He trailed off. She let him stew in the silence.
“Just tell me what happened,” she said, trying for a gentle tone. She didn’t do gentle or sweet much these days. It sounded strange, and Logan gave her a look like he could tell she was out of practice.
“You really don’t remember. I guess that’s not surprising, given how fucked-up you were when we found you,” he said.
“We?” she repeated.
“Me and Nina. When you took off, I figured you were just going to cut through the woods and go home, but she was freaked-out. Wanted to make sure you were safe. So we drove around a bit to see if we could spot you. We were out there for what—forty minutes, maybe? An hour? Nina was fucking pissed. I was just about to call it when we saw you. You don’t remember any of this?”
No point in lying to him now, though she realized she should have let him think she remembered at least part of it. Leave him uncertain what he could lie about. “It’s patchy,” she said, and she could tell he didn’t believe her.
“You were walking on the side of the road. Barefoot. Soaked through. You were fucked-up, like I said. Barely making sense.”
“What did I say?” JJ asked, throat tight enough to hurt.
“I don’t remember,” he hedged, and she made a skeptical noise. “You weren’t making sense. Nothing you said meant anything, as far as I’m concerned.”
“What did I say?” JJ demanded.
“You said someone was dead. ‘They’re dead.’ And you kept apologizing,” he said. “We didn’t know what had happened. We just thought you were high. Figured we should let you sleep it off. So I took you back to my place. We stayed there awhile, and then I drove you home.”
“That part I remember,” JJ said. Waking up in his bed, musty sheets tangled around her legs. Her hair still wet—it had always been so thick, so slow to dry. Logan telling her to get up. Get moving. Get in the car. Get out of the car. Brusque in a way she hadn’t understood. She figured she’d done something. Said something. There was a weird taste in her mouth, metallic. Noises were too loud and strangely muffled, and she was gripped with the feeling that she was running from something, but she couldn’t remember what.
She’d been so exhausted, her thoughts so muddied, that she hadn’t even thought to sneak around the back of the house when Logan dropped her off. She just stumbled up the front drive and in through the door. She heard her sisters’ voices and followed them.
Then the rest. Memory snapping back into her mind. Yellow wallpaper. White grip. Red hand.
“You were with Nina? The whole time, before you found me?” she asked.
“Yeah.” It was almost a question.
“You weren’t with me.”
“No, Juliette, I wasn’t with you,” he said, angry now at having to repeat himself. “Whatever the fuck you did that night, you did it without me.”
She wrapped an arm over her ribs, took a drag from the cigarette, and tried to decide if she was disappointed. She needed the answers. She didn’t know if she wanted them. “Did you have your gun with you that night?”
“What? No,” he said. Shot her a glance that bordered on alarm. She was losing him. The momentary camaraderie between them was guttering out as he realized—remembered—the depth of the trouble she carried with her.
“Where was it?” she asked.
“Why do you want to know?” he demanded. Not angry—scared. Confused.
“You’re not stupid, Logan. You know enough of that answer to know you don’t want to hear the rest,” she said. “Tell me where the gun was and I’ll walk away right now. I won’t talk to you again and you won’t have to know anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
“Fuck,” he said. “You have changed.”
“Adapt or die, right?” JJ said. She gave him a minute. Let him look off into the distance and take a drag of his cigarette and tell himself he was in control—of this situation, of his life, of some corner of the universe. It was a lie everyone had to believe at least a little to get from one moment to the next.
“I’ve been waiting to get asked about that night for a long time. You and your sister weren’t the ones I thought would be doing the asking,” he said at last. His expression was shuttered when he looked at her again. “I’ve done fine without you around, Juliette. I like fine. Fine is all I could ever hope for out of life, and I don’t want to fuck it up. You got questions, find someone else to answer them.”