A More Deserving Blackness (31 page)

             
The tears overflow and Logan ignores them, pushing to his feet and pulling me up with him.  He entwines one hand firmly with mine and, with a lift of his brows that asks silently if I’m okay, he leads me slowly back around the building.

             
At the door, Logan pauses, looking back at me.  Then I reach across him, pull the door open, and step inside.

             
I tell the officer everything I can remember.  Every horrible detail I can think of.  The lights and sounds of the carnival, how I’d driven up there to meet Samantha, the pretty pink dress I’d worn for some guy at my school who’d never even known I existed, the sugary elephant ear, the man who’d called me pretty and I’d wondered if he was going to kiss me before the terror had set in.  Exactly what he looked like, what he’d been wearing, what he smelled like, what he said.  The Ferris wheel and the rain.  Everything.  I scrape the edges of my memory, my nightmares, like the blade of a scalpel severing clumps of dead flesh.  The whole time, Logan sits next to me and holds my hand in his, just like he’d promised he would. 

             
I don’t look at him while I talk.  I can’t.  But as I stare at my lap and tell them how I’d stopped fighting when that man had rammed the barrel of his gun up under my jaw and his weight pressed down over me, I can feel Logan’s hand stiffen, his arm going hard next to mine, silent tension rolling off him. 

             
“He told me -” I take a breath and let it out shakily.  “He told me if I made one fucking sound he’d put a bullet in my brain.  So I didn’t.  I just bit down on my wrist so I wouldn’t scream and I just – let him.”

             
I feel Logan forcibly relax his muscles, feel his thumb rub circles over the back of my hand.

             
“I just laid there and it – it hurt.  It hurt
so
bad and I was just – just praying he’d be done soon, praying for him to – to finish.”

             
I’m filthy and shaking from the words and I can’t look at Logan, I just grip his hand hard enough to leave marks in his skin.  But from the corner of my eye I can see the sickly white color of his face, the clench of his jaw, the way his eyes look up and away as he blinks rapidly. 

             
“I was staring up at the Ferris wheel and it was raining on my face and there was this horrible screaming in my head but – I didn’t make a sound.”

Chapter 18

By the tim
e I’m finished, and Detective Mollard has exhausted his list of questions, the
sun
has already set.  I feel more than drained, like I’ve been wrung out, every last drop squeezed from inside me.  What’s left is dry and brittle and ready to crack. 

             
My parents are waiting for me in the lobby, holding hands, my dad’s face long and grim and my mom’s eyes red from crying.  When they see me they push abruptly to their feet and pull me into a tight hug, all of us crying together.  Their arms are around me and my face is pressed between my dad’s chest and my mom’s soft cheek but my right arm is stretched behind me, still linked to Logan, because I can’t let him go.

             
We drive home mostly in silence, and even with my parents watching him Logan crawled right through my side of the truck first so that I wouldn’t have to let go of his hand.  In the dim interior I keep my gaze fixed on Logan’s face, watching the passing lights seep into the dark spaces of him.  He lets me look, steadily focusing back at me as I lean against him.

             
I awake to the hushed sound of my dad speaking, my head cradled on Logan’s shoulder and his arm looped around my back, holding me gently against him - the first sleep unbroken by nightmares that I’d had for almost three straight days.

             
“ – she okay?  Did she -?”

             
“She was incredible,” Logan answers simply; I hear it rumble in his chest beneath my ear. 

             
There’s a long pause before, “Thank you for staying with her, for supporting her.  At least she can find some comfort in you.”

             
I hear the hint of remorse behind the gratitude in my father’s voice, that I’d never been able to find that comfort in them.

             
“Then I’m glad,” is all Logan says.  Then, his lips at my hair, “Bree.  It’s time to wake up, Love.”

             
Reluctantly I open my eyes and pull away from him, instantly mourning the loss of his heat, his nearness.  The three of them walk me inside and Trish is there in sweatpants and a t-shirt with a mug of coffee steaming in her hand, and my parents are hugging me and whispering in my ear and I’m just nodding because I don’t have anything else left.

             
“Get some sleep, Sweetheart, okay?  We’ll call you tomorrow,” my mom says as she steps out.

             
“You did great.  Goodnight girls.  We love you both,” Dad adds, and then the door closes and Trish looks first at Logan, then at me.

             
“Are you okay?” she asks.

             
Okay?  I don’t know.  But out of habit, I nod.

             
“Yeah, no, you’re not,” she says, surprising me.  “Of course you’re not.”

             
I should shrug, shake my head, pretend for her sake like I always do, but I can’t.

             
Trish has tears in her eyes when she pulls me into a hug.  “It’s okay,” she whispers.  “It’s okay to not be okay sometimes.”

             
My lip is trembling when I pull back and Trish cups her hand over my cheek, tilting her head as a tear falls.  For me.

             
“
You’re
okay.”

             
I can’t speak, can’t nod, can’t do anything – I’m shocked and totally, exorbitantly, soul-sucking exhausted.

             
“Get some rest, you need it,” Trish says, swiping at her cheeks.  “I love you, Bree.”

             
“I love you too,” I manage, and she smiles wetly.

             
Then she glances meaningfully at Logan again before turning and slipping off into the living room, leaving us alone together.  In the silence that follows, I cross my arms over my chest and let myself look at Logan.  He’s standing there watching but not touching me, his unshaven face a haggard mess, eyes withered and red.

             
“Do you want to go to bed?”

             
I shake my head.

             
“Do you want me to leave?”

             
I shake my head again, a little more adamantly, my heart kicking hard.

             
“What do you want?”

             
“You.”

             
Logan wavers for just a moment, his jaw clenched, before closing the space between us, crushing me in his arms.  I slip my hands up the strong expanse of his back beneath his jacket, drop my head to his chest and shut my eyes and just cling to him.

             
The pressure has to be hurting Logan’s brutalized ribs but he doesn’t loosen his hold.  He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, he just clasps me against him almost painfully; head ducked, his face pressed against my hair, his arms tense and hard around me, crushing me in solid warmth.

             
I don’t know how long we stand like that, motionless, surrounded in each other, but eventually Logan relaxes, pulling away and brushing one knuckle softly against my cheek.  “You should get some sleep.”

             
“I can’t.”  Not without him.

             
“Just try,” he says gently, shifting toward the door. 

             
But then he stops as if he just remembered something, and his face is grave and sad as it trails down the length of my left arm to what the sleeve of his coat is concealing.  “Don’t -” he breaks off, closing his eyes for a second and exhaling.  “Just - text me.  Okay?  If you need to.”

             
I don’t want to text him, I want to grab onto him and never let go, but then he’s turning away and reaching for the door and something inside me just splinters.

             
“Logan.”

             
He turns back to me, waiting.

             
“I . . .”

             
“Just ask, Bree.”

             
“Can I go with you?”

             
He doesn’t answer right away, and I’m trembling in purgatory at his hesitation.  But then he just reaches a hand out toward me and I take it.  All the way - leading me out to his car, driving us both the short distance to his house - his face is an expressionless mask.

             
In his driveway Logan turns the key to kill the engine but doesn’t move, staring impassively at his newly painted garage door, his hands still hooked over the edge of the wheel.  As always, he’d left no exterior lights on, and we’re sitting together in his own pocket of blackness on the long, otherwise well-lit street.

             
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I say, and he finally turns his head, scowling.

             
“Yeah,” he scoffs, obviously repulsed.  “That’s what I’m worried about right now.  How
uncomfortable
it made me to hear about your
rape
.”

             
Logan swipes a hand down his face, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “I listened, Bree.  I heard every word you said in there today.  And not a damn one of them made me think for even a second that any of that shit was your fault.”

             
“Maybe not,” I wearily agree.  “But I just -”

             
“Let him, right,” Logan cuts in bitterly.  “Well, I guess I’m a selfish bastard then because no matter how much I hate that that happened to you I’d
still
rather that than you be dead right now, with a fucking bullet in your head.”  He turns fully in his seat, glaring at me.  “You keep saying you let this happen to you, you let yourself be ruined.  You didn’t.  You did what you had to, to save your own life. You
survived
.”  From the dark beside me, Logan’s voice turns cold and sour.  “Stop acting like you didn’t.”

             
I flinch and reflexively feel at my back, popping the handle and tumbling out of the car, closing it behind me, thinking of nothing but getting away from the hard animosity of his voice.

             
Logan’s door slams.  “Damn it, Bree,
stop!
  What you did back there today was the bravest fucking thing I’ve ever seen!  Don’t you run away now.  You said you don’t want to be afraid anymore, so
don’t!
”

             
I whirl back at him, pressing the heel of my hand against the pain in my chest.  “I can’t
do
this!”

             
Logan glares at me over the car, standing there rigid, jaw clenched with fury, and then he just turns coldly away and climbs the porch steps.  Without a backward glance he unlocks the front door, swinging it open and closing it behind him. 

             
With the click of that door I’m left standing alone in the middle of his driveway in a sphere of blackness.

             
I’m shaking and sick and so goddamn tired of feeling like
wreckage
.  Like what is left when pain strips everything else away.

             
I march after him, bursting through the front door and slamming it behind me.  Logan is in the kitchen facing away from me, his hands braced, splayed open on the table and his back bowed, head hanging.

             
I falter. 

             
I can bear his hatred if I absolutely have to, but his hurt could take me to my knees.

             
He doesn’t turn to face me, doesn’t move at all, but his voice carries, low and thick.

             
“You told me the other day I can’t save you.  Do you think I don’t know that?”  He pushes up from the table but still doesn’t look at me and I listen, transfixed, from by the door.  “August tenth,” he says blandly.  The date I’d repeated at the police station today, the date seared in my brain.  “That was the day my mom died.”

             
Turning to me, slowly, Logan meets my stunned gaze.  “I heard you too.  That night.  I heard you screaming in my head.  Everything you didn’t . . .” he stops, swallows and looks away.  “I wasn’t sure at first, until I heard you scream in your sleep.  Because I’d heard it before, and I’d ignored it.  And then I was too late to save my mom and she fucking
died
because I didn’t listen.

             
“You think I wouldn’t give anything to do it again, to leave when I first heard those screams, to get here in time to save her from bleeding to death?  You think I wouldn’t give fucking
anything
to be there that night, to stop what happened to you, to
protect
you?”

             
He’s staring at me with red eyes, his hands balled into fists at his sides, and he shakes his head, disgusted.  “Believe me,” he tells me hoarsely, “I don’t need you to tell me I can’t save anyone.”

             
“You didn’t know.”

             
“No, I didn’t,” he says, but his voice is miserable.  He looks over at me, still standing by the door, in that compact box of space that is the foyer.  “Are you staying or not?”

             
“Do you want me to stay?”

             
He throws his hands up.  “Jesus.  Fuck.  I don’t know.”

             
“I thought it would be better!” I yell at him suddenly, and he stills.

             
“Thought what would be better?”

             
“
Me.
  I thought – if I could just put everything back the way it was, put it all back inside - if I could just stop
feeling
so much – but it didn’t work.”

             
“What are you talking about?”

             
“You!  With you I’m – I’m raw.  Exposed.  I feel too much and I can’t stop it, I can’t block it out.”  I’m clutching my hands over the gaping hole in my chest.  “But this is so much
worse
.”

             
“You wanted this.”

             
“I wanted it to stop hurting!” I shout at him, bending over the hands pressed into my sternum.  “But it doesn’t matter because nothing – hurts as bad as - this.”  I’m gasping, breathless, barely able to get the words out.  “I can’t – I can’t
breathe
without you!”