4. Logan
4
LOGAN
Poppy walks out of Birch PD after a twelve-hour shift with her red hair swaying behind her back, hanging just above her ass, and every single ounce of control I have snaps into pieces.
She’s managed to avoid working on the same shift as me for a month. How she did that, I don’t know. But after walking in on her and Nia talking about going out together again, I just about lost it.
“Gonna go on a date, my ass.” Muttering to myself, I follow behind her, needing to collect myself before I do something stupid like flip her over my shoulder and carry her home like the caveman that I really am.
Never mind the fact that Poppy doesn’t actually say that she is going to go on a date with anyone. I just walked in on Nia inviting her out and proceed to obsess over it for the next eight hours while we both work our shifts.
Hearing her voice on the radio drives a nail into my chest. One that I can’t avoid or do anything to prevent because dispatchers literally tell cops where to go and what to do. If I don’t want to lose my job, I need my radio on.
Even if I’d rather throw it out the window than listen to Poppy give me the cold shoulder in front of every single cop who has our frequency.
By the end of the night, just like every other night that I’ve worked with her, I’m ready to throw in the towel and give her anything she wants as long as I can fall asleep with her in my arms.
But when I close my eyes and think about letting my dreams become reality, all I can see are her lifeless eyes staring up at me, and just like every other time, I know it is all my fault.
So I keep my mouth shut when she says goodbye to everyone else in the bullpen at the end of the night and try to figure out the odds of breaking into her house in the middle of the night again just to hold her.
Poppy walks ahead of me by almost fifty feet, and not once does she look over her shoulder, which is one of just twenty reasons that I follow her out every night from her shift. She doesn’t have any sense of the danger that lurks in the darkness all around us. And I can’t stand the thought of losing her. Not again.
Alive, but not mine, I can handle.
Alive, and just out of reach, right where she belongs.
If anything happens to her, I don’t even have to think about it. I will burn the entire world down while I smile and welcome the death that will bring me back to her.
Morbid? Absolutely. But I also know the extent of my feelings for the woman, and that barely scratches the surface. If there is only one thing I’ve ever learned in therapy, it is how to acknowledge and accept the feelings I’ll never be able to change.
I would have followed Poppy all the way to her car on the other side of the parking lot, just like I do every other night, except for the fact that my phone starts to vibrate in my pocket. With a glance down at the watch on my wrist, I see that I’m already running late.
“You’re late,” my mother says as a way of greeting me. “You’re not going to skip out on our trip again, are you?” I hear the worry in her voice and cringe at the fact that I put her through it… again.
“Nah, Ma.” I smile through the churning in my stomach. “I’m on my way now. It’s barely past four in the morning. We’ve got plenty of time to head out before the sun comes up.”
She sniffs, and I hear shuffling in the background.
“I’m surprised you’re even up,” I tell her honestly. “I thought for sure I’d get to the campsite and you’d be asleep in the front seat of the SUV while Dad and Bax got the tents and everything set up.”
“Shut your mouth, Logan Caleb Pierce.” Mom breaks out the big guns. “Baxter and your father loaded everything up last night, and my coffee is piping hot in my Yeti cup. We’re ready to head out. Just waiting on you to get on the road.” She pauses. “And you better hurry your ass up, boy, or I’m gonna sic your father on you.”
I laugh, unable to help myself at the tone my mom uses. “I’m just leaving work now. I’ll meet you on the road and we can caravan up there. ”
“Great, I’ll see you then.”
When she hangs up in my ear, I shake my head and glance back to where Poppy’s car had been parked, but she is already gone.
Just my luck.
When I pull out onto the road heading out of Birch Harbor, I’m not surprised in the least to see my dad’s massive black Suburban waiting on the side of the road. With a wave, I pass by just as he turns back onto the road.
All I can do is laugh to myself and think about every single mistake I’ve made in my life over the past decade while I make the hour-long drive to the opposite side of Bangor.
My dad slams his door as I’m rolling into the same parking spot I’ve used since I got my license and my parents made me drive myself to our yearly camping retreat.
“Remind me again why we come out here to camp when there are like four campgrounds between Bangor and Birch Harbor?” He tries to keep his voice down as he runs a hand through his now-gray beard, but the tension I see in Mom’s face as she stares at us gives him away.
“Because, Lucas,” Mom snaps irately while carrying one of the sleeping bags. “We’ve done it for thirty-five years, when we were newlyweds and went with our best friends, long before we had the hellions to raise, and we’ll keep doing it until the day I can’t camp anymore.” Once she drops the bright-purple material into their tent, she turns and puts a hand on her hip, staring until her husband moves. “Because you love me and you’ll do whatever I want you to.”
He pulls her into a hug and kisses the top of her forehead. “Chill out, Maria. I wouldn’t give up our yearly weekend for anything.” Dad looks over at me for support, but he isn’t finding it with me.
“Hey, Bax,” I call out, causing my youngest brother to stop unfolding the tent he just laid out. “Are the kids still saying chill out?”
“No.” Bax shakes his head with a smile, causing the same light-brown hair that we all have to shift on his head. “We definitely aren’t saying that. Which you would know if you weren’t a dinosaur who probably needs hearing aids.” Then he runs a hand through the overgrown mop I heard my mother threaten to shave in his sleep.
At thirty-two, I happen to be the oldest of the Pierce children. Regan, the oldest girl, is the closest sister in age to me at thirty. Charlotte would have turned twenty-nine this year, but she is forever stuck at sixteen because of one night gone wrong. Then comes Emily and Finn, fraternal twins who just had their twenty-fifth birthday. But Baxter? He is the baby of the family and hasn’t even turned twenty yet. The only one of our siblings not in attendance is Regan, who works as an arms instructor for the State of Maine. Because of that, she has an even harder time taking time off than Finn, and he is still active duty with the Marine Corps.
“Suck a dick, Bax. I’m not a dinosaur. But I will take advantage of your youth to set up my tent while you’re at it if you don’t shut your mouth.”
Bax just flips me off and goes back to work setting up his tent, and I’m left laughing when one of the poles snaps up and hits him in the face.
“You kinda are a dinosaur,” Emily announces as she marches through the clearing from where her tent is already set up. “Finn and I were just trying to figure out if we needed to buy you dentures for Christmas this year.”
Finn is right behind her, laughing his ass off.
“I’m gonna murder them all,” I mutter while rubbing my eyes. “I don’t even know why I have to be here.”
“Because I have to be here,” Dad whispers from my side. “If I’m stuck here, then so are you. But the good news is, I brought an entire cooler full of beer.”
“Best news I heard all day, Pops.”
“And we don’t have to share with the babies of the family if we don’t want to.” Dad walks away, laughing to himself as he goes.
When Bax has his tent almost put together, I grab mine out of the back of my truck and put it together in less than two minutes, much to my siblings’ despair.
“What the shit, Logan?” Emily pokes the side of my tent like it’s a science experiment that she’s trying to figure out how to reverse engineer. “Where’d you get this beast? I’ve never seen one go up like that.”
“Amazon.” I snicker. “Best purchase all year.”
Staring at the four-person tent that went up quicker than anything I’ve ever seen or experienced before, I know it was worth the one-click purchase. Especially when all of my siblings and both my parents are staring at it with envy.
“Do you see the clips?” Mom murmurs. “The rods are on the outside. He just clicked it on and now it’s up.” She pokes my father in the chest. “I want one. Make it happen.” Then she pushes her way inside my tent and gasps. “Lucas. It’s huge in here.” Her face presses against the netting. “I think we should steal his tent and call it ours.”
“Not a chance, woman. All our shit is in our tent. And it’s time for breakfast.”
My stomach growls as he says those words, and I try not to think about the fact that I haven’t gotten any sleep since yesterday. Plus, the Pierce shenanigans are going to start soon, and I won’t be sleeping until the sun goes down at the earliest.
Just as the sun finishes rising in the sky, all of our tents are set up, spread out the same way they’ve been every year. The only gap is where Charlotte’s tent always went, but we never put anything there. That is her spot. Only ever hers. The one time Emily had set her tent up in Lettie’s spot, after a fight with Finn that she declared meant he was a rotten brother, our mom burst into tears and Dad just picked up the entire thing and moved it on its own. No one tried again.
“Fantastic. We still have plenty of time.” Mom claps her hands together and plops down in the camp chair that my dad set up for her. “Breakfast burritos are in the cooler, still warm from the oven.” She closes her eyes, and her fingers tap against her stomach in a gentle melody that only lives in her head.
“Do you think she cares that we just got here?” Finn crosses his arms and leans over so that his head is right next to mine. “Or do you think that maybe she just wanted us all in the same place?”
“Well.” I nudge him with my shoulder. “You’re still in the Marines, and Emily’s working on her master’s or some shit like that. The only ones around Birch Harbor right now on a regular basis are me and Bax.”
“It’s not my fault I spend more time over there than home.” Finn rubs the stubble on his chin that he’s been growing since he got home on leave. “You know how it is.”
We both walk away from where our parents are relaxing, leaving Emily and Bax there to unpack the cornhole boards and everything else we’ll need for the three-day trip to keep ourselves entertained.
“Heard you were over at Poppy’s again.” Finn doesn’t beat around the bush. “That a good idea?”
I don’t bother asking him how he knows. It’s not like it’s a huge secret. “No.”
The wind blows through the trees, making a sound that we only hear in Maine. No matter where I am in the world, I can’t ever replicate it.
“You hear that?” I nod toward the trees.
Finn stays silent for a few seconds before nodding. “Yeah.”
“She’s like that sound in the trees. The one that only exists here. I’ve gone all over the world, Finn. Everywhere I could in an attempt to find something that hits me harder than she does. That has the power to hit me like she does. And I couldn’t find it. She’s a fuckin’ drug, a muscle memory buried deep in my veins. No matter how far I run, I can’t get away from the pull she has on me. I still love her. Probably always will. But that doesn’t mean I deserve her.”
“That’s poetic,” Finn says with a sigh. “I don’t want to see her break you. Not again.”
I stop, my mouth open for a second while I process what he’s saying. “Finn.” Clearing my throat to buy some time, I think about what I need to say. “Why do you think she broke me?”
“I might have been like eleven when it happened, but I saw how devastated you were. You didn’t leave your room for a fuckin’ month, Lo. She ruined you, and she was never there to fix what she broke.”
With a shake of my head, I pull my little brother into a hug and don’t let go. “You’re wrong, Finn.” The words come out as a hoarse whisper. “ She didn’t break me. She didn’t leave me. I left her, after she was almost killed because of me. I’ve regretted it every single day since I left her lying in a hospital room. I don’t deserve a second chance with her, Finn. Not at the forever that I threw away. Not after I watched her die.”
His eyes search mine for a hint that I’m not telling the truth. He doesn’t find anything, though, because I’ve never been more honest than I am in that moment.
“Life’s too short for regrets, Lo.” Finn slaps my back and then pushes away from the hug. “If what you’re saying is true, you fucked up beyond belief.” He sighs. “I watched you join the Marines to get away from her. I thought it was because she hurt you. Then you joined the Maine State Police when you got out. After that, you joined the Fire Marshals like you were waiting to burn up yourself. Then you went to the Birch County Sheriff’s Department, and now you’re with the Birch Harbor PD. I thought you were running from her and she was following you.” There is a shrewd look in his eye, like he’s just catalogued the last ten years and come to the same conclusion that I have.
“I followed her,” I tell him. “I’m the one who follows her everywhere. I tried to avoid it. Tried to laugh it off and just live my pathetic life without her. I can’t have her because I’m too fucked up. But I can’t help following her. No matter where she goes to run from me. She owns me.” Admitting it to someone other than Ian feels freeing. Especially since Finn knows me better than almost anyone.
“Why are you doing this to yourself, then? If you can’t have her and you think that she’s been running from you. Why don’t you just let her walk away? Unless there’s a part of you that’s maybe, finally, ready to forgive yourself.”
I don’t give him an answer right away. Instead, I listen to the way the wind blows in the trees while I try to figure it out.
“The best thing for both of us is the fact that she keeps running away from me.”
Two cars pull into the campsite, and I would have had to be blind to miss the familiar flash of red hair coming from the back seat.
“Maybe it’s time you pull your head out of your ass and fix it, then. Because that doesn’t look like she’s running away from you. More like toward you…” I’m not sure if he stops talking or the blood starts pounding too hard in my ears to hear what he is saying.
My heart can’t take much more of this. My brain keeps screwing things up, and all I want is her. All I need is her.
“You know.” I slap him on the shoulder, cutting him off, and as I walk away, I say, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything smarter come out of your mouth.”