In to Her

But then I wouldn’t be sure that you’d be safe. And there’s no point in going to all this trouble and having you end up dead. So I’m sorry for that. I hope the house makes up for it. I hope you can put all the ugliness it took to get here out of your mind and just concentrate on your future.

“No,” I say, shaking my head and putting the letter down. I don’t want to read the rest. I can’t read the rest. Because I know what he did and I won’t accept it.

But Yvette doesn’t feel the same. Because she picks the letter up and begins to read out loud.

“‘Someone has to go back and face Damon. Someone has to show up with proof that you two are dead. Someone has to obey his order.’”

“No,” I say.

“‘Someone has to be the monster.’”

“Fuck you, Logan. Just fuck you.”

“‘And that someone is me.’”

“He’s not coming,” I say. “He’s not fucking coming. He did all this and he’s not even coming!”

Yvette just looks at me. Unable to find the right words to help me process what just happened.

But it doesn’t matter. Because there is only one way to process it.

He went back to die so we could live.

I don’t know the last time I cried. I really, honestly do not remember that’s how long it’s been. But right now, that’s the only thing I want to do.

Chapter Thirty-Eight – LOGAN

Life is shitty, and dark, and filled with assholes like Damon who have more power than they deserve and more money than they’ll ever need.

Basically, life is just unfair.

Just how it is.

But every once in a while a chance comes along to even the odds. Or make up for past transgressions. Or just… be the good guy for once.

I guess that’s why I did it.

I am, after all, nothing but a self-absorbed narcissist.

So there. I did it for me, not them.

Someone had to go back. There was no way Damon would ever believe we were all dead without proof. There was no way all three of us could ever get out.

And like I said, I am the monster. It’s practically my job title.

So I went back with the proof.

Big thanks to Manny for not only helping me clean up afterward, but also arranging the bodies to make them both look really dead. I guess he’s seen enough of them to know what they look like. He stopped at a drug store down in Durango before he came up the mountain to get some supplies.

We used baby powder over a foundation of makeup for the blue-gray skin.

I cut my hand open and trickled blood all over Yvette’s neck and even traced it across her throat with the edge of a knife.

We wrapped AJ and Yvette up in tarps, heads sticking out, and took photos. Then we took them out, put them in the van, and I packed the dummy tarps with clothes and blankets and tossed them over the ravine, just like AJ and I planned.

Took a picture of that too.

Damon actually smiled like the evil motherfucker he is when he looked at that photo.

I’m sure some hapless hiker is gonna find those bundles in the summer and think… what the fuck?

But who cares. Damon won’t find them and that’s all that matters.

So here I am. Back in the org, my loyalty proven, and hell, I even got a promotion.

A fat bonus in the form of cash I don’t need, girls I won’t fuck, and drugs I don’t use.

Lucky me.

In my letter I spelled all this out. I told them the house was owned by my shell corporation, which they now officially owned. I told them to never come back, never call me—the number’s been changed anyway because I know you, AJ. I knew you’d try, you loyal motherfucker, you—and I’d never see them again.

Would I have liked it to turn out different?

Sure.

Sure, I would’ve like to end up on that beach with them. Live in that house with them. Fuck them silly every night and then again every morning.

But someone has to be their monster.

And that someone is me.

It’s enough, I decide. To do this good deed. It’s enough for me. It gets me through all the ugly things I have to do to live until the day Damon falls. And he will fall.

When? Who knows.

I’m going to die in this life. I’m one hundred percent certain that Damon will take me with him when someone finally comes for him.

And that’s OK too.

Because they are safe.

If Yvette could walk away from her son to keep him safe—and stay away, even when she had nothing left but the child she gave up—then I could walk away from her. And AJ too.

If she is that strong, I can be stronger.

If she is that selfless, then I can be too.