Page 87 of Ruthless Rebel

“Oh, honey,” she cries, standing and pulling me into a tight embrace, and it almost makes me break. She didn’t visit me in the hospital, so this is the first time I am seeing her since the day Logan died. “I’m so sorry, my sweet boy, for everything you went through, I’m so sorry,” she gasps out between soft sobs, and I rub her back gently, ignoring the wrecking ache in my chest.

“No, I’m sorry,” I mutter into her hair, and she pulls back and frowns in confusion. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him, I tried, but I just…” I trail off, the tears threatening to escape me, and her own pour even more.

Her hands cup my cheeks, as she looks at me sternly. “Asher, you gave my boy what every mother dreams of, someone to love. I’ll be eternally grateful for that,” she tells me, and fuck, her words rip my already shredded heart into more pieces.

I don’t respond, not because I don’t know how to, but because if I do, I’ll break down, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to stop. Helen must see the words I’m not saying right there on my face, because she takes my hand in hers and pulls me to sit down next to her, and that’s how we stay. Countless people filter in behind us, filling up the other chairs, but until the rest of our family joins us, we keep our eyes on the only thing of Logan that remains.

It isn’t until the service is about to start, that Max cuts through the middle of the chairs with his arm around Lily, and they takea seat on the last two chairs available. She is wearing a fitted black dress with oversized sunglasses, but when she takes them off her eyes are red and puffy. She looks awful, completely and utterly heartbroken, and all I can do is stare. Yet when her eyes move sideways and meet mine, I feel like I am back looking in the mirror.

There is no light left there, no love, only grief. And just like me, she will be tainted by this loss forever.

44

LINCOLN

Ishouldn’t be here. I don’t want to be here, but the moment the sun rose this morning, my feet were already moving. I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t have any destination in mind, it’s just, one minute I was at the foster home, and the next I was here. I watched the graveyard workers finish digging his fucking goddamn hole, and all I felt was numb.

When I spotted Arthur’s car pull up in the distance, I quickly stepped away, not wanting to be here when they set up to say goodbye to him. I can’t do it. I don’t want to see Logan’s life be reduced to nothing but a fucking box, not when his blood, his last sign of life, still marks my fucking skin. Bile rises in my throat, but I can’t bring myself to scrub it off, not when he’s in a fucking box because of me.

I slump down behind a tree out of sight, taking a drink from the bottle in my hand, praying that this time it actually fucking makes me blackout, but just like everything else, I fail. I’m not sure how long I sit there, but it’s long enough for me to hear car after car pull up, countless people climbing out, all here to offer their bullshit condolences.

I wonder if they know him the same way I do…knew him.

I’m sure the sight of him in a box will make them sad, that they will share stories of his life and say some crap about him being in a better place, but they're wrong. The only place he should be is with me. In fact, that’s not true, he should have stayed away from me, and then none of us would be here.

The service starts, and they play songs picked out by his parents, and poems I know he would have loved, yet I can’t bear a single fucking second. I shouldn’t be here, I can’t, I have to leave. I climb to my feet, my hand shooting to my side, as I stumble from behind the tree, making more noise than I intended. Heads turn in my direction, and I feel the shocked stares from all of them, no doubt taking in the state of me, but it’s my family's faces that cut right through me.

Elle’s face is sad and disappointed, and Helen’s is even worse, especially when she spots me, yet when my eyes hit Marcus and Jace, I see instant relief. Both of them stand, ready to make their way over to me, but Asher cuts in front of them, stopping them in their tracks. Both of them look at him, but his eyes are on me, whatever he says to them keeps them rooted in place, I can’t hear it, but then he is cutting through the chairs and heading my way.

I don’t want to make a scene, not more than I already have, so when he reaches me and grips me with his non-injured arm, I let him drag me away, my eyes on the black coffin we are leaving behind. Yet Asher doesn’t stop, not until we are a good distance into the cemetery and away from prying eyes, and only then does he let me go.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You can’t just show up here, looking like…” he trails off, his eyes assessing me closely, as his anger dissipates a little. “Is that his blood?” He asks, his voice cracking a little, as he focuses on my blood-stained shirt, and all I can do is nod.

My own eyes trail over him, taking in the dark circles under his eyes, the bruising to his face, and the bandages barely peeking out of his collar, and I wince. I know if I peeled back his shirt I would find another fucking bullet hole in his body, and I can’t bear it.

Asher takes a step towards me, but I instantly take a step back. “You shouldn’t be here, not like this,” he sighs, and I know he’s right, yet still I scoff.

“You think I don’t know that,” I snap. “Do you think I want to be here, to see the only light my life ever fucking knew, reduced to nothing but a fucking box, knowing I’m the reason why?” I scream, not caring who hears us. “None of us should be here, because I should have saved him, that’s what I do. I save people, it’s why I became who I am, it’s why the guilt of my father’s crimes didn’t fucking drag me down to the pits of hell with him, because I fucking save people, yet when he needed me most, I let him die.”

“Do you think you’re the only one who feels it?” He asks, erasing the space between us now and getting right in my face. “Every second since the moment I woke up in the hospital, I remember his cries of pain, the way he screamed my name as they beat me, the way he kept telling me to hang on because he knew you were coming,” he scoffs, as if the words cause him physical pain, and they are like a blow to my chest. “I told him to say goodbye to Cassie for me, and he still had faith that you would save me, and now I have to live with that. With the fact that you chose to save me, to come for me and not him, and Logan died knowing that.”

His words cut right through me, his grief as raw as my own, and fuck, it hurts. “Ash, I didn’t choose you,” I admit, and he frowns. “I chose Cassie. The second I learned the two of you were taken, I knew that if it came down to it, that I would save you every single time,” I breathe, and his entire body freezes at my admission. “Better she lose an uncle than a father. It wouldn’t have mattered if you were side by side, or on opposite sides of the world, in every scenario I would have come for you, for her, and if Logan loved me the way he said he did, he would have known that.”

I let my words wash over him, and my hands itch to reach out and touch him, to grab hold of him and never let go, but how can I keep him when we have already lost everything?

“He didn’t say we,” Asher finally mumbles, tears shining in his eyes, as he shakes his head back and forth.

“What?” I ask, ignoring my head as it screams at me to walk away, and instead, moving even closer to him, like he is a magnet drawing me in.

“Logan, when I was bleeding and I thought I was going to die, he didn’t say ‘we are getting out of this’, he said ‘you are getting out of this’,” he mutters in disbelief, as something clicks to place in his mind. “He was training to be a fucking doctor,” he adds in anger. “He knew what was wrong with him, he knew he was dying and he didn’t fucking tell me, he didn’t say anything, just kept telling me that I was going to be fine.” Tears are clinging to his lashes now, and his pain cuts me deeper than I ever thought possible. “How could he think I would ever be fine without him? He was my salvation and now he’s gone,” he adds quietly, as the first tear splashes onto his cheek, and as if on instinct, my hand reaches up and swipes it away.

“Because he loved you,” I tell him, still haunted by Logan’s confessions for us, thinking it would help him, yet at my words, more tears fall.

“And I loved him, I loved him for years and never told him, and I didn’t get to say it back,” he chokes out, his body looking seconds from falling, and I can’t stop myself from grabbing him and pulling him in. “The last thing he ever fucking said to me, was that he loved me, and I just stood there and watched him die, and said nothing,” he cries into my chest.

“He knew, Ash, even if you didn’t say it, he knew,” I mutter into his hair, and all it does is make him fall apart more. “Logan loved us both, and we loved him.” He sobs in my arms, and every tear that falls breaks me apart completely, because he’s all I have left now, and I almost walked away.

When he pulls back, he searches my stare, almost as if he could read my mind, as he says, “I lost him, Elle lost him, Cassie lost him,” he breathes, reaching up and gently pressing his hand to my cheek. “We can’t lose you too. Come home with me, please, your family needs you, I need you,” he tells me, dropping his forehead to mine, and it’s the first time in days that I haven’t felt like I am completely lost.

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