Logan (Federal Protection Agency #9)

Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

Clay

Someone was staring at me.

I could feel their eyes, and although it wasn’t threatening, it also wasn’t pleasant.

As I set up the board games in the communal area, I kept my head down and tried to focus on the work, choosing games that required the most set up in order to keep myself busy.

It had been a year since I came to back Maryland and after each of the seasons had their turn, summer had rolled around again. A lot had changed, but at the same time things also stayed the same.

I’d gone through several different therapists over the year. None of them were as bad as the first—according to rumors, the man had his license revoked—but it had taken me two more therapists after him before I finally found one that I was comfortable with. Doctor Coleman was a motherly woman, but in a no-nonsense way that didn’t take any shit or tolerate any disrespect. I liked it, as it felt more familiar and comforting than the people who tried to coddle me or treat me too gently. Yet, she never went too far or stepped over the line while she was pushing me to better myself, and her efforts seemed to be paying off.

About four months after starting therapy, I’d picked up some volunteer work at a local halfway house for homeless kids. It was technically open to anyone in need, but the number of LGBTQ+ kids who sheltered at the halfway house was staggeringly high, and a lot of them had faced abuse in some way.

At first, I’d worried that seeing so many people with similar stories to mine would cause me to relapse, but I actually found it cathartic. Like facing my demons head on.

My presence there also seemed to give the kids hope that things could get better.

Well, I called them kids, but most of them were only a few years younger than me.

Leslie, one of the other volunteers, stepped up to my side. We weren’t exactly friends, but we were friendly in the way that people who regularly worked together were. She had once taken shelter at the halfway house, and now that she was older and able to support herself, she was returning the favor by volunteering.

She waited for a moment until she was sure I recognized her, before bumping my shoulder. “Looks like someone has a crush.”

“What?”

She nodded in another direction with her chin. I followed her gaze and found the source of the stare I’d felt earlier. A young man was watching me from the other side of the room, but when he realized I’d noticed him, he quickly looked away.

“What’s his problem?”

Leslie snorted and pushed her round glasses back up her nose when they slid down. “Really? Come on, Clay. He’s obviously smitten with you. Kenneth never used to attend game night, or any other group activity, really. But since you started volunteering here, he’s always the first to sign up.”

I scowled at her. I wasn’t angry, but I was confused, and that usually brought a whole host of other negative emotions.

“Okaaaay. But, like, isn’t that inappropriate? He’s one of the kids.”

“Not really. He is one of the older ones that are still here. I think he turns twenty next month. That’s only three years younger than you.”

“Four years,” I reminded her. “I turned twenty-four a little while ago.” That wasn’t the point and we both knew it. Three years or four years made no difference, but I was still trying to get my head around what Leslie was saying. “Okay. So, he’s not a kid. That still doesn’t explain what you expect me to do about it?

Leslie just shrugged and finished setting up the monopoly game board that I had abandoned. “Well, you could talk to him. Or you could continue to ignore him. It’s up to you and what you feel comfortable with. There isn’t really a right or wrong answer here.”

Before I could answer, Dominic’s ear-catching voice announced the start of the game night and directed everyone to find a seat.

Dominic O’Connor owned the halfway house. He was a large man with an equally boisterous personality. Sometimes so much so that it seemed forced. A middle-aged gut protruded slightly over his belt, but was disguised by his well-tailored clothes, and his thick hair looked like it had never known a split end in its life. Overall, he seemed like the kind of person who’d never known hardship a day in his life, though I had long learned not to be deceived by appearances.

When I’d first met him, I’d been suspicious. A man who surrounded himself with vulnerable kids must have bad intentions, and I’d been hypercritical of every word he said, looking for the signs of a predator.

Yet, my suspicions had slid right off him as if he was Teflon, and he never got upset over my behavior or accusations. Eventually, with the help of Doctor Coleman, I’d learned how to separate my own life experiences from reality and see what was in front of me rather than what I expected. When I did that, I found that Dominic was as genuine as he presented himself, and really just wanted to help as many people as he could.

As I’d eventually found out, my initial thoughts about him couldn’t have been more wrong. Once he got to know you, there’d be times where his facade slipped and the history of his great loss was evident in his face. There was compassion in his eyes that could only be earned through hard life experiences. The loss of his son was his motivator in all that he did now.

We needed more people like Dominic in the world.

It was ironic, if you thought about it. If everyone in the world was like Dominic, then Dominic wouldn’t have been needed, because the halfway house would be empty.

When I wasn’t volunteering at Dominic’s place or going to one of my regular therapy sessions—which had dropped down from thrice a week to only twice—I held down a laughable job at Jason’s construction company.

It could barely be called a job. I knew nothing about construction, so I couldn’t help with the actual work. Instead, Jason had hired me as the company’s unofficial secretary.

Well, it was official. I had an employment record and everything. I only called it unofficial because it was obvious my brother wasn’t giving me the workload of an actual secretary. The company already had an actual secretary who handled most things, and anyone could see my workload did not match hers.

I came in for a few hours four times a week, filed paperwork, answered phone calls, and overall, just tried to make myself useful. In return, I earned a full-time salary, with benefits. I would have protested being given such a lucrative job out of pity, but Jason’s charity was the only way I was going to get any experience to start building a resume, and half my earnings went back to him as rent anyway.

That was the one thing I’d insisted on. At first, he’d refused my offer to pay rent, but he’d been forced to give in when I started hiding the cash in places where he could find it, like under his pillow or in the cup holder in his car.

Jason’s most recent jobsite was just a few blocks down the street from the halfway house. The building they were constructing would eventually be a series of low rent apartments that would also be owned by Dominic. It was meant to be like a part two of his grand plan. Kids from the halfway house, once they reached adulthood, would need a place to stay, and there would always be apartments available for them. This would actually be the second of its kind that Dominic had commissioned; the first one being after his son was killed several years ago.

The building was currently only half done, and currently stood as a skeleton of its final design. It was too bad it wasn’t finished yet. There were several people still living at the halfway house who were already technically too old. Kenneth was almost twenty and had avoided homelessness only because Dominic was too kind to kick anyone out. He could definitely use one of the apartments currently being built.

Summer had just started, so Maryland’s seasonal rainstorms hadn’t quite started yet. The dug-up ground around the temporary office was still dry, so I didn’t have to stomp my way to the door like I had to do on wetter days, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I stepped into the office still as clean as when I left the halfway house.

“Hey, Clay,” Jason greeted me when I stepped through the door without looking up from his paperwork. “You’re back early. How was the halfway house?”

“Same as usual.”

I thought my tone was normal as I took a seat behind the designated secretary desk on the other side of the little room, but Jason must have picked up on something in my voice, because he immediately put down his paperwork and looked at me with a furrowed brow.

“What’s wrong? You’re usually eager to talk about your volunteer work.”

Sitting on the desk was a kinetic statue that used magnets to keep itself perpetually spinning. I’d never bought it, and no one else claimed to have brought it in either. It seemed to be one of those things that just naturally spawned in an office environment.

Staring at the jumble of metallic spheres and rods, I tapped one of the pieces and sent the whole thing spinning.

“What do you think about dating?”

His gaze briefly flicked to the ring on his left hand. “I think I’m married, so it’s not really an appropriate thing for me to be doing any more.”

“I don’t mean you,” I quickly corrected him.

“Oh.” He paused for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. “Oooooh. You mean, like, what do I think about you dating?”

“You don’t have to say it like it’s such a surprise,” I grumbled.

Jason blushed and looked sheepish, but I was already chastising myself in my head. He hadn’t said anything wrong.

Why was I being so hostile?

“Sorry,” Jason muttered as he rearranged the paperwork on his desk, moving things around only to put them right back in the same spot. “I didn’t think. It hasn’t come up before, so I guess I just assumed you weren’t interested or weren’t ready for that kind of stuff.”

I slumped against the desk and caught the little kinetic statue, so it stopped spinning. “I don’t know if I am, but it came up and you’re the only one I know who has actually won the dating game, so I was wondering what you thought about it.”

Jason glanced at his wedding ring again, this time flashing me with a bright smile. “I did win the dating game. Didn’t I.”

I made a fake gagging sound, mocking him for being so mushy. In response, he pelted me with several paperclips.

“Hey, don’t mock me. You’ll understand it someday. When you find the person, you click with, you’re gonna want to be all mushy, too. Just you wait.”

I scoffed again, but I couldn’t ignore the little flame of hope that lit inside me.

Would I ever be like that with someone?

It sounded nice, but I couldn’t imagine it. I already struggled to trust people and marrying someone required trust that bordered on blind faith. Even if I did find someone I felt that way about, certainly no one would feel that way about me.

Jason and Patrick were the cliché that everyone secretly aspired for. High school sweethearts who beat the odds and stayed together through college to eventually get married. They were proud of the fact that they’d been each other’s firsts and wore it like a badge of honor.

I couldn’t even remember who’d been my first. I’d been unconscious for most of it.

No.

No one would look at me with the same kind of pure love that Jason and Patrick shared.

Physical attraction?

Sure. I was practically the master of that. Especially now that I was living in better conditions, eating regularly, and could afford all the hygiene products I wanted. My looks were more stunning than ever. I had no shame admitting that much.

But that beauty was surface deep. Underneath the outer layer, I was still an ugly, broken thing, and although I was healing, some scars would never go away.

I’d lost the opportunity to be marriage material.

Another paperclip bounced off my forehead, hitting me right between the eyes.

“Hey.” I rubbed my forehead and scowled at Jason. “What was that for?”

“For thinking too much,” Jason said, before throwing another paperclip, which I snatched out of the air before it could land. “I can practically see your brain spinning from here, and that usually means you’re criticizing yourself. So, stop it.”

I pouted and scooped up the paperclips that now littered my desk. At first, I meant to store them in the desk drawer, but one of them had accidentally magnetized to the kinetic statue on the desk and stuck straight out like a cactus spike. One by one, I added the other paperclips as well, turning the entire sculpture thorny.

“I’m not criticizing myself,” I said as I decided where to place the next paperclip. “I’m just... evaluating my options. Even if I did want to start dating, there aren’t many opportunities for me, so what’s the point?”

Jason tossed me more paperclips, no longer throwing them at me as punishment, but instead helping to fuel my artistic endeavors. “The point is practice. Just like with reading, you need to start small and work your way up, so you learn how to be in a relationship. You don’t need to date someone and immediately want to marry someone.”

Over the last year, my reading had gotten better. I’d progressed from a middle-grade level to a high school level. That was still behind where I should be, but it was progress.

Nearly the entire sculpture was now covered in paperclips, making it look like it was covered in metallic fur. If I sent the structure spinning now, the paperclips would be thrown around the room like confetti.

“You married the first person you dated.”

“But I didn’t know I was going to marry Patrick when I first met him. I just got lucky.”

I snorted, blowing my blond bangs out of my face. My hair was long enough to tie back now, so long as I made the world’s smallest ponytail, but I usually let it hang free.

“Luck has never been on my side.”

I didn’t have to look to know that Jason was scowling at me from across the room.

“That’s not the point. I’m saying you don’t have to think about it so hard. Date, or don’t date. It’s up to you. But don’t shy away from it just because you don’t know what you want yet. The point isn’t to know what you’re looking for. The point is to look.”

I hovered my hand over the kinetic statue, inches away from sending the whole thing spinning and making a mess. It would be satisfying to watch the chaos unfold as paperclips went flying everywhere.

But then I’d have to spend the next hour crawling around on the floor picking everything up. The momentary joy I’d get wasn’t worth the amount of work it would cost me later.

I returned my hand to my desk, and then rested my head on my crossed arms. On the other side of the room, Jason returned to his paperwork. I watched him, mentally prodding at my sense of guilt the same way one would rub at a bruise to feel the ache. I should be doing my job and helping with the business. Not sitting here moping about the tragedy of my dating life.

Without meaning to, I dozed off. I only worked a few hours at a time, so my nap ended up consuming my entire workday.

When pay for that workday ended up in my bank account anyway, I tried to insist Jason take it back, but he refused, and I eventually gave up.

What I’d come to learn in the last year was that my brother was usually right, and this time was no different.