling asshole from the hall; they’re all irrelevant.  It’s Dylan I want.

             
They stop talking as they note my approach, and Dylan’s face screws up into something obscure, watching me march over to him, before he pushes with his hips, hopping confidently down off the end of his truck and swiping the shaggy ends of his hair from his eyes.  I don’t stop walking until I’m right up in his face, or at least his chest, as he towers over my much shorter frame.

             
“What the fuck is your problem, Dylan?”

             
Dylan blinks his surprise.

             
“Whoooa!” one of his immature little monkeys hoots, elbowing the guy at his side. 

             
“Little mute girl’s
pissed!”

             
They both laugh but I ignore them, seething.

             
“Seriously.  Who the hell do you think you are?!”

             
“What’s the matter, Beautiful?” Dylan asks lazily, smirking down at me.  He makes an obvious show of ogling my breasts.  There are a few snickers from the circle, but I don’t have patience for his games.

             
“I saw everything,” I tell him, and he just raises his eyebrows at me sarcastically.  “Including your dad.”

             
Dylan pauses.  His head tilts a little and then he flashes an arrogant smile at his friends before looping an arm around my shoulders.  “Come here, Beautiful,” he drawls almost casually, guiding me away from the small crowd.

             
I throw his arm off my shoulder, disgusted.  But when I try to shove him away by the chest he just grabs me above the elbow and keeps walking, towing me out of earshot of his friends.  It doesn’t scare me, though, it just pisses me off.  Everything about him pisses me off.

             
“You gonna beat me with a chain now, too?”

             
“Like I had a fucking
choice,”
he snarls.  “After he went fucking
ape
shit -”

             
“Protecting me!”

             
“He beat Bishop within an inch of his life!”

             
He tows me around the side of a full-sized white van and spins me to face him, his fingers biting into my arm.  “What the hell were you saying about my dad?”

             
“He was there Sunday night,” I tell him unflinchingly.  “He saw, and he walked away.”

             
Dylan’s hand tightens to the point of pain over my arm, but I see a flash of surprise in his eyes.  “Even if that was true no one would believe you.”

             
“Maybe not.”

             
He stares at me, squinting a little with the afternoon sun in his eyes, still holding my arm in a grip that flexes his huge bicep under his shirt.  I’ll probably have a bruise and I don’t even care.  I barely even feel it.

             
“When’d you start talking, anyway?”

             
“When I had to.”

             
“We made sure to keep you out of it.  I tried to keep you safe.”

             
I actually laugh at that, a loud bark in his face.  “Well, congratulations, Dylan.  You fucked that up too.”

             
He throws up his free hand.  “What the
fuck!
  I tried to warn you.  Why didn’t you just stay away?”

             
“Because I
trust
Logan.  There’s nothing you could possibly say to change that!”

             
He’s glaring at me, fury barely restrained in his eyes.  “We weren’t trying to kill him.”

             
“That’s funny,” I spit at him.  “That’s probably what Logan thought the night his stepfather murdered his mother.”

             
“Mrs. Brenner died of -”

             
“An abdominal aortic aneurysm, I know.  Pretty rare, actually.”

             
“What -”

             
But I don’t even let him finish.  My hands are balled into fists that are shaking with fury and he doesn’t have so much as a scratch on him and Logan spent that whole fucking night in the hospital.  For
nothing
.

             
“Your father would’ve read the full autopsy report, Dylan.  Ask him.  He’ll tell you it said that she’d most likely had the aneurysm for months before that night, and that it was ruptured by acute physical trauma to the abdominal region.  It might even mention the other bruising undoubtedly found on her body, all in areas normally hidden under clothing.”

             
His jaw is clenched when I finish, his grip painful on my arm.  “Lieutenant Dawson wasn’t abusive,” he says slowly, furiously, like he’d said it a dozen times before.  “He was like family.  I
knew
him.  We all did.” 

             
“You knew Logan, too.”

             
“Yeah, right up until the night he came over to my house pissed and left crazy as hell.  Few hours later my dad was called over there and it looked like he’d slaughtered a fucking
cow
.  Dad made it there just in time to hear his partner drowning in his own blood.  So excuse me if I think maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.”

             
He shakes his head like he doesn’t even know why he’s talking about this with me, narrowing his eyes to angry slits.  “What the fuck do you know about it?  You weren’t there.”

             
“Neither were you!  God, stop being such a coward!  Open your eyes!  Logan’s the only person who was there that night that didn’t
die
and you won’t even listen to a word he says!”

             
“It doesn’t matter.”

             
I wrench back, pulled short by his hold on my arm. 
“What?”

             
“It doesn’t matter!  It doesn’t matter what the fuck he has to say!  He killed a good man with his bare fucking hands!”

             
“You’re an arrogant little prick, Dylan, you know that?”

             
Dylan tightens his grip, hauling me roughly up against him. “Brenner’s a murderer, I don’t give a shit what the courts said.  He needed to pay for what he did.”

             
“He
has
paid for it!”

             
Dylan sneers.  “Yeah, I’m sure he’s paying for it real hard every time he bends you over.”

             
I jerk back and slap him across the face, hard enough that it stings like fire across my palm.

             
Dylan’s head whips to the side, his eyes snapping wide with shock.  Then his huge hand bears down on my arm, yanking me against him, and I cry out at the flash of pain through the fog of adrenaline.

             
Out of nowhere, Logan is there.  He lunges, tearing Dylan away from me with a swing of a fist that cracks solidly against the side of Dylan’s head.  Dylan is flung backward, crashing into the van at his back and stumbling to catch his balance, but Logan just follows, his face sharp with rage.  Muscles bunched and ready, he fists his hands in Dylan’s shirt at the shoulders and smashes him hard into the side of the vehicle.

             
“You think I’m dangerous?  You think I’m fucking
psycho?”
Logan roars in his face, lips pulled back into a disturbing snarl.  He slams Dylan back against the van once more before shoving him callously to the ground.  Glaring down, Logan’s voice is low and ominous.  “You ever fucking touch her again you’ll find out exactly what I am.”

             
Then he turns away, not waiting for the rage in Dylan’s eyes to crack open, and snatches my hand, pulling me to his car and flinging the door open for me.  I hear Dylan push to his feet, yelling irately after us, but Logan slams the door shut, silencing it.  He drops grimly behind the wheel and stomps on the gas, without ever even glancing in the rearview mirror.

Chapter 17

We tear out of the parking lot,
Logan’s hands in white-knuckled fists over the steering
wheel.  One of mine is gripping the door handle tightly, my arm braced and tense, the other wrapped protectively around my stomach.  My left arm throbs from the grip of Dylan’s fingers.

             
Logan drives with clipped motions, jaw clenched, silently fuming.  Huddled in the seat next to him I feel fragile, like a carving made of ice.

             
He doesn’t speak to me.  Driving silently, the fury in his features slowly disappears, leaving only staid detachment.  I can feel it, the intense loss, feel him slip back into the cold reserve, even without looking at him.

             
I want to shout at him, shake him until he looks at me, but I don’t.

             
Expressionlessly, Logan pulls the car into my driveway, and I barely register that Trish’s car is parked there again, unusual for the middle of the day.

             
Logan doesn’t say anything, he just waits for me to get the hell out of his car.

             
My heart is shrapnel in my chest. 

             
God, it hurts so much.

             
Mutely, I reach down for the bag at my feet with my left hand, and I jump when Logan’s hand suddenly clamps down over my arm.

             
“What is that?”

             
I stare at him, frozen by his touch and the hostility in his voice.

             
“Bree, what is that?”

             
I blink and then glance down at the arm he’s holding, pinned in midair.  On the sleeve of my sweatshirt is a small blossom of bright red blood, seeping through the thick gray fabric.  Delayed, I feel the muted sting of pain.

             
He doesn’t wait for me to respond; he just impatiently shifts his hand down to my wrist, imprisoning it while his other shoves my sleeve roughly up my arm.  I wince as the fabric scrapes over the row of uneven slashes climbing my forearm, still fresh and vivid red.

             
Logan inhales sharply.

             
I snatch my arm from his grasp, feeling exposed, and tug my sleeve back down, shrinking into my seat.

             
“What the hell did you do?” he breathes.

             
I’m shaking when I look back at him, at the horror plain on his face.  Tears collect in my eyes.  “You told me it helped.  That it was easier.”

             
His face contorts, just for a second, and he looks more than slightly sick.  He wipes a hand down his face with a sharp curse into his palm.  “When?” he asks thickly.  “When did you do it?”

             
“Last night.”

             
He looks like he wants to ask something else but he’s just shaking his head, staring at me, his jaw set and revulsion plain in his eyes.

             
I can take his anger but I can’t take his disgust.

             
“I told you I was ruined.”

             
And just like that he’s furious again.  “Stop
saying
that!  You want to know what you heard that night?  When you heard my voice?  ‘It’s okay,’” he quotes himself, scathingly.  His voice turns bitter.  “That’s what I said to my mom the night I watched her dying in my arms.  When I couldn’t do anything to save her. 
That’s
what you heard!” 

             
Logan glares at me, his face gnarled with pain, his eyes wet.  “We’re both fucking ruined.”

             
I can feel my own tears trickling down my cheeks and suddenly I’m angry and indignant and hurting for him as much as I am for myself.  It’s too much.  I can’t feel all of this and not explode.

             
“I wanted it to feel better!” I yell at him.  “I wanted what you had!”

             
“I had
nothing!
”

             
“Neither do I!”

             
Logan’s jaw muscle bunches under his cheek.  “You had me.”

             
“I lost you.”

             
But he just scowls.  “You didn’t lose me, you threw me away.”

             
We sit in silence for a minute before Logan reaches for my arm again and I yank it away.  He just looks at me, waiting, and then reaches again.  This time I let him. I let him gently push up my sleeve again, let him turn my arm in his grasp, inspecting the still angry-looking slits across my pale, freckled skin, the thick, raw welt on my wrist.  When he looks up, reaching across me for the glove box, he swallows and his face is ashen.

             
Logan withdraws the small first aid kit there, popping it open with one hand, his other still cradling my mangled arm.  Carefully he covers each wound with adhesive bandages, smoothing them tenderly into place, all without looking at me.

             
While he tends to my injuries, his head bent over my arm, I watch him.  Chunks of his dark hair have fallen over his forehead, partially covering his eyes, but I can see enough of his face; his black lashes swept low over his eyes, his cheek broken open from the fight, his lips.  The inside of the car smells familiar and it smells like him and he’s touching me so softly, his fingers light on my skin.

             
I shiver, and he mistakes it for cold.  “What do you have against wearing a coat?”

             
“Why were you still there?  At school.”

             
Logan snaps the lid closed on the first aid kit, slipping it back into the glove compartment and shutting the door.  “Erik couldn’t find you.”

             
He doesn’t add anything more right away, so I wait.

             
“He told me when he left.  He cares about you.  He was worried.”

             
Which means he’d waited.  Logan had waited for me.

             
I want to catch his eyes, want to search them for hours if he’d let me, but Logan’s hands are on the wheel again and he’s staring, rigid, out the windshield.

             
“It makes me so fucking sick you did that to yourself.”

             
I flinch at his low voice.  Tears overflow and I open my mouth to say something, I don’t know what, there isn’t anything to say, it’s done, when Logan’s unbearably dark eyes flick to the rearview mirror.  My mother and father had just pulled in behind us, blocking Logan in.

             
“Shit.”

             
Logan looks sharply over at me.  “What?”

             
But I don’t answer.  Hastily I scrape the tears from my face with the cuffs of my sweater and snatch my bag from the floor, pushing out onto the driveway.  I smile and lift my bag to my shoulder, pressing my other, bloodied arm against my waist.

             
And turn, shocked, when I hear Logan’s door slam shut as well.

             
He’s standing in the driveway not looking at me and then my parents are there and there’s nothing I can do but pretend everything is okay.

             
“Mom, Dad,” I say, forcing my voice to sound even and controlled, “this is Logan.”

             
“Oh!” my mom beams, hustling over to him and pulling him into a hug, unfazed by his shocking appearance.  I wonder how much Trish knew, how much she’d guessed that I’d never said, how much she’d told them as Mom gushes, “It’s so good to finally meet you.”

             
Logan hugs her back warmly and then shakes my dad’s hand.  “You, too.”

             
“Trish tells us you’ve been good to our daughter,” my dad says, and Logan’s eyes flick to mine.

             
“You guys are back soon,” I jump in, overdoing it a little as my voice is unsuitably loud.  “What’s going on?”

             
Mom’s smile falters a little, but it’s my father who speaks.  “Why don’t we go inside, Sweetheart.”

             
I glance between them, my skin going cold.  “What?”

             
My mom’s gaze lands on Logan briefly before meeting mine.  “It’s okay, Sweetie.  We just want to talk to you about something.”

             
My chest is tight.  I want to scream at them to tell me now, I don’t want to go inside, I don’t want to pretend everything is fine when I’m all shattered pieces and bloody scars. 

             
I don’t even notice him moving, but all of the sudden Logan is there, slipping his hand into mine, threading our fingers together tightly, and I can breathe again.  I squeeze his hand, reaching across my body to cover it with my other, and I can feel Logan watching me carefully.

             
“Okay,” I say.

             
Though my parents both hesitate, glancing awkwardly at Logan, they don’t object when he leads me into Trish’s house, into the living room, sitting next to me on the couch, never letting go of my hand.  Trish gives me an all too bright smile from the kitchen, but doesn’t join us.  I cling to Logan, confused and aching but willing, for now, to take the comfort he’s offering without question.  I know all too soon he’ll be gone again.

             
My mom sits opposite us on the sofa, tugging at the bottom of her white sweater, adjusting it over her round hips.  Next to her, my dad’s thin face looks like he’s trying not to throw up.

             
“What?  What is it?  What’s wrong?”

             
“Sweetie . . .” my Mom starts, and the whole time she pauses I can’t find any air in the room, my lungs are a balloon all shriveled and stuck to itself.  “We wanted to talk to you about going back to talk to Detective Mollard today.”

             
I stiffen and Logan looks at me sharply, his eyes questioning.

             
The blood drains from my face.  I feel lightheaded.

             
“Now that you’re talking . . .” my Mom continues, “there’s just so much you weren’t able to describe to them -” I flinch visibly and Mom’s voice softens, sympathetic.  “There’s so much more you could tell them now, to help with the investigation.”

             
“No.”

             
“Bree -”

             
“The statue of limitations for these kinds of cases is eight years, Bree,” my Dad tells me.  “They could still catch the guy who did it.”

             
“Logan knows I was raped, Dad.  You can say the word.”

             
“Well, I – I didn’t know . . .” he stammers, and I immediately feel bad for him, for my harsh words.  He’s trying to make it easier on me, this impossible thing no father would ever want to ask of their daughter, and I’m lashing out at him.  Just like before.

             
Mom sighs.  “Bree, Honey, this could really help.  We’ve already talked to Detective Mollard and he -”

             
“You already talked to him?”

             
My lungs are jerking in my chest, it’s all I can do not to press my palms over them to try to keep them still, to keep my parents from noticing that their daughter is falling apart in front of them.  I feel Logan reach his free arm around my shoulders, pulling me tight against his chest, and he’s warm and he’s solid and he’s Logan and now I’m crying, cool tears dripping silently down my face.

             
My mom pushes up from her seat, crossing the room and hunkering down on her knees in front of me.  She lays a hand on my leg and looks up at me, her brown eyes wet with tears. 

             
“We’re not going to force you to do this, Bree.  God knows you’ve been through enough.  But this – doing this – it might save some other girl from having to suffer like you had to.  If what you tell the police, if it helps . . .”

             
She trails off, crying, and I stare at her, shaking and terrified.  I don’t want to go through it again, rake over my memories with a fine-toothed comb, expose every horrifying detail, inspect every filthy moment, bit by bit.  I don’t know if I could do it without losing myself, without succumbing to that screaming in my head and never, ever finding my way back out.