Chapter Fourteen – Logan
I should let her go. She can find her own way home.
I’m not the white knight type, anyway. Never have been, never will be.
Still, after she gets up and walks away, I can’t help but feel like I should get up and go with her.
Not to try anything—not really in the mood, after talking about guitars and singing and shit—but just to make sure she gets home.
You know, safe or whatever.
It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t care. I don’t.
Fuck. Maybe a little.
I get up and go after her. I catch her just as her feet hit the sidewalk in front of the house and she turns to walk in the right direction, to wherever she calls home right now. When I reach her side, she tosses me a wrinkled, slightly annoyed look and asks, “What are you doing?”
I shove my hands in my pockets and shrug. “I’m walking. What are you doing?”
“I’m going home. I told you.”
“Cool.”
Wren groans. “I don’t need you to walk me home, if that’s what you’re doing. I can make it there myself just fine.”
“Never said I was walking you home. Just said I was walking.”
She eyes me up, suspicious. “Walking in the same direction as me.”
“Maybe I live this way, too.”
“I know where you live, remember?”
Oh, yeah. I shrug again and say, “Doesn’t matter. I’m walking this way, same as you, so deal with it, nerd.”
The sigh she lets out right then is legendary, and it tells me she’s already fed up with me. Seems I get on her nerves just as she gets on mine. Good. The feeling, as shitty as it is, is mutual. “Back to calling me that. Great. I love being called a nerd like we’re in second grade.”
A smile threatens to appear on my face, but I don’t let it. I don’t even know why I want to smile; it isn’t like she said anything funny. She’s… I don’t know what she is. Everything is confusing when I’m near her, and I feel like a constant contradiction.
I want to be close to her. I want to push her away.
I want to know more about her, but at the same time I don’t.
It’s confusing, it’s shitty, it’s everything I never felt before.
I’m used to getting what I want and then being satisfied, knowing I never wanted more.
I used to numb myself. Never have I ever given myself the opportunity to feel like this.
It fucking sucks. I hate it. I honestly don’t know how the average boring ass person does it.
We walk side by side in silence for a while, and I can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking about.
Is she thinking about me, or are her thoughts still back at that house, where her ex was?
I wonder who he is. I know what he did to her, and I know why.
My comments to her about the subject were…
let’s just say not very nice, and at the time I meant them.
Now? I don’t know. Now I think I just hate that fucking guy, whoever he is.
I could probably find out who he is. Search her social media. If I went to friend and follow her, would she allow it, or would she immediately block me? Hmm. But then what would I do with the information? It isn’t like I care enough to track him down on campus and beat the shit out of him.
Or maybe I do.
Knowing she used to sing… fuck. It’s something we have in common. Something small, but at the same time, something huge. I don’t know what makes me break the silence between us, but I do as I ask, “What’s your favorite song?”
“My favorite song?” Wren echoes, as if she didn’t hear me right. “Why do you care?”
“I’m curious.”
She seems to think about it. “Don’t make fun of me, but I kind of dig the nineties.”
“Okay, what’s your favorite nineties song?”
“Torn by Natalie Imbruglia,” she rattles off quickly, so quickly I know she’s not lying. “What about you?”
I have to resist my urge to shut the conversation down, especially since I was the one who brought it up to begin with.
Anytime anything remotely close to music is brought up, I’d rather fucking not.
“I’m a huge fan of Linkin Park, Breaking Benjamin, Sleep Token.
No way can I pick a single favorite song.
” I have to be careful; she might not know who Black Sacrament is, but with the masks and body paint, my old band is close to the last one I brought up.
Can’t forget how big Black Sacrament blew up after bringing in that girl. They went fucking viral, and now anytime they do shows, clips spread like wildfire. As much as I hate to admit it—and I really fucking hate it—more people know about them now than they did back when I was its frontrunner.
“Is that the kind of stuff you like to sing?” she asks.
“I don’t really want to talk about that.”
“Maybe if you did, it wouldn’t be such a sore subject.”
“And maybe if you confronted your ex and told him what a shitty person he is, seeing him wouldn’t make you run away.” I come off sounding like a little bitch, but once the words are out, I can’t take them back.
“I don’t need to confront him. I already told him we were done when I caught him in bed with my ex-best friend. What more is there to say?” The pain must be too real still, if the hurt in her voice means anything.
“There’s always more to say, like ‘fuck you.’”
Wren shoots a dirty look my way. “Some of us don’t swear.”
“Why not? You think you’re a better person or some shit just because you don’t swear?” I mean, she is a better person than me, but that’s not hard to do, and it has nothing to do with swearing.
“I just don’t see the point. Anything you need to say, you can say using other words. You don’t need to swear to make your point—”
“Yeah, true, but swearing is just fucking fun.” When she groans at that, I smirk.
To my surprise, her place isn’t too far away. It’s maybe a ten-minute walk. She lives in a house directly across from the east side of campus. Not that I plan on coming here again, but it is information I file away for later.
We walk to her front door, and she pulls out a key from the small clutch she has strung over her shoulder.
Before she sticks that key into the lock, she turns to me.
There aren’t any lights on on the outside of the house, no lights on inside either, so there isn’t much to illuminate her, but my eyes are adjusted to the darkness well enough.
She stares up at me from beneath those eyelashes and whispers, “Thank you for walking with me… even though I didn’t want you to.” She bites her bottom lip in a gesture that makes me want to bend down and take that lip between my teeth and give it a nibble myself. “You’re not so bad sometimes.”
Not so bad. It’s not exactly a compliment, but at the same time, it might just be the nicest thing someone has ever said to me—to me, Logan Crew, and not Pope of Black Sacrament. It was definitely the most real anyone’s been with me.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” I reply, unable to look away. Once again, that look she’s giving me is pinning me in place. I’m a foot away from her, but it feels like a mile. She’s too far away. I want to step closer to her, put my hands on her, pull her in and…
Fuck me sideways.
“I’m not bad at all,” Wren says, sounding faintly insulted.
“Depends on who you ask.” My gaze drops to her mouth, and I can’t fight the hunger that rises deep within me. I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her more than I’ve ever wanted to kiss anybody in my life. How pathetic is that?
What is this girl doing to me?
Whatever magic hold on me she has, she releases when she breaks our eye contact and moves closer to the front door. “Night, Logan. I’ll see you in class.” With her back to me, I can’t see her expression when she says that, so I don’t know what she’s thinking.
Is she dismissing me? Or does she want me to fight to follow her inside? We can easily get her sheets as sweaty as we got mine. I can fuck her any which way she wants, and now that she knows what to expect, she can really get into it.
I want to fuck her again. I do. I want to pin her down and lose myself in her all over again—and I’ll take my time. I’ll be her drug, numb her to the pain she feels. She can take a shot of me whenever she wants. She has to know that.
And yet, before I have the chance to say or do anything, Wren slips inside and shuts the door in my face, forbidding me from doing any of it.
I can’t lie; the disappointment in me is huge. It’s such an unfamiliar thing to me, wanting to be with a girl again, wanting someone like Wren. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but it’s like she got underneath my skin the moment we met.
How fucked up is that?
It takes me a bit to pull myself away from the door and turn around.
I don’t want to leave. Fuck, I want to stay.
I want to go inside that house, grab Wren, throw her over my shoulder and find her bedroom.
There’s nothing more I want in the world than to get reacquainted with her body and the way she squirms.
Hanging my head low, I’m halfway to the sidewalk when I feel eyes on me.
Maybe it’s just paranoia—I felt the same thing when I tried hooking up with that chick outside the bar.
A leftover from my days as Pope, when I had to be ever-vigilant that no one found out any personal details about me.
That said, I can’t shake the feeling, and I toss a glance around me.
Nobody’s behind me. Nobody’s around… except for two people hurrying down the sidewalk, coming from the same direction Wren and I had just moments before. But these two, whoever they are, aren’t the ones I felt staring at me.
Huh. Maybe I am losing my shit. Wren must be driving me crazier than I thought.
The two heading toward me make a beeline toward the same house, but one of them stops and decides to come to me. A girl. Pretty enough, but just from a quick once-over, I can totally tell she’s off her rocker. The intensity coming off her is undeniable, and she’s got a wild look in her eyes.
“You,” she says, sounding large and in charge, quite the opposite of her stature. “Who are you? Why are you standing in front of my house?” As the second person slips inside—a guy—I realize just who they are: Wren’s roomies.
“I walked Wren home. She’s inside, and she’s fine.”
The girl tilts her head. “And who is she to you?”
“She’s—” I’m about to say nothing to me, but for whatever reason, the words just don’t come out of my mouth. “Look, I just wanted to make sure she got home safe, okay? I’m out of here now.” I take a step around the girl, or I try to; she doesn’t let me. The girl sidesteps and remains in my way.
“Your name’s not Logan, is it?”
I blink down at her. This girl knowing my name means Wren has talked about me. That’s… interesting. “Yeah, I’m Logan, why?”
The smile that tugs at her lips is more like a sneer. “Logan, you’re not playing games with my roomie, are you? Because if you are… well, I only like games if I’m the one playing them. Wren doesn’t need games. She doesn’t need to be hurt again. She’s better than us, so she deserves more than that.”
“Better than us?”
“Better than me, and definitely better than you—so, yeah, she’s better than us.” There’s an edge to her voice now, and I know she means everything she says. “Listen to me carefully, because I’m only going to say this once.”
Now? Her tone is calm, almost alarmingly so, and I’m so caught off-guard by it that I stand there like a dummy.
“If you hurt a single hair on that girl’s head, I will kill you, and I have more than enough money to make it all disappear. No one will miss you, and by the time they find you, you’ll be nothing but bones.”
It’s not the first time I’ve been threatened; being in the spotlight meant threats every now and then, although those threats were typically sent through sketchy online accounts and not spoken face-to-face like this.
No, you know what? This is new. This whole thing is new—and I know for a fact this girl, whoever she is, means it.
The glimmer in her eyes, even in the darkness.
The flatness of her tone. If she’s got money, it sounds like she knows how to use it…
and money in this country can cover up even the worst of crimes, murder included.
After her threat is stated, she grins at me, but it’s an empty smile with nothing behind it. Nothing but the remnants of a chilled promise meant to either scare me off or frighten me into playing nice. Too bad I don’t really care.
I watch as the girl turns away from me and walks to the house, where the guy waits for her, the door propped open with his foot. She says something to him when she reaches him, and he looks hard at me. His face is the last thing I see before the door closes.
If I was someone else, I might be unnerved by her threat.
I might be scared away. Then again, if I was someone else, I might not know how serious she was, but the part of me that has spent the last few years numb, the part that had the time of his life when he was drinking and getting high and fucking strangers—that part of me recognized danger when it stared at him in the face, and that girl? She’s dangerous, without a doubt.
Turning away from the house, I begin the walk home as I try to fight thoughts of Wren and her overprotective, semi-murderous roommate. Mostly of Wren, and how badly I wished she would have invited me inside.
I never wanted seconds before. There was never a shortage of girls for someone like me. This isn’t like me at all, I know that, and yet I can’t seem to reach inside myself and switch everything back to the way it was before. The way I was before.
Fuck. What’s happening to me?