Page 41 of Forget Me Not

We stay that way for a long time until our breaths align, and we now breathe steadily as one. I can’t undo all of the lies and secrets I’ve hidden from her, but I can decide to give her one piece of me that I’ve never given anyone else. I gently tug her onto her back, grabbing her hand and guiding it underneath my shirt until it sits right on my chest above my heart. I guide her fingers over the scar, no bigger than two inches, allowing her to feel the rigid edges raised on my skin.

“When I was sixteen years old, my mother tried to kill me. That’s what that scar is.” I wait for a response from her, but other than a small gasp under her breath, she gives me nothing. She stays silent, attentive, just listening and allowing me this moment. “Not long after I was born, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.” I run my fingers through her hair, trying to keep myself present in the moment and not allow the memories to take hold of me.

“She managed it on and off over the years. I tried to keep track as I got older and understood it better, tried to make sure she followed her treatment plan. But I was just a kid. I didn’t want to be overbearing in making sure she was taking her medication. One day, she eventually stopped taking them, saying she was feeling better and didn’t like how they were making her feel.”

Logan turns her body to fully face me, and I turn onto my back to allow her to rest her head on top of my chest. Her hand slips back under my shirt, resting flat over the scar, over my heart. It’s the first time I’ve felt a heat coming from the area that isn’t a painful reminder.

“When I was fifteen, my mom started dating a man named Randall. He seemed normal enough when I first met him. He wasn’t the most hygienic or clean man, but he was charismatic, so I could see why she went for him. They were together for six months. The first two months were normal. My mom wasdoing pretty good. She was working at a diner at the time, and everything seemed to be under control. About three months into the relationship, something changed. It was four months in the first time I found cocaine all over the bathroom counter.” I pause, remembering the scene like it happened yesterday.

I had just gotten home, and I was exhausted from school, football practice, and work. I knew my mom wasn’t home because the car was gone. We had two bathrooms in the apartment, one in the hallway across from my room and one in her room. I walked into the one in the hallway, ready to shower the day off of me, only to find white powder covering the counter and some loose in the sink. A rolled-up dollar bill sat next to the faucet. It was my bathroom, the bathroom of her fifteen-year-old child. She didn’t even try to hide it.

“I tried talking to her, yelling at her, helping her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. The drugs had gotten to her. She started skipping her shifts at the diner until they had no choice but to fire her. She and Randall started arguing and finally broke up, but even with him gone, the drug use stayed. In fact, it got worse. And then she stopped her medication. The hallucinations resurfaced, and on my sixteenth birthday, they took over completely.”

Logan rubs gentle circles around the scar, reminding me she’s right here with me. Listening to me, supporting me, loving me, even if she hasn’t said the words.

“I was wearing a black Metallica T-shirt. It had the band logo on the left corner of my chest. As soon as I walked inside the apartment, I knew she was in the middle of an episode. Her latest delusions had been that people were watching her, waiting for the right time to come and kill her. She was mumbling to herself about them being on their way when I walked in. When she looked over at me, she stopped mumbling and looked terrified. She started yelling at me that they had already gottento me. She thought the logo on my chest was a device implanted into me to spy on her. I’d always been able to calm her down up until that day, so I followed her to the kitchen, trying to rationalize to her. I didn’t even see it coming when she grabbed a steak knife and stabbed me with it. She ran out of the apartment and left me there after that. I dialed an ambulance, and I was lucky the knife hadn’t punctured anything major, and I was okay.”

Logan is silent, processing everything I’ve just revealed. I give her the time. I don’t even need a response from her. I just needed her to know. A few moments pass before she speaks, “And your mom?” It’s a question I expected and one I’m finally okay with answering.

“She was in and out of psychiatric care, on and off with her medication. There were good times and bad. But she eventually relapsed. When I was twenty-one, I found her lying in bed with a needle in her arm. She overdosed on heroin.”

She nods her head, not offering me anything else. She doesn’t offer me the standard apology most people would, just like I didn’t for her. It’s because she understands that I don’t want sympathy. Just the understanding, something she has in spades.

“My twin sister started doing drugs to feel numb and quiet her thoughts. Her thoughts that she wished I had died in the school shooting we were a part of, instead of our best friend.” My stomach sinks as Logan speaks. L, or rather Lennox, told me about the shooting, the loss of her best friend, about people’s lack of understanding, about her reliance on drugs. But she never told me about that.

“That journal.” She nods her head to the journal lying on the bed next to her that I noticed when I first walked in. “She details all of it in there. I’ve read the words so many times that I could probably recite them, and it never hurts any less.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” I look down at her.

“And everything that happened with your mom wasn’t yours.” She looks up at me. I’ve heard it from King a dozen times, but hearing it coming from her may be the first time I’m starting to believe it.

She looks away, cuddling herself farther into my chest and I pull her in tighter against me. We lie together in the comfortable silence we always seem to find ourselves in. Her breathing becomes steady, and I think she’s fallen asleep when I press a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

“Hey, Kade?” she speaks softly, her voice more timid than I’ve ever heard it.

“Yeah, baby girl?”

“I think I love you.” I feel her entire body stiffen as she waits for my response, and I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face. She has no fucking idea. I grip her chin between my fingers, forcing her to look up at me.

“Well, that’s good because I’m so fucking in love with you, Logan Grace Hart.” The smile on her face is the last thing I see before I crush my lips against hers.

Her hand grips my T-shirt between us, trying to pull me closer even though we’re already completely pressed against one another. She kisses me back with abandon. An intensity present between us that I’ve never felt before.

I kiss her slowly, savoring each brush of her lips, each swipe of her tongue, swallowing each and every moan she fails to conceal. Her hands find the bottom of my shirt and I reach behind my head to pull it off, making it easier for her. I grip the bottom of her sweatshirt, lifting it, every inch exposing more bare skin. I discard her sweatshirt on the floor and bring my fingers to the bottom of her stomach, gently following the same path the sweatshirt just did. She squirms under my touch, arching her body into me, desperate for me to relieve her of the tension building inside her.

I stare into her eyes, then down to her bare chest, then lower and lower. I try to memorize the masterpiece that she is lying beneath me, for me. I brush my lips against hers once more before moving to follow the opposite path my fingers did with my mouth. I kiss her jaw, her neck, and her chest until I reach the two hard peaks begging for my attention.

I lower my mouth to her right nipple, suctioning it into my mouth and causing her to forcefully arch off the bed, pushing herself farther into my mouth. I lick a circle around the pink bud before gently tugging on it with my teeth. She cries out and I wrap my lips around it again to soothe the ache. I move to her left side, giving it the same attention as I did the right, then continue to lick and kiss down her stomach.

“Please,” she begs as I kiss where her stomach meets her tiny-ass shorts.

I grab the top of them, slowly pulling them down her legs. I lick my way back up her leg, stopping with my face right between her thighs. I blow hot air directly where she is desperate for my touch, and she whimpers, opening her legs wider, spreading herself fully for me.

“Fuck, you’re so perfect.” I run my fingers from where wetness is seeping out of her to her throbbing clit. “Tell me who this pussy belongs to.” I continue my ministrations, taking my time, playing with her perfect cunt.

“Yours, Kaden. All yours. Please, Kaden.” Her voice is raspy, and it sounds like she’s struggling to get the words out as she continues to squirm underneath me.

“That’s it, all fucking mine,” I say before burying my face in her pussy.

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