Page 25

LOGAN

I sat in the closet for three hours before the door to our room at Dansby finally opened. I knew he’d come looking for me eventually, I just wished he hadn’t. Now I’d have to explain myself.

“Josh?” His voice was sturdy as always, kind and searching for me in the darkness despite our last rough interaction.

My lip throbbed and my cheek probably needed ice but I had gotten dressed and came straight here to find the solace in the silence. The rest of the team had gone to a party somewhere on campus and I was grateful when the loudest thing to welcome me into Dansby House was the creaking of the old floorboards.

I heard Dean stop, turn back and flick on the lamp beside his bed.

His tall frame cast a shadow across the floor to where I sat huddled in the closet and I did my best to straighten up and not seem so small but in his presence there was no denying how little I felt.

“What?” I said, harsher than I meant to be, but he didn’t flinch at my tone.

He kicked off his sneakers and peeled off the hoodie he was wearing as he walked toward me and sat on the floor across from me.

“Shouldn’t you be at a party?” I looked at him, curling up against the wall to keep myself from reaching out to him.

“You weren’t there,” he said, like it was just a simple fact and it resonated against the steel cage I kept my heart in.

“I should’ve known you wouldn’t take the hint. I don’t want to be around you,” I lied.

Dean just laughed at me.

“Liar,” he said gently. “We need to talk.” Dean chewed on the inside of his mouth.

“Do we?” I scowled at him but tried to keep my voice lighter.

“You kissed me, Josh. And... I…”

“Spit it out, Tuck,” I snapped.

“I liked it,” he confessed as he rubbed the crescent-shaped bruises that stained his inner wrist with the pad of his thumb. I had hurt him.

“I was fucking with you,” I said, trying to push him away but he just smiled at me.

“No, you weren’t,” he chuckled. "You don’t have to be that guy in here, it’s just us.” He looked around our room, his side so full of life, and mine was bare. No posters, no life. Just my bed and my bag.

“You don’t know me.” I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Stop pretending like you do, I’m not going to be Cael, I’m not going to fuck you in secret to make you feel better about yourself.”

“Hey now,” he smiled, and it was like the room got warmer. So easily he was able to change how I felt, balm the anger, soothe the pain. It was infuriating and exhausting for me. “I’m not the one sitting in the closet,” he joked.

He was smiling at me… I scoffed. Where was his anger? His frustration?

“And I don’t know you because you won’t tell me,” he said instead of getting mad about the Cael comment. “And for the record? You don’t get to use Cael’s secrets as ammo in this firefight.”

“Is that what this is? A firefight?” I snarled at him. "Or is this an integration?”

“Have you ever had a normal conversation, tough guy? Or is everything with you an argument?” Dean asked.

When you were born into a life that never wanted you, the answer to that question was always yes. The only thing I knew how to be and how to be well was angry. Argumentative. It kept me alive for all these years, and now Dean Tucker wanted something else? Something softer?

Fuck that.

“Do you even know what you’re arguing about?” he asked.

“God, go back to your party, Tuck, I don’t want you here.” I turned my head away to stare at the closet wall.

“There you go lying again,” Dean said. “I brought…” he looked around, his eyes catching his bag, he slid it over to us and pulled out some ice and Tylenol. “For…” he pointed to his own cheek and I reached out for the ice.

It stung as I pressed it to the open cut.

“Why did you do that for me?” He asked me after a tortuous beat of silence.

“I didn’t,” I denied it.

“Josh!” He snapped, his voice rising higher than I’ve ever heard from him, and I smiled in shock. “Now you’re smiling?” His entire body deflated.

“It’s funny when you get loud,” I said genuinely.

His cheeks turned red and he rolled back against the hardwood floor with a soft thud, closing his eyes and ignoring my jab.

“It’s a shitty word, and he directed it at you but it wasn’t just about you ,” I explained.

He sat back up on his elbows and looked at me.

“I got expelled from Lorette for attacking a fellow player,” I confessed to him. “Which, by the look on your face, you already knew. Silas is a rat .”

Dean tried to hide the smile that formed on his face at the insult.

“Ian,” he confirmed.

“Ian.” I nodded. I chewed on the inside of my mouth, unsure if I should even tell him the reason why, but the way he was looking at me told me that he was ready to hear it, whether or not I was ready to tell it.

“He found out some shit about my life, things I kept well hidden. He had been harassing me, minor stuff, things I could handle, brush off or ignore. I used to shower alone after all the guys left to hide the…”

Scars.

Dean sat up more and moved closer to me as he listened.

“He got the jump on me in the locker room showers one night,” I stopped because the bile was rising in my throat over the next sentence. I could feel the scar above my eye… “He slammed my head into the wall and I blacked out… When I woke up, he was—” I paused, trying to find a less harsh word, but there was nothing. "He was raping me with a smile on his face.”

Dean watched my every movement; each flinch, each twitch. Every single tense muscle he took note and he waited. I could see the questions on his face and the need to ask them, the want to understand but he stayed quiet.

“He wanted power over me and he got it,” I said with malice in my voice. "But he couldn’t hold on to it because he was stupid for thinking that I would just give in to it. I got up and I beat him until he couldn’t open his eyes because it felt good to do it. I could have stopped, but I didn’t.”

He remained silent, listening to every word I spoke.

“He wasn’t conscious when they dragged me out of the locker room, and I prayed to whoever would listen that he’d stay that way. Lifeless and unable to harm anyone.” I felt the cool water of the melting ice against my palm and realized I’d dug my nails deep into the plastic, and it was leaking down my wrist.

“I fought because I have had to for my entire life, and the moment I thought that I had found a safe place, somewhere I could let my guard down. Ian reminded me that a place like that doesn’t exist. Nowhere is safe, every conversation is a fight, no one has my best interest in mind, harming someone else is easy when it makes you feel better about yourself, and I will never let anyone do that to me again.”

“Understood,” Dean said quietly.

I quietly scoffed, of course, he’d just agree. Like it was that simple.

“Why does no one know what he did to you? They all think you snapped.”

“Because that’s what I told them at the committee meeting,” I said.

“That’s why you’re here,” Dean said, he was finally starting to connect the dots. “Silas was at that meeting, they were going to strip you of your position.”

“They were, but he convinced them that he could find me a place with the Hornets so I could finish my last year of school,” I said. “At the time I didn’t give a shit, I just wanted out of Lorette.”

“And now?” Dean asked.

“Now what?” I shrugged.

“Do you give a shit now?” His lips curled into a soft smile as I nodded.

I envied how easily he just listened.

“I’m sorry that happened,” he said just after, in the most delicate voice I had ever heard.

“It wasn’t the first time, but it was the last.” I swallowed, and I could tell he knew what I meant. He had seen the locks on my bedroom door. Locks I’d ripped off again and again, hauling on the doorknob and begging to be let out..

The sound of them clicking open as my mom got ready to let in another random man was branded into my conscious thoughts. Everywhere I went, so did that noise.

“How many?” Dean asked, clearly uncomfortable but still trying.

I curled my fingers into the hem of my shirt and tugged it gingerly over my head to expose my chest to him, sliding out from the shadows of the closet into the moonlight that shone through the window.

“She did it for money,” I said, looking down at the scars. “People will pay a lot for discretion and who better to keep secrets than a junkie desperate for money.”

I kept my head down as he slid closer, his leg brushing against mine but he was careful to create space. He was cautious not to touch me. I looked up at him and I could feel the tremble in my jaw as the water welled in my eyes.

“There’s that pity again, Tuck,” I murmured, barely getting the words out.

“Not pity, tough guy.” Dean shook his head.

“What is it then?” I asked.

“Admiration,” Dean whispered, his own voice tight with emotion.

It was hard to wrap my head around the idea that maybe instead of Dean being ashamed of me he was praising me for my strength. I wanted to fall back on my anger and snap at him, tell him he’s wrong or stupid but before I could even open my mouth to insult him and retreat back to my safe space he spoke again.

“You know that you’re safe here, right? You might not be happy, but…you’re safe.”

I’d just spent the last fifteen minutes stumbling through my trauma, pouring it out like it meant nothing. And Dean had successfully collected all the blood I spilled into his palms, looked me dead in the eye, and told me the one thing I’ve never heard in my entire broken and battered life.

You’re safe.