Chapter 20
The ride back to Brentwood was quiet. I’d given Logan his jacket back before we’d gotten into the car, and he wore it now, declaring in bold colors that he was a Jefferson Bulldog.
Heat pumped from the vents, but I somehow still felt cold.
My hair was tangled and knotted from how it’d dried after our dance in the rain, and I knew brushing the tangles out before bed would be torture.
I had my own varsity jacket in my lap, tracing the gold stitching with the tip of my finger.
Logan sat absorbed in the silence as well, not attempting to clear it. I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered if he’d even tell me if I asked.
I couldn’t believe it’d only occurred to me tonight that Logan never answered any of my questions.
Not really. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so torn up about it; we were still getting to know each other.
It hadn’t even been a month since we first met, after all.
But it felt like I’d shared so much about me, and yet… I knew so little about him.
I lifted my chin. “What’s your family life like?”
He glanced over at the sudden question. “What do you mean?”
“I know you don’t have any siblings, but what about your parents? Are they still together?”
Inexplicably, Logan laughed. “You’re so random, you know that? Are your parents still together?”
Again. He did it again. “No. They split up when I was younger.”
“That must’ve been hard.” This was his turn to give his own experience, but instead, he asked, “You live with your mom, right? Do you see your dad often?”
“Not really.” He called here and there, mostly whenever he remembered a dad was supposed to talk to his daughter. “So?”
“I see my dad every day,” he replied with a little laugh.
“What about your mom?”
The light we were about to drive under flicked to yellow, and Logan had to hit the brakes hard to stop before the line. His arm stretched out, securing me along with my seatbelt. “Sorry, sorry,” he rushed out.
I waited, but he didn’t go back to answering my question.
Something buzzed in my chest. “Danielle seems really nice,” I said, turning to look out the passenger window.
The sun had set during the last quarter of the football game, leaving the world navy as it held onto the dying light.
“Who did you say she was dating, again?”
“My best friend.”
My fingers curled tighter around my varsity jacket. “He have a name?”
Was it just me, or did Logan hesitate? “Noah.”
I turned in surprise. “The guy from Expresso’s?” The rude guy from Expresso’s? That was Logan’s best friend? The guy who hated Brentwood? “You seem so… different.”
Logan just smiled.
I studied him closer. The red traffic light illuminated the planes of his face, and all the golden highlights of him seemed so shadowy. “So why does he hate Brentwood so much?”
“Eh.” Logan raised a shoulder. “He’s got his own reasons. Why do you hate Jefferson so much?”
The buzzing in my chest became more intense at his quick, lopsided glance over before the light turned green.
He spoke so nonchalantly, and it was that nonchalance that had distracted me every time.
I’d never realized Logan never truly answered any of my questions, just gave me barely enough and spun them back around.
It suddenly was hard to breathe. “What do you want to do after high school?”
“I haven’t really thought about it.”
“You’re a senior in high school, and you haven’t thought about life after?” My voice almost sounded pleading. “College? Trade school? Gap year?” Give me just a little bit of you.
“Why?” Logan slowed as he entered Brentwood’s city limits, looking over at me quickly before turning back to the road. “What do you want to do after high school? Do you plan to try and continue cheering?”
Something inside me snapped. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” His voice was bewildered.
“Turn it back on me. You do it all the time. I ask you a question and you don’t answer. You flip it back to me, and I keep talking. You never answer my questions.”
“That’s not true—”
“Then what do you want to do after high school?”
“I don’t know.” Logan’s voice was more emphatic than irritated, stress pinching his face. “I—I don’t know.”
And that was it. The atmosphere of the car felt thick, and though I watched him, he didn’t crack underneath the pressure of my stare. You don’t know me, Madison, he’d told me that day in the alley, and I could still see the flat look in his eyes as he’d said it. You just liked the idea of me.
And here I was, after having decided to date him, still feeling as though he was a stranger.
“You have this whole life,” I whispered, the words coming out of me in a rush. “This whole life that I feel like I know nothing about. I’ve talked about myself and my issues and my problems, but when I ask you things, you don’t answer me. Not about big things. Not about things that matter.”
Logan had sat patiently listening to my rambles and rants, responding with nothing but careful advice. But he’d never reciprocated. He never complained, never rambled or ranted. I didn’t do anything but bleed him dry, never getting the chance to pour into him, too.
My pinch of a grip on my jacket turned into the fabric wrapped up in my fist. “Is this one-sided?”
“Is what?”
“Us.” I couldn’t look at him; I wouldn’t be able to handle it if his expression shifted. “Are you really… chalant about me?”
Logan turned into my driveway then, but slowly, flicking off his headlights as he slid the car into park.
He turned to me in his seat, eyes seeming to glow in the low light.
It was the first time that I looked at them and wasn’t immediately swept up in their color.
“I’m so chalant about you, Madison,” he said seriously. “You have no idea.”
The words should’ve soothed me, but they only made my stomach twist tighter. “Then why don’t you tell me things? Is it because you feel like I won’t hear you if you said it, then?” My stomach twisted. “That I’m too busy wrapped up in myself to hear you?”
Logan closed his eyes, his jaw flexing. “Of course not—”
“Then what?” My voice cracked before I could catch it. “You didn’t even tell me about your play. You talk about it with everyone else, but you didn’t tell me. Why not me?”
Even though it’d only been a few weeks, Logan had quickly become one of my closest confidants.
It was as if he could reach inside me and warm something that’d been frozen, could ease the fears and nerves that hid themselves in a corner.
I wanted to be the warmth that thawed him from the inside out, too.
Instead, I was someone too focused with themselves to be that person for him. “Is it because you think I’ll judge you for it?”
His eyes were still closed. “No, Madison, that’s not—”
“Then why?”
“Because I shouldn’t be—” Logan broke off with a hard sigh, sinking back into his seat, hands falling limp to the bottom of the steering wheel. His face was screwed up, and his chest rose and fell quickly, as if he couldn’t quite catch his breath. “I shouldn’t be getting attached.”
Getting attached. The phrase slammed into me, and the wind knocked out of my sails. Getting attached—like a dog he was only fostering, not adopting. I was suddenly cold all over. “Why not?”
This time, he couldn’t bring himself to answer.
“Because you don’t think this will last?”
Logan’s voice was quiet. “No.”
I flinched back from the quick answer; he hadn’t even hesitated.
It was suddenly so clear—he thought we wouldn’t last because of me, because he couldn’t fully trust that I’d chosen him.
And, really, how could he? I’d come to Logan after the Most Likely To list practically telling him to his face I was only going to date him to prove my friends wrong.
I fought him at every turn, from mini golf to arcades to even dancing in the rain.
It wasn’t just that he didn’t trust me. It was that I hadn’t given him a reason to. I’d mocked what he cared about, treated his world like it was a joke. And the worst part was, I hadn’t even seen how much it could hurt him—how it kept him from letting me in at all.
What is wrong with me? I thought, despair curling tight in the darkness of his car.
Maybe Jade and the Top Tier and the Most Likely To list were all right. I really was going to peak in high school.
The silence was buzzing so loud in my head that I almost missed Logan’s voice. “Madison—”
“I should go inside before my mom comes out,” I murmured, popping open the passenger’s door almost blindly. My legs were stiff, unwilling, but I forced myself out anyway. “Drive home safe.”
I shrugged on my Brentwood High varsity jacket the second I got out into the cold air, drawing in a shaking breath. That’s right, Madison, the jacket seemed to murmur, enveloping me. You never should’ve fought it in the first place. You should’ve just accepted it.
I walked through the darkness toward my house, the structure blurring as tears pooled in my eyes then spilled over. My first heartbreak. And the worst part was that I couldn’t even go to my best friend about it. She could never know.
And then, in the thick of my thoughts, I heard a car door creak open.
I twisted around just in time to see Logan unfold from the driver’s seat, pushing unsteadily to his feet.
He stood there for a long beat, the night wrapping around him, his expression caught somewhere between lost and longing.
He almost seemed to sway in place, as if a debate were laid out before him.
Logan slammed the door shut. “I’m a mess,” he told me.
His voice was rough and frayed at the edges, as if he was barely holding himself together.
“A mess, Madison. I’ve done things I regret—crappy things that feel like they could swallow me whole.
” He ran a hand through his hair as the next all rushed from him.
“It’s just my dad and me at home. My parents used to fight all the time, so she just left.
I’m a C student. I haven’t even started thinking about college, despite the fact that I’m supposed to have my entire future planned out.
School, football practice, theater practice, extra shifts at Expresso’s—but I can handle it. I can handle it.”
His long strides carried him closer until he stopped just a foot away. His eyes locked on mine, intense and raw. “The one thing I can’t handle,” he said, voice low, trembling, “is the thought of losing you.”
My chest tightened at the rush of his honest words, and my fingers itched to reach out, to close the space between us. The broken tone of his voice settled over me like a shiver I couldn’t shake.
“I wasn’t ever supposed to have this much fun with you.
” Logan’s chest rose sharply as he went on.
“I was supposed to run into you at Brentwood’s open house, send a few flirty messages here and there, and that was supposed to be it.
I was supposed to walk away, and that was supposed to be it.
” The pain that’d been resting on his face in the car fractured in his eyes now.
“But I can’t walk away, Madison. Even if I should. ”
I hooked my hand lightly on his wrist, feeling his pulse slam underneath his skin. “I don’t want you to walk away.”
Logan reached up and coasted his thumb along the curve of my cheek, swiping away a tear track while swallowing hard. “I told myself I was going to be more careful with your heart.”
“You should,” I murmured. “Because it’s yours.”
Logan’s breath stuttered out, and he glanced down at where I was holding him, as if my touch branded him. “What if…” The words cracked in his throat, both a warning and a plea. “What if I don’t deserve it?”
It hit me then that Logan Castle had a secret of his own, the way the Top Tier had secrets.
My own shameful secret was Maisie Matthews, and it weighed on me down to the core of the earth.
Judging by the stiffness in his shoulders and the ache in his eyes, Logan had one, too.
It was as if a thin veil had always separated us, showing only fragments of him, and now it had shifted just enough to reveal the edges of the real Logan.
Not all of him, but enough to see that he hadn’t doubted me.
He doubted himself.
“You do deserve it.” I leaned forward, arms sliding around him, burrowing into his chest. Just as I’d felt his pulse in his wrist, I pressed my ear to his chest and heard it thundering frantically, tripping over its beats. “I’m deciding right now. I’ll be your safe place.”
Logan’s arms stayed stiff at first. His voice was low, almost a whisper, repeating what he’d said before. “I don’t deserve it.”
“And I don’t deserve you being mine,” I replied, pressing my palms flat against his back. He was so firm and taut beneath my touch, but my chest was too aching to pay any real attention to his body. “But you are. And I’m not letting you go yet.”
After what felt like forever, Logan lifted his arms to encircle my frame, securing me to him just as earnestly.
His chin came down to brush against my temple, and I could hear his shaky inhale in my ear.
“I miss everything being easy,” he whispered, swallowing hard.
“That’s what I miss most about being younger. ”
I rubbed my hand down his back, my fingertips brushing over the bumpy stitching in his varsity jacket, pressing into him hard.
I wanted him to feel each of my fingertips, to feel the soothing touch long after we parted ways for the night.
“Me too,” I murmured, a soft, relieved smile touching my lips.
The sound of his heartbeat had been a satisfying enough answer, but this was him taking his own step toward me.
Agreeing. Holding on. “Thank you for sharing with me.”
Logan tightened his grip around me, drawing me as close to him as he possibly could. It was as if he were squeezing my heart with his arms. He said nothing in return, but his lips brushed my temple, as if a whisper of their own.
I wasn’t sure how long we stood out there, illuminated by the glow of his headlights. My mom could’ve looked out the window at any moment—heck, or she could’ve walked out onto the porch—but I stood there, memorizing the sound of Logan’s heartbeat without a care in the world.
The air coasted across the two of us, but there wasn’t a trace of the chill. How could there be, in that moment? For me, it felt like we’d crossed one of our first big bridges together, only bringing us closer.