“When it comes to you leaving your daughter behind, I fucking do,” I shot back, loud enough that someone walking down the street past us glanced at me and cocked an eyebrow. I looked back at him, daring him to say something, and he lowered his gaze and carried on.
“I’m not asking for a lot from you,” I continued, and I realized my voice was getting louder and didn’t give a crap. “I’m just asking that you stick to the agreement we made, the one that you wanted. You fucking remember now?”
“I was young!” she shot back at me, clearly as tired of this back-and-forth as I was. “I didn’t know what I was giving up! Are you seriously telling me that if someone had come to you and made the same offer way back in the day you wouldn’t have taken them up on it?”
I fell silent for a long moment, and she seemed to think it was because I was considering her comment. But I wasn’t. I was just so angry that I couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think. The implication she was making, that I would have abandoned my daughter if I was given the chance, that I would have just left her the same way Samantha—it was so cruel it actually made my head hurt. I shook my head.
“I would never have done that,” I replied fiercely, and I knew it was the truth. And now that she had pushed that button, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to treat her with any degree of kindness any longer.
“You need to get out, now,” I told her, pointing down the street.
“And where do you expect me to go?” she demanded. She always had an answer for everything, was always prepared for a way to make me look like an asshole for kicking her out as though she didn’t bring this on herself, time and time again; as though all of this couldn’t have been fixed if she had just listened to me for a change.
“I don’t fucking care, Samantha!” I exploded. “I just need you to get away from my apartment, away from my daughter, out of my life!”
As I raised my voice and started yelling at her was precisely the moment that I saw Nina standing behind her.
Nina was staring at the two of us like she had seen a pair of ghosts, and it felt as though my heart stopped dead in my chest when I laid eyes on her. It must have been written all over my face because Samantha smiled triumphantly, clearly believing that she had managed to break me down and convince me to let her come in.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” she planted her hands on her hips and cooed condescendingly, and I brushed straight past her, no longer interested in playing a second of her stupid game anymore.
“Nina,” I took her hand and she let me, letting it lay there like a dead fish. “I’m so sorry you had to see this.”
“Who the fuck is that?” Samantha spun around on her heel, narrowing her eyes at the woman next to me as though she sensed competition. “What’s she doing here?”
“I live here,” Nina told her calmly, and she let go of my hand and pushed by the two of us, so she could get into her apartment. Her face was clear, and her eyes were fixed forward, as though she was working hard to pretend that there was nothing going on in her head at all. Samantha glanced at me, eyebrows raised, and I shook my head at her.
“Get out of here,” I told her, and I guessed the anger in my voice was so obvious that even she couldn’t deny it any longer. She raised her eyebrows and held her hands up and backed off down the street, and I grabbed the bags where I’d dumped them earlier and hurried to catch up with Nina. My heart was pounding in my chest. How much had she seen? How much did she hate me right now as a result of it? I had never really spoken to her about Samantha before, never really bothered, but now she turned up on my doorstep, and Nina had seen the side of me that I had done my best to keep from her all this time: the side with the temper, the side that lashed out and fired back and got mad.
I caught up with her just as she reached her door, and she was fumbling with the key in the lock as I started to talk.
“Nina, I’m so sorry you had to walk in on that,” I told her, the words pouring out of me. “I didn’t expect her to be here. She just turned up, and I was trying to get rid of her. I’m so sorry—”
“No, don’t be,” she replied, and she still had that curious calmness to her voice, the same kind she’d had before, as though none of this had really sunk in yet. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I paused. I wanted to grab her hand and lead her up to the apartment where we could laugh about how ridiculous Samantha was acting and drink a little wine and thank God that Erin had been staying with Ant that evening. But Nina seemed reluctant to so much as look me in the eye, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. I hated getting out of control the way I had done down there; there was a reason I had fought so hard to get a handle on my temper, but Samantha always seemed to know the precise buttons to press to get me to act out like a fucking teenager.
“Nina?” I spoke her name one more time, not sure what I was hoping to achieve.
She turned and looked at me, eyes blank. “Yes?”
“Are you still coming up for dinner today?” I tried desperately.
She sighed heavily, and then shook her head, looking down at the floor in front of us. “I think it’s for the best if we leave that for now,” she admitted. “I need … I need a little time to think.”
“Really, you don’t have to worry about her,” I tried to promise her. “She’s nothing to me. She’s not even part of my life anymore.”
“That’s not true,” she pointed out calmly. “She was right there. She’s a part of your life whether you like it or not, Logan.”
And with that, she closed the door in my face, and I stood there staring at the pale wood and wondering what the hell just happened. Half an hour before, I had been walking home excited to cook dinner for the woman I was dating, and then the last woman I’d dated rolled in to come fuck everything up, apparently just to make a point about the fact she still had control over my life. I had no idea what to do now to make it better, so I turned up to my apartment, dumped the bags on the floor inside, and cracked open the bottle of wine I had been hoping to save for the two of us. I had a lot of thinking to do, same as Nina, and I had a feeling it was going to be a lot easier with half a bottle of red inside me to take the edge off.
But after a glass or two, I heard a knock on the door and felt a zing of excitement—it was Nina, and the two of us could work it out. She had been a little shaken, who wouldn’t be, but now she was here and willing to give it a try and—
I opened the door and found myself face-to-face with Samantha.
Chapter 15
Nina
I heard her running up the stairs, and I knew precisely where she was headed. I could have stuck my head out and stopped her, told her that she was crazy if she thought that Logan was actually going to have a conversation with her about this after the shit she had pulled on him. But it wasn’t my place to get involved with any of this. Instead, I went to my door and listened to what happened next.
She banged on the door like she was trying to take it off its hinges, and when he eventually answered, I could practically feel his irritation dripping down from where I was hiding out.
“Samantha?” he demanded, sounding tired like he wanted nothing more than to shove her back down the stairs and out of the apartment once and for all.
“You can’t just walk away from me like that!” she exclaimed.
She had the most grating voice, like someone dragging acrylic nails over a blackboard. I had only caught a glimpse of her, but she was a little terrifying, perfectly made-up and constructed like she had built herself out of solid steel and was about as likely to back down.
“If you don’t get out of here in the next five minutes, Samantha, I’m going to call the police,” Logan told her firmly. I thanked God once more that at least Erin wasn’t around; the thought of her having to face this after everything else she had been through made my heart ache. Small blessings.
“Then call the police on me,” she snapped back at him. “I mean, you’re the one keeping my dau
ghter from me. You really think they’re going to believe that she doesn’t want her mother in her life?”
“All it takes is five minutes of research for them to find out that you’ve been out of her life her entire fucking life,” he fired back. “Get out of here, Samantha, you don’t have a leg to stand on.”
“You can’t stand to be around me, can you?” she snarled, and there was a sudden edge to her voice, as though she had finally figured out which buttons she could press to get a rise out of Logan. I wanted to run up there, drag her away, tell him that she was nothing but a short fuse waiting to blow up the rest of his life. But I knew that I couldn’t stick my oar in. I would only make things worse. I had seen the way she looked at me, as though she wanted to claw me. I didn’t want to deal with it.
“No, I really fucking can’t.” Logan sighed deeply, as though it should have been obvious.
“It’s because you still have feelings for me,” she told him, gleefully. “That’s why you can’t bear to be around me. Because you’re still in love with me.”
My heart dropped. I knew it wasn’t true. I knew that he couldn’t have faked the way he was with me, couldn’t have made it up on the spot. And yet, hearing those words come out of her mouth, I believed her. Just for a moment, I supposed that she knew better than me. She had known him longer—she had shared something that ran deeper.
“That’s not true—”
“And that’s why you’re keeping Erin from me,” she told him, finishing up with a flourish. The whole building must have been able to hear the end of this argument. It had certainly provided some late-afternoon drama for me. I had been so looking forward to tonight, to spending a date night with Logan and actually letting ourselves indulge in some romance. But now I wanted to distance myself as far from Samantha and Logan and all of it, for a long while.
“That’s not fucking true, and you need to leave,” he told her. He was speaking so quietly that I was having a hard time making out what he was saying, but the hardness of his voice was enough.
“Prove it,” she replied.
His voice dimmed for a moment as he ducked back into the apartment. “I’m calling the cops,” he told her, and I heard the distant beep of the buttons on his phone. “And if you’re not out of here in the next ten seconds, I’m going to get them here and tell them that you’re harassing me. Alright?”
“You’re such a bastard,” she shot back, landing in one more blow before she left, but with that, she scuttled down the stairs and past my door and out of the building. Thank God.
I heard Logan let out a long sigh above me, and his door clicked shut. I wanted to go up and comfort him, tell him that he was in the right and that it was all going to be okay, but I felt as though my feet were rooted to the ground. My mind, on the other hand, was whirring so fast that I could hardly keep up with it.
I had known that I was getting involved with someone else’s family. I had known that intellectually in the sense that it was impossible to deny. But it wasn’t until I had seen Samantha standing outside the building, the two of them locked in a conflict that looked as though it was tearing at Logan’s sanity, that it really sank in.
Maybe I should have wrapped my head around that earlier. It had been so easy to just play happy family for a little while. I hated the thought that I had been leading not just Logan on, but Erin as well. I had managed to convince myself that I was suited to this kind of life as long as that kind of life was fun and easy and silly, but now that it was real and staring me down, I wanted out. And I felt like a fucking coward.
What had Ant said to me? That she was scared that I was going to end up sliding out of Erin’s life, leaving her with the same scars that the loss of her parents had given them both. And now, here I was, doing exactly as she had expected me to do. I hated myself. I wanted to call her up and talk to her, but I knew she was far from an impartial ear to this, and she had a pointed investment in me sticking around her brother and her niece.
I went for a shower, ignoring the clothes that I had excitedly laid out on the bed, the outfit I planned to wear on our first real date. My heart sank. How had I managed to catch feelings for this guy that were so deep and so profound when I hadn’t even been on an actual date with him? I had let myself slip and slide into the relationship as long as it was fun.
Samantha’s words were ringing in my ears. I didn’t believe her, of course—I mean, I wasn’t crazy, I knew that Logan wasn’t in love with her and didn’t hold a torch for her and wasn’t doing this out of spite. Samantha proved to me in just a few minutes precisely why Logan should want to keep her away from his daughter, and I believed him when it came to that.
But at the same time, she was Erin’s mother. She kept saying that. And she was right, in a technical sense. I mean, I believed that parents were the ones who were actually there to raise the kids, and Samantha hadn’t been around at least for the last few months, but she had a biological bond with Erin that I could never come close to.
And did I even want to be her mother? Even the thought of that word carried so much weight, and it hung in my head, heavy with what it meant. It wasn’t the kind of role I could just slide into, act like I had always belonged there. I had to earn my place in Erin’s life like that, and I wasn’t sure that I ever truly could. How on earth was I meant to prove to her, to Logan, to myself, that I deserved that title, that role? The work I would have to put in, the time I would have to invest. It was starting a relationship with two people. I couldn’t fall in love with just Logan; I had to fall in love with everything that came with it. And I would have been willing to try if it hadn’t been for Samantha turning up and reminding me that things were never going to be simple with him. He had a past, and I couldn’t just ignore that, no matter how much I wanted to.
The water from the shower poured over me, and I ran through everything I needed to do on autopilot. My brain was rushing faster than the water, and I felt like I couldn’t pick a single thought out to focus on. Half of me wanted to go upstairs and declare to Logan that I didn’t care what he was going through; I was there for him, and I had no intention of going anywhere.
But the other part of me—the part that was a little more practical and connected to the reality of the world around me—knew that I couldn’t swear to that. I wanted to stand by him, and I wanted him as part of my life, and I wanted to believe that I could provide stability for Erin and that I could stick around the way her real mother never had.
But what if I couldn’t? What if that was a lie? What if I was just going to hurt her? I couldn’t do that to her, to him. The thought of letting them down, of letting them all down so badly, made my heart hurt. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t put myself in that position.
At least until he had things fixed with Samantha. That much was clear. If she was going to come rolling in and out of Erin’s life, I couldn’t be doing the same thing. The thought of leaving that little girl behind—the thought of leaving Logan—felt so wrong. But it was the right choice, for now, until everything was fixed. I owed it to all of them, not to confuse things any further.
I climbed out of the shower and looked up at the ceiling, wondering if Logan was standing right above me. My heart sank at the thought of having to break things off with him—well, put things on hold, at the very least—but I would have to be the one to do it. I knew he never would. But I was the one who could see this situation from the outside, and it was clear that we needed to take some space, to make sure that, in all of this, Erin came out of it unscathed. It was a shame the same couldn’t be said about me; not any longer.
Chapter 16
Logan
I called Nina’s number for what felt like the dozenth time that week, as though this time she was suddenly going to swipe it up and pour apologies and excuses and explanations into my ear and I could pretend that nothing at all had changed between us.
But instead, the call once more went to voicemail, and I hung up and tossed the phone against the couch. I didn’
t know what I had expected. I wanted to talk to her, just to hear her voice, but she had made it pretty fucking clear that was the last she wanted from me.
I knew it had everything to do with that fucking argument she had walked in on. Had she heard Samantha tell me that I was still in love with her? Did she believe it? The thought of that made me the angriest, the notion that Nina might believe for an instant that I valued someone as heartless and hopeless as Samantha over her. Samantha was nothing compared to Nina, the only thing tying us together some tiresome biological fact that was barely even applicable anymore, not since she had given up her rights to her daughter.
But I hadn’t been able to get hold of Nina since the day of that argument. I figured that she needed a little space to process what she had seen, and I didn’t blame her for that; it must have been a lot to take in for her, a big chunk to process, the knowledge that my ex was back in town and accusing me of all kinds of ridiculous shit. She had never met Samantha, didn’t know that this was what she did—throw enough lies out there that you would agree to what she wanted just to get her to stop. She was a master manipulator, better at it than anyone I’d ever met, and I wished I could just go down there and tell Nina all of that. Hell, I wished I could have gotten ahead of this, told her that Samantha was always going to be rolling in and out of my life with a specific kind of demand that she would usually lose interest in a few days later.
But that wouldn’t have been true this time around. No, as it happened, a couple of days after the argument I received a letter through the door, my name and address printed in big, imposing letters on the front, as though whoever had sent it had intended it to make a major impression. I tore it open, and my heart sank when I saw what was written inside.
She was trying to get custody of Erin. I was almost certain that I could prove to any judge with even an inch of common sense that it was a terrible fucking idea, but there was still a good chance we would get dragged up in court together, and I would have to lay my case out in front of her. The thought of that was enough to make my stomach churn with panic. Back when Erin was born, Samantha had been out of the picture so fast it had left my head spinning, but in retrospect, it had been a good thing: she hadn’t been around to fight for our daughter, and I hadn’t had to bother with arguing my case against her. But now I would have to come up with something, something convincing enough to keep Erin out of her claws.
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