Page 17 of Liam (Preston Brothers #4)

Liam

Darkness fills my already closed lids, and I peel one eye open to see my brother Logan standing in front of me, blocking the sunlight filtering through the open garage.

I sit taller in my chair, already on the defense for whatever it is he might have to say. He lowers his eyebrows, confused by my presence. I’m sure he didn’t expect to find me here, alone, sitting on a camp chair facing the vast nothingness in front of me.

I match his confusion.

It’s midday on a Friday, and he should be at work.

His mouth moves, but I don’t hear what he says, and it’s only now I remember the headphones covering my ears, the same song playing on repeat for over an hour now. I lower the headphones to my neck and ask, “What?”

He motions to the portable CD player resting on my lap. “You still use that old thing?”

“Sometimes.” I shrug. “What are you doing home?”

“Forgot my wallet.” He looks up to the door of the apartment above us, where he lives with his girlfriend, Aubrey, then back at me. “Need to get gas.”

“You can’t use your phone to pay?”

“Forgot my phone, too.”

“Sucks.”

For a long moment, we just stare at each other, neither of us saying a word, and I don’t know what more he could want or why he’s still standing in front of me.

“Hey…” he says, finally breaking the silence. Thank God. “I’m sorry no one told you about Addie working at the cabin. I know how you like your own space, and trust me, I get it. We really should have run it by you first.”

Not at all what I was expecting him to say, but it’s been hard to predict Logan the past few years. When we were kids, he’d usually just glare at us, followed by a curse, then go off somewhere to get high. We all know what caused the recent change in him. Though, sometimes, I wish I didn’t.

I lower my gaze, focus on his shadow. “It’s fine,” I murmur.

“How is it with her there?”

“Also fine.”

His shadow shifts. Not to walk away, but to come closer. “You know, I was actually thinking of taking the rest of the day off.” Liar . “You want to do something?”

I was doing something, and that something was exactly what I wanted to be doing.

I glance up at him, try to read his mind the way Linc does with me.

Not surprisingly, it doesn’t work. I sigh.

Growing up, Logan was the brother I was the least closest to.

We just didn’t… click. Didn’t have anything that connected us.

With Luke, it was sports. Leo—he at least made at effort.

But Logan… I guess effort should go both ways, and neither of us really tried until after .

After we thought we might have lost him forever.

I mean— I thought that. After Logan’s insane, drug-fueled bender to help him cope with the demons of his past, Lincoln wanted nothing to do with him.

When Dad and my brothers were leaving to get him from jail, I remember Lincoln’s specific words: Let him rot in there .

And I remember my dad looking at me and asking if I felt the same. I told him I did.

I lied.

And I don’t even know why I lied, but it had always been me and Linc versus the world, and I often said I agreed with him even when I didn’t. The day we found out the truth about Logan’s past was the day I started separating who I am and who Linc is.

I’m not mad about Linc having those initial feelings—he’s just as entitled to them as anyone. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with him always .

Logan raises his eyebrows now, still waiting for a response. Do I want to do something with him? Maybe. But first—“Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

I lift the CD player between us. “Did you steal this for me?”

He chuckles. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “It was at one of Old Lady Laura’s garage sales. It was in a box with other—oh, wait. Yeah, I did steal it. But not for you.”

My laughter is quiet, unfamiliar, and Logan finally moves, going farther into the garage to drag another camp chair beside me. He sits, matching my position, saying, “The battery compartment was all rusted, anyway. I had to deep-clean it. She wanted two bucks for it. Can you believe that shit?”

“Scammer.” I peer at his profile as he stares ahead.

There’s nothing to see out there besides green grass and tall trees, but the way he’s looking at it, all relaxed—maybe even content —this might be all he needs.

This , to him, might bring him the peace I’m endlessly chasing.

Too bad it doesn’t have the same effect on me.

The view hadn’t changed much since the last time Logan and I sat together like this. Only, back then, it wasn’t just us. It was all the Preston boys. Even Dad.

“You remember the last time we did this?” he asks, and maybe Lincoln isn’t the only one who can read my thoughts.

I don’t respond, and so he continues, “You and Linc wanted a new dirt bike, and Dad said he’d buy you one if you cleared out this space.

” He glances behind him at the mess of boxes still pushed to the back.

“You never got that dirt bike, did you?”

“No,” I chuckle, shaking my head.

“Damn, how long ago was that?” Logan muses.

Without hesitating, I answer, “Seven years.”

He was fifteen, and we were twelve, and like most twelve-year-old boys on a mission, Linc and I started off strong with the cleanup.

But, like most boys, we lost focus pretty damn quick.

For Linc, it was a bag of old coins he swore were worth millions.

For me, it was Mom and Dad’s old CD collection.

There was an old stereo amongst all the junk, the wires nothing but a pile of tangled mess. Even if we could untangle them, I had no idea how to connect it all. I remember glancing at Lincoln, questioning, and he said, “Ten bucks says he’ll tell you to fuck off.”

Of all of us, Logan was the most capable with electronics, and so I found him in his room and told him the situation.

Surprisingly, he didn’t tell me to fuck off.

Not only did he connect the stereo and get it to work, but he talked me through it all, showing me step by step where things go and why.

It was the first time I recall Logan willingly spending time with me.

This, right now, is the second.

The weather’s similar on both occasions—just warm enough to tingle your flesh, but not enough to irritate it. That day, we went through our parents’ music collection, playing song after song, sometimes appreciating them, but most of the time, laughing at them.

Dad must’ve heard us from inside the house, because he came out to see what we were doing.

Then, slowly, the rest of my brothers joined in.

We all gathered in the garage, sitting on camp chairs, facing the open door while Dad played DJ.

Occasionally, he’d share a memory of a song, most of them having to do with our mother.

“Wonderwall” by Oasis played four times in a row before he moved on.

But what he played next wasn’t much better.

I remember all of us sitting quietly still as “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton played through the speakers.

The quality was low, filled with pops of static, but we all understood the lyrics.

We all felt them.

For a long time after the song ended, none of us moved. None of us made a sound. Then Lucas, my oldest brother, turned to Dad and said, “We all miss her, Dad.”

Dad shook his head. “It’s not about a man losing his wife. It’s about a dad losing his son…”

I clear the emotion from my throat now, pushing away the memories, but not far enough that they disappear completely. “Remember how Dad played us all these sad fucking songs and told us their meanings, their backstories?”

“Jesus,” Logan murmurs, shaking his head. “I’ve never been able to listen to ‘Wonderwall’ since.”

I remove the CD from the Discman Logan stole and get up for the first time since I sat down. Logan watches me make my way to the stereo, insert the disc, and hit play. “You remember what he told us about this one?”

Logan waits for the intro to play through, then nods a few seconds into the poppy tune. “I know the song, but I can’t remember the story behind it.”

I lower the volume on “The Way” by Fastball and sit down beside him again.

And then I tell him.

The lyrics of “The Way” are about an older couple who ditch their lives, driving off before dawn to chase an endless summer.

They drink, talk, enjoy each other’s company, and when their car breaks down, they continue on foot.

The chorus paints a picture of a golden road free of hunger, cold, and aging—the dream, some might say.

The song is upbeat, the melodies boppy, and the lyrics…

the lyrics are almost whimsical. But the truth?

The truth is based on an elderly couple from Texas, who drove to an event only ten miles from their home and never returned.

The wife had Alzheimer’s, and the husband was recovering from brain surgery.

When they first disappeared, a reporter wrote a series of articles about them, and the bassist for Fastball read the couple’s story and romanticized the idea of them taking off to live a carefree life together.

It wasn’t until thirteen days after they first went missing that they were found four hundred miles away. They were still in the vehicle, which had veered off the side of the road, hidden in brush.

The band had already finished writing the song when they found out about their deaths.

My chest tightens at the memories of that day, of listening to the song for the first time.

I don’t look at Logan when I tell him, “You all talked about how devastating it was, and obviously, that’s true.

But… you guys couldn’t understand why anyone would want to just pack it all up and leave everything behind, and I…

I remember just staying quiet, because I kind of agreed with the song’s take on it all.

The idea of just getting up one morning before dawn and disappearing… ”

Logan remains silent as I work through my thoughts, my memories.

I was drawn to the idea. Not so much disappearing, but more… escaping , I guess, and even at that age, I understood why. They all talked about their futures, jobs, wives, kids, the works. I could never see myself beyond my current state.

I still can’t.

“That day was the first time I realized something was different about me,” I murmur. “Not because of how people saw me from the outside, but because of how I felt on the inside.”

Logan’s so quiet, I barely hear him. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Liam.”

Heat burns behind my eyes, and I close them, hoping he doesn’t notice. “I didn’t say wrong. I said different.”

Logan doesn’t respond to that, just lets the song continue to play. I gather my thoughts, my courage, and turn to him before opening my eyes. He’s already watching me, his vision clear and right on mine, and I wonder what he sees, what he thinks of me.

The day after I discovered the CD collection, he found me in the garage, listening to the same song through an old pair of headphones connected to the stereo. “You know you can get music on your phone now?” he’d cracked.

“I know, but it’s different like this. It’s less… clear,” I’d told him. But what I really meant was, it’s more open to interpretation.

A few days later, he found me in there again, doing the same thing. Then he handed me the portable CD Player. “Now you can listen to it anywhere.”

Everyone’s always said that Logan is the black sheep of the family.

He had a fuck this attitude no one could match and gave zero shits about what people thought of him.

But he was still popular at school and always had a ton of friends, no matter how fickle those friendships were.

Prior to Aubrey, he could get any girl he wanted. He chose the best one.

Besides his sometimes (now understandably) shitty attitude, he was just like our older brothers, Lucas and Leo. Just like Lincoln and Lachlan.

Logan isn’t the black sheep of the family.

I am.

But, there have been moments, like the day he gave me the CD player, and right now, when I think… maybe neither of us is black. Maybe we’re the same shade of gray.

He clears his throat now, adjusting in his seat, as he keeps his eyes trained on mine. “So… are you going to tell me why you’re sitting here, listening to that song? I mean, why now ?”

I push out a breath, then inhale slowly —just like the truths and realizations that have haunted me since I sat on the dock with Adelaide.

Piece by piece. Little by little. “Because I don’t want to think like that anymore.

I guess it just recently dawned on me that there’s so much I don’t see.

So much I don’t know . About the world, and about people , and…

I don’t know. It’d be a damn shame if I continued this life blind to it all, you know?

” I kick out my legs, get more comfortable accepting my new mindset.

“I gotta start looking up more… start looking deeper than what’s on the surface. ”

Logan cracks the tiniest of smiles. “Promise me something?”

“What’s that?”

“If you ever decide to pack up your shit and disappear, let me know, okay?”

“Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”

He shrugs. “Not if I want to ride shotgun.”