Chapter 25
Logan
Throwing up into the strategically placed bucket by the side of the sofa, I wipe my mouth with the handy cloth and make a noise that sounds a bit like a wounded animal.
Which I suppose I am.
“Here.” Isaac sits his massive self on the coffee table in front of me and shoves an ice pack on my face.
Pain shoots through my entire body, wrenching my broken ribs. Wrapping my arm around myself, I notice I’m strapped up, for which I’m grateful.
“Thanks,” I mutter from behind the freezing cold pack, the irony not lost on me. Leaning back, I rest my head on the back of the sofa and adjust the ice pack to sit over my swollen eyes.
“Can I give you a piece of advice?” Isaac says.
“Sure.”
“Forget about the girl; keep your head down and go back to the way things were.”
“She’s not a girl.”
“She is to Q. So if I were you, I’d forget about her.”
“You’re not me.”
“I went easy on you, Logan. I won’t next time.”
I want to point out that I would, in fact, die for ‘the girl,’ but right now, that isn’t the best strategy.
“How do you forget about someone who has wormed their way into your soul?”
“Find someone else.”
I snort. “Yeah, I tried that. Do you know where it led me?”
“Let me guess….”
“Straight back to her.”
“Figured. I get it. But unless you want to spend the rest of eternity at the bottom of the Grove City River, I’d forget her and move on.”
“Yeah.”
What else can I say?
Fuck all.
“Take some painkillers when your stomach can keep them down, and get to bed, Logan.”
Removing the ice pack, I see him stand up through my less swollen right eye and wave him off.
As soon as I hear the door close, I haul myself to my feet, my head spinning, and the bile rises in my throat.
Forcing it back down, I stagger to the wall above the living-flame fireplace.
Swinging open the painting to reveal the safe behind it, I curse when I hold my face up to the optical scanner.
“No dice, you fucker.”
Grimacing, I drop the ice pack and spread the swollen skin around my eye, the nausea welling up at the pain, but it works.
The safe clicks open, and with a labored breath, as I release my battered eye, I lean heavily on the wall with one hand while the other pulls out a brand-new burner phone.
Lifting the stack of papers underneath the gun Shelley tried to off me with, I pull them out carefully and, having over-exerted myself, I turn and lean against the wall as I search through the records for Serena’s cell phone number.
Using my right hand to dial, it’s the only part of my body that doesn’t look like it got run over by a train, which then reversed and did the conga over my body, then jumped up and down a bit before driving off.
After two rings, she picks up.
“Serena’s phone.”
Wincing, I debate whether to hang up or plow forward. My need to know she’s okay wins out over self-preservation.
“Rue,” I rasp. “Is she there?”
“Logan,” she whispers. “She’s sleeping, but you shouldn’t be calling.”
“I know, but I have to know if she’s okay.”
“She’s not okay. I mean, she is, but she’s not.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means she’s alive.”
“What?” My heart thunders in my chest painfully, making my lungs work even harder to take my next breath.
“It’s complicated and not my place.”
“She did this because of me?” The terror that spikes my blood so fiercely over causing her so much pain is something that hasn’t occurred to me since I was ten years old.
“Yes and no. Look. It’s complicated.”
“Let me speak to her. Please.” My plea affects her as she pauses.
“She’s sleeping. I’m not waking her.”
I can’t force her to do anything, so I clench my aching fist and say, “I’ll call back later. Please, Rue. I need to speak to her.”
“That’s up to her.”
She hangs up, and I have no choice but to chuck the phone back into the safe with the papers and slam it shut, followed by the painting, having memorized her number to dial from a fresh burner later.
Needing to distract myself in the meantime, I hobble over to the bucket and pick it up, staggering to the downstairs toilet to dispose of the contents and swill it under the tap before dropping it onto the floor.
It’s not the best, but right now, I don’t give a shit.
Limping with my arm around my ribs, I take the stairs painfully, slowly, one at a time, in an activity that seems to go on and on.
“Fuck’s sake,” I murmur halfway up. “I didn’t know my bed was at the top of fucking Everest.”
My joke does nothing to spur me on, but several minutes later, I stumble into my bedroom, grabbing the wall as I make my way into the bathroom and turn on the shower before I pass out.
Having already been stripped of my shirt, I remove the strapping around my ribs and loosen my pants, letting them drop around my ankles.
Sitting heavily on the toilet seat, I awkwardly toe off my shoes and endure an agony the likes of which I hope never to repeat any time soon, I remove one sock and contemplate showering with the other one on.
After a few seconds breather, the steam from the shower filling the bathroom already, I brace myself and get the other one off with a cry of pain that I’m glad no one else was here to witness.
“Fuck,” I pant, hauling myself to my feet using the toilet paper holder as leverage.
Stepping into the shower, I howl when the hot water hits my lacerated and sensitive skin like razor blades.
“Fucking pussy,” I tell myself, letting the hot water wash away whatever dried blood it can without any help from me.
Minutes, hours, who knows how much time later, I turn the shower off and unsteadily climb out, reaching for a towel to pat my skin dry. Shoving it on the counter, naked, I hobble to the safe in my bedroom, situated a trying overhead reach in my closet.
Clenching my jaw, I open it with the fingerprint scanner and pull out the secondary burner, closing the safe and walking the few paces to the bed before falling into it, panting like I’ve run a marathon.
Grunting as I don’t have the capability to re-strap my ribs up again, I hold the phone up to my face.
Feeling that enough time has passed between then and now, I dial the phone, hoping I got the number correct through the haze of my beat-up eyes.
It rings and rings, so I hang up, gathering my strength to try again.