It was like a punch to the gut. It actually winded me.
How did my father know about the American? He could only know if what he was saying was true.
But surely there was an explanation…
“Get out,” I gasped, slumping down onto my sofa, curling into myself for protection.
“All right.” His voice was soft with sympathy now, real or faked. “But once you see reason, you can find me at the Balmoral Hotel. I’m staying there until you agree to come home with me.”
It was an understatement to say my father had sucked all of the happiness out of my flat when he’d left. It was like my family had radar or something!
“Oh, look, Grace is truly happy. Let’s go shit all over it!”
I barely moved from my sofa for the rest of the day as I went over and over everything my father had said. The confusion, the guilt, the sadness… it was all so much.
I needed to talk to Logan.
That afternoon, around dinnertime, he and Maia walked into my flat together. I knew Maia had been going to a friend’s house after the YA program and that Logan had agreed to pick her up after his work. That meant I’d been stewing, and knowing that I’d have to stew for hours, until this moment.
As soon as they walked into the living room, I looked at Maia. “Could you give me and your dad a few minutes alone, sweetheart?”
Maia took in my expression, concern in her eyes. But she nodded. “I’ll go next door.”
“Grace, what’s wrong?” Logan asked as Maia left the room.
When I heard the door shut, I stood up. “My father was here today.”
“What?” Logan marched across the room and took me by the arms. “Are you okay?”
“No. He wants me to come home. To be with my mother. She really is sick.”
“Breast cancer?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.” Logan’s grip on me tightened, and he tugged me closer. “You told him no. He’s off his fucking head if he thinks you’re going home with him.”
I blanched and pulled out of his hold. “He did his usual. He tried to manipulate me.” I glanced over my shoulder at Logan, whose own concern seemed to have quadrupled since I pulled away from him. “He said you saw the American. Sharon, was it? He said she visited the club twice this week. During the day. How did he even know about her?”
Now it was Logan’s turn to blanch.
My stomach fluttered unpleasantly. “Did she visit you?”
“It’s not what you think. I saw her once this week. If she visited before, I wouldn’t know about it. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to get upset over nothing. She was there to see if I wanted to rekindle things one last time before she left the country. I told her about you and she left. End of story.”
My heart was pounding at the thought of that woman being anywhere near him. For Christ’s sake, I could still hear her screaming his name from his bedroom next door. I gritted my teeth against the memory. “If it was nothing, you should have told me.”
“And upset you over nothing? You’re starting to trust me. I didn’t want to fuck it up.”
“Clue in, Logan. It’s better to hear that shit from you than someone else. Least of all my goddamn father!”
“This is what he wants!” Logan yelled back, gesturing between us. “To fuck us up so he can sweep in and manipulate you into going home with him!”
“Yes, it is,” I said, lowering my voice. I sagged against the back of the sofa and stared up at him balefully from beneath my lashes. “Don’t keep something like that from me again.”
“I won’t. I promise.” He rounded the sofa and put his hands on my hips, drawing me against him. “Tell your dad to go home, Grace, before he causes any more trouble.”
The slamming of my heart became a sledgehammer pounding. “I’m not sure I can.”
“What?” He stared down into my eyes, his filled with incredulity.
“Logan, you know I’ve been carrying this guilt, this weight, over my mum’s cancer. The fact that I feel like this means something. I need to work it out, and if that means talking to my dad again, then so be it.”
“You know what the guilt means, Grace? It means you’re not a soulless bitch like the woman who gave birth to you. It’s as simple as that. Don’t let him draw you back into that world.”
“I’m trying not to. I feel panicked just at the thought of it,” I confessed. “But, Logan, what kind of person does it make me if I don’t go to my possibly dying mother’s side?”
“What are you worried about? What the world thinks of you? What we think of you? Or what you think of you? Because at the end of the day, babe, the only opinions that matter are your own and those of the people you care about.”
There was a huge part of me that knew Logan was right and another huge part of me that hyperventilated at the mere thought of letting the Bentleys back into my life. Yet there was also this small voice inside of me that kept telling me Logan was biased. He couldn’t give me advice because he had a stake in the outcome.
Although I knew Aidan did too, I called him that night as Logan and Maia sat in my sitting room watching a movie after dinner. I closed myself in my bedroom with the phone and dialed my oldest friend’s number because he had been there with me through the trauma of my mother’s betrayal and my family’s apathy toward me.
He also had a far less hotheaded reaction to drama than Logan.
“Oh shit,” Aidan said once I’d finished telling him about my father’s visit.