Page 72 of Because of Logan

“Yes, I did. A lot, actually, but the girls, and later on, women, in my circle of friends were all very much like Amanda.”

I loathe what I’m about to say next, but if I’m to be honest about myself and my life, this has to come out.

“Most people would say I was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth. And they would be right. My family is wealthy. The families they relate to are wealthy. I attended private schools with kids who were rich and entitled. It was drilled into my brain from very early on that we were better than the rest of the world. I grew up among people who reinforced that idea. My grandparents, the ones who left me and my brother this house, tried to teach us otherwise and gave my brother and me a different perspective.”

Skye listens intently. She’s hanging on my every word. That’s another opposite from Amanda. If the conversation was not about her, fashion, jewelry, or gossip about who did what, she was not interested. Looking back, I feel like an even bigger idiot.

“But it didn’t really register until I moved here and started at Riggins. Being around so many people, with all different backgrounds, opened my eyes to all the hypocrisy my family and friends fed me.”

I take a deep breath and run my fingers through my hair.

“I’m not making an excuse for having been an ass growing up. Not at all.”

“You didn’t know any different,” she says.

“You are a product of your environment and the beliefs that were instilled in you.”

My hands fist in my lap.

“Yeah, and add to that the way my father ran us all like a drill sergeant and my eagerness to please him and earn his love, and he had the perfect little puppet in his hands.”

Fuck! I’d said too much. I didn’t mean for it to come out. I glance back at Skye, unsure of what I’ll find. I see no judgment, no pity. Thank God.

“No child should have to earn a parent’s love. There should be no doubt of that love, ever.”

“My grandparents gave me that love. We could be kids in this house. We felt loved and free over here. But we weren’t around many kids our age. We spent a lot of time outdoors with our grandparents. Hiking, skiing, fishing, swimming, playing hockey, and running around like feral kids. It was the complete opposite of the kind of life we had back in Connecticut. My father didn’t much care for our visiting our grandparents. He thought their lifestyle unfit, but now that I am older, I think it was more that he could not intimidate or control them and they had some kind of hold over him. What, I have no idea. And he traveled a lot too. Our mother usually accompanied him. Having our grandparents watch us solved the ‘who will watch the kids’ problem. I’m sure he would’ve been more than happy to hire a team of sitters, but like I said, my grandparents got us instead.”

“I bet you loved that. Being able to spend all that time with them.”

“I did. I loved it. My brother even more than me. Liam was always in trouble with our father. He couldn’t do anything right. I was always a rule follower, didn’t question much. But once I moved out for college at eighteen, I really got to see the world through my own eyes and eventually be myself as well. I didn’t like that version of me very much, and the further I tried to step away from it, the more my father tried to control me. I went along with his wishes for a while. Amanda was another extension of my father, but I didn’t see it. I was a horny teenager with no clue about the real world and had this beautiful woman who claimed to love me.”

“What do you mean by her being an extension of your father?”

“She kept tabs on me for him. She manipulated me on his behalf. Amanda is four years older than me. It flattered me. She knew just what to say and do.”

“You’re not the first teen led by his hormones. You were a kid, and she was an adult. You can’t take the blame in this. If the gender roles were reversed, no one would blame the teen girl.”

“That’s true enough.”

“I don’t understand something. Why would she keep tabs on you?”

“Because her father and my father had plans, business plans that would make them millions of dollars, and I was part of it. They needed someone they could trust to run this company they had plans to develop. And they needed me to do it.”

“Why not just tell you about it?”

“Because the plans they had, and the company, weren’t exactly legal. Amanda was in on it. They needed someone they could control, someone to take the fall if shit went south. Someone they could claim they knew nothing about, because who would believe a father would set up his own son? And through my marriage with Amanda and the prenup they had planned, assets would be under her name and could not be touched if anything happened.”

“Wow!”

“Wow doesn’t begin to cover it. My father was pressuring me to propose to Amanda. He wanted us married before he started the new company. His bullshit reason was to have a solid foundation between the two families. The real reason was to have Amanda closer and able to manipulate me from the inside. She actually showed up one day with a huge rock on her finger and told me it was our engagement ring and she’d send me the bill. I later found out my father had paid for it.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“It was summer before senior year. And I decided to go home and surprise her since I wouldn’t be around during her birthday because I was taking summer classes that year. I went home but didn’t tell anyone about it.”

I have to stop and take a deep breath because the anger at them and at myself for being so blindly stupid still stings after all these years. Skye reaches out and grabs my hand, lacing our fingers together and holding them between both of her hands.

“When I got home, Amanda’s car was in the driveway and I thought it would be perfect. I figured she was visiting with my parents and we could all have dinner together.”

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