The Winter We Collided: A Small Town Single Dad Romance (Ocean Pines Series Book 2)

by Victoria Denault

  “If. Maybe. Probably,” Dad snaps. “You are intent on beating yourself up.”

  “You have a disease,” Terra says firmly, voice even and calm, and I know she’s using everything she’s learned in school right now. “Alcoholism is a disease that changes thought patterns and the ability to make judgements and creates self-destructive behavior.”

  “Spoken like a therapist,” I argue. “But I get how hard it is to accept how a disease can make someone do insanely negligent things. Even as an alcoholic, I can’t just blame the disease for my shitty life choices and the consequences. I put myself in a position to be a part of this horrendous, life-altering moment, and now I’m going to lose the only girl who has made me feel alive because of it.”

  Dad wraps an arm around my mom’s shoulders just long enough to give her a squeeze and then takes me by mine and looks me dead in the eye. “I gave this Turner family all the money I could afford to help them through this. I knew Bryan’s family had nothing to give, and I didn’t want them to suffer a massive financial loss on top of an emotional one. It’s all I could do. I had to focus on you. I will never regret making you my priority, and if I could have done more for that family, I would have. But I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Dad, I don’t blame you,” I say and hug him. “If it was River, I would do what you did. I just…I can’t believe this is happening now.”

  “Are you going to tell her?” Ma asks as my dad and I pull apart.

  “Yes.” The thought makes me stomach lurch. But I also know I don’t have a choice. “Keeping secrets is what got us into this situation. I’ve never owned the truth about that night, which I need to do. Confess it out loud. She bared her soul to me tonight, and I have to bare mine back.”

  “She has to know about this. We had lawyers involved and everything,” Dad says.

  “Honestly Dad, something is off with that deal you guys made. I’d bet my life Chloe doesn’t even know about it.”

  “But the money was supposed to help with her medical costs,” Ma says, and her expression grows fiery. “That’s what the brother told Declan.”

  This must be the same brother that is now trying to force her to sell the house. He must have kept the settlement for himself and left her out in the cold. That’s yet another reason why I have to talk to Chloe. Down the hall, the front door opens, and Finn’s voice bounces off the walls. “Hello! Logan?”

  “Back here,” I call back, and he appears a second later in the doorway. His eyes dart around the room taking in every person’s expression, which makes his own grow darker. His eyes finally land on mine.

  “Jesus. It’s true?”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  He scrubs his face with his hand just like Dad did minutes ago. “Fuck. Oh God. Logan…” He walks to me and hugs me. I hug him back briefly but pull away. “Let’s go. Mom and Dad need to sleep.”

  “You can spend the night here if you want,” Ma says to me. “All of you can. You don’t have to go home alone.”

  She’s worried about me. I hug her. “I’m not touching the stuff again, Ma. If anything, this is just another reminder that drinking ruined my life.”

  She nods and hugs me again. It’s fierce, tight and brief. For such a petite woman, she’s always been able to give insanely hard hugs. She grabs my chin. “I love you Logan. I love all of you. And I’m proud of all of you.”

  Finn kisses her cheek and then Terra does before the three of us make our way through the house to the front door. Mom and Dad watch us throw on our winter gear and walk out into the night. They both still look stricken, but they’ll be okay. I, on the other hand, am in for even more hurt. I have to tell Chloe, and just the thought is tearing me to pieces inside.

  “You scared the shit out of me back there in the restaurant. I thought you were dying,” Finn says as we stand in the driveway. “I had to call Terra. I couldn’t just leave you like that.”

  “He was having a panic attack,” Terra tells him. “You did the right thing.”

  “Did Chloe get home okay?” I ask. “Is she freaking out about the way I acted?”

  “Yeah, she’s worried and hurt,” Finn replies and a pained look flashes over his features. “What are you going to do?”

  “And what can we do to help you?” Terra asks, her voice slightly muffled by the wool scarf she has wrapped around her neck and half her face.

  “I’m going to tell her. I’m done with the secrets. I know it was everyone’s best intention, but hiding the fact that I was in that car didn’t protect me,” I sigh.

  “I wish I could change this,” Finn says, his voice despondent. “I fucking hate this.”

  “I do too,” I reply. “If you guys want to help, let me crash with one of you. I will need somewhere to live.”

  “She might surprise you,” Terra says.

  I just give her a quick nod because I don’t even dare hope that either Chloe or I can get through our emotions on this and come out the other side with our relationship intact. It feels impossible right now. I’m officially frozen standing out here, which is actually a relief. I wish the cold winter air could numb my emotions as well as it numbs my skin. I walk over to my car. “Finn, can you take Terra home? I need to be alone and think this out.”

  They both nod and stand there watching me as I get in my car and drive away. I drive aimlessly for hours. Where would I have been if I’d just not had that first beer at fifteen? If I hadn’t used booze as an answer to every problem. Life is such a bitch. If I hadn’t been an alcoholic, I wouldn’t have been in that car with Bryan. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone to Wells that day without me, and Chloe would still be married. I would be a doctor by now. I wouldn’t need to rent a suite in someone else’s house. But, alternatively, I might never have talked to Bethany, which means I wouldn’t have River. And I wouldn’t have fallen in love with Chloe.

  Finally, at almost three in the morning, I drive back to the house. Chewie must be busting for a pee, and I feel horrible for leaving him so long. But I had to make sure Chloe wasn’t waiting up for me. I couldn’t face her tonight. I needed time.

  I always thought that the universe hadn’t made me pay enough for my choices in life. Everyone tried to tell me that was enough. That I was forgiven by the universe and I needed to forgive myself. But in the end…I was right. Because if I lose Chloe over this, it will be the universe collecting my debts in full.

  26

  Chloe

  “Hey Chloe?” I hear Aspen’s voice. “Wake up, honey.”

  There’s a strong hand on my shoulder suddenly and it gives me a little shake. My eyes flicker open and I see Aspen’s brother Abbott’s handsome face swim into view. “Are we home?”

  “Yep. I can’t believe you slept the whole way,” Abbott says. “You didn’t do a single run either the whole time and barely left your room at the ski cabin. Are you sure you’re not sick?”

  “Just heart sick,” Mitch tells his old college friend. I don’t argue. I just reach for the door handle to get out of the car.

  Aspen and Abbott decided, last minute, to join Mitch and me for our Christmas ski trip. I think Aspen was worried about me. I called her after the horrible ending to my last date with Logan. And then again the next day when he never came home, or called, and then again the day after that when he was still missing. She, being the private eye that she was, investigated and finally, four days after the date that ended with Finn driving me home, Aspen came over and sat me down in the living room. “It’s not you, it’s him.”

  “He’s ghosting me?” I asked and my heart felt like someone had dipped it in liquid nitrogen. “He’s ghosting me and his apartment?”

  “Terra said he’ll still pay his rent. He’s not exactly ghosting you,” Aspen had explained with a frown on her face. “Terra said he’s going through something heavy and needed his space but that he would talk to you. When he was ready. And that he was sorry.”

  “I don’t understand,” I had whispered. I was confused and really, tr
uly concerned at first. Was it something I said? Something I did? Had he fallen off the wagon and I didn’t realize and he was trying to get sober? But then as the days kept coming and he was still nowhere to be found, I started to get angry and hurt.

  I think Aspen convinced her brother Abbott to do Christmas in Vermont with us to make sure I was okay. It was nice to have them there. Aspen didn’t ski either and tried to keep my mind off him. It sort of worked until I woke up Christmas day to a text message from him.

  Merry Christmas. I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything when you’re back. I’m so sorry.

  I didn’t respond because I didn’t know whether to yell or cry but I made the decision if I didn’t hear from him in the next twenty-four hours, I would park my rundown car at the Fire Station and ambush him when he showed up for a shift. If this was over, I was going to make him tell me to my face.

  I move to get out of the car, juggling the dog carrier with Boss and Stevie in it. They both give one final growl to Major who is in the back of Mitch’s SUV. The Shepherd yawns, unperturbed. Mitch gets out of the car with me and walks to the back to grab my bag for me. I take it and hug him and wave to Aspen and Abbott. Aspen rolls down her window. “Call me anytime.”

  I nod and walk to my house and as Mitch and my friends drive away, I stand at the bottom of the stairs, staring at them. They’ve been shoveled – recently. I look around. I don’t see his car. Leaving my suitcase at the bottom of the stairs, I walk around to his side of the house, but am blocked. The path to his door hasn’t been shoveled and the snow is more than ankle deep. “What the fuck is happening?”

  Of course, no one answers my desperate whisper. I head into my house. Like a robot, I go through the motions – turn the heat on, light a fire in the fireplace, unpack, throw some laundry in, check to see if there’s anything worth eating for dinner even though I’m not hungry.

  And then…Boss barks.

  I head out into the living room, and he’s climbed up on the chair by the bay window. The same chair where I waited for Logan when he was coming to see the apartment. Boss is snarling and barking, but his tail is wagging a million miles an hour. Just on the other side of the glass, with his wet, wide nose against it, is Chewie. But I’m more interested in Logan, who is standing just to the left of his dog. He looks like hell. His hair is disheveled, his beard unkempt, his skin pale except for under his blue eyes where he’s got some serious dark circles. “Can I come in?” he mouths.

  I nod and walk to the door and pull it open. Chewie comes bounding in, right past me to Boss, who yaps and jumps in pure glee. The excitement of our dogs is a complete juxtaposition to the mood emanating from both of us.

  “Chewie, calm down,” Logan says sharply. His dog looks up, big brown eyes confused. I rub his head and look back up to Logan.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Yes. We do,” I say, and he closes the front door. I motion for him to follow me into the living room. Neither one of us sits down though. We just stand there, him in front of the couch and me by the chair. “Better late than never, I guess?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I wait for more. For something that takes this sickening feeling from the center of my heart. He shoves his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “I had a panic attack.”

  “That lasted almost two weeks?”

  “No. But kind of. I’ve been struggling to keep it together since that night. Really struggling,” he says.

  “Why? Because I didn’t tell you I was a widow? That’s a deal breaker?” My voice is strained.

  “No. It’s complicated.” He stops speaking and takes a step closer to me. His skin is pale, his eyes filled with pain. I can feel it, whatever is eating away at him, like it’s an object in the room. It’s that intense. And now that sickening feeling in the deep center of my heart, the feeling I thought was caused over his repulsion and rejection of me, is now shifting into something else. Something much more ominous.

  “I can handle your pain. Your struggles with money or horrible ex-relatives or anything else,” he says, and his voice is so tight it’s like a guitar string about to snap. He’s struggling to hold himself together. “We’re adults. Life gets complicated and messy, and I won’t run from that. Not when staying put means being with you.”

  He steps toward me and reaches for me but I step away. “Then why the hell have you evaporated from my life? You didn’t answer texts or calls. You didn’t come home. Why?”

  He steps into my space again and reaches out and wraps his fingers around my wrist, gently tugging my hands from the pockets of my cardigan. He instantly laces his fingers with mine and despite everything, I step closer. Now our bodies are almost touching. His body relaxes, shoulders dropping, fingers loosening. But his expression looks fearful, like he’s in the front car of a rollercoaster cresting the monstrous peak before a plummeting drop…and his safety belt is broken. And that makes me feel like the girl in a horror movie heading upstairs to check out a noise. I’m moving towards something horrible. I can feel it.

  He takes a deep breath and exhales. “You poured your heart out to me that night, and I owe you the same. I’ve been keeping secrets from you too. Some I knew about…others were being kept for me.”

  “Logan, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say and then it hits me. “Is this about your alcoholism? Did you…are you drinking again?”

  “I’m not off the wagon,” he promises and squeezes my fingers laced with his. I reach up and cup the side of his face. He closes his eyes momentarily, like a flutter, and then looks me straight in the eye. “When I was off the wagon, when I was in the throes of alcoholism, I was in a car crash.” He pauses and closes his eyes, gently untangling his hand from mine. After taking a deep breath he continues. “I was in the car that hit you and Jackson.”

  I drop my hand from his cheek. “No you weren’t. Why would you say that?”

  “I was,” he replies, and I am about to open my mouth and tell him he’s insane because I was there. I know who killed Jackson. I know he was alone in the car. But then Logan speaks again. He speaks the name I have only ever heard once and never wanted to hear again. “You were hit by Bryan Liddel in Wells Beach, on Route One at approximately four thirty the afternoon of October tenth. I had been drinking with Bryan all day. I was the one who wanted to go to the bar in Wells because they never cut us off. I was in the car with him when he hit you.”

  “How is that…no. It’s not possible,” I say firmly. Why would he say such lies? What the hell is he trying to do—destroy me? “No. No one ever mentioned a passenger. The police would have said something.”

  “The police decided I wasn’t of importance in the case because I was passed out,” he says. “But Jackson’s family did know. And my family paid the Turner family two hundred grand to help with medical and funeral costs and to keep my name out of the media. I was in medical school. Our family has a business that relies on the community. They were trying to save me and the family from being branded by this mistake forever.”

  My chest is so tight I can’t take a deep breath, and my skin feels too hot, like you can cook an egg on it. “Jackson died and money was the answer?”

  I can’t just stand here. I have to move. I step away from him and start to pace around the room. I feel helpless and angry and so filled with rage. Logan is being ripped from me. My life…the happiness I had with him, is being savagely torn away with every word he spills. “My family didn’t know what else to do.”

  “They could have stopped it from happening. Stopped you from drinking with him that day. You could have stopped him from driving. From destroying my life!” I’m screaming now. Tears spill onto my cheeks. Boss jumps to his feet from where he had curled up next to Chewie and starts to growl.

  “I was passed out in the car, so I didn’t know Bryan decided to drive, but if I was conscious, I might not have stopped him. I never did before.” He looks like his own words might make him throw up and I don’t blame him.
I can’t…I can’t absorb them myself without wanting to be sick. He takes a deep breath that makes his shoulders shake and continues. “But I didn’t know anyone was in the car with your husband. No one told me, and then I was shipped off to rehab in Florida, so I never saw any newspaper reports or anything,” Logan says and lifts his hands to his lips, almost like he’s praying. “I’m not making excuses I’m just telling you the facts.”

  “You passed out in the car?”

  “I was passed out after I puked in the bar and got kicked out. Bryan must have just gotten in the car and driven off without waking me up,” Logan says. “I know that means nothing, and I have always told myself it doesn’t let me off the hook. My guilt over that day has never left and never will. Now I’m more crippled by it than ever. That’s why I couldn’t face you. You deserved to know the truth but I was too much of a fucking coward to say it. I needed time.”

  His eyes are swimming in unshed tears. He reaches out to me, but I back away. “I am spinning out of control emotionally,” I tell him in a hoarse, quivering voice. “I don’t know which way is up. I need time to process this. Alone.”

  “I understand.” He nods and walks toward the front door. Chewie follows. “I love you.”

  He leaves, and I crumble to the floor and bury my face in my hands as a sob quakes through my whole body. I love him too, and that’s the problem. How can I now?

  27

  Chloe

  Denny stares at me with pure, unbridled bewilderment. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I swear, Chloe.”

  I raise both trembling hands and cover my puffy, blotchy face. Denny’s dark eyebrows are pulled together, and his wide mouth is set in a firm, flat line. I called him, barely able to speak I was so distraught, and told him I needed him to come over immediately. He’d just finished a night shift and was at the station about to get changed before heading home. He showed up and hour later still in his police uniform.