“Of course,” I answered easily.
“Okay.” He blew out air between his lips and looked down at Maia. “I’ll need the details of your last school, sweetheart, so I can arrange a transfer to a school here.”
She nodded eagerly.
“You’ll need more clothes. If Grace can’t take you, I’ll get Shannon to. She’s dying to meet you.” He reached out with his other hand and stroked her cheek with his thumb. There was this dazed, tender light in his eyes, and I think it was just finally hitting him that Maia was his. She was his daughter. His voice was gruff with emotion when he spoke again. “I’d better go see your mum.”
“I’ll come with you,” I blurted out. I didn’t want him to go back out there alone. I didn’t want him to have to face it on his own after everything he’d already gone through.
“What about Maia?”
“I’m fifteen,” she piped up. “I can look after myself for a few hours. Believe me.”
Logan frowned. “How would you feel about spending a few hours with Shannon?”
I wasn’t sure that was a good idea, considering Maia had never met her aunt. However, she spoke up before I could say anything. “Okay. I want to meet her.” I scrutinized her to make sure she was telling the truth, and as far as I could see, she was. In fact, she was positively giddy. Jittery. Like a kid on Christmas morning.
I guess, in a way, this was a bit like that for her. Instead of presents, she was getting a family.
“Here? Or at Shannon and Cole’s?” Logan said.
“Um…” She bit her lip. “Here, please.”
Excited she might have been, but she was also still nervous. Logan seemed to understand she’d be more comfortable meeting his sister somewhere that felt familiar and safe to her. “Okay. Let me give her a call.”
He did it right away, and we heard him telling her it was to be just her. In other words, Cole wasn’t invited this time. She must have agreed, because he got off the phone and nodded at Maia. “She doesn’t have a class today, so she’ll be right over.”
Not too long later my doorbell rang and Logan disappeared to let Shannon in. He led her into the sitting room, her violet eyes shining, her cheeks flushed, and her bright red hair falling around her shoulders in a mass of gorgeous waves and ringlets. She scanned the room, and as soon as she spotted Maia, she strode over to her.
Without a word, Shannon tugged Maia into her arms and held on tight. I looked at Logan to see how he was reacting to the heartwarming scene. Just like this morning, his expression was carefully blank.
I was starting to worry about that.
Shannon eventually let go of Maia long enough to step back and then cup her face between her hands. Maia looked at Shannon as if she were some beautiful, magical fairy. Shannon was looking at Maia in much the same way. “Just look at you. You’re so grown-up and so beautiful. Isn’t she beautiful?” Shannon grinned at us.
I nodded, and Logan murmured, “Yeah. She looks just like you, Shannon.”
Maia’s eyes grew round at the compliment.
“Except for the hair.” He smirked.
They both giggled, the sound exactly the same, and I burst out laughing at their twin expressions of amazement and excitement. I had a feeling they were going to be fine, and I started to relax about leaving Maia alone with Shannon.
“Well, you two better hit the road.” Logan’s sister gestured toward the door.
Logan nodded and walked over to give both Shannon and Maia a kiss on the cheek. I followed suit, squeezing Maia’s hand and giving Shannon a grateful smile before hurrying after Logan as he started his determined journey back to Glasgow.
Like the last time I was in Logan’s car with him, there was total silence. Unlike last time, however, I wanted to give him the quiet. He needed it to process everything that had happened. So I gave him quiet. And he took it. For the entire ninety minutes.
When we eventually pulled up to the familiar block of flats, Logan parked and switched the car off. He looked at me.
I gave him a small, wobbly smile. “Are you ready?”
“I want her to fight me.”
He didn’t have to clarify his statement. I knew exactly what he meant, because I wanted Maryanne to fight him too. For Maia’s sake. It wasn’t about him not wanting to take care of Maia. No matter what happened, he was going to do that. But we both wanted Maryanne to give some indication that Maia meant something to her. My mother had never fought for me. It was a special kind of agony knowing your own mother didn’t love you. It was always with me. A ghost haunting me, a demon taunting, “If your mother can’t love you, who can?”
I fought that demon, or whatever you wanted to call it, every day. Most days I won. Still… I didn’t want Maia to have that fight.
Logan gave me a militant nod. “Let’s do this.”
By the time we reached the door, I had butterflies in my stomach and not the good kind. It didn’t help that Logan banged on the door like he meant business. I stared up at his stern expression and reminded myself that I didn’t actually know him that well, and I had no idea what his reaction to this situation was going to be without Maia around as a buffer.
Oh shit.
I guess that made me the buffer this time.
Not even a few seconds passed before the lock turned and the door swung inward to reveal a tall, skinny fellow, wearing nothing but a pair of ratty gray jogging bottoms.
His thinning dark hair was unwashed, his face unshaved, and there was a strong odor of stale sweat reeking from him.
“Aye?” he grunted, scratching his bare belly. Not that he had much of one.
“Is Maryanne home?” Logan said, politely enough.
The skinny man’s answer was to leave the door open, turn around, and walk away.
Logan took that to mean we could enter, and I followed him inside the flat. I was instantly hit with that stench we’d smelled last time we were there. I instinctively huddled closer to Logan as we walked down the narrow hall and into the living room. The skinny man flopped down on an armchair across from us. Maryanne was lying on the couch watching television.
She looked up, her expression giving nothing away.
“Remember us?” Logan scowled at her.
Her eyes narrowed. “What the fuck do you want now?”
I eyed her carefully. She seemed less jittery than last time. I didn’t know enough about substance abuse to understand what that meant. Was she high? Was she not high? Who knew?
Logan forged ahead. “I got a paternity test. Maia is mine.”
“Good detective work.” She snorted, and the skinny man laughed.
Logan ignored them both. “I also got a copy of her birth certificate. You named me as the father on it. You gave her my name.”
“So?”
“I have legal rights, Maryanne. I’m enforcing them. Maia is living with me from now on. Permanently. Do you have anything to say about that?”
Maryanne just stared at him.
Skinny Man frowned at her. “You gonnae take that?”
“What’s it to you?” Logan said, his tone quietly menacing.
I shifted a little closer to him, sensing the fight in him.
“Nothing.” Skinny Man shrugged and then grinned idiotically. “Wee My was nice to look it, that’s aw.”
Logan lunged, but I was faster. I put myself in front of him, my hands pressed to his chest. “Don’t.”
He grabbed my wrists, glowering over at Skinny Man. “If you fucking touched her, I’ll kill you.”
“Naw, man.” Skinny Man got up out of his chair, backing off. “Mare, tell him I didnae touch her.”
Maryanne grunted. “What would he want a wee bairn for when he’s got me?”
Logan was still tense.
I pressed harder against him, forcing him to look at me. Our eyes locked, and I felt all his pain and frustration and impotence over Maia’s history wash over me. I curled my fingers into his shirt and leaned closer. “They’re not worth it,??
? I whispered. “Let’s just go.”
He blinked at my words, and I felt him relax, his hands uncurling around my wrists. He looked over at Maryanne. “Does this mean you’re not fighting this?”
“Does it look like it?” She gestured around the room. “What the hell can I do for that wee lassie, eh? She’s better off with you. Why do you think I told her about you? She doesnae need me.”
I shook my head. “You have no idea how wrong you are.”
“Get oot ma house, fancy pants.”
Logan tensed again. “This is it, Maryanne. If you ever coming looking for Maia, you’ll have to go through me first.”
Her answer was to turn up the volume on the television.
Logan could only stare at her in disgust.
I dropped my hands from his chest in order to take his hand in mine, and I led him out of the flat.
And I didn’t let go until we got to the car.
There was more tense silence between us as Logan drove back toward Edinburgh. We were perhaps twenty minutes in the car, however, when he suddenly pulled off the motorway and into a service station car park.
He turned off the engine and just sat there.
I waited, giving him time.
And then, “Who does that?” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel, his chest moving up and down rapidly as he took haggard, quick breaths.
I’d seen him tense, concerned, anxious.
But not like this.
I didn’t know if it was purely about Maryanne, but I suspected it was everything. It was a buildup of everything from the moment he’d opened that paternity letter. Maybe even from the moment Maia had turned up on our landing.
“Logan.” I touched his arm, forcing him to look at me. “Anything you do is going to be better than what Maryanne has done for Maia.”
His eyes blazed. “I could have done this no problem a few years ago, but I’m not that guy anymore. The laid-back guy who could take on anything.”
“You keep saying that. Was prison really that bad?”
He clenched his jaw and looked out of the windshield.
“Logan?” I pressed.
“It… I had to become a different man in order to get through it.”
“How?”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s done.”
“It’s not done,” I disagreed, hearing the irritation in my voice and not caring. “You have a teenage girl waiting for you at home now. A week ago, okay, fine, I would have dropped it, let you keep whatever shit that’s stirring inside of you to yourself, but it’s not just about you anymore.”
Logan turned his head and glowered at me. I tensed, waiting. And to my surprise he began to talk. His voice was gruff, low, however, like the words were dragged from deep down in his belly. “I’m not a criminal, Grace.”
There was a pain in those words he couldn’t hide, and I felt the burn of tears in my eyes in response to it. “I know that, Logan.”
“No, you don’t.” He shook his head and looked away from me. “I wasn’t that kid. I wasn’t that teenager, and I certainly wasn’t that man, and I didn’t surround myself with men like that either. The men inside… So many of them aren’t even men. They’re just scum who think because they like violence and like playing with knives and drugs that it makes them men. I was breathing in scum for two fucking years, listening to them and the vile, ignorant things they talked about. Things they planned to do when they got out, the men they planned to fuck up, the women they planned to hurt. And I listened to them plan to hurt one another. Because it’s war.” He turned to stare at me now, his nostrils flared with anger, with the memories. “It’s a war in there. And if you don’t want to get fucked-up, you have to make them fear you.”
I shivered at the look in his eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means I had to find a balance. I wanted out early for good behavior, but I also had to make sure no one messed with me. I spent every day in the gym bulking up and allied myself with certain men.”
“What kind of men?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“The kind of men who are real hardened criminals. The kind of men who have done very bad things, Grace. One of my closest friends in there – and we still talk to this day – was in for manslaughter. It was his third conviction since he was fourteen. That’s the kind of men I let into my life. What kind of man does that make me?”
I ached all over for him. “The kind of man who did what he had to do to survive.”
“You say that, but you don’t know what I was party to in there.”
“And I don’t need to.” I shook my head. “Not unless you really want to tell me. Because otherwise I don’t care. I don’t need to know. It doesn’t change who I think you are.” I rested my hand on his leg. “Logan, it was two years of your life. Two terrible years, I know. But in the grand scheme of things, two years should not define who you are.”
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “You’re forgetting the reason I was in prison.”
Sensing I hadn’t quite won this round with him, I said, “Then tell me about it.”
“I was at work,” he said immediately. “I used to be head mechanic in a garage. Shannon came in… stumbled in.” When he gazed at me this time, he looked truly haunted. “Fuck, Grace, you should have seen her.” He shuddered and looked down. “Her top was ripped, her jeans undone, her face… Fuck, her face. Bloody, swollen. And her arm was hanging funny. Dislocated.” He wrenched his eyes from the floor to my face. “I grabbed her, shouted at someone to call for an ambulance, and as we waited, she told me her boyfriend had done it. I can’t explain it. I’ve never felt rage like it. She’s Shannon.” He seemed to plead with me. “She’s my wee sister. She’s the kindest person I’ve ever met until you. She means the world to me. I wanted to kill him. He tried to rape her. He beat the shit out of her. And later I found out it wasn’t the first time he’d hit her. The thought of her fighting him off, trying to get to me so I could protect her… the thought that I wasn’t there…” He trailed off, his emotions getting the better of him, and I waited as he attempted to get a handle on them.
“I had only one thought,” he whispered. “To find him and give him back as good as he gave.” He cleared his throat, his face turning hard. “They call it bloodlust. Maybe it was, because once I got ahold of him, I couldn’t stop. A colleague, a friend of mine, he followed me. Dragged me off.” Logan glared at me now. “I put Shannon’s boyfriend in a coma. What kind of man does that make me, Grace? Fit to be a father?”
I had a feeling he wanted me to be outraged. Disgusted. Take Maia away. Seeing him so raw, so exposed, and so ashamed of himself was too much. I didn’t want him to feel that way about himself. And so I sought to help in any way I could.
A story I had told no one, not even Aidan, came to mind, and I found myself telling it to Logan. “When I was fifteen I woke up one evening and there was a boy in bed with me. He had his hands on me, touching me. I fought him off, hearing laughter around me, and when I managed to get away from the boy, to get out of the bed, I discovered my brother, Sebastian, and a few of his drunken friends in my room. He’d brought them into my room to deliberately do that to me. My parents weren’t home.” I looked at my lap, trying to hold back the tears. I hadn’t realized how painful it would be to say the words out loud. “I ran out of the room and locked myself in my bathroom, and I could hear them laughing the whole time. The one who had touched me, I knew him. He was my brother’s best friend. He stood outside the bathroom and taunted me until my brother got bored and pulled him away. I was terrified.” I forced myself to look at Logan, and he was staring at me, incredulous, outraged. “Sebastian did things like that all the time. He thought it was a game. We’re both lucky he didn’t get me raped.” I stared solemnly into Logan’s eyes, hoping the point I was trying to make would have an impact. “Life is shades of gray, Logan. I don’t know if what you did was wrong. The law says it is, but I just think you were acti
ng on an instinct that most people have. If I could choose between how Sebastian acted or how you acted, I’d choose your actions. That’s all I know.”
“Jesus, fuck, Grace,” he said hoarsely.
“I know good and bad, Logan, trust me. And deep down you do too. And you know you’re a good man. You know it. And I’m not going to tell you any different.” I brushed impatiently at a tear. “We both know Maia deserves you. You deserve her.”
My heart leapt into my throat as I was abruptly pulled across the passenger seat and into Logan’s arms. He wrapped his hand around my nape and pressed my head into the crook of his neck, while his other arm fastened tight around my back. I had no choice but to slide my arms around him and hold on.
I let his solid, secure warmth rush over me.
I breathed him in.
And I wished that this moment didn’t feel as perfect as it did.
CHAPTER 10
A
s I stepped out of my flat I realized I was relaxed for the first time in what felt like forever. I was going to meet up with Aidan, Juno, and Chloe for a coffee before starting my work for the day.
Maia was at school.
Her first day of school.
Thankfully, her time off school ran at the same time as Edinburgh’s Easter break, so it didn’t even really feel like she’d missed out on much. She was starting a new school in the last term of the year, which was a little awkward, but there was nothing that could be done about that.
Logan hadn’t wasted any time in arranging Maia’s new life here with him. He got her transferred to Muirhead High School, which was a twenty-minute walk through the Meadows and into Viewforth. Logan had dropped her off this morning, but she had been quite insistent that she walk home alone and that she would walk to school by herself every morning thereafter. Her father was not happy about this. I think he kept forgetting she was fifteen years old and used to taking care of herself. I’d tried to tell him that, but he’d just grunted at me and led Maia down the stairs and out of the building.