The Lies He Spoke

THIRTY THREE

"Oi, I'm doing this because we're friends." Andy tapped Blake's arm. "Let's go."

Blake stayed where he was. "Andy-"

"If you don't want to talk to me, that's fine." Andy put his hands up. "I will not ask you and I won't bother you. But what is not fine is sitting in here all by yourself. I swear I will let you have deep thoughts by yourself in your room if that's what you want."

Andy eventually got Blake to leave the car. Blake dragged his feet, but he followed Andy back to their apartment, where Andy sat down in the living room, turned on the TV back to the show he'd been watching. "I'll be out here," Andy said, putting two fingers to his temple.

As Blake went back to his room, the volume went up a bit higher, and Blake wanted to die of embarrassment that Andy just knew that Blake was about to cry. He sat down on his bed and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes and willed himself to push it down. He could not be falling to pieces right now. He needed to think straight. He needed to help Logan. He needed to help Olivia. And he still had the whole Elijah mess to tackle-

He laid on his bed, the weight of everything pushing his limbs down into the mattress. He felt paralyzed with everything that was going wrong. He tried so hard to keep upbeat about the situation, but with what he felt like Olivia had come to him with, he was being reminded too much of what happened five years ago.

He didn't know how long he laid there, his arms over his head, thoughts threatening to drown his sanity, but his door slowly creaking open brought him back to his bed. He lifted his head the slightest bit to see who it was, even though there was only one person it could be.

Andy awkwardly cleared his throat from the doorway. His hands were jammed in his shorts pockets, his shoulders turned inwards. "You decent?"

Blake put his head back down on the bed. "Not really."

He heard Andy slide down against the wall until he was seated on the floor. Into the quiet, Andy asked, "What's wrong?"

What's wrong? Blake wanted to laugh. What's right was the real question here. Everything was wrong and nothing was right. "I'm really scared," Blake admitted, just grateful that he was facing the other way so he wouldn't have to see Andy's face and so Andy couldn't see his. He didn't want anyone to see him reduced to this.

"What're you scared of?"

"I guess..." Everything. "That I can't stop whatever is happening. Or about to happen."

"Is this about Olivia coming here?"

"Yeah. She wouldn't tell me why she came."

Andy shifted on the floor. Blake imagined him chewing his lip, trying to figure out the best way to tell him. "I think it's Logan," Andy finally said. "When I mentioned him, she got all tense. She didn't want to talk about it. And if it was something else, she would've told Logan, wouldn't she? I think she came here because she couldn't tell him."

Blake's stomach rolled nauseously inside of him. There it was - the truth that even Andy could see after only sitting with Olivia for a fraction of the time that Blake had been with her that day. Blake knew it was Logan. How could it not be, when Olivia was comfortable enough to tell Logan anything she was afraid of? If it was anything else, Blake knew she would've gone to him instead.

And if it was Logan, there was a very short list of things that would make Olivia so tearfully reluctant to divulge what was going on. Logan would never do anything to hurt her, but to himself...

That was where his terror lay.

"I hope you're wrong," Blake whispered.

It had taken Logan months to stop cutting - months. It had taken him and Elijah and Logan and the doctors and his psychologist and tears and arguments and boundaries and a million stars had aligned for him to get better. Blake didn't want his brother to go through that pain again. He didn't want to see him go through that pain again. He didn't want himself or Elijah to live those moments again.