“I fought for us,” I tell him. “I want you to know that. I told Vanessa to fuck off, basically. I said that our relationship is real, and that I care about you, because it’s true. I love you, Logan.”
He stops looking at me. He stares hard at the ground. I want to touch his cheek, ask him to look at me, check and see if he’s still here with me.
I clench my hand to my side. “But I can’t do this. Not anymore. You refuse to work on yourself. You refuse to change. I can’t force you to trust me or anyone else. I can’t force you to stop harming others around you because you’ve been hurt yourself. I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through. You know that I am. But that doesn’t mean I deserve to be treated this way.”
And maybe that’s been a part of the problem all along also. I’ve felt sorry for him. I’ve pitied him. That’s wrong of me, too, to think of him as a victim who needs me. Logan doesn’t look up from his feet. “I can’t make you stop hurting me,” I tell him. “But I can do what I need for myself.”
I pause. It’s painful to say these words.
He doesn’t respond. He barely breathes.
“It’s like you put your life and your world into acting so that you can live out other characters’ stories without having to look at your own. Without having to face yourself and make the changes that you need to make.”
Logan opens his mouth once, and then again, like he’s trying to force himself to speak. I wait. It feels like a full minute passes of just us breathing and sharing the same space.
“I tried,” he eventually says.
Is trying enough? “You tried, and then—what, you gave up?”
“It isn’t as easy as you make it seem. To change. To become a different person.”
My voice gets quiet. “You’ve been through a lot of shit, Logan. There’s a lot you still need to heal. I thought I could be a part of that for you. Maybe that’s on me. I’m sorry. I think a part of me did have a hero complex. I wanted to save you. But that isn’t my place. I don’t think I can do that for you. Me, or anyone else, but yourself.”
“How?” His voice sounds so small.
“I don’t know,” I say. I’m also whispering. “Therapy, maybe.” I’d suggested it to him before, but he’d laughed at the idea then. In his silence, I wonder if he’s seriously considering it now. “Maybe—a place like rehab or something, that can give the support you need. Let you get out of the city and away from the industry and focus on yourself for a while.”
He’s quiet, but I know he has more to say. He clenches his jaw. His eyes are wet. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you so much. I care about you. I don’t always know how to say it or show it, but I do.”
I wish I could say it was okay. That we can begin again, and maybe this time, things will change. “I’m sorry, too,” I tell him.
We stand there for a long while, silent—both of us afraid to move, because when we do, this will end. But there isn’t anything else to say, so I force myself to focus on each step I take away from him instead of turning back to him again.
Logan
It doesn’t take long to reach my dad’s manor a few hours after Mattie leaves. He lives about thirty minutes away, up in the Hills. It’s funny that I almost never see him. I don’t run into him around town or on sets. He never visits me, and I never visit him. He has another life, separate from mine, where he hosts industry events and works on his action films. I never see him, but he still takes up so much space in my life.
His house is the basic white modern-style mansion clinging to the side of a cliff, an infinity pool in view as I make my way up the drive. I get to the gates and enter the passcode. The gates slowly slide open, and I speed onto the gravel.
When I ring the doorbell, a light blinks at me. My dad is on the other side of the camera, considering whether he wants to let me in. After what feels like a full minute, the door buzzes. I swing it open and let it shut behind me. I walk into the open living room space that’s designed for parties and head to the balcony to look over the cityscape—the Hills and the skyline of the skyscrapers in the far distance.
There’re footsteps behind me. My dad is tall, handsome—dark hair and eyes, salt-and-pepper strands. He’s wearing a casual white shirt and slacks. “You didn’t say you were coming over,” he tells me.
I look back out at the city. I’m not even sure I’m going to miss it. “I came to say goodbye.”
“Going somewhere?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’ve decided to check into a facility.”
“Rehab again?” He sounds disgusted.
“That’s a part of it. It’s supposed to focus on mental health.” I swallow, then force myself to say, “Survivors of sexual abuse and assault, among other things.”
I chance a look at him. He narrows his eyes. I’ve never spoken to him about this before. I’ve never discussed how he would leave me with execs and actors he needed money from when I was a kid. He had to know what would happen, right? He just didn’t care.
“Survivor of sexual abuse and assault,” he repeats. “That’s dramatic, isn’t it?”
I lean against the railing. “Pretty sure I figured out why you never talk to me about it. Why you want to downplay what happened.” He blinks at me. Usually, I just take whatever he says silently. “You’re too ashamed. Right? That has to be it. Who wouldn’t be ashamed, knowing they abandoned their kid to be raped?”
“You weren’t raped,” he says.
“You weren’t fucking there. You can’t tell me what happened.”
He turns away. He’s in denial. I didn’t even consider that possibility. Maybe he managed to convince himself that I wasn’t going to be hurt when he left me behind. Maybe, somehow, he twisted shit around in his head so he could think my rape wasn’t so bad.
“I did what I had to do for my family,” he says, when he turns back to me. “For you. And because of—” He can’t even finish the sentence. “Now, you’re living in luxury, and you want to complain? Come here with these accusations?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. Just letting you know that I’m leaving.”
“You’re acting like a piece of shit.”
Maybe it’s because of his own shame that he attacks me every time he sees me, to distract from how horrific he was to let people hurt me when he was supposed to protect me instead.
“I’m moving,” I tell him. “I won’t be in the apartment anymore.”
He snorts. “You won’t last a week. You’ll spend all your fucking money on drugs. After this shit with Briggs Stevenson, do you think anyone’s going to hire you? You’ll come crawling back to me.”
“No, I won’t,” I tell him. “I’ve decided I don’t want anything else to do with you. I dropped off the car. Everything in the apartment is yours, technically. This is the last time we speak to each other.”
He outright laughs now. “Who the fuck do you—”
“Don’t call me anymore, telling me that I’m a piece of shit,” I tell him. “I don’t want any more contact.”
“You’re something else, you know that?”