Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
PIPER
“ I couldn’t let anything happen to you,” Logan moans as Elliot drives through the city toward his apartment. Logan and I sit in the back seat, Elliot is in the driver’s seat. He looks at me suspiciously in the rear-view mirror. Logan’s voice is delirious with pain as he clutches his hand to his chest. “I’ll never let anybody hurt you, Piper. Never .”
“It’s okay,” I whisper, smoothing my hand up and down his arm, comforting him as best as I can as adrenaline and delayed terror pump through my body.
I know Elliot must’ve guessed by now, but he hasn’t said anything.
“What are we going to do?” I whisper.
“We’ll go to Logan’s apartment, then we’ll contact the FBI. That’s the only course of action we’ve got left.”
“Elliot, I’m sorry, man,” Logan says.
“We don’t need to talk about this now.”
“I’m sorry for the lies,” Logan continues, his tone faltering with the shock of everything that’s happened. “But I can’t say that I regret it. That’s the crazy thing. Piper means too much to me.”
Elliot grinds his teeth. “Just focus on not passing out from the pain.”
Logan sinks against me, resting his good hand on my knee. He still has the shackle and chain attached to his hand. He shot the chain free, but we couldn’t get the shackle loose.
“She’s the best person I’ve ever known in all my life,” he groans, his arm trembling, speaking through gritted teeth. “She’s the love of my life?—”
“Logan,” Elliot interrupts. “You just saved our lives. Don’t say shit that makes me hate you.”
Elliot’s comment brings a steely silence into the car. I wrap both my hands around Logan’s uninjured one, doing my best not to burst into tears.
“We can’t comment on police corruption,” FBI agent Jason Waller says roughly two hours later, looking across Logan’s glass coffee table at us. “But I can assure you that now you’re working with the FBI, we will do our utmost to ensure that Sal Mangano is brought to justice for this offense.”
“What are the next steps?” I ask, feeling strangely numb from the experience.
“My colleagues are currently canvassing the area and accessing security footage to verify your claims,” Jason says. “Once that’s done, we’ll launch an investigation into the matter. In the meantime, we’ll provide you with security, proper security this time, security you can trust.”
Logan lets out a heavy sigh, his eyes steely, hard. His arm is in a sling and a bandage. I sit between him and Elliot, and that feels symbolic, as if I’m a wedge that will drive their years-long friendship apart.
“When they had me in that basement, it sounded like Sal was doing this alone, without the say-so of the Family. You may be able to get somebody to flip on him.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wolfe. We’ll bear that in mind.”
“If I can do anything else, let me know,” Logan snarls. “That sick bastard tried to order his men to kill my best friend and… and Piper.” He was going to say, ‘and my woman,’ or ‘my girlfriend,’ or something like that. I just know it. But he stopped himself. “If you want to turn a blind eye while I execute the prick myself, I’m fine with that, too.”
Agent Waller shakes his head. “This is in our hands, Mr. Wolfe. In the meantime, I suggest you spend the night here. We’ll be able to take more decisive action tomorrow. Do you mind if I use your office to liaise with my team?”
“Go ahead,” Logan says, moving to stand.
“Please,” Agent Waller says tightly, the lines in his face creasing. “You’ve been through enough, Mr. Wolfe. There’s no need for an escort. Sit. Relax. Assuming your statement is true, you took the best possible course of action available to you. You did an incredibly brave thing.”
I want to take Logan’s hand again. But somewhere between the mayhem and the shock of the car ride, then the call to the FBI and the paramedics, and giving our statements, I realized what we just did.
We told Elliot, not with words, but with our actions. We rubbed it in his face.
Soon, it’s just the three of us in Logan’s large living room, the setting sunlight orange through the tall windows.
Elliot stands, paces, grabbing his vape pen, and taking a long inhale. His expression hides in a cloud of vapor for a few moments. I almost want it to stay like this so I don’t have to see the resentment in his eyes.
But then it clears, and I see the pain. “Now I’m the bad guy for wanting to know what the hell’s going on between you two,” he snaps. “Logan, you’re a goddamn hero. Piper, your life… you could’ve…” He trembles. “I guess I’m expected to ignore this, then. Pretend I didn’t see what I saw, hear what I heard.”
Before I can reply, my phone buzzes from the table. It’s Ruby.
Ruby: Oh my God! When can you call me? Mom wanted to take a trip out of town, anyway. Do you think I should leave tonight?
“Ruby’s going to skip town until this blows over,” I say. “Maybe you should go with her.”
Elliot clenches his jaw. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What? Nothing. I just thought you might want to be with her.”
“So, because I’m with Ruby, I’m supposed to swallow this. No complaints, no questions. Is that it?”
“Nobody’s saying that, Elliot,” Logan says, sounding tired.
Now that the adrenaline has worn off, he’s been far less affectionate with me in front of Elliot.
Elliot drops into the chair Agent Waller vacated, resting his forehead against his hand. “Explain, Logan. This is Piper we’re talking about. Fair enough, I can’t exactly take the moral high ground. I get that. But I didn’t watch Ruby grow up. I barely knew her. She’s not my best friend’s goddamn sister.”
“But she’s your sister’s best friend,” I snap.
“So, I am just supposed to swallow this, then?.”
Logan touches my hand. A moment later, he realizes his mistake and lets it drop. But the damage has been done. Elliot glares like he’s getting himself ready for a fight.
“Nobody’s saying that,” Logan mutters. “Elliot, I never wanted to hurt you.”
“When did it start?”
“Recently,” I say. “That’s when it really started.”
“What do you mean, really ?”
“We kissed before she went to college,” Logan says, dropping the bomb. “No, that’s not fair. I kissed her. It just… happened. I walked into the living room. We were alone. Suddenly, it was like I was seeing her for the first time. Beautiful. Angelic. Somehow confident and shy at the same time. I tried to forget about it, about her, but when she came home, I couldn’t.”
“It’s been a two-way street,” I say quickly, not wanting Logan to take all the blame.
Thinking of it as ‘blame’ is sick, though. It’s not blame —more like credit for starting this beautiful relationship.
Elliot sits back, sighing darkly. “Piper and Logan. I can’t even fit that into my head. I know I’m being a hypocrite. You were happy for me, Piper; at least, I think you were.”
“I am,” I snap. “I didn’t say that just because I want you to be okay with this.”
“I never said that.”
“But you just implied it. Don’t play games with me.”
“What is this, then?” Elliot snaps. “A fling? Something more?”
“It’s everything,” Logan says passionately. “Before Piper, I thought I was broken. I thought my childhood, our childhood…”
“Don’t use that against me,” Elliot snaps. “This is Piper . She’s my sister. I just can’t…” Elliot shakes his head again. “This has to stop.”
I gasp. “What?”
“If you have any respect for me, you’ll stop this until I can make some sense of it. Maybe until after the investigation.”
“And what if you can’t ever ‘make sense’ of it?” I demand.
“I don’t know, Piper,” he says. “And I get it. You didn’t ask me to cut things off with Ruby. But if you’re telling the truth, if you were genuinely happy for us?—”
“I was. I am.”
“Then you’ll understand why I need you to stop because I feel genuinely sick to my stomach. I can’t process this right now. I was just gagged and shoved into a closet. I thought I was going to die. Please.”
“We’ve all been through a lot,” I say. “Logan risked his life to save us.”
“Piper,” Logan says, his voice heavy with emotion. “If Elliot wants us to pause this, we must give him that courtesy.”
“You want this too?”
He looks down at me, his eyes swelling with the same emotion in his husky voice. He shakes his head. “I want you. I want us to do what we always have: take this hell and turn it into a little slice of heaven. I want us to read and write and work on Do It All. I want us to love, Piper, something I never thought I was capable of before I met you. But I don’t want to keep betraying Elliot, either.”
Tears well in my eyes. What if this is the end?
“Can we have a last kiss, at least?” I snap.
Elliot stands, walking toward the balcony garden. “Fine. And, sis, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not as selfless and understanding as you.”
I grab Logan’s face with both hands, leaning forward and pressing my lips against his. As we kiss, all the fear, adrenaline, and shock turn to pure passion. He groans, kissing me hard, our tongues caressing as if they want us to keep kissing, never to stop.
“I don’t want to do this,” I whisper.
“Me neither,” Logan replies. “But we have to respect him. We owe him that after so many years of lying.”