Page 40 of Best Kept Secret (The New York Thunder #3)

LOGAN

“ W here’d you get to last night, huh?” Happy sidles up next to me in the locker room after practice, shouldering me with a knowing smirk.

I cast a quick look around, breathing a relieved sigh to find the place Dallas-free.

“He’s in the showers.” Happy answers my unspoken question with a whisper.

“How was he after I left?” I ask, keeping my own voice down. “Did he seem sus?”

Happy makes a face. “I mean, he was asking if you two left together. But I just played dumb.” He shrugs.

“Man, I’m so screwed,” I groan, my head falling forward. I bang it against the top shelf of my cubby a couple of times for good measure.

“Do you really like this chick?”

“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth, glaring at him. “And quit calling her a chick .”

Happy bites back a grin, hands held up in defense with a wry, “Sorry.”

I roll my eyes, ignoring him, grabbing my phone from my gym bag .

“Maybe you need to tell him…”

I heave a sigh knowing he’s right. And honestly, if it were just me, I would tell Dallas.

Millie is worth way more than a punch in the face and a fine for breaching the bullshit player code of conduct.

But it’s not just me. She made a promise to her brother, and until she’s ready to tell him the truth, then I can’t say a word.

When the time comes, we’ll tell him together.

And he can kick my ass if he needs to. That’s a beating I’ll gladly accept.

A smile claims my face when I see three new text messages on my phone, all from Millie. And man, I don’t know if it’s normal for your heart to skip a beat just from a notification on your phone, but the way she affects me is something else.

But before I can read her messages, my phone shudders in my hand with a phone call.

Treetops.

My heart that had skipped a beat literally seconds ago suddenly settles like lead in my chest, and I scramble to answer the call as quick as I can.

“This is Logan,” I answer, flashing Hap a look to tell him to give me some privacy which he thankfully obliges and turns, busying himself in his cubby.

“Hi, Logan, it’s Kathleen Munro from Treetops.”

“Hi.” My brows knit together.

“I tried calling your father, but I can’t get through, and there’s been a—” The manager of my mother’s assisted living home hesitates, and my heart stops as anger flames my skin at my father ignoring her calls knowing damn fucking straight he isn’t allowed to do that.

“Your mother had an episode this morning. She was becoming violent to the staff and to the other residents, and she was harming herself. We’ve had to sedate her. ”

On a trembling exhale, I close my eyes, trying so hard to placate my climbing anxiety, but it’s pointless, my heart already starting to race. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

It normally takes me a good hour to drive from Manhattan to Treetops, but today I make it in under forty-five minutes.

Still dressed in my workout gear and running on empty, I don’t even lock my damn car as I race from the parking lot and up the tree-lined stone steps to the prestigious red brick building where my mom lives.

Pushing through the door, I’m panting for breath as I stop at the front desk, ringing the bell impatiently. An older lady I’ve never seen here before waddles out from the office, smiling kindly at me, and maybe I’m being a dick, but there’s no time for niceties.

“I’m here for Beth Cullen.”

“Oh, yes.” The woman acknowledges me with a nod, taking a seat and tapping something into her computer. And honestly, I don’t think she could move any fucking slower.

I tap my fingers against the counter, looking around for what, I don’t even know.

“Can I just go in?” I press, glancing at the secure door.

“One minute,” the woman says, continuing to type.

I bite my tongue before I say something I know I shouldn’t.

The door behind the receptionist opens, and Kathleen Munro walks out, her eyes widening when her gaze lands on me. “Logan, you’re here,” she announces, looking at the woman at the desk and trying yet failing to hide her annoyance. “Logan’s fine to go straight through,” she tells her.

The receptionist looks from me to Kathleen and back again, reaching over and pressing the button to release the latch on the secure door and, with a muttered thanks, I hurry inside, meeting Kathleen around the corner in the white-washed corridor.

“She’s still sleeping,” Kathleen says over her shoulder as she leads the way. “But she should be waking soon.”

As I follow her up the stairs and into a similar corridor, I suddenly feel a like a piece of shit.

I try to visit Mom as much as I can, but during the season my weekly visits tend to dwindle to every other week, sometimes even only once a month.

But as I glance through the open doors of the rooms we pass, catching glimpses of the residents inside, all of them alone and miserable looking, I realize it’s been more than a month since I was last here.

And that’s just not fucking good enough.

Kathleen stops at the door at the end, poking her head inside.

She offers me a sad smile, stepping aside, and I walk into my mother’s corner suite with the view of the gardens and the pine-covered hills in the background, my heart clutching painfully in my chest when I catch sight of her lying there in her bed.

She looks smaller, frailer than she did last time I was here.

Her skin sallow, eyes sunken, lips chapped, even her hair looks thinner.

The woman lying in that bed is a shadow of the woman I remember growing up who was so fun-loving and carefree, so full of life, the woman who used to dance around the kitchen in the morning as she cooked breakfast, the woman who snuggled on the sofa and watched cartoons with me all day when I had my tonsils out when I was nine.

This woman is like a ghost, and it causes my heart to crack open, my eyes stinging with tears.

I take a seat on the chair next to her bed, quietly clearing the lump of emotion from my throat as I reach over and place my hand over hers while Kathleen checks Mom’s vitals before smiling at me and walking out, leaving us alone.

Despite her fragility, my mother looks so peaceful, and I can’t help but smile, reaching up and gently stroking her cheek. I lean in to press a tentative kiss to her temple, whispering, “I’m here.”

When my mom first started showing signs of mental illness, my father never took it seriously.

He said she was just being dramatic. But I would leave the house in the morning and worry all day, terrified that by the time I’d get home, she’d be dead.

She attempted to take her life twice, and it was on the third and final time that she almost succeeded.

I was off at college when my dad called me to tell me he’d found her unresponsive in the bathtub but that she was alive.

I remember he sounded almost disappointed that she’d survived.

That’s when he sent her here, where she’s been ever since, slowly deteriorating.

Her official diagnosis is schizophrenia with trauma-induced psychosis.

The first few years, unless she was suffering a psychotic episode, she was okay when I would see her, but the last couple of years, she’s gotten so bad that most of the time I come here, she doesn’t even know who I am.

I love my mom with my whole heart, but sometimes I wish she would just go to sleep and never wake up because I know she’d fucking hate that this is what her life amounted to.

A soft murmur tears me from my thoughts and I turn, finding mom’s gray eyes watching me, a dazed, vacant look in her gaze. And no matter how far removed she is from the mom I remember, she’s still my mom, and there’s a familiarity in her face that I doubt will ever be taken away.

“Hey, Mom.” I smile, placing my hand on top of hers.

“Levi, what time is it?” Mom croaks, looking around. “You should be at school.”

I swallow around that painful lump in my throat. Wow. Today’s a bad day. “No school today, Mom.”

She relaxes some, sinking back against the pillows with a shaky breath.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “Do you need anything?”

She shakes her head, eyes flitting about the room, looking at everything and nothing at the same time.

“Is your father home from work?”

“Not yet, Mom.”

She looks at me again. “Did you feed Marshall?”

I press my lips together in a smile I hope appears genuine, but it’s hard; Marshall was our dog when we were kids, and he’s been dead more than ten years.

“Not yet, Mom,” I say again, my voice thick with emotion.

Mom’s lids droop and she starts to doze off again, but just before she falls asleep, she shocks me with her hushed, slightly slurred words. “I love you, Logi Bear.”

I stare at her for a long moment, taken aback. And it isn’t until she closes her eyes, and I see the steady rise and fall of her chest, when I know she’s asleep, that I release the breath I’ve been holding, allowing my tears to fall.

For the first time in years, she remembered me. Me. Not Levi.

A nurse walks in then, smiling at me as she moves to the side of the bed to the IV machine my mother is attached to, and I wipe my damp cheeks with my sleeve, clearing my throat again.

Another nurse walks in, and they start moving silently about the room, and I’ve been here enough to know that they’re getting ready to roll my mom as she’s not as mobile as she should be.

Standing, I lean in and press another kiss to mom’s forehead with a whispered, “I love you, Mom.” And then, nodding at the nurses, I walk out to give them some space and my mother some dignity.

It isn’t until I make it back to my car that the weight of what just happened sinks in.

Sagging back against the driver’s seat, I close my eyes, gripping the steering wheel as I take a few steadying breaths.

And then, bowing my head, I cry. I cry for my mom.

I cry for my brother. I cry for the father I never had.

But mostly, I cry for what was, and what I know will never be again.