Chloe
After dinner and the slightly awkward sort of break-up, I called Logan’s phone on the walk back to my car to see what he wanted earlier. Cassie answered and something inside me twisted. Why didn’t he answer? That was so unlike him.
“Thank God, Chlo! I wanted to call earlier but I remembered you were out with Rhys,” she said.
“What’s going on? Logan called but I was at dinner. Where is he?”
“He came home about ten minutes ago drunk and covered in lipstick.”
“What?” He was past that. He’d been doing so well. Shit, he’d called me an hour ago, was that before he’d lost it?
“I don’t know what’s happened, all I know is that he’s relapsed and barely making sense.”
I picked up my pace, jogging to my car. Rhys peeled away but I didn’t have enough time to worry if he just drove like a crazy person when he was alone or if I’d really hurt his feelings. “Is he awake?”
“Yeah, laying on the sofa having a full conversation with my dad about random crap.”
“Good. Keep him awake; kicking his arse will be so much more effective if he’s aware of it. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” I hung up, ripping my car door open so hard I almost knocked it into the car next to me. Bloody boy!
As mad at him as I was it also worried me why he was drinking again. There was no way on earth he was going back there. Recently, he’d been a much better person, better than before Jace died even. He didn’t use women at all now, well, until this evening, apparently.
It took me a little over ten minutes to get to his house, I’d purposefully driven a little slower so I could think, try to work out why he’d fallen and what I was going to do about it. He didn’t let me lose myself to grief and my hermit-like state and I sure as hell wasn’t letting him lose himself again.
I stormed through the front door, ready to kill him. In the kitchen I could hear Julia and Cassie talking but my focus was on Logan, laying on the sofa with Daryl holding out a bottle of water to him.
Daryl looked up and smiled, relieved. Somehow, after being the ones to save each other, we knew what to do to keep the other in check. He’d done it for me a lot and hadn’t given me many opportunities to need to pick him up but now he had and I wasn’t going to let him down.
“What are you doing, Logan?” I asked, folding my arms over.
As mad as I was I couldn’t help admiring how adorable he looked with glossy topaz eyes and a lopsided smile. He looked like a naughty kid.
“What’re you doing, Chlo?”
“I’m here to kick your arse.” I dropped to the sofa he was on and sighed. “You’re better than this. What happened?” Daryl got up and left for the kitchen, giving us privacy.
“I don’t know.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I really don’t know. We all fall off the wagon, right?”
He was right. There had been times since the first time he pulled me from my pit that I’d not wanted to get out again. I couldn’t be too mad at him, everyone had setbacks. “Do you want to talk about why you picked up a bottle?”
“I only had a few glasses.”
“You’re drunk.”
He grinned. “Well, they were big glasses.”
I was back to being so pissed off that he’d got himself into this state – although not as bad as it had been, apparently – that I had to take a few seconds to breathe.
“Logan, sit the fuck up and drink the fucking water.”
With the curve of his mouth and humorous glint in his eye, he sat up and said, “Chloe’s got a potty mouth tonight.”
Chloe’s seconds from pouring the water on your head.
He slumped back on the sofa and held his hand out. “Alright, water me.”
“Don’t tempt me, Logan.” I handed him the drink, which he drained in one.
“Why’re you so pissed? It wasn’t that long ago that I was holding your hair back.”
“We were on a night out and I had one too many, I wasn’t drowning my sorrows at home alone.”
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
I rubbed my forehead. “I am so not in the mood for this tonight.”
“What happened tonight?”
Removing my hand from my face, I looked down at him. All trace of humour had gone and he was watching me with curiosity and concern. “I had the awkward let’s just be friends conversation with Rhys.”
“The prick broke up with you?” His voice actually went up a couple octaves.
“He’s not a prick. I broke up with him and technically, it wasn’t really breaking up, we weren’t official.”
He stared at me with a completely blank expression. I hated when I couldn’t read him. “Ohhhh.” Tilting his head to the side, he added, “That makes sense. You can do better.”
“There was nothing wrong with him at all. It just wasn’t working out.”
“He’s not sexy enough.”
I did a double take. “Sorry?”
“You’re a ten and he’s a four, max.” Rhys was good looking but the drunken idiot was biased.
“Can we not number people, please?” At school guys would call out numbers, scoring girls as they walked by, it was so pathetic and actually made one girl cry once. Since then it bothered me. Also, Logan was rating men?
“Number me,” he said, and smiled wide, showing his pearly white teeth.
I couldn’t keep a straight face. “Looking like that?”
“I can’t help sexy. I was born like this, sweetheart.”
“Okay, there is no getting sense out of you when you’re like this. I’m just gonna put you to bed and do the arse kicking in the morning.”
“Shall I list the pros and cons?”
Again, I was stumped and slowly losing patience. “What?”
He held up a finger. “Con, my family will hear you scream.” My eyes bulged. Where the hell was his head tonight? “Con, you’ll get awkward in the morning. Con, in my drunken state I might feel a little violated in the morning.” Now why didn’t I believe that? “Con, people will ask you who is better in the sack and you’ll have to refrain from shouting out my name, which will be hard.”
“Okay, there we have it. All cons and no pros so let’s just get you upstairs so you can sleep.” I hooked my arm under his.
“There is a pro,” he said, not moving an inch to help me get him up. He was damn heavy.
I sighed in frustration. “Go on then! Pro…?”
He leant forward and whispered, “It will be fucking mind-blowing.” His breath cascaded across my neck and I shuddered.
And what in the world do I say to that? I gulped, goose bumps prickled all the way along my arms. What was he doing? He didn’t say things like that and I certainly didn’t react to him the way I was.
Just when looking into those deep topaz eyes was getting too much, he chuckled. “But,” he said, shoving himself forward, “an awkward Chloe would suck, so please stop begging and we’ll forget this conversation ever happened.”
With a devilish smile over his shoulder, he walked upstairs and left me speechless in the living room. I’d forgotten what drunk Logan was like. Pretty amusing if you weren’t the one that had to deal with him and if you weren’t the one whose heart rate was all over the place.
“Is he okay?” Julia asked.
I snapped out of it and turned to her, plastering on a smile and rolling my eyes. “Yeah, he drank the water so I sent him to bed.”
“Good. Are you staying tonight?”
“That okay?”
She pointed at me and arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you ask. Night.”
Smiling for real, I replied, “Night, Julia, Daryl.” Daryl nodded and followed his wife up to bed. Cass hadn’t come out of the kitchen so I went in. “You okay?”
She looked up from staring at the worktop. “Yeah, sorry. I’ve not seen him like that in a while. Thought it was behind him.”
“Like he said to me, people have setbacks. Like you’ve told me before, he’ll be fine.”
“Don’t let him fall, Chloe.”
“Don’t plan to.”
I sat down and she opened the fridge, pulling out a bottle of white wine. “This late?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“Logan’s good, Cass.”
“I hope so. Want a glass?”
Why not? “Please.”
“I’m worried about him. I lost one brother and I’m not prepared to lose another.”
I ran my finger around the bottom of the empty wine glasses on the counter. “You won’t lose him.” I won’t lose him. “It was a one off. We stopped by Jace’s grave a few days ago, that’s probably why he’s not dealing so well. I shouldn’t have suggested we stopped.”
“Don’t blame yourself for his drinking, he’s perfectly old enough to not get smashed.” She poured two very generous glasses of wine and immediately took a long sip.
“Thanks, Cass. I know he’s old enough to handle it but sometimes he just doesn’t. I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
“You think he’ll tell you more than I’m fine?”
I shook my head. “Not at all, but I’ll try anyway.”
“You’re good for him. He wouldn’t listen to any of us.”
“Not convinced he listens to me the whole time either. Guys are a nightmare.”
She laughed. “Yeah, don’t I know it? Fucking Rick.”
“Sorry, Cass. How’s everything going there?”
“Nothing new. I can’t wait for all this to be over, to go back to my maiden name and put him firmly in the past. I must’ve had a six year brain meltdown.”
“You didn’t. He was great before he turned into a selfish wanker.”
She blinked hard and opened her eyes wide. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say the word wanker before.”
“Don’t think I’ve used it much. Rick thoroughly deserves that title.”
She held her glass up and I did the same, ready to toast to whatever she wanted. “To moving on from wankers.”
I clinked my glass against hers. “To the next man in your life being worthy of your love.”
“Back atcha, chick,” she said. “Never know, maybe we’ll both get lucky this year.”
“I’ll definitely drink to that!”