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LOGAN

H e was struggling.

Suffocating.

I reached out under the table, swallowing my own panic and wrapped my fingers around his thigh, squeezing just enough to get him to breathe.

When I had climbed into the passenger seat I couldn’t have imagined dinner going like this. Dean had a tendency to dramatize but his family was whole other level of fucked up. They passed information about conversion clinics back and forth while stuffing their mouths with food.

The kids laughed and Dean’s father just kept drinking his whiskey in judgmental silence like nothing was happening. It was baffling that none of them realized how dehumanizing their conversation was and worse that they weren’t even including Dean in it.

The first time he said Sir, instead of Dad was a shock. But to hear him call his Mother ma’am as she berated his life and choices. I rarely felt the need to be angry for others, my own life was full to the brim with hate but today, in that moment of absolute disrespect; I made space for Dean.

I squeezed his thigh again and he inhaled a shaky breath as his mother continued to question him about things.

“I don’t know if I can…” Dean stumbled over the words. “Maybe a press release?”

He was caving to their requests.

The man I was so sure was made of stone was crumbling like a sandcastle in the tide.

He was going to write a statement and say what? Lie to everyone, tell them he wasn’t gay? Live his life still suffocating from the pressure of his family and buried beneath all the lies they want him to tell.

I watched as he stumbled through the degrading conversation and pulled my phone from my pocket.

911

Where are you?

I dropped the pin with our location and shoved the phone back in my pocket, turning my attention back on Dean who looked like he was going to be sick. They weren’t anywhere near finished with him.

His brother had pulled out his phone and was going through his contacts of women to set Dean up with all while Dean sat there and took the abuse. Part of me was tempted to flip out, to get him out of there but the logical part of me could see that it wouldn’t make anything better.

And Dean and I weren’t close enough for me to play white knight.

It was awkward and frustrating.

Time seemed to crawl by as they listed off women, each name making Dean flinch in protest, but he continued to offer them a soft smile that made me sick.

“What about Kerri-Ann?” Lianna asked, and Harvey scowled. “She’s pretty, brown hair,” she described her to him but it wasn’t getting them anywhere until she said, “smart but not smart enough to realize your brother is gay.”

“Oh! Kerri! Yeah…” Harvey nodded but I still wasn’t sure if he actually knew what his wife was talking about. “You just need to buckle down, show them they were wrong until we can get this fixed,” he said to Dean.

“Franklin,” his mother chimed in again, her voice sickly sweet like nails scraping along chalkboards. I knew the tone well, my mother used it often when she wanted something or was about to say the most fucked up thing she could think of in the moment.

Dean tensed in my grip, bracing for impact.

“We love you and we love who you are, but as a family we’ve worked too hard for our stations in life for something like this to come out. You’re so sick and we can see you struggling, the cry for help was heard so just let us take care of you now?” She said and it felt like someone had poured ice water down my back.

I could only imagine how jarring that was for him.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The words were strangled, like he was choking on the air in his lungs, but he got them out, his eyes watering and his muscles so tight I could see the way they flexed in his neck.

She opened her mouth to say more but was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Franklin, answer the door,” his father said, and I watched Dean rise from the table.

“Yes, Sir,” he said through a clenched jaw before leaving me at the table with the vultures.

“My apologies for the brash conversation, Josh,” his mother cooed. “We don’t see Franklin much these days, and some heavy topics were discussed, but I can trust you’ll keep all this to yourself?”

I smiled at her but didn’t answer.

It was tight, and laced with disgust so loud that her expression changed from uneducated confidence to panicked fear the longer she stared at me.

“I should check on Dean,” I said, using the name he liked rather than Franklin on purpose to let her know exactly where my loyalty lay. I rose from the table slowly. “Dinner was delicious,” I said, looking down the table at everyone else before meeting her gaze again. “The chicken was overdone.”

I pushed my chair in and made my way through the house without another word, stopping only because Dean stood just outside the open front door. His entire body was curled against Silas, I had never seen a man that size break down so hard. Silas’s hand was against Dean’s neck, holding him still while he sobbed. The guy we had once assumed never broke, the unshakeable golden retriever, had been split in two and was hemorrhaging on the front step of his family's townhouse.

I hadn’t thought Silas would actually show—my faith in him was still strangled by the past but without questions he had dropped whatever he was doing and had been here in record time. For the first time since meeting him, I was grateful. Gray eyes watched me as I walked from the house and closed the door behind me, giving the two privacy from everyone inside. The sound of the door clicking had Dean standing up straight and turning away from me to wipe his face with his hands.

Silas patted his back and waited until he was ready.

“I should go back in there,” Dean’s voice cracked, and Silas grabbed him by the arm.

“Absolutely not,” he growled.

“They’ll just take it as an act of hostility.” He cleared his throat but Silas’s grip held firm.

“From where I'm standing you and Josh did the least hostile thing you could have done,” he said. “From here on out you leave the communication with them to me.”

Dean scowled. “I can’t ask you to do that,” he said.

“You aren’t asking, I’m telling you. It’s an order.” Silas adjusted his grip to pull Dean down off the step gently. "Whatever happened in there was bad enough for that asshole to text me. You do not go back in that house or I’ll drag you out of here.”

I snorted that time and both of them looked at me with dirty expressions. “What?” I shrugged. “The guy weighs, like, two-fifty—no way you’re dragging him anywhere.”

“It was…” Silas sighed but the joke had returned a light to Dean’s blue eyes that I hadn’t seen for nearly two hours.

“It’s okay,” Dean said with a tight nod. "I hear you, Doc, but it’s not that simple,” he said.

“ It is , walk yourself to your car, get in and go back to the Nest. Now.” Silas stared at him, and I could see Dean thinking about the options but Silas wasn’t going to back down and I was glad for his pushy attitude for the first time ever.

“It’s a Jeep,” Dean groaned and rolled his eyes but I could see him relaxing a little bit with the way the conversation was going. “Thank you for coming,” he said.

“Always.” Silas tapped two fingers against his chest, then clapped Dean’s shoulder to move him in the right direction. “Go,” he said as the front door opened again. “Mr. Tucker, how’s your Sunday?” I heard Silas turn on his business voice as Dean and I started toward his Jeep.

There was an inkling of guilt leaving Silas to deal with the fallout, but the main priority was getting Dean away from it.

“Keys,” I said to him as we approached the curb.

“No.” He shook his head and tried to walk around me but I stepped in front of him and held out my palm with one hand, yanking open the passenger door with the other.

“You aren’t driving like this,” I said. I didn’t care that he had painted some fake smile on, I’d seen that look a hundred times—standing in my bathroom mirror, practicing it so no one would ask questions. Becoming Joshua Logan, pitcher with the cocky attitude and handsome smile all to protect Josh, the beaten down, angry little kid.

Dean watched me for another moment before digging the keys out and dropping them in my palm. He slipped into the seat in silence, and I closed the door on him. Silas heard the sound, briefly looking over his shoulder at me and nodded at me as Dean’s father continued to speak in quiet, quick sentences.

I climbed in and closed the door behind me, starting the engine before he could argue, getting us out of there. It wasn’t until we were moments from the house that Dean finally opened his mouth.

“Thank you,” he said, the sound was too quiet and too broken. It slithered beneath my armor and inched its way toward my guarded heart.

“I’ll help you with the press statement,” I said, ignoring the way his little, cracked gratitude made me feel and turning into the driveway of Dansby House.

“Okay,” he said and as soon as the engine died he was out of his seat and disappearing into the house. I tried to follow but it was clear he didn’t want that so I grabbed my books from the dining room table and sat down to write.