Page 11 of Every Sunset

LOGAN

“Are you gonna tell me what happened with Anna earlier?” I asked.

I had been holding my tongue, hoping my brother would tell me himself.

I hadn’t wanted to break the spell of the great evening we’d had.

Maddox had been so much more like the man I knew him to truly be as he stayed for dinner, and formed a friendship I never expected to see with Anna, and more shockingly with Max.

We had played football together, my brother, Max, and I.

How long had it been since I saw my brother do something so normal and relaxed?

How long had it been since I had seen him smile the way he had when Anna said something funny?

Too fucking long was the answer to every one of those questions.

“I pushed her. Asked her who she was running from,” Maddox told me as he continued to load up the dishwasher.

“Fuck Maddox! What were you thinking? We’re lucky she didn’t just run,” I growled as I looked through the kitchen window and out to the guest house with worry. Would they run now, with the darkness for cover?

“She considered it, but I told her she was safe here. She won’t run again,” he told me confidently.

“Did she tell you anything we can use to keep them safe?” I pushed, desperate to know what Anna and Max were facing.

I could tell myself all I liked that I had a duty of care because I was their landlord and they lived on our property, but the truth was that it was so much more than that.

I was falling for Anna in a way I had never fallen for any woman before.

A part of me felt the need to make sure she was safe and cared for.

“Not really. Just that no one would be coming looking for them. Whoever he was, I’m pretty sure he’s either dead or behind bars,” Madd told me.

“Then why was she crying?”

“She just….broke, I guess? I was just asking about Max. I told her he seemed mature for his age and she fell apart. I swear I wasn’t an asshole.

I held her and she sank into me. I think she needed it, to just let out whatever she was dealing with and know she wasn’t alone.

” He had paused in his task of loading dirty plates and was just staring into space as he sometimes did. I hated the pain I saw on his face.

“You’re not alone either, Madd. I’m right here and I always fucking will be.

You can talk to me if you need to,” I told him.

It was the same thing I had been telling him since he left the hospital a year earlier, but he’d never been receptive to it before, always just telling me to fuck off, or pushing me away in some other way.

“I know,” he said this time, as he met my eyes and gave me a single nod.

To anyone else it might have felt like a brush off, but to me, after the last year of him shoving me away time and again, those words meant a fuck of a lot.

“We need to keep an eye on them,” he went on, changing the subject as he nodded through the window toward the guest house.

“Something bad happened to them and neither of them are as good as they’re pretending to be. ”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Anna had a kidney transplant last year. She told me earlier. I asked Max about it while we were moving the groceries and he told me he’s worried she’s not taking care of herself enough ever since. He mentioned that she’s barely sleeping.”

“I’ll do some research and we’ll keep an eye on her. Maybe we should invite them over here more often,” he suggested.

“That mean you’re gonna be around more to keep an eye on Anna?”

“Don’t fucking start with me, Logan,” he said flatly, turning back to the dishwasher and resuming stacking it. “I told Anna I’d be here for her – that we both would. I want to keep that promise, but don’t think for one second them being here and me caring is some miracle cure to all my problems.”

“Is there a cure for being an asshole?” I joked, deciding not to push him any further for that night at least. He was home and not at my bar drinking himself into a stupor. I would take that as progress.

***

As soon as the clean up of the kitchen was finished Logan had headed into town to relieve his manager at the bar and shut things down for the night.

I was relieved he’d left. I couldn’t stand to see the way he was constantly glancing at me with that annoying half smile and so much fucking hope in his eyes that this was me taking some huge first step into pulling myself together.

He was right when he said I was an asshole.

I didn’t used to be, but since the attack and my resulting injuries I had become the king of the assholes, especially with Logan who had literally done everything in his power to try and get me through it all.

But he couldn’t fix me, no matter how hard he tried.

No one could fix what wasn’t there to fix.

No one could change what had been done to me, leaving me a shell of the guy I used to be.

No one but me could make me come to terms with the life and body altering repercussions I had been left with and find a way to move forward, and I wasn’t ready for that.

Or more like I didn’t want to come to terms with it all and move forwards.

I wanted my life from before back and without it I just didn’t see the fucking point anymore.

I was lost, trapped in a past I could never get back to and too terrified to look for a future I didn’t damn well want.

That was what I had seen in Anna earlier, that lost feeling.

She, like me, had no idea what she was doing or where she was going next and it terrified her just the way it terrified me.

That’s what was driving me to help her and the only reason I wasn’t blind drunk that night, like I usually would be and had been every night for months now.

The alcohol helped me to block out the pain, mental and physical, and it made me feel numb, which was the only feeling I craved anymore.

But not that night. That night I had wanted to get to know Anna and Max.

I wanted Anna to believe that I could be more than the fool drunk she helped the night before, so she would come to me when she needed to.

That was why I was sat out on the steps outside the back door with the one and only single beer I was allowing myself that night.

It was probably creepy that I was just sat watching the guest house, but I felt the need to be close.

I just needed to know Anna, and her kid were safe.

That single thought seemed to be drowning out all of the pity and wallowing that had consumed my thoughts for so long before they came along.

I groaned as pain throbbed through my lower leg where my prothesis sat and I leaned down to rub it. I was considering taking the thing off for the rest of the night when a roaring cry came from the guest house, startling me and instantly causing my adrenaline to hit hard.

I was on my feet and moving as fast as I could across the lawn before I even registered what I was doing.

More cries rang out through the small house and I saw lights flick on inside.

A hundred possibilities raced through my head, but the main one was that it wasn’t Anna making that sound.

Someone was hurting Max and my instant conclusion was that someone had come after them and found them.

I was at the door of the guest house when I heard Max yell for his mom in such a terrified, panicked tone that I didn’t even hesitate to put my shoulder right through the front door. It gave instantly, my strength increased by my pumping adrenaline.

“MOM!” Max roared again, and I heard a crash that was definitely coming from upstairs.

All of the fear and paranoia that had ruled my entire life for the last year was gone as I grabbed a baseball bat that sat in a stand near the door and moved up the stairs as silently as I could with the stupid fucking prothesis.

Luckily, I had mastered getting up stairs with the damn thing, but I was nowhere near as stealthy as I had once been.

“Max, it…it’s okay, honey,” I heard Anna’s voice cry when I reached the top. She was definitely crying and I could hear the tremble in her words even from where I stood.

Another crash from the bedroom to my right and I was moving fast. Was someone hurting Anna and making Max watch? Was Max trying to fight back. He was tall and pretty muscled for his age, but I doubted he’d have much chance against a fully grown adult.

I paused outside the closed door of the room that I knew they were in and forced myself to take a breath. My training kicked in and my adrenaline seemed to calm some. Feeling focused and ready to handle whatever I walked in to, I kicked open the slightly ajar door and strode into the room.

Anna screamed from where she stood, close to the door, so I instantly looked for Max, expecting him to be trying to fight someone off of him with the loud crash I heard, and he was, but it wasn’t a person.

He was stumbling around, crashing into the dresser which had been over turned.

His eyes were open but it was obvious to me he was trapped in a night terror.

He was visibly shaking and tears were on his cheeks as he clutched a hockey stick which he was waving around, trying to fend off whoever he was seeing.

“Maddox?” Anna whimpered as she seemed to take me in. I turned back to her and saw fear in her stance and on her face. I instantly dropped the bat to the side of the room and tried to calm down some.

“I heard from outside. I thought you were being hurt,” I tried to explain as I kept an eye on Max.

“He won’t wake up. I ran in here as soon as I heard him, but I….I can’t even get close to him,” she gasped.

“Has this happened before?” I asked as I weighed up my options. I knew I shouldn’t wake him, but he was going to hurt himself if I didn’t.

“Not like this. It’s not his fault. He…he‘s having a nightmare. He’d never h-hurt anyone!” she cried.