Kayla’s arm shot up, shielding herself, and the padded toy bounced unharmed off her arm. “Ooh, what a deadly comeback. I’m shaking in my jammies over here.”
Challenged, Paige grabbed a sock monkey. And the giggling fight was on. As immature and silly as it was, the stuffed animal war soothed Paige’s nerves. Ducking and swinging, she laughed, throwing out empty threats and basking in Kayla’s company.
But deep inside, she still worried. If Kayla knew who she was talking about, would she be so open to the idea? Would she still tease Paige about marriage and babies?
Paige didn’t think so.
She kept her brewing dilemma to herself, determined to push her growing feelings for a forbidden boy as deeply inside herself as they would go and not let them spread any farther.
Avoiding the moment she had to drive home to her dad’s house, she lingered at Kayla’s, doing total girl stuff together like painting toenails, checking out famous gorgeous guy pictures on line, talking movies, and snacking on junk food.
When she finally called it a night, Kayla walked her to her car. “Thanks for stopping by, sweetie. And call me in the morning. I want to know how the homecoming with Paul went. Besides, I want to spend every possible second with you while you’re home, maybe introduce you to my man, Archer, and go last-minute Christmas shopping together.”
“It’s a deal.” Paige hugged her friend and started home.
Chapter Twenty
LOGAN COULDN’T PINPOINT exactly what prompted him to drive home on Christmas Eve. He told himself it wasn’t because of Paige; just because he knew she was somewhere in Creighton County, he wanted to be here too. But deep inside, he recognized she was definitely a factor.
He was drawn to her light.
He drove his old secondhand truck slowly through his hometown, feeling nostalgia, depression, and a strange disconnection. While most things were exactly how they’d been before he’d left, little changes here and there made it look foreign.
He wondered when someone had torn down that old barn at the north end of town across from the school. And had the house next to the post office always been such a gawd-awful green?
Everything seemed so small. Even the streets looked narrower.
Sighing, he drove past his parents’ house. Did they still live there? They’d been there all his years of growing up, but things changed.
He’d certainly changed.
The lights were off inside; with dusk approaching, it looked empty. But he already knew it would be. He knew where his family was.
He drove to the only Christmas Tree farm in the county.
Pulling over into the drive of an abandoned gas station that had been running when he’d lived in the area, he killed the engine and slid out of his truck. Across the street, the tree farm looked busy. Festive holiday music played from speakers strategically placed along the rows of perfectly-formed firs and spruces.
Logan scanned the cars in the parking lot, but he didn’t spot his mother’s Land Cruiser. Then again, she tended to trade in every other year, so he wouldn’t know what she was driving now.
After zipping his coat up against the winter chill, he stuffed his hands into the pockets and leaned against his tailgate as he watched families leave and arrive. It amazed him how many people waited until the night before Christmas to get their tree. He’d always thought his was but a few to do this.
But seeing a young dad struggle to roll his Douglas fir onto the roof of his car while his wife held back their three toddler children told Logan how wrong he was. Many families held the same tradition as his. Twitching with the need to race across the street to help the poor guy out, Logan pulled his hands from his pockets and straightened away from his truck. He actually took a step in their direction when another family hauling their tree to a sleek black Mercedes SUV caught his attention.
For a second, he froze as he watched them, feeling royally exposed where he stood. Crouching slightly, he slunk backward along the side of his truck until a shadow concealed him.
His two younger brothers—God, they’d gotten tall—carried their blue spruce with ease, one holding onto the base, the other carrying the front. Under the instruction of their father, they lifted and effortlessly plopped the tree onto the roof.
Chest growing tight as he watched, Logan swallowed convulsively. His mom wore her hair different these days, longer and straighter. She looked lovely. Elegant. Fisting his hand, he brought it to his mouth, feeling like an invader for spying on them during their family time. But he couldn’t bring himself to look away.
They definitely hadn’t stopped tradition just because he’d left.
“You lied at the meeting.”
When the soft accusation came from beside him, Logan whirled around. Focusing on the new arrival, he dropped his hand from his mouth to press his open palm flush against his erratic heartbeat.
“Paige!” He drew in a deep breath. “What…what’re you doing here?”
She shrugged, her eyes sad as she glanced past him toward his parents and brothers, who were now tying their tree down with bungee cords.
“I just wanted to torture myself, I guess.” Her smile was anything but happy. “With it just being my dad and me, Christmas is pretty dismal around my place. It depresses him a lot, so he mostly just drinks. I…I guess I wanted to see what your Christmas Tree Night was all about and feel envious over here across the street by myself while I hated you and your perfect family from afar.”
Logan didn’t know how to reply to that. He understood her sentiment too well.
“Is that them?” she asked, hitching her chin to point out his family.
He glanced over and watched his brothers pile into the back of their car as his parents got into the front. “Yeah.”
Paige nodded. “And why aren’t you with them?”
He drew in a long, deep breath. “Because they kicked me out.”
“What?” Paige seared him with an incredulous glance before she shook her head vigorously. “No…that can’t be. Your dad was your lawyer. He got you out of jail. He supported you.”
With a bitter laugh, Logan shook his own head. “Of course he got me out of jail. Do you know how mortified he would have been if a Xander, one of his own, had been imprisoned? It was bad enough his son had already embarrassed the family by killing someone, but for me to actually pay for my crime was unheard of. To preserve the family name, he got me off, and then he told me once I graduated from high school, he wanted nothing to do with me.”
Paige’s mouth fell open as she gaped at him. “And what did your mom say?”
Logan shrugged as he turned his gaze back to watch his family’s SUV back out of their parking spot. “She didn’t say anything. She agreed with him.”
Stepping up beside him as his family disappeared down the street, Paige said nothing.
He wondered what she thought of him now. That he was a pathetic loser who deserved what he got? She’d lost most of her family over what he’d done; it was only fair that he lose his too. She was probably smug and overjoyed to learn he’d lived alone these past few—
“What’re your brothers’ names?” she asked so quietly he barely heard her.
He glanced at her, astonished to see her eyes downcast with empathy.
Swallowing the knot of shock in his throat, he fumbled to answer. “Uh…Caleb. Caleb and Jake. Jake is sixteen now and Caleb is…wow.” Logan shook his head, depressed to realize how much time had really passed. “He’s eighteen. Already a senior.”
Paige nodded as if soaking in the information. “Have you seen any of them? At all? Had any contact with them?”
Logan began to shake his head. “No. Well…Jake keeps his Facebook account public. I check his page…a lot.” He sent her a grin. “Looks like he might be better than me on the basketball court.”
Instead of smiling back, Paige looked crushed. His words had reminded her of her own star basketball player of a brother. Dizziness wavered through him, and everything c
ame flooding back. The reason his family had rejected him. The reason he’d never have a future with this wonderful person. The reason he was so broken.
He’d killed Trace Zukowski. Taken a life. Stopped a beating heart.
Forcing himself to breathe through his nose before he had a panic attack, he looked up at the clear sky. Half of a moon dangled among the glittering stars, just like half a man stood next to the most dazzling female he’d ever know.
“You were right, you know,” he confessed, still gazing out above them. “Your brother didn’t start the fight that night.”
He wasn’t sure why he told her. But with the memory of Trace lying dead at his feet so fresh in his mind, he wanted her to know the truth. Everything.
Paige gasped. From the corner of his eye, he saw her whirl toward at him.
“So you did hit him first?”
He shook his head. “No. No, he threw the first punch. That was true.” With a deep breath, he added, “But I made very certain he would.”
“What happened?”
Finally, he turned to look at her. With dark eyes intent on him, she’d drawn both her hands up to just below her chin and held them together, almost as in prayer. He could see on her face how much she yearned to hear this story. But if he told her, she’d probably hate him again afterward.
He didn’t like it when she hated him.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
She gulped as if she fully comprehended the consequences. Then she nodded. “Yes.”
“Okay.” He closed his eyes, prepared to regain her absolute abhorrence. “After we lost the ball game that night, my friends and I drove into Landry and got stupid drunk. We were hanging out in our usual spot when your brother and his crew happened by. I was still in a raw mood after losing to him, so I called out something, some kind of sarcastic congratulations. I don’t exactly remember what I said. But he had some witty comeback that ticked me off.”
Logan scoffed and glanced askance at Paige. “He always had a smart aleck response for everything. Even on the court.”
Paige’s grin was immediate and watered with nostalgic tears. “That was Trace for you. A great big smart-mouthed know-it-all.”
“Yeah, well it drove me crazy,” Logan muttered. “And he knew it, so he did it every chance he got. What was worse, he was so good at everything. I just wanted to beat him at something. And that was when I focused on the girl he had tucked under his arm.”
Paige perked to attention. Dropping her hands from her chest, she frowned. “Say what?”
Logan turned back to the stars. He couldn’t look at her for this part of the story. “I waited until she was off away from him…and then I struck.”
“Oh, my God.” Paige covered her mouth with both hands. “What did you do?”
Sending her a brief scowl, he sniffed. She didn’t have to make it sound as if he’d accosted the girl against her will.
“Nothing bad. I just…flirted mostly. She was as drunk as I was, so it wasn’t too terribly hard to charm her. When your brother caught us kissing, though, he was—”
“Kissing!” Paige jerked her hands down to her abdomen as she sucked in large breaths through her mouth. “You kissed…you kissed Kayla? Oh my God. Kayla?”
Kayla? “Yeah,” he said on a grimace. “I think that was her name.”
“No, no, no,” Paige insisted. She shook her head resolutely as if denying it enough would make it not so. “You’re mistaken. Not Kayla. You don’t understand. You can’t mean Kayla. He loved Kayla.”
When Logan just stared at her, she balled her hands into fists. “You don’t understand,” she repeated, her voice raising an octave. “He bought her a ring. I found it when I was cleaning out his room. But I couldn’t tell her about it because I didn’t want to hurt her. He loved her so much.”
A ring?
Falling back a step, Logan gawked, unable to digest this properly. Reaching out, he caught hold of the bed of his truck, needing the support.
“He was going to marry her,” Paige hissed, making him flinch.
Looking away, he cursed aloud. “I didn’t…I didn’t know.”
“She…she’s my best friend now.” Paige sobbed in a dry heave.
He glanced up and saw the look in her dazed eyes, the sick disdain on her face.
“God. I shouldn’t have told you that part.”
“Yes. Yes, you should have.” Hysteria filtered into her words. “Someone should’ve told me a long time ago. Oh my God.”
“Paige.” He stepped toward her, lifting his hand, only wanting to comfort her. “She didn’t do anything wrong. She was so out of it. She didn’t know what she was doing. It was all me. I did everything I could to steal her away from him. In fact, I swear she was starting to push me away when he caught us.”
“I don’t care,” Paige nearly screamed, slapping his fingers away before he actually touched her. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “He loved her. He wanted to marry her someday. And she let another guy kiss her?”
He watched her curl into herself, cradling her arm around her waist as she bowed her face and clenched her eyes shut.
Agony tore through him. He didn’t want to watch this; he ached even knowing he’d started and couldn’t stop it.
“Paige, please,” he begged with no idea what he was actually begging for. “No matter what happened that night, she’s still your best friend. Hating her now is only going to hurt both of you. I guarantee you one hundred percent she is sorry for what happened, and if she could take it back, she would in a heartbeat. I mean, the way she cried over him…” He shook his head. “I swear I’ve never seen anyone cry like that before. She refused to leave his side. She was…she was devastated.”
Paige wiped her wet face and looked at him. He tensed under her all-knowing gaze, and everything became clear. He wasn’t just pleading her friend’s case; he was pleading his own. By the look in her eyes, he could tell she knew that.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled, suddenly uncomfortable. Hugging himself, he glanced to where his family’s car had sat minutes ago. “Or maybe you’ll do just fine without her.”
His family seemed perfectly fine without him.
“No.” Paige sniffed back a few more tears. “No, I wouldn’t. And I’m sure your family is not fine without you either.” Turning slightly away from him, she brushed her hands off onto her thighs as if needing something to do. Then she drew in a deep breath, collected herself, and looked at him over her shoulder. “Thank you for telling me.”
He nodded, unsettled by how easily she’d been able to find composure. Holding pain inside couldn’t be good for a person. If she was repressing anything, it’d hurt her more in the long run.
Not sure what else to say, certain anything that came out of his mouth would only induce her to hold more in, he reached for the handle of his truck door. “I should…I should go.” He’d already done enough damage. He couldn’t handle the thought of doing more. Especially to her.
But she stopped him with a single word. “Logan?”
He paused and heaved a shaky breath, afraid to turn around. “Yeah?”
“The night I cut my finger at The Squeeze and saw your wrists…”
When she didn’t go on, he swallowed and rotated to face her. She was going to ask about his cut marks; he just knew it. He didn’t want to talk about them. Ever. He’d been in a dark place then, so dark he wasn’t sure how he’d ever climbed out of all that black. He couldn’t reasonably explain why he’d done it, couldn’t rationalize the overwhelming necessity to end everything. He’d just needed to stop the pain.
“I was so messed up.” He breathed out the confession. “I don’t know why I cut them. I’d just gotten my life back on track. It didn’t make any sense.”
Paige merely watched him. So he kept talking, blurting it all out.
“After…after my parents kicked me out, they let me keep my car. So I drove it as far as I could on a tank of gas. Then I sold it for cash. It was jus
t a quirk of fate I landed in Granton. But I found a job, a crappy place to live, and since the entire town centered around the university, I eventually enrolled. But it was like I was on auto pilot.
“Inside, I knew I didn’t deserve any of it. And every day I attended class, I would see all these normal people around me, going to classes, living their lives, like nothing…nothing wrong had ever happened in the world. I just didn’t belong, so I tried to take myself out of the equation.”
Paige shuddered, wrapping her arms more tightly around herself, but let him keep talking.
“When I woke in the hospital, Sam was my state-required counselor. She’s the one who convinced me to attend the grief meetings. She thought…” He chuckled derisively to himself. “She said that she could tell just by looking into my eyes that I’d lost someone close.”
He glanced at Paige, expecting her to share the irony with him. But she just stared up at him from her own beautiful, dark, grief-stricken eyes.
“You told me once you didn’t expect me to forgive you because no one else ever had,” she said.
Nodding, he watched her intently, waiting and hoping, yet dreading too.
She gave him a tremulous smile. “I didn’t understand what you meant. I didn’t know your parents had kicked you out and cut you off. I didn’t know you hadn’t seen them since graduation, or how much you had struggled to get your life back on track. I didn’t know you’d fallen so low you wanted to end it all.”
He squinted, wondering what she was getting at. “You couldn’t have known. It’s fine. I didn’t—”
“No.” Her lips tilted in a somber smile. “It’s not okay. I understand what it’s like to lose all my loved ones so suddenly, but I never felt guilty about it. I never thought I deserved to be cast out of their lives. Not the way you did. And maybe still do.” She drew in a large breath. “I think you have suffered just as much, if not more, than I have since Trace died, so I’m going to tell you something and I’m going to mean it, but I think the real person who needs to say this to you is yourself.”