Chapter 191

As it was so late when we had this conversation, we both decided to get some sleep and call the Christopher’s in the morning.

In bed, I couldn’t sleep at all, wondering what a reunion might look like between Logan and his foster parents. He couldn’t sleep either from what I could tell, tossing and turning.

Worriedly, I reached out and touched his back, after he rolled on his side away from me.

“You okay?” I asked him. I kept my voice soft, but in the quiet dark of the bedroom, it still seemed too loud.

“I don’t know,” he replied. His voice was just as soft, just as loud. “For years, I thought the Christopher’s were only after the Hatfield’s money. It’s hard to convince myself otherwise now, even with the things you are telling me.”

“I know you are helping to support them,” I said, remembering the checks under Dylan’s name.

“Do they know?” Logan asked, glancing back at me.

“No, but I recognized Dylan’s name and was able to piece it together,” I said. “You are a good person, supporting them even when you thought they only wanted your money.”

“They gave me a good childhood. I didn’t want them to suffer.” With a sigh, Logan rolled onto his back.

From his profile, I could see the defeated look on his face. He almost seemed childlike in that moment, lost and confused. He didn’t want to believe the kind people that raised him could only be doing so for the money.

I didn’t believe it myself, not after talking to them and befriending them. But I hadn’t been there. Beyond surface level information, I didn’t know much of anything.

I could easily believe, however, that Logan’s grandfather was sitting in his penthouse, pulling everyone’s strings like a puppet master. To make Logan more subservient to him, the first thing he would have to do would be to cut the connection Logan had to anyone else.

Isolation always seemed to come before control.

Logan, strong, intelligent, and independent as he was, continued to be crushed under his grandfather’s heavy command.

Perhaps reestablishing the connection between Logan and his foster parents would help him finally find the way to break away from his grandfather’s control.

But I wouldn’t push Logan into this. This was his life and he had to make the choices for himself.

“We can wait to talk to them,” I said.

He was quiet a moment. “I don’t think I want to have the conversation over the phone. If I could see their faces, I should be able to tell if they are lying.” Turning his head on the pillow, he looked at me. “Can you arrange a meeting?”

I smiled a little. “Isn’t that my job?”

The joke landed well and he laughed. It didn’t last long, but it still felt like a victory.

“You aren’t my assistant anymore, remember?” he said after a moment.

I leaned closer to him and kissing his shoulder, circled my arm around his waist. “I’ll make the call.”

“Thank you,” he said, soft again. He lifted his arm and draped it around me. I rolled half onto his chest. Eyes drooping, I listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat and was gently lulled to sleep.

My last thought, before the darkness, was my hope that he would find sleep too.

We slept in the next morning, not rousing again until around ten. We decided not to rush into the phone call, giving us time to shower, change, and eat.

Around noon, we couldn’t procrastinate anymore.

“Do you want to stay in the room?” I asked Logan.

“Put it on speaker,” Logan said. “I want to hear.”

Nodding, I opened my phone, found Tammy’s number and called.

“Hazel, dear! How lovely to hear from you,” Tammy said, when she answered. With her voice on speaker, Logan suddenly went very still. His face was stone, I couldn’t read him at all. I wanted to ask if he was okay, but couldn’t without alerting Tammy. All I could do was hope he was.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Tammy,” I said. “I hope you aren’t working today.”

“No,” Tammy said. “Frank has a shift later, but he’s still home. Frank! Frank, it’s Hazel on the phone!”

I winced as her loud voice crackled the speakers of my phone. I knew she meant well though, so I didn’t say a thing about it.

“Tammy, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about, actually…”

“Oh?”

“Yes, um. I was in contact with Logan recently –”

“Our Logan?” she asked, hope in her voice.

“Yes. He’s coming to visit soon and I was thinking if… Well… maybe we could all meet for lunch.”

Tammy’s end of the call went very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I checked to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected. It hadn’t.

“Tammy?”

“Oh, Hazel. I would love to see him, but… maybe it isn’t for the best.”

That surprised me. “Why?”

“I don’t think Logan would like it, and I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble for even suggesting it,” Tammy said. “Frank and I have tried contacting him for years now, and he never answers our messages. He will always be our heart, but I don’t think he wants to see us again.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “When I spoke to him about you… Tammy, meeting is Logan’s idea.”

“It is?” Tammy asks, and that hope is back, filling her voice with brightness. “He… wants to see us again?”

“Yes,” I tell her.

Her voice breaks. “Oh, Logan…” A sob comes through the phone.

In the background of the call, Frank asks, “What’s the matter? Why the waterworks? Is Hazel okay?”

“Frank…” Tammy sniffles more. “It’s Logan… he wants… He wants to see us!”

“He does?” Frank gasps. “When? I’ll clear our schedule. Whenever he wants!”

“Tomorrow?” I suggest. “Would lunch tomorrow work?”

“We’ll make it work,” Tammy said. “Thank you, Hazel. Oh, God bless you, child.”

It took several more minutes of grateful exchanges before I’m finally able to end the call with Tammy and Frank.

Logan remained frozen, just as he had since the conversation began. I wasn’t sure he even blinked.

“Was that okay?” I asked him.

Slowly, he lifted his gaze from the floor up to my face. “They sounded… happy.”

Happy was an understatement to how ecstatic they sounded. “Yes.”

Logan almost seemed like he was in shock, and it was starting to worry me. I reached out toward him, but in the same moment, my phone buzzed with a text.

Thinking it might be Tammy, I quickly checked.

No. It was Tina, from the same number that had sent me that naked picture of her in Logan’s bed. A message I had since deleted, but I saved the number in case this happened again.

Now was not the time to deal with Tina, but the short preview of the message caught my attention.

Logan and I are having sex…

What the hell was she on about now?

I clicked on the message and read the full thing.

Logan and I are having sex on his bed right now. He’s begging my name. He doesn’t even mind me texting you while I ride him, that’s how good he’s getting it.

Logan must have seen the shift on my face, because he came out of his own statue to ask, “What’s the matter?”

Another message comes through.

You’ve lost, Hazel. It’s time to give up.