The concern in Katie’s voice sent elation through Logan’s chest, but he stamped it down. He hadn’t been sure what to expect when he’d called, but her fear for his safety wasn’t at the top of the list of guesses.
“Who broke it and why?” The flurry of words from her mouth came at a steady stream.
Logan wasn’t sure what question to answer first, but he listened to the questions, fear, and dismay. With each word, he steadily became more scared; it was the first time in a long time that Logan had ever felt surefire fear. However, as Katie rattled on a million questions a minute, Logan realized that no matter her skin tone, if she was ever going to rise above the hate he’d brought into her life, he couldn’t be a part of it. Not that he was so sure she even wanted him in it now that everything was said and done.
“Okay, that’s it . . . I’ll call my dad and ask him if this is the freaking kind of prison he runs. If he is okay with men running around and breaking noses.” She was a bit out of breath, but Logan knew she wasn’t done yet. “Oh, wait. You didn’t fall, did you? Shit, of course you didn’t. What happened?”
Logan could imagine her long legs as she paced back and forth across whatever room she was in, and then her words hit him. “No, don’t call your dad. I’m fine; they got the two guys who did it. I’m fine.” He said again a bit louder.
He heard her intake of breath, and he hoped she was settling down. The last thing he needed was her father finding out that she’d been talking to him, whether over the phone or through email.
“Okay, so . . . um, why are you calling me?” she asked, suddenly sounding a bit insecure.
Logan was going to be honest as hell, and hoped she would be truthful as well. “I need to ask you a few questions about this Jason guy.”
“Oh.”
He could have sworn she sounded disappointed. “I need you to tell me what he said to you.” He worried that this question would rehash an old argument. He hadn’t called in two weeks, and now he’d only called for answers.
“He told me that you were a player with a fiancée named Dawn. But that wasn’t true, was it?” She asked hesitantly.
He shook his head as he spoke, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “No. What did he look like?” Logan believed he already knew, but he needed to be sure. If Jake had gotten to Katie, and then to Aaron, he could have easily set up Logan’s beating.
“Tall, white, good-looking, bright blue eyes, and blond hair.”
Logan cringed at the fact she’d found that bastard good looking. Still, he wasn’t sure if it’d been Jake or not.
“Anything else, ba—” He caught himself. Not because he didn’t want to call her baby, but because he shouldn’t. “Katie?”
Katie sighed. “He drove a Denali, it was black.”
Caught, Logan thought. It was Jake’s SUV. “Okay,” was all he said. He needed to think for a moment. He wondered if Katie was in danger, or if he needed to send someone to watch over her. But who the fuck could he trust enough to send? No damned body.
“Why are you so quiet?” Her soft voice pulled him back to her, but he wasn’t ready just yet. He needed to think, and that would be impossible with her warm voice in his ear.
“Can I call you back?”
Her response came quick. “No.”
“Okay.” He said dolefully. He was set to hang up; it was what he’d expected in the first place.
“Talk to me now! Tell me what’s happening in there with you, and who this Jason person is. Logan, you need to tell me the truth.” The demand in her voice urged him to obey. He did need to tell her everything just in case she was in danger.
He rubbed the tension from his shoulders. “Jason is really my lawyer, Jake. He’s pissed at me for something I did in the past. Being my lawyer, I guess it made it easier to find you. When he did, and found out that—”
“I was black.” Her voice held more sorrow than he could take.
“Yeah, he used it against me in here.” Logan was still pissed. If he had just taken the time to find out if she was white, this shit wouldn’t have happened. Still, Logan couldn’t help but want to make her feel better. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. Normally, I’m more careful about the people I keep in my life. I dragged you into this, and I shouldn’t have.” His whole life he’d lived by a code; just one slip up, and shit was out of control.
“You’re right.” Not what Logan had expected, but her voice held an odd calm. “You should be more careful and keep black women out of your life. Especially ones like me: a college graduate, New York Times bestselling author, homeowner, and successful person. You should definitely keep white men like Jake in your life, since he’s a piece of shit, lying asshole.”
At a loss for words, Logan pulled the phone away from his head and took a deep breath. What the fuck was he doing? Pushing the receiver hand to his head, Logan said, “You’re right, but at this point, it doesn’t matter. I’ve messed up, and lost not only your trust, but also the ability to breathe through my nose.” He wasn’t apologizing for his beliefs, because he believed they’d kept him safe over the years.
“Logan—”
“Katie, I don’t . . . I don’t know how to protect you from him in here, and I feel obligated to. I feel like I have to because it’s my fault you are in this shit.” Logan’s headache was back in full force, and there was an annoying pressure behind his eyes. Sleep in the infirmary was the best sleep Logan had had in years, but now—back in his cell where Katie’s pictures were missing—sleeping was impossible. “There’s more. I think I put your safety in danger.”
Katie thought she had a boring life. If you were to ask anyone in Lakewood about her, the recluse who lived minutes away from the prison, they’d tell you she was a good, quiet girl. She would never have written to a convict, nor would she have placed her life in danger by falling hard for a racist.
No, Katie was a good girl who needed to call Joe and let him take her out. A good girl should hang up this phone and ask Logan, the convict, to stay out of her life. However, this good girl, the one everyone thought Katie was, was long gone. In her place was this new Katie. And this Katie sat on the couch in shock at Logan’s words.
“Danger?” she whispered. In the two weeks that she and Logan hadn’t spoken, she believed that she’d grown a bit, if that were possible, over that short amount of time. Unfortunately, she was still the same girl who would be afraid of the danger her situation presented.
“I’ll do what I can from here to keep you safe.” The reverent tone in his voice soothed her a bit. While Logan had told her that he didn’t associate with anyone out of his race, Katie had a hard time relating Logan to the man he seemed to want her to see him as.
Fear laced her voice, and Katie didn’t even think to hide it. “Do you think they are going to target me?” She wondered if it were time to call her father. Maybe this had gotten too out of hand. The thought of calling him and admitting that she’d messed up was too much. Katie was an adult who could handle her own issues without the coddling hand of her father.
“When I got back to my cell this morning, the picture you sent me was missing, so I don’t know. Jake is out of town, or at least that’s what his secretary is saying. The guy that did this,” Logan paused, and Katie urged him on gently, “the guy who did it, he’s my last cellmate, Aaron. He’s with the AB brothers here in prison.”
“AB brothers? What’s that?” She’d never heard of them, but she was positive it had to do with some prison brotherhood bullshit, and since Logan had gotten hurt over her, Katie guessed it had something to do with a group she hoped she never had to confront.
“The KKK. Katie, I am not a part of that,” he quickly explained.
Those initials sent a chill down her back and she closed her eyes, forcing tears back in. “I know.” And she did. Nothing about Logan made her think that he was with the KKK, but she still thought him a racist. The word stung her to the core, and her answer must have shocked him into silence.
&
nbsp; “Logan, I can see where you are coming from. The black kids hurt you in your neighborhood, and then Trent comes along and protects you. So then, you make a choice that you believe is necessary, and maybe that worked for a while, but how can you not see that not all black people are like those hoodlums, especially when you know me?” She couldn’t reconcile him with a bigot or an idiot, so why was he so blind?
His momentary silence hung heavy in the air. “Katie, why are you doing this to me?” His breath came ragged.
She could almost feel his pain through the phone. This was not what she’d expected, but she so desperately wanted Logan. Katie wrapped her arms around herself and sat back in her chair. She missed his voice, she missed the feeling it sent through her, but most of all she missed his company. “What am I doing, Logan?”
“Making me rethink my life. I can’t . . . I just—” His firm words sent a powerful current through Katie. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, but uncertainty held the words at bay. What was she feeling? It was a strange mix of fear and hope, but hope for what? What self-respecting black woman would let a man with issues like Logan in her life?
“This thing we have, I never thought I’d have it with a woman like you. I won’t lie, it’s thrown me for a loop, baby.”
Still the word baby from his lips made her shudder.
“The thought of you getting hurt because I’m a fucking idiot is killing me. I want you. I want to hold you, taste you, and keep you, but my life won’t allow it. The walls I’ve created, I swear I can see you knocking them down, but then I have to worry about the shit you’ll find behind them.”
Katie closed her eyes, silently praying for Logan to let go and accept what they could have—skeletons and all. “Tell me what you want from me, Logan. You know how I feel about you, even if I hate that I do. But I see you being so much more than some white kid that got his ass kicked in the ghetto. I see you.”
Logan grunted. “Baby, they kicked my ass then, but never again.”
Katie couldn’t hold her tongue. “No, just this time white men did it. Is that okay to you? Is it okay white men beat your ass, but worse that in the past, black men did it?” Here he was with this shit again.
“I get where you are coming from, but you need to understand . . . if I make this change, it’s not going to be overnight. I swear there are going to be some rough times, and that’s why I think we should take it slow.”
Katie agreed. She was still nervous and hurt by his previous actions. Plus, she was still scared that Jake had more up his sleeve.
“When I got your picture, I realized the color of your skin didn’t matter. When I looked at it, I was angry with myself for the things I’d said to you because I’d promised when I found the woman I wanted to make a life with, I’d never hurt her.”
The tears Katie had been fighting finally made their escape. They had overcome this hurdle, but she knew there were more to come. She wondered if she would be strong enough to be in Logan’s life, and if he’d be able to overcome his past.
There were times when being honest could break you in half, and then times when it was liberating, and for Logan, this time it was the latter. He wanted to be in Katie’s life, and he wasn’t going to let the fear of the unknown hold him back anymore.
“Logan . . .” Her voice was soft and imploring, and there had never been a time when Logan wished he were on the outside more than this moment. “I don’t know. I think . . . no, I know I need time to think. Like a fool, I don’t want you to stop calling me. I missed you when you didn’t, and now I’m worried that you aren’t safe there.”
He understood, and felt the same way. He didn’t fear for his safety, but instead for his parole hearing, which was just a few short months away. He couldn’t fuck that up, not now. “Yeah, I’ll keep calling, but I’ll give you some time and call you back later tonight. I need to talk to Iggy, and see who was in and out of our cell while I was in the infirmary. Maybe you can get someone to come and stay with you until I figure this out?” he asked. He didn’t want Joe, or whoever the man was that fixed her sink, with her when he couldn’t be, but having her safe was more important.
“I can get Teal over here,” she said. “That might work.”
“Okay, I’ll call you back in a few.” Logan paused. There were better ways to tell a woman goodbye, but Logan couldn’t bring himself to say anything other than, “Bye.”
When he hung up, he stared at the phone for a while before standing and heading to his cell. Actually, he limped. Aaron and his friend, Davis, had broken his nose, bruised a rib, and he’d needed twelve stitches—with a concussion to boot—but Logan didn’t care. Katie’s pictures were missing, and he was legitimately scared for her safety. He finally made it up the stairs and to his cell . . . only to find Iggy snoring on the top bunk.
“Iggy,” Logan called, and the man immediately turned over and glared at Logan, bleary-eyed.
He flipped over and pushed a hand under his pillow. “I been waiting on you, muthafucka’.”
Though his body was still sore and aching, Logan balled his fists and stepped forward. He’d gotten his ass kicked once, and he’d be damned if it was happening again.
Surprising Logan, Iggy laughed and raised his hands up to show he wasn’t going for a weapon. “Nah, man. It ain’t nothin’ like that.”
Unconvinced, Logan didn’t back down. “It’s not, is it?” The last time he didn’t pay attention to his surroundings, he’d ended up a bloody mess on the floor.
Iggy threw his legs over the side of his bunk, keeping his hands in the air as a show of pacification. “Nah, man,” he motioned to his pillow, “I got something for you. And I know you want this, you know what I mean?”
Logan didn’t, but he nodded anyway. If push came to shove, even with his broken nose and bruised ribs, he could take Iggy.
His cellmate slowly reached into his pillowcase and Logan watched, waiting and willing to kick his ass up and down the cell if necessary. When Iggy pulled out Logan’s manila folder, his heart dropped. If he’d also grabbed Katie’s pictures, Logan could assume she was safe from Aaron, for now. He reached out and snatched them from the man.
Taking a calming breath, he looked inside. “Why the fuck do you have them?” he demanded, glancing up. Iggy looked offended, but Logan didn’t give a damn. He wanted answers and he wanted to be sure that Aaron stayed away from Katie. Jake he could handle with one phone call, but Aaron had long arms that could reach further than Jake’s.
Iggy stretched and pointed out of the cell. “I have them cause those dudes came in here and looked through your shit.” He reached under the pillow again and pulled out Logan’s pictures.
Taking them, Logan shoved the pictures into his folder, ignoring Iggy’s knowing stare. They’d had issues because Logan had accused Iggy of not acting his race, but after meeting Katie, Logan felt like a damned fool. Like she’d said, ghetto wasn’t a race thing. Logan thought about it for a moment, and was just about to ask Iggy a question, but the man spoke.
Iggy jumped off his bunk as he said, “And you better believe that I looked through it.”
Logan took an intimidating step closer, forcing Iggy to retreat backward. Was Iggy going to use this as ammunition against him? Logan wondered if he was going to have to kick Iggy’s ass after all. He knew he had to look like a monster. It’d been two weeks, but his face was still a bruised yellow and green mess, and he had a red eye from a blood vessel that’d burst.
“I . . . I had to make sure I wasn’t hiding drugs or some shit,” Iggy stuttered, causing Logan to take a small step back. “Theeeen,” Iggy annoyingly dragged out the word as Logan moved back further and opened his manila envelope to make sure everything was all there, “I find out that you play a racist in here so those dudes don’t beat yo’ ass, but you really like that dark meat.”
Logan paused. He wasn’t sure what to say to Iggy, so he said nothing at all. Bringing his stuff to the plastic desk, he placed it down and used b
oth hands to lower himself into the seat. Relief took some of the tension from his neck and back; suddenly, he was ready to lie down and take a nap.
He closed his eyes and massaged the back of his neck. “Don’t ever call her dark meat again.” It wasn’t a request, but a threat.
“I hear you.” Iggy clapped his hands together and sat across from Logan. “So, you one of the men that come in here, act the part, and do yo’ time, am I right?”
Logan opened his eyes and stared at Iggy. Something was different about him, but Logan couldn’t place his finger on it. It was like there was more to Iggy than he let on, because as Logan looked the man in his eyes, he saw understanding in them. He had told the man he needed the white beat into him, and here Iggy was, protecting his secret. Why? Logan didn’t get it. The man thought he was black, didn’t he? He walked and talked like the black kids in his old neighborhood, and because of that, Logan placed him right in the same category.
He wondered what Katie really thought of him. Yeah, she’d called him a racist, but there was so much more to Logan than his past, and he wondered if he could overcome it.
“Where are you from, Iggy?”
The man seemed taken aback. “For real? You want to know something about me?” Iggy feigned shock . . . or maybe he wasn’t faking it. Logan had been a dick to Iggy since the day he’d moved in. “I’m from Chicago. Lived on State Street. Why you asking?” His brow raised in suspicion at the question.
Logan ignored the latter question. “It dangerous there?” He didn’t know if State Street was a suburb or what.
“Ah, hell man, it’s rough, but why you asking?” Iggy’s voice was serious now.
“Because I want to know when you decided to start acting like a damned fool. If you had a good upbringing, I’m inclined to think you—“
Incarcerated: Letters From Inmate 92510 Page 11