Chapter Forty-Nine
Logan
I’d started sorting through what of my parents’ items in the house that I wanted to keep and what to toss.
They didn’t keep one photo from my childhood out on display. There was a box in Mom’s closet that hosted the few pictures of my innocence.
There was no part of me in this house. Something I never realized or thought I cared about until I was trying to find a piece of myself in their life.
There was none. I was nothing to them.
The first frame to smash against the wall felt good to my soul, so I just kept going. I was going to toss everything in this house anyway. The sadness and pain turned to anger. There was no ounce of remorse as I remodeled the house of the people who’d birthed me.
Callum and Tate tried to stop me, to calm me down, but I gave Tate a warning to back off before I punched him, still boiling from that anger. I didn’t regret that either. We all had our moments where we needed to fight to get the rage out. This was my turn.
When the anger bubbled over, I sat on the floor amid the wreckage. Attempting to let this place, these memories, and the old inhabitants go. Forgiveness was not on the horizon for now, but I knew enough to let this shit go for the moment.
Then, I heard her voice.
She’d come, and she could see what love did in my eyes. The pain of what I was feeling was shattered in broken pieces all over the floor.
I didn’t have the rage left in me to tell her to go away, to make her believe I was the asshole I felt right now. So, I just shut off my mind from her touch, from her comfort. She tried to reach me, an admirable attempt, but I’d made up my mind. She was not right for me. Love wasn’t right for me. I knew her inside and out, felt her pain and fears.
Knowledge was powerful, and with that knowledge, I was bound to hurt her. Maybe even more than that dick of an ex had. I couldn’t do it to her or to myself.
“I’m here,” she whispered over and over.
“I never asked you to be.” I stood, helping her up as I did, and then walked back up the stairs. I had papers to sign, and then I wanted to get the hell out of here. Forget this place.
None of my friends stopped me as I walked away. They knew I needed space, and they would give it to me for some time.
Mia stayed until nightfall and then said good-bye. Her echoed voice hit me with a sense of longing.
I grabbed my half-drunken bottle from last night and promised myself that, when I woke in the morning, I would move on. The past was in the past, and there was nothing I could control about it now.
It was time to get on with my life and what I wanted to do with it.
That was exactly the way I woke up. Feeling like I’d shed my depressed skin, I started getting my shit ready to head back home. The house would be donated along with everything in it to charity, and I felt better that at least some part of this awful place for me would turn into a haven for someone else.
Callum and Tate packed their bags as well and went to send a message to Mia that we were leaving on the next flight out, but I stopped them.
Of course, they ignored me and did it anyway once we made it to the airport, both of them glaring at me with disappointment for how I’d been treating Mia since she showed up with them.
“Yeah, you know you’re fucking up with her,” Tate grumbled, thinking he knew what was inside my head.
He didn’t. Hell, even I didn’t.
“I’m moving on.”
“No, you’re running and afraid of being with Mia. Of being in love,” Callum piped up.
I shot him a glare of my own. He wasn’t far off the mark, but it didn’t mean I had to like it.
“She’s not going to let you go. She knows the real you and will be there to help pull you out of this shit-storm,” Tate added.
“I figured you’d be happy. Now, Mia is free game for you.” It was a low blow, a hit that I didn’t need to make.
Tate or Callum would never touch a woman that one of us had been with.
