Page 29 of The Wanderer

I’ll be there in 30.

Okay, so the text flirting was good. He'd moved on from yesterday. But as she quickly showered and dressed, she couldn't help feeling guilty for luring him here under false pretences. He thought this would be a booty call.

She had something else in mind first.

"Tell me again why you're dragging me through the back streets of Melbourne?"

Logan sounded like a whiny kid, deliberately baiting Hope because he knew she loved their sparring. This was the fifth alley she’d shown him and despite his fake indifference, she saw the gleam of interest in his eyes.

"Because this is culture," she said, pointing at a giant ebony mouth in a scary crimson face plastered across a laneway entrance. "You showed me yours yesterday, today I'm showing you mine."

She waggled her eyebrows and he chuckled. "I'm talking about the essence of Melbourne, in case you were wondering."

He ducked down, his lips grazing her ear and sending a shiver of longing through her. "I'd much rather see something else of yours," he murmured, nipping her ear lobe before soothing it with a flick of his tongue that sent a jolt through her.

"Later." Her grip on his hand tightened as a silent promise of things to come. But for now, she had to come up with a smart way of broaching the sensitive topic of his dad without alienating him. "Did you do anything last night after you dropped me off?"

He stiffened but didn't pull away. "Went back to my place and emptied the minibar, which I keep stocked for my occasional trips to Melbourne. Easier than having a regular fridge."

She didn't know if that jibe about him being transient was directed at her, a pointed declaration that he wouldn’t be around for long so she should shut the hell up. It didn’t stop her but she didn’t want to sound judgemental. "It's always more fun drinking from those teeny tiny bottles."

"It's what's inside that counts." He sounded resigned rather than bitter and she hesitated, searching for the right words to ask what was bugging him. “It’s not like a hotel minibar. I stock regular sized beer cans in there. Much more effective for kicking back and forgetting everything.”

Before she could say anything, he continued. "I'm not an alcoholic, I've just had a rough few days and I apologise for my shitty behaviour yesterday." He huffed out a deep breath. "I'm not some dickhead trying to jerk you around, so maybe if I give you a little insight you might actually forgive me."

"Hey, there's nothing to forgive." She lifted his hand to her mouth and pressed a kiss on the back of it, trying to clamp down on her curiosity and failing. Thankfully, she hadn’t had to pry much at all and he seemed ready to divulge snippets of his past.

The tension bracketing his mouth lessened but the haunted shadows flitting across his eyes didn't. "My dad wasn't around much when I was growing up. He tried to make it as a comedian so was on the road all the time. Mum and I missed him a lot, particularly Mum."

His eyes turned flinty as he hesitated, as if struggling to find the right words. "She was a different person when Dad was around. She'd light up and then when he left again, she'd clam up. I thought that maybe she had depression but she wasn’t on any meds and didn’t display many of the symptoms when I looked it up."

Hope clung to his hand, wishing she could infuse him with strength. She understood more than he knew. Having a physically present but emotionally absent parent could be just as hard as not having a parent at all. She’d often felt invisible around her parents; or worse, like they’d never wanted a child and didn’t want her around. They tolerated her, doing their utmost to bend her to their will, to make her their clone.

When she hadn’t acquiesced, they’d lied to force her into it and while she may have forgiven them, she’d never forget.

“What happened?”

His brows pulled in as he cleared his throat. "Dad started to make some serious money when I was in my teens so he rarely came home. Mum got worse to the point she pretty much ignored me most days, preferring to spend wasted hours looking up Dad’s gigs online.”

He stiffened, his expression contorting with pain. “Then she died."

Sadness tightened Hope’s throat as she leaned in and rested her head against his shoulder. "That must've been heartbreaking."

"It was."

Two short, sharp words that hinted at sorrow and pain and devastation. Her parents may be narcissistic liars and she would mourn them out of obligation whenever they passed, but the audible anguish in Logan’s gruff voice told her exactly how much he’d loved his mum.

He remained silent for a long while and she waited out his pause, surprised by his candour, relieved she didn't have to pry it from him but regretting causing him pain by recounting his past

"I blamed Dad for her death. At the funeral, he stood up in front of everyone and waxed lyrical about how much he loved his family, how everything he did was for me."

His upper lip curled in a sneer and his eyes hardened to a steely blue. "Bullshit. He happily abandoned us because it suited him. It was always about him. His career, his opportunities," he spat out, bitterness lacing every word as his face reddened. "He tried to reach out to me after the funeral. About how we should catch up more often now that I was moving to Melbourne for my apprenticeship. About how the men of the Holmes family had to stick together, how we had to look forward to the future together. I told him to shove it up his ass."

He stood rigid, his nostrils flared, a vein pulsing at his temple, and Hope slipped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest, trying to convey silent comfort. He held her but his arms were unyielding, his back stiff beneath her hands.

"The other day when he called and I was with you? He told me he’d had cancer.” His voice cracked a little and he cleared his throat before continuing. “He's okay but he laid a heavy guilt trip on me and I've been mulling it ever since."

Helpless, she wished she could do something. She’d wanted to know what was behind Logan’s funk and she’d got more than she bargained for. She had no idea whether Logan wanted comforting or to be left alone. His body language screamed hands-off but the torment in his eyes gutted her.

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