Page 19

LOGAN

I dozed off on the bus, my thoughts plagued by the look on Dean’s face when he fought back about his family. It was startling to see him so heated—rare for Dean—but clearly, there was a lot to unpack about his mother.

What he told me didn’t compare to or dismiss my own past, but it showed me a different side of him that I hadn’t realized existed before that moment. That was the Dean who disintegrated a bat against a tree, the one I had been looking for since the first time I saw him.

It rattled me.

The buzz of my phone finding service woke me, forty minutes from Harbor, and I was scared to look at how many more messages had flooded in since the other day. Once she realized they were being delivered again, she probably flipped out. Dealing with the fallout from camp was oddly worth it? The last few practices had been promising for a season that might actually be good. We had a chance to win if we could just keep our focus on the game and not on the issues underlying each and every player. Our personal problems needed to be left in the parking lot, which, for this group, was easier said than done. They wore their grievances like patches on their jerseys, on display for the world to see. It was more annoying than Dean trying to pry my favorite color out of me.

My answer wasn’t meant to get under his skin; I’d truly never had one.

I’d never stopped to think about it long enough to pick one.

Even after he had yelled at me, I sat there staring out the window, trying to decide, but nothing came to mind. Green was too… green. And blue was too bright, but also too dark and sad. Red seemed obnoxious, and maybe I only owned so much red because we got handouts at Lorette. Yellow was his, so I couldn’t have that or it would seem like I liked yellow because he liked yellow.

After a while, I realized that I was arguing with myself about the rainbow and got mad at the distraction. For a whole hour, I had forgotten every problem that itched under my skin whilst I just tried to pick a color.

Unsuccessfully.

Dean fell asleep an hour into the bus ride; his head leaned back against the seat, exposing his strong neck. His lips were slightly parted, his chest slowly rising and falling as he found peace in his dreams.

I was envious that his life didn’t seep into his sleep; it wasn’t easy to close your eyes and see your demons waiting for you.

An hour later, the bus turned, and his body shifted, the full weight sliding across the seat and resting against my shoulder. I hissed from the contact at first, but didn’t push him away. I just breathed through the burning that the connection brought on, and slowly counted the curls of his hair to distract myself. Each one was perfect—like honey-dipped straw.

I lifted my hand and ghosted around a solitary curl that rested against his forehead, wanting to touch it–needing to know how soft it was, but unable to bring myself to do it. His breathing hitched, and I dropped my hand as he stirred from his sleep to the realization that he had fallen over.

“Sorry,” he mumbled in a sleepy tone.

“You weigh more asleep,” I muttered, shifting away from him, creating space and wishing I hadn’t all at the same time.

“Where are we?” He asked, brushing his hair back and flipping his hat over on his head to conceal his messy curls.

“Twenty minutes out,” I estimated. “You snore.”

“I do not.” Dean rolled his eyes and looked around the bus. Everyone was awake, give or take, from what I could see, and their anxiousness to get home and into their beds was tangible.

My anxiety was high for a whole other reason.

The last two weeks at camp had been hard, but they were nothing compared to being stuck inside Dansby House with them. We hadn’t even pulled up to the stadium, and I could already feel the walls closing in on me.

As if he could read my mind, Silas’s head popped over the chair in front of us. His hair was messy from sleep, and he was definitely half awake, but he gripped the chair as he spoke. "I have you in the guest room downstairs on the main floor until we can figure out a room to put you in that won’t cause a fight.”

“You can put him in my room,” Dean offered, before I could say anything, and I groaned. “Ella is with Arlo, which means my room is the guest room, and I’m sick of sleeping with Van. He smells like an overheated hippo,” Dean complained.

“Uh—” Silas stopped to think about it.

“He can either bunk with me, or bunk with Mitchell…” Dean shrugged. “But I’m captain now. It’s literally the rule that I get my room back, and if it’s not, I’m making one right now.”

“Alright, alright.” Silas laughed. "You can have the captain's room.” He put his hands up in defeat and almost lost his balance as the bus turned into the Harbor stadium parking lot. “Your choice, Logan. Do you want the hippo or the chainsaw?”

“I do not snore!” Dean scowled.

I didn’t want either of them. I would almost have rather slept on the couch than have to share a room, but from the looks on their faces, it wasn’t an option.

“Tuck.” I shrugged. “I don’t want to know what an overheated hippo smells like.”

“Disgusting. It smells disgusting…” Dean grumbled and started to pack his backpack up, before slinging it over his shoulder and climbing off the bus.

I stayed in my seat until everyone else was off, and then slid my phone out of my pocket to finally answer a call from my mom.

It barely rang once.

“Joshua?” Her voice was manic through the phone, and I had to take a deep breath before confirming to her that it was me. “Where have you been? It’s been… it’s been…”

“Two weeks, Mom. I had a baseball thing,” I explained quietly.

“A baseball thing?” She scoffed. "That was more important than me? A baseball thing? You sound like him .”

I resisted the urge to snap at her. “What do you need, Mom?”

“I need my son to love me the way a son should love his mother.” She said it like it should have been under her breath, but she made sure it was loud enough for me to hear.

“Anything else?” I asked gently, just trying to avoid her getting wound up.

“Jimmy left and—”, she stuttered over her words, “he took that new stereo I bought and I was going to pawn it for cash…”

“How much do you need, Mom?” I asked her. The story didn’t matter. I didn’t even know who Jimmy was, and he couldn’t have been any better than the previous fifty guys.

She didn’t answer, and I could hear her in the background, rifling through cupboards, looking for something. My eyes were focused on the small crowd of players in the parking lot, just outside the blue-tinted bus window. They were so blissfully unaware of the challenges everyone else suffered.

“Mom,” I said again to get her attention. "How much money do you need?”

“This is your fault, you know.” She came back to the receiver. "If you were normal like the rest of us, you wouldn’t have gotten kicked off that team. But no…my crooked son had to fuck other little boys and now we’ve been cut off from…” She stopped, unable to say his name, but I could hear the pain in her voice. “And I can’t pay rent or buy groceries without that, Joshua. But you just had to play baseball! Follow in his footsteps!” She snarled. “Is it worth it?”

“Mom.” I sighed. "How much money do you need?”

“Throwing balls with your new family while your mother is starving!” She hissed.

“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said to her, knowing that visiting was the only thing that would stop the spiral of vicious insults happening over the phone. “Don’t leave the apartment. Don’t go looking for…”

“Jimmy?” She said, as if I should know his name. “That bastard is never getting back in my bed; piece of shit…” She trailed off in a slew of insults before she set the phone down on the counter without hanging up or saying goodbye.

I sat, listening to her destroy her apartment, the familiar sounds of her crashing from a high echoed through the receiver. Going down there was exactly what she wanted; yelling at me through the phone never gave her the same rush as doing it to my face.

Hanging up, knowing full well she’d call back the second she realized, I climbed off the bus and started toward my car. It was the oldest piece of shit on the lot, but it ran and that’s all that I needed. A way of getting to and from Lorette to keep my mother from ending up face down in an alley.

“Where are you going?” Dean’s voice was too warm and worried at my back.

“I have to go into the city,” I said.

“You were just there.”

“Some of us have lives outside of Harbor,” I bit out, reaching through the open window in the backseat to pop the lock on the car. I chucked my duffle bag in and turned to look at him. “I’ll be back. You can tuck me in later—how’s that sound?”

“Patronizing.” He rolled his pretty blue eyes at me, and I had to shove back the snarl that formed on my lips at the traitorous feeling of thinking it was cute. “Your girlfriend might not like it, though.” He smiled.

“If that’s you fishing, I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said as my phone vibrated again. I looked down to see the texts rolling through and shoved it away in my back pocket.

“Tell your girlfriend that.” Dean looked at the phone with a smug expression.

“You’re going to have to work a lot harder than that to get under my skin, Tuck,” I said. My tone was controlled, but all I wanted to do was get on the highway and scream at the top of my lungs.

The irritation building from the constant vibrating in my pocket, combined with Dean’s incessant need to figure me out, was making me lose my mind.

“Doesn’t look all that hard.” Dean smirked.

I wanted to hit him.

What would that solve? Nothing. It would simply be kicking the Hornet's nest, and they were already operating on a hair trigger with me as the target.

“You gonna make it into Lorette in that thing?” He asked next, when I didn’t respond fast enough.

“I made it here in this thing.” I scowled at him and popped the driver's side door. “Not everyone has a daddy to buy them a brand new truck,” I snapped, looking at the deep red vehicle behind him.

“It’s been sitting on the lot in the cold, but…whatever you say, Logan.” He stepped back from the car. "And it’s a Jeep , not a truck.”

“Oh, so twice as expensive. Did he wrap it up with a bow for you?” I rolled my eyes and slammed the car door in Dean’s face. I shoved the keys in the ignition and prayed that the car didn’t embarrass me. For the first time since I pulled it from the junkyard on Twenty-second Street, it started without trouble.

It had taken me two weeks to get it running—and a new block heater to keep it running—but it did its job when I needed it to, and I didn’t have to bus anymore. I pulled noisily from the parking lot, leaving the team behind, and for the first time in two weeks, I was finally alone.

I gripped the wheel tightly, inhaling as deeply as I could, and screamed.

I didn’t stop until I couldn't breathe, and then I did it all over again.

It felt fucking amazing.

Every ounce of malice poured out and dissipated into the air. I hadn’t realized how much pent-up aggression I was holding onto until that point, but with it all out of my body, I loosened my grip on the wheel and let my shoulders relax back against the cracked leather seat.

The engine gurgled, causing the car to sputter and skip.

“Fuck,” I swore, as smoke began to billow from beneath the hood.