We were close to the hotel and I wanted to know what happened. “Logan, please just tell me what all of this is about? And why you’re telling me this story.”
He scrubbed his jaw and resumed driving. “I crumpled up the paper and threw it to the ground. I told her it couldn’t have been mine. We hadn’t fucked in months and I’d always used a condom. She told me she was three months along. That I should know condoms aren’t always effective. When I didn’t blink an eye, she insisted it was mine. I still didn’t believe her. Not that she was pregnant, and not that it was mine. I lost it then. I told her I’d had enough of her lies and to stop harassing me. I didn’t hold back. I told her what I thought of her and that I couldn’t believe she’d stoop to the oldest trick in the book to try to be with me. I couldn’t stand her—why would she even want to be with me? She cried that her father was going to kill her. Send her away to live with the nuns. I didn’t listen; instead I told her to leave and never come back. She ran into the bathroom and I didn’t bother with her. I wasn’t about to play her game. An hour later, I didn’t know if she was still there, but I got up to check anyway. That’s when I saw the blood pooling from under the door. I busted it open and she was lying there. Blood had arced up in splashes on the wall, the ceiling, and the side of the toilet. It was everywhere. It took me a moment to figure out where it was coming from. Then I saw it. She’d cut her wrists open—she’d killed herself, and it was too late to save her. I was too late to save her.”
There was no color. No light. No words. Nothing I could say.
The inflection in his voice told me of the pain he felt. Who was I to judge? And I still didn’t understand how he knew Peyton’s attack was because he’d been seen with her.
I reached over to him as he pulled up to the hotel valet. “Logan, you were a kid. How were you to know what she’d do?”
Ignoring me, he grabbed my bag from the back and got out without a word. My door opened and he stood there waiting for me. We stayed silent until we got to his room. I sat on the couch. He paced the room.
Finally, I spoke. “I don’t understand what this has to do with Peyton.”
He ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t know what to do when I found her, so I called my old man. When he got to my grandfather’s, he called someone to come get me and told me he didn’t want me anywhere near there. I had no idea what he was doing, but found out later that he took the blame for her death.”
“What do you mean, took the blame? She killed herself.”
“In our house,” he muttered.
“But it wasn’t anyone’s fault.” I insisted.
“You don’t understand. A powerful man’s child doesn’t just die. They don’t just get shot, and certainly don’t just kill themselves. There has to be a reason. Always a reason. My father took that blame.”
My heart leapt. “How could he?”
“After he called 911, he called Patrick and told him what had happened. His version anyway. He told him Emily stopped by to see me but he didn’t know why. He knew it was going to get out that Emily and I had been together anyway, and he wanted to be the one to put it out there. He went on and told Patrick that when he told her I didn’t want to see her anymore, she started to cry, and then asked to use the restroom. He finished the story by telling him she’d been in there a while, so he’d gone to check on her, and that’s when he found her with her wrists slit, but it was too late. She was already dead.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“In Patrick’s eyes my father caused her distress. He was the reason she killed herself. And code mandates a life for a life. He thought Patrick would kill him but instead Patrick took his life in a different way. That day my father sold his soul to Patrick to save me.”
I was shaking my head. “But you didn’t do anything. It wasn’t your fault.”
“But it was—and my father knew Patrick would see it that way. I had gotten her pregnant. I was the one who didn’t believe her. I was the one who left her bleeding out in that bathroom.”
“Logan, she took her own life.”
He sat in a chair. Clasped and unclasped his hands before rubbing the back of his neck. “Don’t you get it? It was because of me.”
“Logan.” I said his name only. I could see the pain he was feeling, but I didn’t think worse of him because of this. He was a young teen. It wasn’t his fault. No one makes another person do something like that—people do it to themselves.
It was enough to make him glance up. “I’m getting off track. After everything happened, my parents divorced and I moved to New York with my mother. Patrick never spoke about the pregnancy and to this day, I‘m not certain he ever found out, but Tommy and his sister were close, and he knew.”