Chapter Four – Logan
Another semester. Somehow I’m still here. Not that long ago, I didn’t want to be here at all. I hated it. I chose this college purely based on the fact that I heard it was a good party school—and I loved the partying scene.
The hooking up. The drinking. The drugs. Everything about it. I couldn’t get enough. Guess I was still trying to relive the old glory days of Black Sacrament, when I used to be somebody, when I used to be Pope and not just Logan.
But that plan was shot to hell the moment I met her.
Wren. From the first time I saw her in the bookstore to when we bumped into each other at the club before fall semester began…
I was so fucking stupid. The look she gave me at the club, it must’ve rewired a part of my brain—and stupid me didn’t realize it until it was too damn late.
I’m an asshole. I’ve always been an asshole. I used to get away with it because the girls dug the music and the mask, but now that I’m just me… everything is different.
I couldn’t hook up with anyone else after that. Drinking and drugs didn’t hit the same. Until that night where Wren sprung a karaoke date on me, I was losing myself all over again.
And then… then when I realized she knew who I was somehow, that she’d discovered my little secret, I lost my shit all over again.
I reacted without thinking, a typical Pope move, something that got me kicked out of the band to begin with.
I said things I shouldn’t have, and I said them like I meant them. Cruel, mean, venomous.
At the time, I did mean them. I meant every single word.
She was driving me insane. If I didn’t stop her, didn’t try to put her in her place, then where would that leave me? I’m not the kind of guy who likes to lay their fucking soul bare for anyone, much less a girl who shouldn’t mean anything to me.
A girl. Just a girl. Just a fucking girl I shouldn’t have given a single thought to after I took her home that night and fucked her adorable brains out.
But no matter how many times I try to remind myself of that, that she doesn’t matter to me at all, it rings so hollow.
Nothing in my life has ever sounded more untrue.
It’s been months. Months since that night at the karaoke bar. Months since she tried to remind me that it’s okay to sing, that it’s okay to be who I am. Months since… since I’ve seen her.
If I was losing my mind after I met her at that club, I damn near lost everything after the karaoke date.
My mind was the first thing to go, but it wasn’t the last. For the past few months I’ve been nothing more than a shadow of myself, a zombie dragging its body from day to day.
I haven’t touched alcohol or anything else since—things that normally would have numbed me to the pain.
But this kind of pain, it’s not the kind of pain you can run away from. It’s not the kind of pain you can drink yourself into oblivion and ignore. No amount of drugs could ever replace the high that Wren gave me.
No, this particular pain needs to be felt. Demands it. A pain like this is unlike anything I’ve ever felt, and the only thing I could seem to do was withdraw into myself, especially after I found out what happened to her that night.
I still remember the day I found out like it was yesterday.
What the fuck was I doing? That question rang in my head over and over as I walked to Wren’s place. It was Sunday, less than forty-eight hours since my tantrum with Wren, since she got me up on that stage and made me sing with her.
I shouldn’t give a shit. The old me wouldn’t. But, for some fucking reason, when it came to Wren, the old me was less and less powerful, and because of that, I felt like shit.
The things I said to her, how I said them… I wasn’t proud. No, I wasn’t proud at all. I was such a fucking dick, and I wanted to do something I’d never done before, without anyone prompting me.
I wanted to apologize. I wanted to see her, to tell her that I was such a massive fuck-up that I acted without thinking, and I didn’t mean anything I said to her.
And more than that, I wanted to kiss her.
To hold her. To lose myself in her because losing myself in Wren was the only thing that could possibly keep me sane.
She wasn’t the pathetic one. I was. I was nothing, and watching everything I’d built crumble around me while knowing I caused it had pushed me to the edge, but it was easy to step away from that ledge when I was with her.
I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know why. I’d tried again and again to convince myself that Wren meant nothing to me, that she was just a little nobody—a girl who wasn’t even my type—but nothing stuck.
Because it was all lies. Somehow, someway, it was all lies and I was too blind to realize it until now.
She didn’t owe me anything. I knew that, but still I couldn’t sit back anymore. The last day and a half I’d spent losing my mind, and I knew the only thing that could possibly make things right was going to see her.
Going to her house took courage I didn’t know I had, and as I strolled up to the front door, I could honestly say I wasn’t ready for anything to happen.
No, foolishly, I thought she’d answer the door, invite me inside, and we’d have a heart-to-heart.
I’d tell her I was a terrible human being, that I didn’t deserve shit when it came to her, but that I wanted more than anything to try again.
But that’s not what happened.
I was a mere five feet away from the door when it flung open and Wren’s roomie and a guy stepped outside. The guy was carrying a duffel bag. The girl’s eyes immediately landed on my face, and she skidded to a halt, causing the guy behind her to ram into her and grumble out a rough, “What the fuck?”
That what the fuck sentiment was echoed by the look on her face. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight pony, not a single hair out of place. Her green eyes instantly narrowed at me, and her lips pulled into a deep frown. “Elias,” she said, “go get the car ready. This won’t take long.”
The guy behind her, Elias, huffed his annoyance, but in the end he went to do as he was told, moving around us and heading to the driveway, to where his car sat.
“Logan,” she hissed out my name with such spiteful venom, it sounded like she wanted to kill me. It shouldn’t surprise me at all—this was the girl who threatened to kill me and stated she had more than enough money to get away with it. “You have a lot of balls coming here after what you did.”
“Wren told you what happened,” I muttered, the dejection plain in my tone.
“She told me enough. I knew it wouldn’t end well.
Someone like you—I fucking warned you that if you hurt a hair on her head, I would end you, and I meant it.
You might not have been driving the car, but you left her there.
As far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing but a dead man walking, so if I were you, I’d get the fuck out of my way. ”
The more she said, the more confused I got. “Wait, what? Driving the car? What car?”
“Wren’s in the hospital. She got hit by a drunk driver after your little date Friday night, and you left her there like she was nothing but trash to you. She could’ve died, you asshole—”
When she explained, my heart did something funny in my chest. It skipped a beat or two. Or three. Or maybe even more. Honestly, it was hard to tell. Everything around me got hazy, blurry, topsy-turvy, like the world had suddenly started to spin too hard, too fast.
Wren was hit by a drunk driver?
“I need to see her,” I said, but before I could say anything else, the girl stepped toward me and lowered her voice to a bare whisper.
“You will not see Wren. In fact, you shouldn’t think about her at all.
She’s better than you, and she deserves someone who has his shit together, not another fuckup like her ex.
If you try to see her in the hospital, it’ll be the last thing you do.
If you value your rotten life at all, you will stay away from her.
Hell, if you care about that girl at all, you’ll stay away.
She doesn’t need to be dragged down by you.
She deserves to be lifted up by someone who’d never hurt her. ”
Everything she said, as harsh as it was, was completely true. I couldn’t argue with her. How could I? Wren never would’ve been in that situation, she never would’ve been there that night, if it wasn’t for me. If she went after me while I was too pissed off, storming away, and got hit by a car…
It was my fault. It was one hundred percent my fault, and I deserved every single bit of ire and fury this girl was currently giving me. My head was spinning, and that’s the only reason I could not respond to her, why I couldn’t say a single word.
“Now you listen to me,” she whispered, her voice hard, “if I see you around here one more time, if I catch wind of you trying to see her in the hospital? You won’t live to see another sunrise.
You wouldn’t be the first person I’ve gotten rid of, and you probably won’t be the last. If you value your pathetic, miserable life at all, you will turn around and forget Wren exists. You’ve done enough to fuck her up.”
The first time she threatened me, I was too stunned to really hear it.
A part of me knew she was always serious, but here and now…
there was something different about her.
A deadly sort of calm, and the way she off-handed mentioned that I wouldn’t be the first…
I believed her. I believed every word she said.
This girl was no saint. She was no angel. She had a darkness inside her that she only let out at certain times. To push her would be the biggest mistake I could make right now.
Such a small girl with such a killer attitude, but she was in Wren’s corner, and she was only saying these things to protect her. To protect her from me. Nothing she said was a lie. I was the miserable, pathetic one. I did this to Wren.
A girl like Wren could never be happy with someone like me. I’d only drag her down.