Seven of Hearts

21. Logan

21

LOGAN

“ W hat about Theodore?” Kristin asked from the kitchen as she sipped her coffee.

I glanced up from my laptop screen and raised an eyebrow. “I’m not naming my kid Theodore.”

“Okay. What about something epic like Atticus or Atlas or Percy?”

“You know, maybe it’s a good thing you and Will never had kids,” I said as I made a note on the presentation that Paisley had sent over from the Chicago team. “I think you would get your naming privileges revoked.”

“What’s wrong with those names? They sound so classic,” she argued.

“It sounds like he should be riding a dragon,” I said.

“And what’s so bad about that?” she countered.

“You know, I think I’m going to go back to work at the Chicago office. You’re distracting me,” I teased with a straight face.

Kristin knew me better than that. She abandoned her coffee mug by the pot and walked over to peer out of the windows that faced the DeRossis’ house.

Leah’s car was in the driveway. I couldn’t help but crane around the mess of computers on the dining room table to see if she was outside.

“Busted,” Kristin said with a smirk. “I think you’d quit your job before you went back to Chicago.”

“Then maybe leave me alone so I can get some work done before your husband fires me,” I grumbled. “Don’t you have a job? Because I don’t think ‘full-time future aunt’ is a paying position.”

“I’m okay with an unpaid internship,” she joked. “Besides. Full-time curmudgeon doesn’t pay the bills, and yet here you are taking over my kitchen table and mooching off of my coffee.”

“Coffee is an office essential,” I said as I took a sip from her favorite mug. I had stolen it from the dishwasher when I had gotten here after leaving Leah’s this morning. “It’s like air conditioning and toilet paper.”

“Spoiler alert—my house isn’t your office. And if you, Will, and Bryan don’t stop leaving your shit everywhere, I’m going to rent you an office space in town. I swear Bryan moved his entire home office set up out of Kylie’s and his place.”

I glanced over at the three-screen desktop monstrosity that lived at the head of the table.

Maybe an office space here wouldn’t be a bad idea . . .

Will worked remotely because he traveled a lot. The team that Bryan led was based in Texas. I oversaw the Chicago team and some other high-level stuff.

“You have that look on your face,” Kristin said as she set her mug in the sink.

I steeled my expression. “What look?”

“The look that says you’re going to stay.” Kristin pulled her silvering hair out of the clip that held it up and ran her hand through it. “And I hope you do. Not just for Leah and the baby. But for yourself too. Are you really happy in Chicago?”

All I had ever wanted was to escape Beaufort. To go somewhere where no one knew anything about me. All I wanted was to escape the presuppositions that people like Leah’s parents had about me.

And after leaving Beaufort and moving to Chicago, then coming back, all I could think about was how empty my apartment was. How mundane my life was. How it felt like I was a hamster in a wheel, running like hell but not going anywhere.

Perfection sucked. It set low standards and strangled growth.

“No,” I admitted.

Kristin passed by me on the way to grab her keys to head to work. “Then stop pretending like you are. Life will get good a lot faster than if you stay on your high horse.”

As the front door opened and closed, I couldn’t help but think that life was already good.

A text from Leah appeared on my computer screen, automatically forwarded from my phone so I never missed a message.

Leah: I deep cleaned all the blinds and curtains at the DeRossis’ house, and rented a steam cleaner for the floors at the Lawsons’. I think nesting hit and it happened at the wrong houses.

I laughed and typed out a quick reply.

Logan: Say the word and all the throw pillows will disappear. You don’t even have to lift a finger.

Truth be told, I liked her throw pillows. It was nice having something comfortable at every turn. But I liked teasing her about them even more. Leah knew it was all in good fun.

Logan: Kris said that we should name the baby Percy or Atticus.

Leah: Do they give us his dragon at the hospital? Because my apartment has a no-pet policy, and I don’t think I can convince the management office that it’s an emotional support dragon.

Her text made me laugh as I turned back to reviewing Paisley’s presentation, but I was interrupted again by a knock at the door. Zoey was at school, Kristin had just left, and Will was upstairs in his office, on a conference call with a client. Maybe Kristin had forgotten her key and locked herself out of the house and her car.

But I remembered her grabbing her keys . . .

Maybe Leah had decided to take a break from deep cleaning the DeRossis’ house and sneak over after she saw Kristin leave.

“Just a second,” I hollered into the empty house as I darkened my computer screen and pushed away from the table. I jogged to the door and unlocked it. “Did you forget your?—”

But the person on the other side wasn’t Kristin, Will, or one of my siblings.

It was Leah’s dad.

“Mr. Holloway.” I hated how surprised I sounded, but he was the last person I expected to show up on the porch.

“Logan,” he said, a little chipper. As if this was totally normal. “I was hoping you and I could have a chat.”

I glanced down the porch to the DeRossis’ house. Leah’s car was still there, but she was inside. “Sorry you had to drive all the way out here, but these are my work hours, and Leah’s at work as well.”

His smile was that of a retired corporate shark. A little slower moving, but just as sharp. “I think you can spare a few minutes out of your day. After all, you’ve got that big, important vice president title.” His chuckle was dry. “I’ve never known a VP who couldn’t call the shots from time to time.”

He was baiting me, and I wanted to take it.

Leah had told me about the screaming match she’d had with her mom. From the looks of it, her father wasn’t coming in peace. He was coming to get his personal pound of flesh.

“Then I guess you know some pretty lazy VPs. So that’s the second thing you’ve gotten wrong: you don’t know me, and I’m not lazy.”

Even though John Holloway was retired and probably on his way to go play golf, he had thrown on a blazer. Probably for the intimidation factor.

It didn’t work.

Much.

John just laughed. “Come on, Logan. Let’s have a chat. It’ll be faster than you trying to close that door in my face the way my daughter did to her mother.”

I didn’t like the way he called Dr. Holloway, “Leah’s mother.” It was distancing language. Cold and impersonal.

That was his wife, who he had chosen before Leah was ever around, and yet he didn’t relate to her that way.

Leah was going to be an incredible mother. But first and foremost, she was mine.

The reality of how I felt about her nearly knocked the wind out of my lungs.

On the drive to and from visiting my dad, I had slowly unpacked everything I hid away in my mental stores that had to do with Leah Holloway. I laid them out for organization and inventory. There was no denying what I felt for her, I just didn’t have a plan for the practical application of those feelings yet.

I always needed a plan. A strategy so that I knew how to navigate all the ins and outs. That compulsive need probably circled back to wanting to control everything, but that wasn’t the case with Leah.

I just couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her.

Over the last six months since that fateful drunken night, she had become the one person I wanted more than anything, and the only person I couldn’t bear to lose.

When our son was born in a few months, that feeling would grow exponentially.

“I’ll cut to the chase,” Mr. Holloway said as he reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and produced a checkbook. “I can see that you’re trying to do better than your old man, and I applaud that. I’m prepared to make this worth your while. We can work out visitation if you’d like to remain in contact with the child after it’s born, but this nonsense with Leah has gone on far too long.”

“Get off the property,” I clipped as I reached for the door handle.

He didn’t flinch. “I don’t think you understand the deal I’m offering you. I’m giving you a chance to put this mistake behind you. I’d assume a man like you would want that. Or maybe you’re not as smart as you pretend to be. You can play house all you want, but I will not let you drag my daughter down to your level. I will not let this infatuation and farce of a relationship with a murderer’s son go on any longer.”

Six months ago, someone throwing what my parents had done in my face would have sent me into a manic spiral of needing to prove myself.

But I didn’t need to prove myself to John Holloway.

He was just a pathetic sad sack who was simply used to being belligerent enough to get his way. He didn’t care about Leah. He didn’t care about my son. And I’d be damned if I let him think he had any power over me, who I loved, or who I was lucky enough to be loved by.

The click of his pen might as well have been a gunshot.

“Name your price,” he growled. “Don’t hold back on my account. You want six figures? Name it now. Because if you pass up this offer, there won’t be another.”

I laughed.

Mr. Holloway stumbled back, like the breath from my lungs had pushed him off kilter.

I wasn’t cowering and he didn’t know what to do with that.

“Put your checkbook away,” I said. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Don’t be foolish,” he scoffed, spewing spittle with each syllable. “A kid with two parents serving time would call this a lucky break. You fucked up and you’re getting off scot-free.”

“I’m the son of a billionaire. I don’t need your pennies.”

I didn’t give him a chance to respond as I slammed the door and locked it for good measure.

When I got back to my computer to continue some semblance of a normal, measured workday, Will was in the kitchen helping himself to the remnants of the coffee pot.

“How much of that did you hear?” I asked.

“Doorbell camera caught it all,” he said as he yanked open the refrigerator door and reached for the bottle of cinnamon creamer. “I tuned in to the season one finale of your love life when I got off the conference call. It was more entertaining than all the streaming apps out there. I should have made some popcorn.”

I just shook my head as I pulled out the kitchen chair so I could get back to work.

“So,” Will said as he topped off his coffee with the creamer. “You’re the son of a billionaire, huh?”

I stiffened, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. It had been a great line to whip out as a slap in the face to Mr. Holloway, but I was sure Will felt differently.

“Sorry,” I grumbled as I sent the rest of my notes to Paisley so she could get on with her day. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why?”

“Because you never talk about your net worth. You probably didn’t want me dropping that kind of information to him.”

“I don’t give a shit what someone like that thinks. But I do give a shit what you think.” He pushed the kitchen’s sliding door open. “You coming?”

Apparently, I didn’t have a choice.

Will led me down to the dock and assumed our normal seats, side-by-side. “Explain something to me.”

“What?” I said as I snapped a cattail that was growing up by the thick wooden post.

“Why did you make it about me and not you? I know you’ve never touched your trust fund. You’re not hurting for money yourself.”

I looked down at the cattail in my hands, bending the stem so I had something to focus on.

Before Will had married my sister, he set up savings plans specifically for me and my siblings—Kristin included—to go to college if we wanted. Between the five of us, he had set aside ten million dollars.

It didn’t even put a dent in his bank account, but it changed our lives.

The deal was that when someone graduated, he would move the leftover money into a trust fund for that person, with a matching contribution on top of it.

He knew how to create one hell of an incentive.

“Because he kept saying I was the product of my parents, and it’s not true,” I said as I peeled back one of the cattail leaves.

Will nodded. “You’re your own man. I’m glad that you understand that.”

I shook my head. “I’m the man you showed me how to be. I wanted him to know that.”

Will snapped his head to the side. He stared at me, but I kept my eyes trained on the water.

“Sorry if that was weird to say.”

“We have a weird relationship, don’t we?” he said with a quick smile. “I’m your boss, but I love you. We’re brothers-in-law now, but I was your sister’s partner when she was your legal guardian. I take responsibility for you, but I also see you as a friend. I see you as a peer because we’re both living life for the first time. And you know what I think?”

“What’s that?”

“I think that’s parenthood, Lo. And it’s been an honor. So, if it counts for anything, I think you’re gonna be damn good at it.”