Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
My head leans against the window. My sodden clothes cling to my skin. Every now and then, my body is shaken by a sob. The soft light of the streetlamps passes me by as I stare up at the sky. It’s black. Starless.
“Tell me what happened.”
I keep looking outside and don’t answer. I touch the leather of my bracelet with my fingertips. His bracelet. The more I touch it, the more nausea fills my belly.
“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay. You’ll do it when you’re ready. Should I take you home?”
No. That’s the last place I want to go, because Thomas will be looking for me there. And I don’t want to be found. Maybe that’s why I called Logan of all people. He’s the last person Thomas would think of. I shake my head almost imperceptibly, aware that Logan is looking to me for an answer.
“Okay,” he says, confused. “Where to, then?”
“Wherever you want. It doesn’t matter,” I say apathetically, watching raindrops smash into the glass and then slide away.
Silence falls inside the car. We meander around for a few hours with no specific destination, moving deeper through the dark and deserted streets of the city.
Exhausted, I close my eyes, but all I can see is the two of them, naked in bed together.
I can hear the words he spat at me last night. The cold way he dismissed me.
“I don’t love you. And I never will.”
Logan stops the car, and the change in motion wakes me up.
I lift my head. “We’re on campus,” I note in an expressionless voice. I asked him not to take me home, but that’s exactly what he did. Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?
“Look.” Logan takes his hands off the steering wheel.
He puts one on my thigh with a level of intimacy that I didn’t grant him.
But I don’t push it away. I don’t have the strength.
Instead, I just stare at his hand as he continues to talk.
“We’ve been around and around in the last three hours.
I’m nearly out of gas. And you seem really shaken up.
Your clothes are soaked, and you’re pale.
You need to take a hot bath and get under the covers, because you’re shivering.
I don’t know how long you’ve been like this, but you’re going to get sick. ”
I don’t argue because he’s right. I’ve been shivering since I got into the car. I’ve been shivering for a long time, actually.
“So I’m taking you home now, whether you like it or not.”
“Okay, fine,” I answer, nodding slightly.
Logan stops near my building and tells me to go inside while he goes to look for parking.
I pray I don’t find Thomas lurking somewhere waiting for me, but my prayers are in vain.
There he is, sitting on the floor with his back against the door to my suite.
It’s almost eight in the evening; how long has he been here?
He looks horrible. Anguished. And I shouldn’t even care even a little bit. I’m the injured party.
He sighs in relief the moment he looks up and sees me. He leaps to his feet and, in two strides, comes to me and grabs my arms. But I back up, slipping out of his grasp.
“Jesus Christ, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you all day! I used GPS to find the car in a parking lot a few miles from here; some people at the gas station told me they saw the car go off the road!”
I pull the keys out of my pants pocket and throw them at him. He catches them on the fly automatically. “Your car’s fine.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the car. I just want to know what happened. Are you hurt?” He tries to take my face in his hands, but I dodge him.
“You can’t touch me. You can’t do it ever again,” I demand, making him stumble back.
The elevator doors open behind me. I can tell that Logan is here by the way Thomas’s face goes hard.
He lunges for him immediately, but I manage to get in between them and push Thomas back.
Thomas returns to the fray, towering over me, though he is careful not to actually touch me. I’m not his target; Logan is.
“Fuck off,” he warns Logan through gritted teeth.
“I’m here because she wanted me here,” Logan answers from behind me.
Thomas stares down at me. I can read a mixture of incredulity and anger in his expression. “Get rid of him. We need to talk.”
Where does he get the balls to give me orders after everything he’s done?
“No. We don’t have to do anything anymore.
You told me everything you needed to last night.
And after this morning, if there’s anyone who needs to fuck off, it’s you.
” I turn my back to him and take Logan’s elbow, gesturing for him to follow me.
I know perfectly well that this is going to enrage Thomas, but I don’t care.
I don’t even have time to get my key in the lock before Thomas is grabbing my wrist to stop me.
Then, everything happens too fast. I see Logan moving closer to me, as if intending to free me from Thomas’s grasp, and I see Thomas grab Logan by the collar of his shirt and slam him ferociously against the wall. It’s a horrible bit of déjà vu.
“Touch her again, and you’re finished,” Thomas tells him, an inch away from his face. The veins in his neck are throbbing. His voice is so low. Rough. So devoid of emotion that he doesn’t even sound human.
Logan, however, remains unintimidated and merely gives him a mocking smirk.
He knows that things between Thomas and me have changed, and now he wants to provoke him.
Under different circumstances, I’d get angry and tell him to leave.
But I hate Thomas so much right now that I have no intention of stopping Logan.
In fact, his brazenness inspires my own.
I jerk Thomas back with all the strength that I have and jab a finger at him.
“You have no right to treat him like that! You have no right to show up here and pretend you want to talk to me, and you no longer have any right to make a scene like this. So just leave and get out of my life!” This time, I open the door without any interference.
I take Logan by the arm, and before Thomas’s confused and impotent eyes, I slam the door right in his face.
Thomas yells my name as he pounds his fist repeatedly on the door.
His blows are so hard that I’m afraid he’s going to break the wood at any moment.
Fortunately, we hear a campus security officer intervene and, with no small amount of effort, force Thomas to leave the dorm, shouting threats and curses as he goes.
I close my eyes, let out a sigh, and, with a voice full of shame, I turn to Logan. “I’m sorry you got mixed up in all of this. For the umpteenth time. You always end up getting hurt.”
Mortified, I look at the wrinkled collar of his navy-blue sweater, which brings out the color of his eyes.
“It’s okay, don’t worry about it. I’m fine.” He smiles reassuringly at me. But I feel anything but calm or reassured. My pulse is racing, my breathing is labored. I hurt. I hurt like hell.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to go take a shower. I really need it.”
“Sure, go for it. I’ll stay here.”
After showering and putting on the thickest pajamas that I have, I sit down with Logan on the sofa.
He’s waiting for me with a mug of hot tea in his hands.
He gives it to me as soon as I sit down.
“I took the liberty of using the kettle I found in the kitchen. It’ll be good for you to drink something warm. Are you feeling a little better?”
I shake my head, clasping my hands around the hot mug. I take a sip of tea before looking at Logan with tear-filled eyes and answering, “It’s going to be a while before I feel better.”
He lays his arm along the back of the sofa and moves closer to me. “What happened? Would you like to tell me about it now?”
“What happened is that I keep falling in love with the wrong guys. All wrong…” I take a long breath, doing my best not to fully burst into tears again.
“I fall in love with them, and they destroy me.” From the regretful face he gives me, I can tell that there’s no need for me to add anything else.
I put the mug on the coffee table in front of us, closing my eyes and brushing back my hair.
I see the same scene I’ve been watching on loop since this morning.
I’ll never be able to scrub it from my mind again.
And then his eyes…Thomas’s eyes, so full of desperation, begging me to believe him.
The same eyes, the same desperation that I just saw in the hall before Logan arrived.
Before I yelled at him to go and kicked him out as harshly as I could.
“I knew he was going to hurt you sooner or later,” Logan murmurs, troubled.
“I never thought he’d be able to hurt me this much,” I admit, my gaze locked on the floor.
“Hey.” Logan touches my cheek, brushing a tear away with his thumb. “You don’t deserve this. These tears…” He rubs another one away, bringing his face closer to mine. “With me, you wouldn’t have cried.”
“Logan…” I whisper, my vision blurry. Then I put my hand over his and move it away from my face.
“It’s okay. I’m not asking for anything.
It’s just that sometimes I regret not trying harder.
” With one finger, he strokes the back of my hand.
We stare at one another in silence as the thoughts spin uncontrollably inside my head.
I’ve been pushing Logan away all this time because I was afraid of undermining my relationship with Thomas.
A relationship that has just been as undermined as it’s possible to be.
And now Logan is right here, and he’s being so sweet and considerate that I wonder how I ever could have treated him so poorly before.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asks, bringing me back to my senses.