38
Never Met a Sword I Didn’t Fall On
I watched campaign staff argue with each other across Cary’s living room with the blurry, muted distance of a person a thousand leagues underwater. I sat at one end of the room, Logan at the other, our gazes fixed on our hands. Between us, Nora, Cary, Anita, and a small cadre of crisis comms consultants yelled back and forth, debating what to do.
We’d gathered here at Cary’s house because Nora said the campaign office was a zoo, and reporters would likely camp out at the houses of anyone high-profile. That comment had been a blow to Cary, who’d insisted he was a very famous member of the campaign. But since it turned out that, high-profile or not, Cary was a trust fund baby whose parents had purchased him a house bigger than Lee’s and Logan’s combined, I couldn’t find it in myself to feel sorry for him. The one thing that had broken through my misery was seeing evidence of Cary’s last-minute attempt at concealing his true personality before we arrived. Things had been awkwardly shoved in about a dozen hiding places. The best: a life-sized cutout of Matt Bomer from Magic Mike peeked its handsome head out from behind Cary’s pantry door.
I had to turn off my phone because of the sheer influx of notifications, but before I did, my neighbor called to confirm there were reporters outside my apartment. Nora had put a gag order on everyone gathered here, asking them not to mention the latest coverage. It was a mercy all the more remarkable because she could barely bring herself to look at me.
How quickly I’d fallen from cloud nine to twenty-thousand leagues under the sea.
Anita’s voice broke through. “What were you thinking, cookie?”
I looked up to find the entire living room watching me.
“I understand wanting to go for seconds in a hot man buffet,” she said. “Logan plus Will, yum. But why do it in public?”
“Because she wasn’t thinking,” Nora said coolly. When we locked eyes, her icy mask faltered. “She made a move without considering the consequences. Again.”
“It’s a rookie mistake,” said one of the consultants, adjusting his glasses. “We see it with clients all the time, thinking they can outsmart the public—”
“Enough,” Logan cracked, and everyone fell silent. His steel gaze swept the room. “Back off Alexis. I’m the one who told her to date Will if she wanted to. If you have shit to say, say it to me.”
“You did what?” Nora screeched. “How could you?”
He looked at me and the anger in his eyes melted away. “Because she shouldn’t have had to put her life on hold just to help me.” He cleared his throat. “Will is the real deal for her.”
His kindness was so unexpected a lump formed in my throat. Here I was drowning in guilt over what my mistake had done to his campaign, and Logan was defending my ability to date Will. He didn’t even know Will and I were over. It was enough to make me take a deep breath and say the thing I’d been working out while they yelled.
“I’m the one who messed up.” I used my firm speech voice. “As far as the world is concerned, I’m the villain. If I own it, make a public apology, Logan can dump me and that will be the end of it for him. This doesn’t have to be Logan’s burden.”
“It would make him sympathetic,” Cary said, scratching his chin. “It could actually help the campaign.”
Nora jerked to Anita. “Can your team look into how this would play?”
“Of course—”
“Absolutely not.” This time, Logan surprised everyone by pushing to his feet. He looked around the room with an incredulous expression. “Jesus Christ, we’re not throwing Alexis under the bus. Have you seen what people are saying about her? It’s disgusting. Not in a million years.”
Nora threw her hands up. “Then what’s our move? I know you like to process, but time’s up, Logan. We’ve got reporters beating down our doors. We have to do something.”
“I know,” he said, and took a deep breath, like he was steeling himself. “Call your press contacts. I’m making a statement.”
The suits buzzed. “What kind of statement?” Nora asked.
I recognized that look on his face. It was the same he’d worn when he stood up from the bar and told Carter the creep to come fight him. Too defiant for his own good.
“I’m telling everyone the truth,” Logan said. “The whole story. That I asked Alexis to pretend to date me to save me from press scrutiny. Which means she was free to see Will. She did nothing wrong.”
“You can’t.” Disbelief turned my voice hollow.
“Over my dead body,” agreed Nora, and she and everyone in the room launched into arguments about why Logan couldn’t, their protests tangling together.
He threw his hands up. “It’s not a debate. I appreciate your advice, but I’ve made up my mind.”
“Logan,” Nora whispered, and her quietness was the scariest thing of all. “If you do this, it’s career suicide.”
“Maybe,” he said, just as softly. His eyes tracked to mine and I held my breath. “But I’m not winning at the cost of Alexis.”
“The two of you.” Nora pointed between us. “First you’re competing to throw each other under the bus, and now you’re trying to out-sacrifice each other. Both games are equally infuriating, for the record.”
“Tell the reporters I’ll meet them at the office.” Logan nodded at me. “I’m going to fix this, I promise.” Then he took off.
Once the front door shut behind him, the whole room deflated. Cary fell onto his couch. “We’re fucked. I have to start sending my résumé out. And I was already choosing drapes for my new capitol office.”
Nora smacked his arm. “Don’t be a quitter.”
“Excuse me,” I said, fumbling out of my seat. I had to catch Logan before he made a life-altering mistake.
Luckily, the driveway to Cary’s mini-mansion was long, and Logan was just nearing the end. “Wait!” I called, suppressing the memory of the last time I’d chased after him and how poorly that had turned out.
He stopped so I could catch up, but he was already shaking his head. “There’s no use trying to convince me.”
Now that we were alone, panic leaked into my voice. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Of course I do. It’s the bloody right thing. We both knew this arrangement had the potential to blow up, and I promised you if it did, I’d deal with it. So here I am. Let me.”
“Will and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.” The words flew out before I could think.
He grew unnaturally still. “But you liked him.”
“I did. I do. Just—as a friend, it turns out.”
I could practically see the wheels turning as Logan studied me, trying to see inside my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Fix it, mend it, the familiar voice whispered. You’re going to lose him. “I’m sorry for going out in public with Will after our argument, and kissing him, and bringing him home. It was thoughtless, like Nora said, and I’m so—”
“No, you’re not,” Logan interrupted.
“Excuse me?”
He shook his head. “You’re not sorry, Alexis. You were mad. Admit you were mad at me for blowing you off when the union crisis hit.”
I felt a surge of panic. “No, I wasn’t—”
“You were justifiably mad. Own it.” He watched me, waiting.
It was getting hard to breathe. I wasn’t allowed to make demands of other people. I was the one who accommodated.
Logan raised a hand as if to touch me, then clenched his jaw and pulled it back. “Lex. You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to be furious, and vengeful, and whatever else you’re actually feeling. Fuck, you’re allowed to be a downright shitty person every once in a while, no one’s perfect. You could’ve told me I pissed you off, and I would’ve tried to make up for it. That’s all that would have happened. We would’ve argued, then made up.” When he laughed, the sound was so sad it made me sink my teeth into my tongue. “I wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
“You made me feel small,” I burst, surprising even myself. But why was I surprised? My filter had always been weakest around Logan. From the first night on, his brashness had been a magnet, pulling me out of my hiding place. “Yes, I was angry, okay? I was furious at you for dismissing me and making me feel less important than your campaign, even though I know that’s ridiculous. Of course I’m less important than your campaign! Your campaign is everything you’ve been working toward since you were ten years old, chaining yourself to that tree.” My chest heaved. “There. That’s how I felt. Are you happy?”
This time Logan did touch me, brushing his fingers down the side of my face. “Yes. Very.” As my heart hammered, he leaned in and kissed my forehead. I closed my eyes. “You’re not less important than the campaign,” he whispered. “I’m trying to show you.”
His phone pinged and my eyes opened. Reluctantly, Logan looked down at the screen. “I’m sorry.” He gave me a weary look. “I have to go now.”
“Please,” I choked. “Don’t throw your campaign away for me.”
Logan looked back over his shoulder, his smile small and sad. “Sorry, Lex. I’ve got to piss you off one last time.”
We lined the sofa, staring at Cary’s giant flat-screen. In the center of it, Logan stood in front of the campaign headquarters, flanked by reporters. The campaign’s comms director was visible in the background, biting her nails. Underneath, the chyron scrolled the headline Arthur Breaks Silence About Cheating Rumors.
“I’m going to make this brief.” Logan’s face was the sternest I’d seen it. Goose bumps rose on my arms. “I asked Alexis Stone to pretend to date me after compromising pictures of us surfaced that I deemed a risk to my political career. The entire deception was my idea and carried out at my request.”
Beside me, Nora winced, but Cary looked at the screen with shining eyes.
“Because of the nature of our arrangement, Alexis had every right to date other people.” His sternness slipped into anger. “So I’m asking—demanding—that the media leave her alone. As for me, I want to offer my apologies for misleading you. I let the pressure of the race warp my judgment. Rest assured I’m done pretending to be someone I’m not to appease people. From now on, you’ll get only the real Logan Arthur. I hope it’s enough. Thank you.”
He turned his back on the cameras. Predictably, the reporters exploded into questions, but he kept walking to the campaign office, where the comms director put an arm over his shoulders, shielding him, and they disappeared through the double doors. The cameras returned to the anchors in the studio, whose mouths were almost comically agape.
“What a fall,” said one of the comms consultants, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Logan ends up on a syllabus at the Kennedy School.”
“Epic Fuck-Ups of the Twenty-First Century,” agreed another consultant.
I tuned them out. All I could think about was what Logan had said: that he was going to stop pretending to be someone he wasn’t to appease people. All this time I’d thought he and I were complete opposites, but where it mattered, we were the same.
I was pulled out of my thoughts by Nora, squeezing my hand. When I saw her face, I knew what she was going to say. “I should leave now, shouldn’t I?”
At least her voice was regretful. “I’m sorry. But I need you to keep your distance from Logan from this moment forward.”
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me and swallowed hard, willing myself not to cry.
“You’re part of a scandal now,” Nora said. “Which means you’re toxic to him. All people will see when they look at you is his lie. If he’s going to have a shot at coming back from this—”
Cary scoffed.
“We can’t have you anywhere near him,” Nora finished. “Do you understand what I’m asking?”
It was only logical. Still, how it stung. “Yes,” I said quietly. “You want me to disappear.”