I Love You, I Hate You: Part 1

“Danika?” Dad asks again.

I turn, my brows pushing together and stare at my dad. He’s a good guy, with thick ties in the community. Whatever Logan did all those years ago, there’s a chance my dad will know about it. “Who is Alan Shaffer?”

The color drains from Dad’s face. He retracts his arm from my shoulder and shoves his hands in his pockets. The screen door slams behind me. We both look over to the Harris house. Watch Logan get into his car without so much as a glance in our direction, then peel out of his driveway.

“Dad?” I pry. “Who is he?”

Dad clears his throat. “He’s no one, sweetie. Why do you ask?”

I chew on my lip, wondering how much I should say. Logan’s secrets are his to tell, but the way my dad blanched, he knows something. Plus Logan told me to talk to Dad, which means he’s involved somehow and keeping secrets from me. “I met him today.”

“Who?” Dad asks hesitantly.

“Dr. Shaffer. He was at Logan’s house today.” I watch Dad carefully, waiting for him to react. He swallows hard but doesn’t say anything. I think he knows what happened to Logan. I think he’s kept that secret for years, and I need to know why. So, I add, “He was super creepy. I don’t like him.”

44

Logan

I take another sip from the beer in my hand, then toss the empty bottle into the grass. Forty-five minutes. It takes forty-five minutes to walk from dumbnut’s house to here.

Dumbnut is not Jake, by the way.

The one day I want him to throw a party, he doesn’t. No, dumbnut is some sophomore trying to make a name for himself. I was the only senior there, adding a cool factor of a billion to the kid’s pathetic excuse of a party. There were maybe twenty people, but there was beer and that’s all I wanted

My foot slides off the edge of the sidewalk and I stumble. I left my car at dumbnut’s house, having enough sense not to drive tonight. Clearly that’s as far as my logic goes because this is a terrible idea, but I have to see it. To know if it’s changed.

I stand in front of Dr. Shaffer’s old office, hands in my pockets and stare at the building that ruined me. It’s not a psychiatric office anymore. A few months after he died—or didn’t die— it turned into a cell phone store. Another commercially operated, chain store, with nothing special about it.

Too bad the owners didn’t know Dr. Alan Shaffer had molested dozens of kids in that hollowed out space.

I bet they would have never bought it.

“I wondered how long it would take you to come back,” a voice drawls from the shadows.

My head’s spinning. I rub my eyes, willing the beer and whiskey to stop dancing in my stomach. They’re fucking with me. Bad.

“They didn’t tell you, did they?” he muses, stepping into the light. “They let you live all these years, thinking you killed me.”

This can’t be real. My mind is doing it to me again. Alan Shaffer is dead. This is nothing but a fucked up hallucination. He wasn’t in my house today and he isn’t here now. He. Is. Dead.

Alan points to the edge of the building, at a small security camera I didn’t have enough sense to notice. “I’ve waited for years. Watching. Buying my time until you came back to me, but you never did. You never once showed remorse for what you did to me.”

Something in my brain flips. The anxiety and turmoil within me ignites. “What I did to you?” I step closer. Not quite on the property but not on the street anymore. “What about what you did to me? What you did to all those other boys?”

Alan smirks and looks at his old building. He is still in the shadows, barely visible in the glow of the neon closed sign. “I was helping those boys, just like I was helping you.”

“You abused them!” I shout, taking another step. “Me. You abused me! You knew I was vulnerable. You took advantage of my trust and made me feel like what we were doing was normal.”

“It was, Logan.” Alan sidesteps closer to the building. “When two people love each other—”

“I don’t fucking love you,” I cut him off. The fire in my blood burning hotter. “The only person I’ve ever loved is Danika.”

I suck in a breath at the realization. I love her. I love her with every fiber of my being. I hate that I realized it here, with him.

Alan smirks. “See, my methods worked. Without our affections, you would not relate those feelings you have for her to love.”

I see the flashing red and blue lights reflecting on the storefront windows before anything else. There are no sirens. Just lights.