Chapter 22 Logan
I get it now.
I knew I’d fucked up, but thought I could fix it.
I thought I had time. I wasn’t worried enough about the situation to be scared.
So fucking stupid. I knew it would break her, but I assumed, the way I always assume, that I’d be able to fix it before she found out.
Or that if she did, she’d let me fix it.
She’d let me be an investor, she’d hear my apology, we’d solve it together.
I want to burn the look on her face out of my memory—the devastation, the pain, like I’d actually hit her. The way her dark eyes went wet and then hard when she understood what I’d done. I want to go back. I am terrified of losing her. But she’s already gone.
I haven’t seen her in days. We were only together that long to begin with. So why does this feel like someone died? When I close my eyes, there’s a moment when I see her sultry smile, her laughter, the way her eyes lit up when we danced. Then, in a flash, it’s gone, replaced by her hurt, her anger.
It barely fazed me getting back on a plane. I just had to get home as soon as possible. I needed to see her. I had no idea if I made it back to the city before her or not.
Returning home, work was the last thing on my mind, but I had surgeries scheduled, and I was almost grateful for the distraction. At the hospital, the scrubs felt like a costume. I was playing the old version of me, where I had my shit together. Where nothing mattered more than work.
I run through the day’s cases with the senior resident, rattling off details on autopilot while some other part of me has stayed back in Georgia. My scrub nurse keeps shooting me worried glances across the table. I tell her I’m fine. She doesn’t believe me, and she’s right not to.
I scrub in, catching my reflection in the mirror at the bay. Bags under my eyes, jaw unshaved for the first time in years. I look almost as bad as I feel.
The scrub room smells of chlorhexidine and stale coffee.
Inside the OR, sterile iodine. I open a chest cavity, work through a full day of standard Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting surgeries—I could do them in my sleep.
My hands move on autopilot while my head throbs with static, the same loop of her face when she found out.
Days pass like this. I text Rose, not knowing if she even has her phone back. I’ve tried reaching out to Easton. Roger told me he’d heard back from him—only to say that Rose was safe, nothing more. We didn’t deserve more.
But fuck, I wanted more. I wanted everything.
I had everything.
Should I have just told her the truth? When I realized what had happened?
No, I shouldn’t have signed the fucking letter in the first place. Pearl was right. I barely read it. And for the investors to drag Rose’s name through the mud, based on nothing but lies, means it must have been worse than I thought.
I fucking deserve this, but Rose does not. Rosaria Lopes. Quiet, calm, steady, thoughtful. Passionate, brilliant, beautiful. And the whole world turned against her. All because her sister held a grudge. And because I, Logan Wells, am a fucking asshole. Just like she said I was.
Two weeks pass.
I leave the hospital past two in the morning most nights, burying myself in case notes. The night air is cool. It’s October now. I stand outside for a while, not really going anywhere.
I barely had her. A blink of time, really. Not even close to enough. But the loss of her has rearranged my brain chemistry, and I don’t know how to function.
I head home. I don’t sleep. I lie in bed, but my mind keeps playing out new scripts—going back in time, trying to fix things.
Telling her the truth before she found out in such a vicious way.
Me never signing the letter in the first place.
Discovering it was Rose behind The Resilience Project, and us falling in love sooner, having even more time together.
Every memory of her, I twist and elaborate into a lifetime ahead of us. A lifetime that will never come.
I pull out my phone and send her another undelivered text. I call, but it says the user is not available.
When sleep never comes, I climb out of bed. It’s six AM. No surgeries scheduled today, but I need to prep for next week. I get up and make coffee, moving how I feel—slow and miserable.
There’s a knock on my door.
I go still. My heart does something stupid—thinks, for just a second, that somehow it’s her.
But when I look through the peephole, it’s not my short, brown-haired succubus.
It’s Pearl.
Bracing myself, taking a deep breath, I swing open the door. Her hair is in a sleek, high ponytail. She looks perfectly put-together, and it enrages me.
“I fucked up,” she says before I can slam the door in her face. “Okay? Now let me in.”
I stare, dumbfounded, as she pushes past me.
“You fucked up?” I repeat slowly.
She rolls her eyes. Walks over to my coffee maker, moving about my kitchen as though she’s been here a thousand times. She has, actually. She pours herself a cup, takes one sip, makes a face, then dumps it down the drain. “You really should move to cold brew.”
“What?” I ask, shaking my head, slamming the door shut as I follow her into the kitchen. “What are you doing here?”
“I… I don’t know. All I know is that I’m uncomfortable. And I don’t like this feeling. It’s new. It’s… itchy.”
“Itchy?”
She huffs and rolls her eyes again. I swear she’s been body-swapped.
“Look, I feel bad or whatever.”
“Pearl—”
“Be quiet and hear me out.”
I shut my mouth, not because she told me to, but because I genuinely have no idea who this version of Pearl is.
She eyes me like she’s waiting for me to interrupt. I swing my hand out, as if to say, the floor is yours. “I’ve always hated my sister.”
I put my hand up. “If you came here to—”
“I’m not. Just shut up and listen.” She huffs, then takes the coffee mug and begins to rinse it out, keeping her hands busy.
“It’s hard to explain. But over the years I’ve just…
built this picture. Of her. Of you.” She glances at me under her lashes.
“We made sense, you and me. And you just never fucking saw it. I kept waiting. I know you don’t love me, Logan. ”
“I’m sorry,” I say. Not that she deserves it, but maybe if I had shown her something, if she had real love in her life, she wouldn’t have burned everything down. Maybe if she had something real, she wouldn’t be so cruel.
“At the gala last spring… I saw the way you looked at her. You two always argued, but that night, you couldn’t stay away from each other. I was so mad at her because I’d spent so long trying to make you look at me like that, and she did it effortlessly. Like she does everything else.”
“So you sabotaged her career?”
“I’d like to remind you, once again, that I wasn’t alone in that.”
I grit my teeth, hating that she’s right, but still fucking furious at her. She can see me ready to snap, so she acquiesces.
“But yeah. That was one of the reasons. And Daddy did say all that shit about her. It felt good, I guess. To take her down a peg.”
“There are no pegs, Pearl. She’s your fucking sister.”
“Whatever.” She waves her hand. “My point is, I was pissed at her, so I did something mean. It’s what I do. I don’t know why I do it, it’s just… it’s always been easy. Intellectually, I know I should feel bad about it, but emotionally, I just… I can’t explain it. But I just can’t get there.”
I stare at her for a second. I may be a cardiothoracic surgeon, but I did rounds in psych. She’s charming. Changes her moods on a dime, mimics sadness and hurt on cue. Lacks emotional empathy. “Pearl, have you ever gone to therapy?”
She narrows her eyes. “Yes. And I’m aware of my diagnosis.
That doesn’t matter right now. My point is, I didn’t see how bad it was until the wedding.
And I realized—you’re never going to love me.
And maybe I loved the idea of you more than you, anyway.
I mean, if you wanted to sleep together, I wouldn’t say no.
But—” She glances at my face. “Right. Obviously not.”
I say nothing.
“So, I’m letting you go. But I want to be friends.
I don’t make friends easily… You, Harlow, even fucking Griffin.
Dash and Reign. You guys are all I have.
All I’ve ever had. I’ve told myself I don’t fall for people I date because they’re not you, but I think it’s simpler than that.
I can only manage so many people at once. Too many variables.”
“This is an awful lot of self-awareness and honesty for someone exhibiting psychopathic behaviors,” I say, throwing it out there.
And to my surprise, she doesn’t seem shocked by the term. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink.
She shrugs. “It’s been a relief, honestly.
Dad’s pissed at me, and we got into a huge fight, and it felt so good not to pretend.
It feels good to admit I’m fucked up. That I’m micromanaging every friendship I have so it’s perfect.
Not having to do that is… nice. Harlow is pissed at me too, but she said she likes me better like this.
And Griffin—” she pauses, a blush moving up her pale neck.
I shake my head. “I’m glad you’re having a breakthrough, Pearl. I really am. But the person I’m worried about isn’t you. Do you understand that? You broke her. The fucking shit you said to her, I can’t even—”
“I don’t know if I can fix my relationship with Rose. I need to talk to her. And I will. But that’s not why I’m here. Even though you had your ego-maniac head shoved so far up your ass, you didn’t bother to read that letter, I know what I did was wrong, and I want to make amends.”
“Do you actually mean that?” I have no idea who this woman is. My brain is rapid-fire crumbling that I missed one of my best friends being actually fucking certifiable, and I don’t trust a word out of her mouth right now.
She looks at me, and I watch it happen again, in real time—she gathers that pout I spent years worrying after, eyes going soft and glassy on command.
Then she breaks into laughter.
Jesus.