“Maia.” I stood up, but she’d already spun on her heel and dashed out of my flat.
I heard the slam of Logan’s front door and slumped back in my chair, wishing my life weren’t so freaking complicated and that I didn’t care so damn much about one fifteen-year-old girl and her annoying father.
CHAP TER 18
I t would suffice to say that I could not get to sleep that night. I tossed and turned for hours, until eventually I gave in and got up to do some work.
At around four in the morning I was in my sitting room stretched out on the couch with my laptop, working on Joss’s manuscript. I was having the best time with it. The lady knew how to bloody well write a good book. This was when my job was amazingly fun, because I got to read a great book and then advise on little things that I thought might help make it greater.
I was lost in Joss’s compelling heroine and whether a scene she’d written that let the reader dive a little deeper into the heroine’s psyche should perhaps be brought forward in the plot so the reader could connect with her a little faster, when —
BANG! BANG! BANG!
I jolted up on the couch, my laptop almost sliding off of my lap at the sound of a fist banging on my front door. Wary, I got up, placing my computer aside, and hurried down the hallway on tiptoe. I peeked out of the peephole, and my heart leapt into my throat.
I unlocked the door, yanking it open to reveal Maia standing there in her pajamas with hair disheveled and face pale. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”
She shook her head. “Dad’s having a nightmare.”
Worry instantly moved through me. “A nightmare?”
Maia nodded. “He’s thrashing around and all sweaty. I’m really worried.”
“Okay. One second.” Pulse racing, I rushed back into the flat, grabbed my keys and slippers, and hurried out to Maia. Following her into Logan’s, I whispered, “Does this happen a lot?”
Her wide eyes met mine. “Not at first, but the last few weeks he’s had a few. I’m frightened to wake him because I saw this movie once where this guy had nightmares all the time and he could be, like, violent in his sleep. But I can’t leave him like that. It’s really bad tonight. It’s been going on for ages.”
“Right.” My gaze was automatically drawn down the hallway to where his room was. “Go back to bed, sweetheart. I’ll make sure he’s all right.”
Maia sagged with relief and exhaustion. After giving me a grateful hug, she returned to her room.
Filled with trepidation, I started down the hall to Logan’s room, and sure enough I heard a noise like a pained grunt. Moving faster now, I pushed inside his domain, my eyes taking in the shadow of furniture in the dim light. Logan was curled up in the tangle of his blankets as if he were contained in a small space and not a huge bed. Everything about his body language suggested he was trying to protect himself, and the vulnerability of it caused a painful streak to radiate across my chest.
He jerked suddenly, his face tightening in sleep, and he gave another pained grunt. I switched on his bedside lamp, and the light exposed the sweat glistening on his face and the dampness of his T-shirt.
I felt anxious about waking him, unsure how he would react, but I couldn’t bear to watch him in pain like this. “Logan,” I said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Logan.” I shook him.
He flinched but didn’t wake up.
I bent closer, my lips at his ear. “Logan, you’re having a nightmare, sweetheart. Wake up.” I shook him harder and jumped back as his whole body jerked.
Violet eyes blinked up at me in confusion and shock.
Logan’s chest heaved with exertion.
“You were having a nightmare,” I told him softly.
“Jesus,” he whispered, running a hand over his damp short hair. Then something changed in his expression. “Maia?”
“She’s fine,” I assured him. “She was worried, so she came to get me.”
“Fuck.” Logan huffed and sagged against his pillow, his fingers curling into his hair. “Fuck.”
“I’ll go get you some water.”
When I returned to his room, he’d propped himself up against his headboard and taken off his sweat-soaked T-shirt. He looked exhausted, and that was almost enough to distract me from his well-defined abs.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the water I handed to him.
There was a small part of me that wanted to embrace our awkwardness of late and just be done with him. Walk out and not look back. However, there was a much larger part of me that was worried sick about him.
That part won.
“Scoot over,” I said.
Our eyes met and I held my breath, and despite everything, I hoped he didn’t reject my offer of friendship.
He didn’t.
Once he’d moved over a bit, I propped myself up against the headboard and stretched my legs out on the bed beside him. “How long have you been having nightmares?”
There was silence from my left, and I was about to press him when he finally replied, “Since I got out.”
I ached for him. “Logan,” I whispered, turning my head to look at him.
Our eyes met again, and I hurt for him even more at the sight of his stubborn expression. “I’m fine, Grace.”
“You’re not fine.”
“Look, they come and go. I hadn’t had one in a while, but lately…”
“What are they about?”
He gave me a wry smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Prison, of course.”
“Specifically?” I insisted.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not leaving until you do.”
Logan sighed heavily. “Why are you even here?”
I glowered at him. “Because despite everything, I do care about you. I don’t like the idea of you having nightmares, and talking about them might help make them go away.”
His face softened. “I appreciate that, babe, but I don’t think this can be as easily solved as all that.”
“At least try.”
“I’m in a tiny dark room,” he said abruptly. “There’s absolutely no space for me to stretch out. I’m curled up in it just to fit. Yet somehow, magically,” he said with dry disgust, “there’s room for feet to kick at me, knives to stab at me… faces to…” His eyes lowered, the muscle in his jaw clenching.
“Faces, Logan?” I pushed.
When he looked up at me, his eyes were blazing with turmoil. “I let shit happen in there that I shouldn’t have, Grace.”
Hearing so much pain in his voice was unbearable for me. I reached for his hand and threaded my fingers through his. His grip tightened around it. “There’s something in particular,” I deduced softly.
“Something haunting you.”
He scowled at the wall.
After what seemed like forever, he finally began to speak. “There was a kid. Nineteen. Stupid, cocky little kid. But he wasn’t a bad kid. I know bad. It seeps out of them. You feel it in the air around them, something heavy and dark that creeps over you and makes you shudder like someone is walking over your grave.
“Not this kid. It was all bravado. Got himself thrown inside for being an accomplice in an armed robbery. He used to swagger around, trying to convince everyone this was where he belonged, but he was scared and you could fucking smell it on him. Like blood in shark-infested waters.”
I felt a little sick just imagining where this was going. “What was his name?”
“Danny,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Danny Little. Tried to get every fucker in the place to call him the wee man. I tried to tell him he was pushing too hard, pissing the guys off…”
“Was he your friend?”
Logan frowned. “I think I was his. He told me everything about himself. About his mum and his wee sister. How he was just trying to take care of them, make life better for them since their old man had passed away. A fucking cliché of tragedy, this kid.
“Just a kid, Grace. I should have protected him.”
The agony in his voice brought tears to my eyes. “Logan…” It almost sounded like a plea.
He turned to me, guilt written all over him. “I knew they were circling. I didn’t do enough. They got to him… kept threatening to rape him. I told him it was just a bullying tactic, but they tormented him with the threat until they attacked him. They didn’t rape him, but they promised him that they would next time. I just told him to keep strong, that they were bluffing, toying with him. I wasn’t… I didn’t do enough.”