Page 64 of Eight Years Gone

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“You did everything you could.”

He shook his head as he wrapped her up, nuzzling against her. “There were so many things I could have done differently.”

“No, Jagger. I heard the nine-one-one call.”

He frowned as he looked at her. “I thought the case went to a plea bargain—that the bastards are rotting for the next fifteen to twenty years.”

She nodded. “They plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter.”

He shook his head with his anger. James Marsh and Brett Harley—two of the lowest lifeforms he’d ever met—robbed his brother and murdered his best friend for a handful of dime bags. “That’s not enough. Logan’s life was worth more than that.”

“Yes, it was.” She frowned. “How did you know? About the plea bargain? That happened after you left.”

“I asked Colonel Hinders to get me word on how everything worked out.”

She swallowed. “Oh.”

“You shouldn’t have heard that call, Grace.” It made him sick thinking that she had. She was supposed to have been spared from the horrors of Logan’s last few minutes alive.

She nodded. “Yes, I should have. I needed to.”

“The only good thing that came out of that night was that you weren’t with me.”

“I needed answers—the ones no one could give me. I needed to know what happened. I had so little control over any aspect of my life after Logan died. When we got word from the district attorney that there would be no trial, I drove to his office. I told him I wanted to know everything he could share about the case. He told me what he could. He mentioned all that you had done to help with the case—to try to help Logan. He also mentioned the nine-one-one recording. I asked him to get it—to play it for me.”

“He shouldn’t have done that.”

“He wasn’t excited about it, but I insisted.”

“He still could have said no.”

She stroked his skin. “I could hear how scared you were—how frantic you were to get Logan help. That night was awful. Logan was awful the last time we saw him, but you went to pick him up when he called. You tried to get him to the hospital. There was nothing more you could have done.”

He wanted to be able to believe that—to not pick apart and second-guess every minute of that evening. “There’s always something more.”

She adamantly shook her head. “Not this time.”

“Sometimes I was afraid that maybe you would blame me too—that you would start seeing me the way your dad did.”

She stared at him with shocked horror in her eyes. “No, Jagger. No. I loved Logan so much. I still do, but the drugs and his choices are what killed him.”

He shook his head as he felt the tear trail down his cheek. “I grew up around that shit. I should have seen the signs that he had a problem sooner. I should have done more before it got so out of control.”

Grace wiped it away, then swiped at her own. “He was my brother. He was older, but I was Logan’s rock after my mom died. We were both so close with her, but as much as I loved her and she loved me, they had a different bond. I tried to fill the void, but I couldn’t.”

“You were a damn good sister, Grace.”

“And you were a damn good friend.” She kissed him. “We did everything we could, Jagger. We visited him every weekend—both times he was in treatment. We bailed him out when we more than likely shouldn’t have. We were his support system. When I look back, I know that after my mom died, that’s when he started getting lost. We tried so hard to help him, but there was the Logan before his injury and surgery and the Logan after. Little by little, we lost him. By the time he left us, he was my brother, but he also wasn’t. He wasn’t the same. He died a little each week. The last time we saw him, it felt like he was a stranger.”

“He loved you, Grace.”

She nodded. “I know he did.”

“When I was carrying him out of the junkyard… Before he lost consciousness, he told me to tell you how sorry he was.”

Her face crumpled as she started to cry.

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