Page 2 of Tortured Eyes
One
“That’s the thing about you, Logan. You're lost.”
The words are enough for me to slam the door behind me, intent on dismissing them without looking back. Lost? Try living my life and see how much focus is necessary to keep on top of it. Diversions to the left and right, misdirection and secrets building up on top of more secrets. Add in the personal loss I'm struggling to cope with, and it's no goddamned surprise I look lost to some people. Not that I care what the majority think. People are nothing but a tool for me—things I use or abuse to move in the direction I've been taught to travel.
Everyone apart from the person I’ve just left.
I stride through the dark hallway and descend the stairs, shaking my head clear. Lost? The fucking audacity. I snatch at the door, swinging the damn thing wide, and close it behind me. Frigid morning air greets me, as cold as the damn words I've just heard. Animosity makes me head for the car, but I end up staring into the low-lying fog rolling over the sea, the sun beginning to rise alongside it.
Lost.
My fingers loop and thread the tie angrily, and I finally rough my hair into shape. I don't even know what the hell that word means. Maybe after the publicity event of the year I'm heading to, I'll think on it, find some sense in it, but not now. Now is for something else. For thoughts and memories, all of which will probably haunt me for the rest of my goddamned life.
Five more minutes gazing at the murky outlook, thinking, and I get in the car. The wheel spins in my hand, and I drive off without acknowledging the near argument any further. Maybe I should have spent the night in one of my clubs instead of here like I used to. Life was simpler then. Endless fucking. Endless drug-fuelled binges. Endless booze. That's not my life now, though. I changed it.
I drive the coast roads, heading roughly for the one place we’re all going to be today. Most of the city is probably travelling there. Not that I give a damn about anyone else who’ll be in attendance, but much as I hate to admit it, today might touch parts of me that aren’t normally touched.
The phone rings in the car after a while, Carter's name flashing. Fuck him. Whatever respect I had for big brother died along with the authoritarian stance he started taking years back. His fault, not mine. I don’t know what changed in him, short of a woman's pressure. I don’t know where the hatred started creeping in for both of us either, but it did. It filled corners of me I didn’t know I had, swirled animosity and loathing through my veins until proving myself became the only thing I could focus on. The eventuality of that attempt led me to vengeance. My hatred became an inbuilt mechanism, something that clawed and absorbed the edges of me in a vice-like grip, bending and shaping a new version of my thoughts. I went to the opposition then. Went and talked, listened intently, and finally found sense in their words rather than that of my own family.
My gaze scours the fog again, bitter resolve making me grip the wheel tighter, and I floor the accelerator. I’ve got an hour or two to kill before the finale. Time to remember him without others suffocating my thoughts on the matter.
* * *
The road is full of cars lining both sides of the verges, more so than I expected. I pull in behind one of them and get out to walk the long drive down to the waiting hoards, pulling my suit straight. People head down the pathway alongside me, all of them wearing their finest. My eyes take in the team I know so well,my head nodding in acknowledgement, and then I notice the governors and their wives crowding by the entrance. I search the masses for the Mayor, wondering how much trouble he’s in now he’s got no one to back him up like he’s had for the last ten years. He’s off to the right of the pack, all three kids and his third wife hanging off his arm in some show for the society gathered. The guy should get an award for playing the grieving asshole. Shame it’s not real grief, though; it’s fear.
I shrug my long, black, woollen coat in closer against the rain and make my way through the crowds, uninterested in the blatant, characterless display of politicians pretending they give a damn. They don’t, none of them. What they do care about is how they’re going to run a city with no one in charge. How they're going to control the crime cartels. Difficultly is the word they’re probably considering. And with the weight of those wars on their shoulders now, rather than the man who’s taken care of it, in his own way, for the last fifty years, they're going to fail.
Still, they're all looking at me—waiting, wondering.
They're right to.
The clergy start ushering and filing us into order after a while, and I look through the hordes of umbrellas as we walk the final half-mile behind the car. So many people. I snort under my breath as a woman beside me sniffs and grips her husband’s arm and listen to her heels clattering on with a hundred or so others. She probably fucked him at some point in the past. Not that anyone fucked him, or with him. He fucked with them. Harshly.
“Logan.”
I pull in a breath and listen to my mother approaching from the side, my eyes refusing to look at her. She’s as bad as Carter in some ways, but her every fucking look seems laced with pity and disappointment as if she can barely acknowledge I’m her son. Not as bad as my father’s everlasting and unapologetic display of regret when he manages eye contact, but it’s just as damning.
Just as fucking critical.
“Mother,” I say, feeling her arm link through mine.
“You should be at the front. With Carter and Fia.”
“Why?”
She half stops me, her body trying to get in front of mine and her hand on my chest. I don’t let her. I keep walking, eyes downcast as I keep up with the procession.
“I know he meant something to you, Logan. I don’t know why, but I know he did.”
Damn right she doesn’t know why. Perhaps she would if she’d had the foresight to encourage my father to do the thing fathers are supposed to do for their kids: trust them. This one we’re putting in the ground. He did. For years he trusted me, gave me insight. Helped build a new me.
“Your father’s up there, too. And Nate. Go, be with them.”
“No. I’m best here. Separate from that fabrication of truth.”
She gasps slightly and loosens her hold on my elbow, the delicate length of her arm slipping back from mine. “Your father cared a great deal for him.”
“Stop, Mother. He barely even knew him.”
