Seth had gotten the scholarship to MIT at the same time he’d come up with his software idea. He’d been a little obsessed with it. He’d just known that he could make computers work more efficiently. The software he’d come up with integrated systems with ease, and from there he’d been able to completely transform the way companies did business online. But he’d needed the professors at MIT, the equipment, the connections. He wouldn’t have had them here. “Logan, I thought you understood I had to go to a bigger school. I needed one that concentrated on technology. I offered to pay for you to come with me.”
Logan shook his head. “Seth, I couldn’t have made it into MIT.”
“There were other schools.” Seth had sent him about a thousand enrollment packets.
“And I was scared of them.” Logan sat down at the bar. He was calmer, more assured than Seth had ever seen him. God, Logan had grown up and Seth still felt like a kid. “I was scared of leaving Bliss. I was scared that I would get out into the real world and not fit in. I was scared that once I was in your world, you would realize what a completely inappropriate friend I am for you.”
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb. What would your parents have thought of me? The people around you? I was a hick kid from a small town who was kind of scared of his own shadow. And I was raised by lesbians. And my male role model is a guy who keeps a star chart of all the alien species he’s met. Yeah, I would have been totally accepted.”
Seth’s heart hurt a little, but Logan was right. “I would have accepted you.”
“Seth, one of two things would have happened,” Logan began. “You would have paid attention to me and not gotten your work done and you would have resented me. Or you would have ignored me and then I would have resented you. I can see that now. Everything happened the way it needed to happen. I wasn’t ready then. I am now. I’ve finally figured out that bad shit can happen to a person anywhere in the world, but that doesn’t mean you don’t take it on. That doesn’t mean a man should hide away. I didn’t take the money because I wasn’t sure I would make it through school, and I didn’t want to let you down. I’m cool with it now. I know what I want to do, and you’re the moneybags of this family.”
“What?” Seth was starting to feel like he was way behind in this conversation. He’d kind of thought this would be the place where he stormed out.
Logan leaned forward a little. “I know we’re supposed to be having this massive fight, but I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m going to lay it out and I’m going to hope that you can forgive me. I didn’t call you after the incident because I didn’t want you to see me like that. I was ashamed. I was lost. I was broken, man. I was utterly broken. I let it happen.”
“You didn’t exactly have a choice, man.”
“I did later. I chose not to call you. I chose to beg my moms to understate my injuries to you. I chose to keep taking those pills even after I didn’t need them because I didn’t want to have to feel anything. Caleb cut me off, and I went out and found some more. The asshole didn’t even charge me at first, and then he told me I had everything on credit. Yeah, I bought that. He was paying me off to not turn his ass in. I chose to do that. And I chose to buy heroin one night because I was going to go out in a blaze of glory.”
Seth felt nauseous, like he’d just been kicked in the gut. “Oh, god. You were going to kill yourself.”
“Yes,” Logan admitted. “I didn’t actually try, but I went so far as to buy it. I sat in Hell on Wheels. I had a couple of beers. I walked into the bathroom because I didn’t want my moms to be the ones who had to find me. It seemed fitting to die in a toilet because that’s where my life was.”
His best friend had nearly died—twice—and he hadn’t realized it. “What stopped you?”
“You sent me a text. I was sitting there staring at it and wondering if I would feel really good just for a few minutes before I died and my phone buzzed and you were asking if I’d seen the new Batman movie and, just for a second, I wanted to. I wanted to see the movie. I wanted to grab some popcorn and sit in a theater and do something normal. I had one fleeting second where I wasn’t thinking about what a piece of shit I was.”
He forced down the need to cry. All of his anger was gone in a rush of empathy. “Logan, how can you think that way?”
“I’ll tell you, but not without Georgia. I only want to say it once, and there are a few people I need to say it to, but I felt that way then. There’s a little piece of me that still feels that way. But that night, I knew I wanted to do one thing and that was see a movie. Silly thing, really, but it had been months and months since I wanted anything beyond feeling numb. So I dumped the drugs and I called my friend Hope, and she marched into that bar and she sat up all night with me and in the morning. I also had to pay off my dealer. I am sorry about that, man. Sawyer helped me out by making up the whole barroom brawl story so you and Nate didn’t have to know how far I’d fallen. Hope convinced me I should talk to Bernie when I paid him off. At first I was just going to drop a tip and have the bastard arrested, but Hope is really convincing. She seems to think we all deserve the chance to change. Do you know what happened? After an hour with Hope, the dumb fuck used every dime I paid him—your money—and he got himself clean and right with the law. Who does that? I remember watching him and I couldn’t quite believe it. At the end of the day, he was just a scared fuck like the rest of us. But he took the out when it was given to him. When he walked into the station house, I knew I had to go to Dallas. If a low-life drug dealer could change, I had to. I called Wolf and he talked to his brother, and I tried to get out. But there the truth is, I shamed this badge. I shamed my family.”
“You made a mistake, and you’re correcting it. Logan, you could have told me then and all I would have done was gotten my ass here as fast as I could.” He would have done anything to help his best friend.
“I know that now. And Georgia will forgive me, too. That’s not the problem. I haven’t forgiven myself, and I’m not sure how I’m going to do it, but I know what Leo was trying to tell me now. I have to figure it out because I’m not willing to lose anything more. I’ve chosen to be afraid to move, to see the darkness. I think you would have handled it better.”
“I don’t know. I’m not into pain, man. I don’t know how you survived.”
“A part of me didn’t. Georgia handled it better than me. She’s a tough one, our girl. She figured out early on that the world isn’t perfect, and she didn’t wilt under the pressure. I damn near did, but I won’t anymore. I’ve figured something out about families. If we let them, the people in our lives can get lost. How long have you planned this trip to Bliss?”
Seth knew what he meant. How long had he been plotting to get Logan into a position where he had to come home? “Over six months. If we’re coming clean, then you should know that I did pay for your membership to The Club and I paid all of Leo’s fees, too. I paid for your moms’ anniversary party because I needed an excuse and I helped grease the wheels for Laura’s adoption. I didn’t have to do much. Caleb and Stef have a lot of pull, but I’ve done a bunch of business in China, so I made it work.”
So many plots, so many balls up in the air.
A little smile tugged Logan’s lips up. “You wouldn’t let me stay lost. If I hadn’t come home, I very likely would have hung around in Dallas for a couple of years and we would have gotten involved in our own lives, and we would have drifted apart. Eventually you would have married Georgia, and we would have missed out on something amazing because we let it break down. A friendship is like a marriage. We have to work at it. We have to put energy and love and kindness and, yeah, sometimes we have to pray that there’s a ruthless prick in the relationship with a complete control disorder. I love you, Seth. I know your father told you that makes us queer, but I’m okay with that. I kind of like the hell out of my moms, so if I turned out like them, I would be damn lucky. I love you, Seth. I don’t want to get physical, but you’ve got a big part of my soul and I want to thank you for not letting me get lost again. I want you to understand that I know you’ll get lost in another project, but I’ll let you and when you’re done, me and Georgia will be waiting right there.”