Page 37 of Structure of Love

Well, shit. I couldn’t quite look him in the eye, my blush reaching atomic levels. “Cooper called me just as I was leaving.”

“Ohhhh.” He came in closer to sling an arm around my shoulders, a gentle sort of hug. “Tell you what, I think we’ve hit the brews part of the evening. Let’s warn Joey that he needs to replace the wood on this lane, get a beer, and talk.”

The gentle way he handled me undid my embarrassment by half. I still felt a touch mortified, but he was taking the situation in stride and wasn’t ribbing me. I wanted to kiss him in thanks. He paid attention, this man, and it was hard for me to reconcile his tales of being an angry teenager when he was such an incredibly patient and attentive man.

I ordered a beer and fries, because hard conversations went down better with fries, and we snagged a back table. It gave us a buffer from people, and this was a conversation I wanted only him to hear.

Logan scooted in close, our knees brushing together, and the warmth in his brown eyes almost undid me. “All right. So your brother called, but you still came on the date. First, good job.”

“It’s not what you think.” I sighed, picking at my fries. “I actually called Zar.”

“Who’s Zar, again?”

“Zar is the second childhood friend. He’s a cop in Plymouth. Also dating Asher, for reference.”

“Okay, got it.”

“Anyway, Cooper called me, and he was so high I’m honestly amazed he remembered how to work a phone, and said he was being thrown out of the park. Either I picked him up or he’d spend the night in the drunk tank. I almost left him there.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because it would be worse tomorrow. My mother would have lost her mind if I hadn’t gotten her precious baby and brought him home. She’d have given me hell. I wouldn’t have lived it down for months. I just…I didn’t want to miss our date. I couldn’t make myself do that. So I called Zar.”

“Does Zar normally help you?”

“No. Normally, no one helps me. I think this is the first time I’ve ever asked someone to handle Cooper. Zar owed me a favor, though, and was willing to help this one time.”

Logan hummed softly, processing.

Ugh, the situation felt shitty, like I’d still somehow screwed up somewhere.

“Can you walk me through your family dynamic?”

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. “Which part?”

“Either? Any? What you feel comfortable talking about?”

None of it, to be honest, but something in me wanted to tell him. Wanted to explain. Just so he knew where I was coming from, if nothing else. “Dynamic between us brothers?”

“Well, yeah. Why your brother is the pampered one, why you’re the responsible one?”

Everything might make more sense to him with context. “It was about, er, twenty years ago now? Sounds about right. My mom was driving us somewhere, I forget where, and Cooper and I were in the back seat. Cooper was three, I was twelve. We’re a little over nine years apart in age.”

“Got it. Keep going.”

“Anyway, Mom lost control of the car. We slid on the ice and the car rolled. I had some bumps and bruises, but I was okay. Mom was knocked unconscious. Cooper was thrown from the vehicle, and he was pretty badly hurt. As a rambunctious three-year-old, he was constantly undoing the car seat buckle despite Mom’s warnings, and it cost him. He was just so small, the collision had a huge impact on him. I was able to crawl through the car, find my mom’s purse, and call 911.”

“Whoa, at twelve you did that?”

“Fortunately, I was always levelheaded, even as a kid. I knew we had to get help ASAP, so I called. The poor operator had to figure out where we were from the clues I could give her. Ambulance was dispatched, we were all taken to the hospital, but it took two surgeries to put Cooper back together. He healed fine from it, he barely has a scar to remember the accident by, but it triggered something in my mom. I think she blamed herself for it. She’s always been a wine mom, even then, and I suspect she wasn’t perfectly sober that day. Not that she’d ever admit to it. She shot into being an overprotective parent, and there wasn’t anyone to check her. Her parents were long dead, so are my dad’s. My dad works on an offshore oil rig. He’s rarely home.”

Logan’s face screwed up in a grimace. “So she overcompensated with Cooper, and it’s only gotten worse over the years.”

“In a nutshell. Cooper could do no wrong after that accident. She babied him to the point of uselessness. I, somehow, became another adult for him. Can you imagine? At twelve fucking years old, I was now the man of the house. I had to take care of Cooper. The only escape I got was playing with Asher or Zar, and you can bet I basically lived at their houses to escape the hell my house had become. I moved out the very day I turned eighteen. Still, my mother expects me to take care of Cooper. It’s like she can’t move on from that day.”

“She likely hasn’t. I take it she never got therapy?”

“Doesn’t believe in it, which is ironic considering she’s the one who needs it the most. My dad stopped trying, almost as if he doesn’t care. I can’t get him to care—no one can. And she won’t change.”