“Mom, come on,” I begged, seeing the hate in her eyes.

“Jesus Christ. Can’t you see we’re h-h-having a fucking t-t-talk?” Logan slurred.

That wasn’t helping the situation.

Mom hurried over to him, grabbing his arm. “You are trespassing. Leave before I call the cops.”

He yanked his arm away from her, stumbling backwards, hitting the fridge. “Don’t touch me. I’m talking to your daughter.”

Mom’s eyes shot over to me. “And this is exactly why we are going to have the abortion. He’s a mess.”

Logan stood up as straight as he could, his eyes wide with disgust. “Abortion? You’re having an abortion?”

My body was shaking, my eyes glassed over. “No. Wait. Mom, stop. You’re not helping.”

“You really spoke about an abortion?” Logan asked again.

“We are getting it on Thursday. I already called to set it up,” Mom said, which was a lie. I was eighteen and had the right to do what I wanted with my body, not what my mother found fit.

Logan let out a low breath. “Wow. So you were gonna do this without talking to me? You don’t think I’d be a good dad or something?”

Mom laughed sarcastically.

Again, not helping.

“That’s not what I said, Lo.”

“That is what you said! That’s what you meant!” he hollered, his eyes dull, as if the light I loved so much in him had been sucked from his entire existence.

“You’re not listening to me because you’re high, Logan.”

“Which isn’t anything new,” Mom muttered under her breath, disgust stinging her words.

“Mom, will you stop?” I begged.

“No. She’s right. I’m always high, right? That’s all you people think of me,” he said, gesturing toward Mom and me. “You and all your fucking money in your big ass house with no fucking struggles.” As he stumbled around, he accidentally knocked over our knife set, sending them across the floor. Both Mom and I jumped out of fright.

Oh, Lo… Come back…

“You need to leave. Now.” Mom grabbed her cell phone and held it up. “I’m calling the cops.”

“Mom, don’t. Please.”

“No. I’m leaving. You can have this all,” he hissed. “Your money. Your house. Your life. Your abortion. What the hell ever. I’m gone.”

He hurried away, and tears fell down my cheeks as I stared at Mom. “What’s wrong with you?!”

“Me?” she screeched, shocked. “He’s a disaster waiting to happen. I knew you were naïve, Alyssa Marie. But I didn’t know how extremely stupid you could be. He’s an addict. He’s sick, and he’s not going to get better. He’ll drag you down into the flames before you bring him fresh air. You should give up on him. He’s a lost cause. Kellan and you both are his enablers. You’re allowing this to keep happening and it’s only going to get worse.”

I took a deep breath before racing after Logan.

He was walking toward the gate to climb back over it. “Logan, wait!” I cried.

He turned around to see me, his chest rising and falling heavily. “I let you in,” he said, his voice harsh.

My voice, was the complete opposite. Weak. Pained. Scared. “I know.”

“I let you in, even though I told you it wasn’t a good thing. I’m not someone who loves, Alyssa. But you fucking made me love you.”

“I know.”

“So, you made me love you. And I loved you hard, because I don’t know any other way. I loved you to my core, because you made this life seem a little bit more worth living. And then, out of nowhere, you turn on me. What did I do? Why would you… I told you my dreams. I told you everything.” He stepped closer to me, his voice lowering, shaking. When our eyes locked he shook his head once, stepping backward. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” I asked, bewildered.

“I’m not my mother,” he snapped.

“I know you’re not.”

“Then why the hell are you looking at me like I am?”

“Logan… Please just hear me out.”

He walked over to me, and our bodies melted together as they always did. His forehead fell against mine, his tears brushing against my skin as my hands rested on his chest. We wrapped our arms around each other, both of our bodies heated from the inside out, burning to know the reasons why life had to be so hard. His lips fell against my ear, and his hot breaths brushed against my skin as he said the words that scorned my soul.

“I never want to see you again.”

***

He disappeared that night.

He disappeared from my life in a blink of an eye. The late night calls vanished. His gentle voice was gone. Each night I wondered where he was, if he were safe. Whenever I stopped by his apartment, he wasn’t there. Whenever I called him, it went straight to voicemail. Kellan said he hadn’t heard from his brother, neither. He hadn’t seen him, and he was just as terrified as me.

When I told Mom I wasn’t going to give up the baby, she screamed at me, and went ahead with her threats, and cancelled her payment plan for my college. Erika and Kellan let me move into their small apartment as I tried to find my footing.

Each night Kellan and I came back to town, and we’d drive around to the different places that Logan might’ve been. We spoke to his friends, but always seemed a minute too late.

He was at parties, but seemed to always vanish. His friend Jacob told us Logan had been using a lot lately, but he hadn’t been able to talk to him.

“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” he swore. “If I run into him again, I’ll let you know.”

I felt a knot in my stomach.

What if Logan crossed a line?

What if he couldn’t come back from this hurt he was feeling?

It was all my fault.

Chapter Eleven

Alyssa

I hated receiving phone calls during the middle of the night. They always shook my nerves. No good news came at three or four in the morning. Unfortunately, I’d had way too many of those calls during the past few months, all because of one boy who set my heart on fire. Whenever the phone rang, my mind went to the worst possible situations—an illness, an accident, death. Some nights I’d stay up with heavy eyes, waiting for the phone calls. When I didn’t get them, sometimes I’d dial his number just to hear his voice, just to make sure he was okay.