Page 44 of Logan

Well, it was official. I had an employment record and everything. I only called it unofficial because it was obvious my brother wasn’t giving me the workload of an actual secretary. The company already had an actual secretary who handled most things, and anyone could see my workload did not match hers.

I came in for a few hours four times a week, filed paperwork, answered phone calls, and overall, just tried to make myself useful. In return, I earned a full-time salary, with benefits. I would have protested being given such a lucrative job out of pity, but Jason’s charity was the only way I was going to get any experience to start building a resume, and half my earnings went back to him as rent anyway.

That was the one thing I’d insisted on. At first, he’d refused my offer to pay rent, but he’d been forced to give in when I started hiding the cash in places where he could find it, like under his pillow or in the cup holder in his car.

Jason’s most recent jobsite was just a few blocks down the street from the halfway house. The building they were constructing would eventually be a series of low rent apartments that would also be owned by Dominic. It was meant to be like a part two of his grand plan. Kids from the halfway house, once they reached adulthood, would need a place to stay, and there would always be apartments available for them. This would actually be thesecond of its kind that Dominic had commissioned; the first one being after his son was killed several years ago.

The building was currently only half done, and currently stood as a skeleton of its final design. It was too bad it wasn’t finished yet. There were several people still living at the halfway house who were already technically too old. Kenneth was almost twenty and had avoided homelessness only because Dominic was too kind to kick anyone out. He could definitely use one of the apartments currently being built.

Summer had just started, so Maryland’s seasonal rainstorms hadn’t quite started yet. The dug-up ground around the temporary office was still dry, so I didn’t have to stomp my way to the door like I had to do on wetter days, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I stepped into the office still as clean as when I left the halfway house.

“Hey, Clay,” Jason greeted me when I stepped through the door without looking up from his paperwork. “You’re back early. How was the halfway house?”

“Same as usual.”

I thought my tone was normal as I took a seat behind the designated secretary desk on the other side of the little room, but Jason must have picked up on something in my voice, because he immediately put down his paperwork and looked at me with a furrowed brow.

“What’s wrong? You’re usually eager to talk about your volunteer work.”

Sitting on the desk was a kinetic statue that used magnets to keep itself perpetually spinning. I’d never bought it, and no one else claimed to have brought it in either. It seemed to beone of those things that just naturally spawned in an office environment.

Staring at the jumble of metallic spheres and rods, I tapped one of the pieces and sent the whole thing spinning.

“What do you think about dating?”

His gaze briefly flicked to the ring on his left hand. “I think I’m married, so it’s not really an appropriate thing for me to be doing any more.”

“I don’t mean you,” I quickly corrected him.

“Oh.” He paused for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. “Oooooh. You mean, like, what do I think aboutyoudating?”

“You don’t have to say it like it’s such a surprise,” I grumbled.

Jason blushed and looked sheepish, but I was already chastising myself in my head. He hadn’t said anything wrong.

Why was I being so hostile?

“Sorry,” Jason muttered as he rearranged the paperwork on his desk, moving things around only to put them right back in the same spot. “I didn’t think. It hasn’t come up before, so I guess I just assumed you weren’t interested or weren’t ready for that kind of stuff.”

I slumped against the desk and caught the little kinetic statue, so it stopped spinning. “I don’t know if I am, but it came up and you’re the only one I know who has actually won the dating game, so I was wondering what you thought about it.”

Jason glanced at his wedding ring again, this time flashing me with a bright smile. “I did win the dating game. Didn’t I.”

I made a fake gagging sound, mocking him for being so mushy. In response, he pelted me with several paperclips.

“Hey, don’t mock me. You’ll understand it someday. When you find the person, you click with, you’re gonna want to be all mushy, too. Just you wait.”

I scoffed again, but I couldn’t ignore the little flame of hope that lit inside me.

Would I ever be like that with someone?

It sounded nice, but I couldn’t imagine it. I already struggled to trust people and marrying someone required trust that bordered on blind faith. Even if I did find someone I felt that way about, certainly no one would feel that way about me.

Jason and Patrick were the cliché that everyone secretly aspired for. High school sweethearts who beat the odds and stayed together through college to eventually get married. They were proud of the fact that they’d been each other’s firsts and wore it like a badge of honor.

I couldn’t even remember who’d been my first. I’d been unconscious for most of it.

No.

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