Page 70 of The Fire Between High & Lo (Elements 2)

I shrugged my left shoulder.

He shrugged his right.

We watched Erika destroy the house, before she put it together again, and I wondered the whole time if I was really strong enough to face my past again. I didn’t know how it would feel, coming face to face with Ma.

I didn’t know how strong I was.

Chapter Twenty-One

Alyssa

“Logan?” I whispered, knocking on his bedroom door. He’d been in his room for the past thirty minutes, and I could only imagine where his mind was traveling to after finding out about Kellan’s cancer. I listened to him moving around the room before the door opened. He sniffled a little and ran his hand over his face before narrowing his eyes at me.

“Yeah?”

His ey

es were red and slightly puffy. I wanted to reach out to him and wrap my arms around him, pulling him in closer to me, apologizing for his hurts and suffering.

You were crying.

“I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing,” I softly spoke.

“I’m fine.”

I stepped into the doorway a little, growing closer to him, knowing he was far from fine. Kellan was Logan’s world. When he left for Iowa, he only kept in contact with his brother. When he ignored all of my calls, he answered every single one of Kellan’s.

“You’re not okay.”

“I am,” he nodded, a cold stare in his eyes. “I’m fine. I’m not gonna fall apart and shit, Alyssa. People get cancer every day. And people beat cancer every day. He’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

Any normal person would’ve missed it, the small tremble in his bottom lip, but not me. I saw it, the way his heart was currently inflamed with pain. “Lo, come on. It’s me. You can talk to me.”

“And who are you to me, exactly?” he hissed, a bitterness coming through his tone. “How long did you know? How long did you know he was sick?”

My lips parted, but he kept talking.

“So you did know? One thousand and ninety messages, Alyssa. You left me one thousand and ninety messages. You called my phone one thousand and ninety times, but you couldn’t take the time to call and leave just one message telling me my brother had cancer, the same cancer that killed our grandfather?” he hissed, lifting his hand and grabbing his doorknob. He slammed the door shut, and I wasn’t surprised. Everything he said was harsh, but it wasn’t untrue. I did know about Kellan’s cancer for a while, but it wasn’t my place to say anything. Kellan made me swear that I wouldn’t.

My fingers landed against the door, and I closed my eyes. “I live at the last house on the corner of Cherry Street and Wicker Avenue. It’s a yellow house with a piano shaped flower pot on the front porch. You can stop by if you need to, Logan. If you need to talk to someone. You can come whenever, anytime you need to.”

The door swung open, and I gasped lightly as he stepped forward, hovering over me. His face was hard, and where reddened eyes once existed moments ago, they were replaced by an angered stare. “What don’t you fucking get?” he hissed. He stepped toward me as I stepped back. We kept this up until my back was against the hallway wall, and his body was inches away from mine. Our mouths were so close that if I leaned in, I could’ve felt the lips I used to always want against mine. His words fell from his tongue, stabbing me with each syllable. “I don’t need you, Alyssa. I. Don’t. Need. You. So if you could do me the favor and stop acting like we are friends, that would be great. Because we aren’t. We will never be friends again. I don’t need you. And I don’t need your fucking supportive shoulder.”

He walked back to his room and shut the door. I took a few deep inhales, my nerves shaken. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding destructively against my chest as I walked to the living room to grab my jacket and toss on my tennis shoes.

Who was that?

That wasn’t the same boy I knew so many years ago. He wasn’t my best friend.

He felt like a complete stranger to me.

“Are you okay?” Erika asked, frowning my way.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Can you just be a bit easy on him, Erika?”

“Seriously?” she huffed annoyed. “He just snapped at you, literally snapped. And you are asking me to be easy on him? I am two seconds away from telling him to get the heck out of my house.”

“No,” I quickly said, shaking my head. “No. Don’t. He’s going through a lot. I mean, I couldn’t even imagine… If it were you…” My words faded. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle finding out that my sister had cancer. “Just give him a break.”