by JA Huss
But I can’t give up hope. He doesn’t want to either, he just worries about me. He worries that I will get depressed again and not be able to pull myself out of it. He thinks about that pill bottle. Sometimes I look at those pictures of us you left. And I relive that one day we spent with you.
One day.
How can one day feel like forever? How can I miss you so much? Love you so much? After knowing you only one day?
I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I just know we still feel that way about you and we still want you. And if you come here, Logan, we will bring you into our family. We promise. We will.
We will never forget you, or what you did, or that you’re Lucas’s real father.
You will always have a place in our hearts.
We love you.
Yvette and AJ
Chapter Forty-Two - AJ
Dear Logan,
This is a hard letter to write but I feel like it’s time. It’s been three and a half years, dude. Such a short time in the grand scheme of things, I know. But it feels so long since you were with us. You feel so far away.
Yvette had our second baby. I made her stop writing you when we found out she was pregnant again, so… sorry you didn’t know that until now.
Gabriella. A little girl this time. My blue eyes and Yvette’s very blonde hair.
Rosie’s daughter—remember Rosie? The drugstore cashier?—well, her daughter Yalesia helps us out now. So Yvette isn’t overwhelmed. She’s doing great actually. Didn’t get depressed after giving birth and I hate to say this, but I think it’s because I’ve kept her from you.
We still have your picture up on the wall in the kitchen and Lucas, oh, man, dude. You’re really missing out. This little boy is so you. So rowdy, but sweet. So rough, but gentle. But Lucas walks by your picture every day and says, “Hi, Daddy.” Except he mostly says it in Spanish.
He loves the ocean. We spend a lot of time on the beach just hanging out.
I started a little kayak business taking people on tours of the mangroves and in the summer we have a bioluminescence tour at night. Lucas loves to see the plankton glow at night. He’s something, man. Really something.
And I know you’re probably thinking he doesn’t need you. He has me, and that’s enough. But Logan, dude. We still need you. So please, get your shit together and come back to us.
Because I can’t write these letters anymore. It hurts and I just don’t think you’re coming. I know you’re alive because we heard through various sources that you’ve been sending the Nightingale people money for Yvette’s son. We finally made contact with them about two years ago. Yvette needed to know everything was OK. And it was. Still is.
So we know you’re alive… just… what are you doing? Why aren’t you here?
Did you forget about us?
I figured you had shit to take care of. I get that, I do. You risked everything. You sacrificed your own happiness to save us. But it’s time, man. It’s time to save yourself.
Did you fall out of love with us? Or find someone new?
It’s cool, if you did. We’d be heartbroken, but we’d be able to move on if you just told us to stop waiting.
I’m not gonna lie, I want to give up. I want to stop hoping. Because I don’t think you’re coming.
But I can’t. I can’t just forget about you. Who you are to me, what you mean to me, what you did for me.
I can’t ever forget how you gave us everything and kept nothing for yourself.
So I won’t.
I refuse to give up on you.
I will wait for as long as it takes. I will wait. But we’re not going to write any more letters in this book.
So… goodbye, I guess. For now. Maybe forever. But I hope not. I really hope it’s not forever.
I wish I could save you like you saved me. I wish you would give me that chance.
We will always love you.
AJ, Yvette, Lucas, and Gabriella
EPILOGUE - LOGAN
I am a hard man to love.
I get that. I have an awful job working for an awful man. I risk prison and death pretty much every day. And when I got back after the blizzard and showed Damon the proof that AJ and Yvette were dead, he was happy with me and my place in the org.
For a while.
But then one of his cousins betrayed him and he called on me to step in since AJ was gone.
And I killed him.
That’s what I do now. Not money laundering
I have killed dozens of people over the past five and a half years since AJ and Yvette escaped to the island.
But three days ago something changed.
Damon is dead.
Not by my hand, even though I’ve gone to bed every night and woke up every morning wanting to kill him so I could leave and be free.
It was his little brother.
Oh, I helped, of course. I set it all up. But I made a deal with the little brother. He gets power, I get to leave.
So my apartment is empty. Sold it two weeks ago and I’m on my way to sign the closing papers now. And I have no job. Not that I need one, I have plenty of money. And I have no friends, because all of the people I call friends would kill me just as quick as I’d kill them. And no family, because that shit was over back in my teens.
I just have them.
Except… I’m not sure I do, actually.
There’s a part of me that still thinks I have a chance with AJ and Yvette down on Holbox Island. But it’s a very small part of me.
I know they’ve moved on. I’ve had someone watching them this whole time. Making sure no one got suspicious. Making sure Damon didn’t go looking. Making sure they were safe.
So I know they have children and one of them could be mine.
I know they are happy and complete too.
I know they don’t need me.
Showing up now, after all these years, would just rip their world apart. But still, I have a small glimmer of hope that it could still happen. Even after five and a half years, it could happen.
The airline app on my phone has two flights. One to New Zealand where I will start over fresh. And one to Mexico where I will interrupt their lives.
Which choice is the right one?
I don’t know.
The problem is… I’m not the same man they used to know. The problem is they’re not the same either.
But the real issue has to do with how this whole thing started.
One day.
Just one day.
That’s all we ever had together.
And there’s no possible way this is real. There is no possible way to fall in love in one day. It just can’t happen.
Except it did.
Maybe I’m just imagining it because my life has been a nightmare since I left them? Or maybe I’m just crazy? Fucking delusional and I’m living this fantasy life in my head because I needed something to hold on to.
Or maybe I’m just afraid.
They only had one day too, the logical part of my brain says. They got to that island with the exact same history as I have now. They started from nothing and they made it work.
They’re happy, they’re in love, they’ve started a family.
All of that without me there to complicate things.
You will fuck it all up, Logan. Because you fuck everything up.
That’s my real fear, I guess.
Not that it wasn’t real, but that it was, and my part in it is over. Has been over since they got to the island.
I leave the apartment and take a car to the closing office. It takes me exactly ten minutes to sign the papers and then I’m on my way to the airport with a single carry-on bag of possessions.
When I get there I stare at the departures board. Weighing my options.
New Zealand? Or Mexico?
New Zealand feels safe. It feels far, far away. It feels like I could become someone new. Start over for real. No one would know me any other way.
Mexico feels like t
he past. Mexico feels like I would have to accept who I am. Embrace it. Live with it.
Mexico makes me afraid.
Will they reject me? Do they hate me? Do they secretly fear that one day I will show up and ruin everything?
Do they wake up each morning praying I stay away and go to sleep at night thanking God for answering their prayers?
My heart hurts just thinking about that.
It aches in such an overwhelming way I tab the little button on my phone app and complete the check-in.
And that’s it.
My decision has been made.
When I arrive at the beach I pick them out immediately. There’s not a lot of people on the sand, only about two dozen. And they have their backs to me.
But still, I would know them anywhere. I could be blind and still pick them out in a crowd.
They’re sitting on a blanket, the little girl in Yvette’s lap, the little boy holding a kite as he runs back and forth trying to make it fly.
AJ calls out to him in Spanish, “Ven a comer ahora, Lucas. Entonces volaremos la cometa.”
Come and eat, Lucas. Then we’ll fly the kite.
His name is Lucas and I love him immediately because kids are like that, aren’t they? Easy to love.
But fear grips me as the little boy turns to his father. His gray eyes meet mine from a dozen yards away. Lock on. He picks me out immediately.
Squinting his eyes, he marks me as a stranger. Someone who does not belong.
And I want to run. Because I know how this will end. I know I have no place here.
But I don’t run. I don’t want to alarm him. I turn, very slowly, and walk back the way I came.
Then his little-boy voice calls out, “Hola, papi!”
And I turn back.
Yvette and AJ slowly turn their heads.
And they are smiling.
END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit where I get to say anything I want about the book even if it makes no sense. It’s a little bit like the “author’s note” you see at the end of some books except I write them the day I upload, don’t ever edit it, swear a lot, and give no fucks about what people think of me when I’m done.
It’s kinda like drunk-Julie.
So this book has a little story behind it because back in May of 2014, during the week that BEND released (and got banned) I had planned a little trip down to Mesa Verde. If you’re not from around here Mesa Verde is an archeological site in the southwest corner of Colorado where an ancient native tribe, for whatever reason, decided to build their homes into the side of these cliffs.
And I figured that hey, Mesa Verde is in Colorado… I live in Colorado… how far away could it be? And also, Hey! I should go see that shit like right now, because it’s kinda cool. So this week that BEND released and got banned I ended up on this road trip down to Mesa Verde.
I was wrong, by the way. It’s not close at all. Like anyone with a phone, even back in 2014, could figure that out pretty quick. But when I plugged in the hotel address it was on Main Street and who knew that like… every town in the fucking world had Main Street, right?
So the app told me it was like three hours away but it wasn’t taking me to Mesa Verde, it was talking me to Main Street in Alamosa and actually said, “You have arrived at your destination,” when I stopped to pee at a McDonalds.
Fucking Mesa Verde was seven hours away, you guys. SEVEN. I had no clue. I could’ve gotten to Mount Rushmore quicker and that shit is like two states away. (Welcome to the Rocky Mountains, people. Land of no direct access to anything).
So anyway, to get to Mesa Verde you have to go way the fuck past Alamosa and drive through the Rio Grande National Forest and go through Wolf Creek Pass. I had never been down to this part of Colorado so I had no idea that this actual highway was a total fucking death trap. However, on the other side of that goddamned mountain your reward was this amazing overlook area called “Scenic Overlook in Mineral County”. Not an exciting name but it was a totally amazing view.
And normally I’m not a “scenic overlook” kinda road tripper because I’m anxious to get where I’m going, but after climbing that fucking mountain and totally thinking I was gonna go over a cliff seventeen different time and thanking my lucky stars seventy-three times that I had this stupid idea in May and not January, I needed a break.
So I pulled over and took a picture.
As did every other person who made it over that mountain alive. And here’s where the relevant part comes in…
So I was standing there are the guard rail minding my own business and next to me are these three people. Two guys and a girl. And they were all laughing and taking selfies and group pictures and there were kinda hands-y with each other.
So of course, my dirty book author mind goes right to the logical conclusion that these people are in a committed threesome. I come up with this whole story about them Where they’re from, where they’re going, what they’re gonna be doing tonight. And this was back before I wrote 321 but I was kinda plotting it in my mind. And I kept thinking, holy shit. My book ideas are totally real. I’m not crazy, this shit happens.
So I make up this whole story about this thriple, including all the dirty parts, all in the span of five minutes. And I’m totally thinking this is gonna make a good book when the second guy’s wife comes over to join them and I realize they are actually family.
My book idea was shattered. Those people. If they only knew what was going on in my head.
But FIVE YEARS later Julie is writing another menage book and this whole scene pops into my head and I figure, hell. It’s my imagination. I’m just gonna use that idea anyway.
So that’s how we got Logan, AJ, and Yvette. A banned book that turned into a badly-planned road trip, that turned into Julie’s sick imagination.
Anyway. I loved Logan. He was my favorite and I know what y’all are thinking—there should’ve been a bonus epilogue, but you know what? I think another epilogue would’ve ruined it, so I decided not to go there. And I’ve heard a lot of grumbling lately about authors doing bonus scenes and making readers sign up for their newsletters to get them, and I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with that shit. Because this ending is an ending and the extra epilogue would’ve been a bonus in my mind. And I don’t really see anything wrong with asking people to sign-up for your newsletter to get it, but if that’s not a “thing” anymore, I’m cool with just leaving things as they are.
So that’s it. Logan’s kid recognized him because AJ and Yvette made sure he would, and then they smiled when they saw he finally made it “home”. If you want to imagine them fighting over the kid and Logan threatening to take them to court, be my guest. But that’s not how I imagine it.
The beauty of books, right? Everyone gets to have their own interpretation.
I have a lot a NEW THINGS coming up very soon. The next book will be out the last week of March (yes, March, just a few weeks away) and I haven’t announced it yet or revealed a cover or a title or anything. In fact I have three books written at the moment just waiting to be released. You’ll be seeing A LOT from me from March through the end of the year so I hope you’re ready for some smut and a few surprises, because that’s all coming up quick.
As always, THANK YOU for reading, THANK YOU for reviewing, and I’ll see you in the next book.
Your servant in smut-dom forever,
Julie
AKA, JA Huss
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JA Huss is the New York Times Bestselling author of 321 and has been on the USA Today Bestseller's list 21 times in the past four years. She writes characters with heart, plots with twists, and perfect endings.
Her books have sold millions of copies all over the world, the audio version of her semi-autobiographical book, Eighteen, was nominated for a Voice Arts Award and an Audie Award in 2016 and 2017 respectively, her audiobook, Mr. Perfect, was nominated for a Voice Arts Award in 2017, and her audiobook, Taking Turns, was nominated for an Audie Award in 2018.
She lives on a ranch in Central Colorado with her family.