Breaking Bedlam (Beautiful Bedlam Book 2) Read online

  “Yeah…” he replied feeblemindedly.

  “And then you brought me out in to the middle of the lake, pushed me in to the water and told me to swim back?” she reminded him with a small smile on her face as if she were fond of that particular memory.

  “Yes, granted it was not the nicest way of teaching you how to swim but hell it worked, didn’t it?” He remarked with a goofy grin recollecting the hilarious incident.

  “You’ve gotta love karma.” She said ironically and swiftly knocked him over the side of the canoe with the oar and in to the lake making a great splash as he went down.

  “Logan. Logan, get up, it’s not funny. Logan!” she began shouting in a panic after her initial joy and triumph period had passed, as his body was nowhere to be seen.

  “Logan!” she cried again but she was met with silence with not even a ripple in sight.

  17.

  Sienna screamed his name one more time before diving in to the lake herself.

  “Boo!” he yelled as he popped up behind her startling her half to death.

  “How could you do that to me? I thought you had drowned! I thought you were-“

  “Dead? Awful feeling that, isn’t it? To think for even a second, the pain, the worry, the terror that shakes your heart, the stifling anguish you feel when you think that someone you love had just died?” he retorted callously and pulled himself up in to the boat. His white t-shirt and light blue jeans were completely soaked.

  “You do realize that you’re mad at me for something that you might have done to me?” she asked fervently feeling as if he were being unfair and pulled herself up with a little help from Logan (much to her annoyance) in to the canoe.

  “Might have done. There’s a big difference between dying from cancer and throwing yourself in front of a moving train whilst your boyfriend is begging you not to.” He yelled back at her trying to hold on to his anger and to not get distracted by the way her dress clung to her exquisite figure.

  “I swear to God, I’m going to throw myself back in to the lake if it starts raining right now.” he retorted acerbically looking up but lucky for them the skies were clear.

  “I’m sorry! Is that what you want to hear? I’m sorry! Because I truly am! And I’ve told you over and over again. I came to you at the hospital the moment I woke up even though I could barely walk! I told you how sorry I was but you just threw me out and told me you just pretended to love me for sex. How am I supposed to feel now every time I see you? Every time you tell me that you love me, how am I supposed to believe anything you say?” she asked angrily and wrapped her arms around her shoulders.

  “Sienna, I’m sorry, okay…I was mad. I was so stupid. I should never have said those lies. I was wounded and hurt and in my anger I said things I shouldn’t have said. I love you.” He said earnestly as he rowed them back to the dock.

  “The sad thing is even though I believe you, I think there’s always going to be a small part of me who’ll always doubt you because of it.” she said solemnly.

  “So where does that leave us?” he asked forlornly already knowing the answer.

  “I don’t know, Logan, where do a schizoaffective and a cancer survivor go from here?” she sighed as they reached the dock.

  “I need some space and time away from you. I’ll find my own way home. Thanks for the party Logan, it’s been most enlightening.” She told him with a heavy heart and walked past the dozen of their closest classmates and friends who’d clearly watch the entire bizarre encounter from afar.

  “Dude, I think they totally did it out there.” She heard one of the twins from the ‘reject’ group as Rose once had called them in the cafeteria say as he joined the group, with a drink in hand.

  “Not fair, Logan Jackson always gets the hot crazy ones.” His brother sighed and drowned his cup. Somehow Logan always managed to come out on top, Sienna thought confusedly as she took the car keys to the mini cooper off an open mouthed shocked Candice who had most likely seen Sienna knock Logan in to the lake with a wooden oar. Her expression read ‘dat bitch is cray cray’. Sienna couldn’t agree more.

  18.

  “No, that’s not for you.” She chided as the dove cooed and flew over to the hummingbird feeder Sienna had hanging on the widow’s walk outside her bedroom window. She liked coming out and sleeping there sometimes, on warm nights like tonight, when the streets were silent and the stars and birds had come out to play.

  “Besides you’ll be dead by dawn. Bright side is you’ll be up again and flying by dusk.” She said airily as the dove cooed once again as if it were calling someone.

  “Oh my…you’re scary.” Sienna yelped and moved back as a large black raven came and perched itself up on the railing. The pretty white dove instantly flew to the raven as soon as it saw it and they both flew off together in to the night sky without a care in the world. Urgh. Love. It defied all sense of reason and logic.

  “Who’s a pretty kitty?” she fussed over Smeags as he came bundling in through the open window. He completely ignored her and hissed as he looked down through the railing. “Seriously? First the bird, now the cat, what’s a girl gotta do to get a little love around here?” she remarked quizzically to herself as she leaned back against her pillow and blanket that she had brought out to lie upon. She sighed and readjusted her long blue Winnie the Pooh nightshirt that fell just inches above her knee and plugged her earphones in as she looked up at the magnificent night sky.

  She took out the letter her father had left her the night of his suicide. She hadn’t even opened the envelope despite having it in her possession for six months now. Her fingers grazed over the front of the white envelope, over her name,Sienna, and wondered what thoughts must have been going through his mind as he wrote down his final goodbye to his daughter. She sighed, not ready to open it and left it resting against her heart as she looked up at the stars. She plugged in her earphones and looked up at the stars.

  “I was just guessing at numbers and figures, pulling the puzzles apart, questions of science, science and progress, don not speak as loud as my heart.” she sang along with the chorus of Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist’. She had always had a beautiful soprano singing voice with a smoky vocal texture.

  “And tell me you love me, come back and haunt me. Oh and I rush to the start, running in circles, chasing up tails, coming back as we are.” She sang tearfully,

  “Nobody said it was easy, oh its such a shame for us to part, nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be so hard. Arghhh!” she shrieked suddenly and jumped up in fright. She seemed to get so lost in her singing that she hadn’t noticed the dark figure that suddenly loomed over the railing.

  “Whoa! Its me!”

  “Logan! I nearly crapped myself! What are you doing here? Don’t you know not to creep up on a girl like that? I mean, seriously, don’t you watch Law and order SVU?” she yelled with her hand over her pounding heart.

  “Why do you have a frying pan?” he asked disconcertingly as he noticed her weapon of choice and her frantic crouched over pose resembling the chick from Tangled.

  “Logan, what’s wrong?” she asked softly as he climbed over. She could see his eyes were red, sore and absolutely distraught. She suddenly had that gut wrenching sick feeling in her stomach that churned away at her.

  “What is it?” she asked slowly as Logan leaned against the railing and looked out at the street below him, his face streaming with silent tears.

  “Its Amber. She’s dead.” He said somberly looking at Sienna. Her heart fell to her feet, her entire body froze in shock as the slow familiar feeling of grief and despair came crawling in over her skin and sank deep in to her bones, consuming her entirely. Her eyes didn’t fill with tears simply because she had spent merely fifteen minutes with the girl that day and had already fallen in love with her old soul and quick wit nor was because it was a girl who had been robbed of her life so young, but it was because of the pain and anguish that Logan was going through, a feeling she knew too
well.

  “What?” she gasped incoherently as if she’d heard wrong, wishing she was wrong.

  “My sister is dead.” He said inaudibly and took a small step towards her.

  “I know you said you needed space but I think I’m going crazy, I needed to see you.” He said poignantly. She wrapped her arms around him pulling her in to her warm embrace unwilling to let go. “My sister is dead.” He repeated again faintly as if he couldn’t believe it.

  “How is that even possible? I mean, we just saw her…” she said slowly after a few moments as she tried to gather her thoughts and senses.

  “She was strong today. It makes no sense. She was out of her bed walking. She was happy and laughing. I don’t understand what went wrong. The doctors they said she passed in her sleep after we left. She-” he stopped as his voice broke off due to the emotion that was choking him.

  “Oh Logan,” she said softly and

  “You know what the worst part is, nobody was even there when she died. Her mom was too busy doing go knows what all day, my dad had only visited Amber a grand total of five times in his entire life, Jake barely got time to get away from New York and my mom hated the fact that I saw Amber every weekend. I should have been there. I should have stayed with her.” He said angrily as he took a step back away from her.

  “Its not your fault.” Sienna told him adamantly.

  “You know what the worst part it? The doctors didn’t know what to do with her. They just left her in the morgue like a slab of meat in the freezer. They couldn’t reach her mom. I only found out ‘cos Danny called me and I when I went over there demanding to see her, they wouldn’t let me. They said family only.” He sighed and clenched his fists looking like he wanted to punch something or someone.

  “I only knew her for two years but-“

  “Shh, you don’t have to explain it to me.”

  “My dad even came to the hospital.”

  “He did? Oh my God, I can’t even begin to imagine how he’s handling it.”

  “My dad didn’t come to see her. He barely blinked when he’d heard she’d died. He was only there to pull me out of there in case anyone got wind of the fact that good old Senator Robert Jackson has been secretly paying the medical bills of his illegitimate daughter. You think your mom is messed up? Well you don’t know the half about my dad. They’re both a match made in hell!” he snarled bitterly.

  “Sorry I came through the window.” he apologized looking sincere and gentle all of a sudden as he noticed Sienna’s doe-eyed expression. He didn’t mean to load off all of his worries on to her. She was just the first he needed to talk to when he was angry or upset, it had always been like that since they were children.

  “Its almost as if I was afraid you wouldn’t see me if I knocked on the front door besides now you can’t say I’m not a romant-“

  Sienna couldn’t contain her overwhelming feeling of love for him any longer and pulled him in to a long heated passionate kiss. When she pulled her lips away from his she could see the absolute surprise in his captivatingly dark eyes.

  “I’m sorry, I…didn’t mean to confuse even further. I-“

  He pulled her back to him before she could get another syllable out this time not letting go, showering her lips to her collarbone with hungry insatiable kisses as if he couldn’t get enough of her, their love tasted sweet and salty all at once from the tears that remained from before.

  “We should probably stop doing that if we ever want to get through one full conversation together.” She said breathing heavily as she held on to the wall still intoxicated from his lips.

  “That’s probably a good idea.” He murmured back with his fingers on his swollen lips still stunned by the rush he received from hers.

  They sat there on her widow’s walk for hours, talking, laughing, crying, and talking some more just lying back against her pillow and blanket looking up at the stars.

  “God, I wish we had something a little stronger that this.” Logan remarked referring to the chilled glass bottle of cola in his hand.

  “Sorry, I threw all my mom’s hidden stash down the drain this morning. She’s going to be mega pissed when she comes home.” Sienna replied with a small diffident smile and took a sip from hers.

  “Sorry, bad idea.” He apologized remembering Sienna’s indifference to alcohol after watching her mother destroy herself and her family over it.

  “So Winnie the Pooh makes a comeback, huh?” he raised his eyebrows at her shirt.

  “Oh, I guy a knew once has a crazy fetish over ‘em. Its kinda creepy actually.”

  “Only you can make Winnie the Pooh look sexy.”

  She rolled her eyes at him thinking he was just teasing but he wasn’t.

  “What? I’m serious!” he retorted frankly with a grin his eyes skimming over her long toned golden legs.

  “I got you a present today, birthday girl.” He said sweetly and took a small black velvet box out from his back pocket.

  “No! You shouldn’t have, especially not…not today.”

  “No way. That looks…ridiculously expensive.” She exclaimed as he opened it to reveal the most beautiful pair of tear drop shaped diamond encrusted emerald earrings she’d ever set her eyes on. She felt herself falling in love only the second time in her life.

  “And preeeetty.” He said pushing the velvet box towards her.

  “I’m not some dumb kitty you can throw a ball of yarn at. No way.” She said standoffishly but couldn’t take her eyes off the emeralds.

  Smeags yowled at that from inside her bedroom taking offense to her comment.

  “Sienna, it’s your birthday plus I missed the last two so I’ve got a little making up to do especially after being an asshole these last few months. Besides, Amber was the one who picked it out. She was like the president of our fan club. Trust me, sometimes I think she loved you more than I did even though she never met you til today.” He retorted wryly with a far away look in his eye as if he were fondly remembering his sweet young sis.

  “Thank you.” She said to him bashfully as she took it as the thought of Amber’s face imagining Sienna accepting this from Logan. Her heart stung a little at the thought. Even though she didn’t even know her in person, Amber actually loved her. Why was it that the sweetest of souls always departed the quickest?

  “I wish I could have gotten to know her better. I wish Annie could have met her. I wish Amber had never gotten sick, that my mother wasn’t a drunk,”

  “That my father wasn’t a super douchebag,” he interjected chirpily.

  “That our parents weren’t cheats, that my dad was my dad, that he didn’t kill himself, that I wasn’t sick and that you were happy.” She sighed and closed the box scaring herself a little of how much she adored it already. She had never been a big jewelry girl but now she was almost seconds away from calling her new earrings her ‘precious.’

  “That’s a lot wishes, princess. And I am happy, Sienna, maybe not now, not today, but I’ll get there and so will you.” He said stoically and leaned back against the blankets next to where she lay, his face mere inches from her.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “When have you ever been afraid to ask me-“

  “Anything? Yes, yes, I know, stupid question. Sienna… what hallucinations do you see? I saw you today, at the party before blowing out your candles, you were smiling at thin air…”

  “I see my dad from time to time, sometimes we talk, most times I just see him from afar. Oh and I see a dead bird, a dove to be exact.” She sighed and kept her eyes on the stars, too afraid to see the look of shock and pity in Logan’s eyes. if she had been brave enough to look all she’d have been met with warm understanding and no judgment. Smeags meowed inside restlessly.

  “Shh,” she said soothingly and looked in to her bedroom window.

  “Can you see it now?” he asked softly trying to mask the worry on his face.

  “No, that’s just my cat. Sméagol, Smeags for short, he gets r
eal cranky when you call him his full name. Archbishop Sméagol Canterbury, first of his name. ”

  “You have a cat?” he asked wondering how he did not know this.

  “Yeah, here boy,” she called and kissed her lips together calling him but he didn’t come.

  “I don’t know where he went. He’s not exactly my cat, I don’t really think he has an owner; he just pops by from time to time. You’d like him, he’s Persian so he’s a little exotic and he’s super mean.”

  “Exotic looking and mean, yup, sounds like my type.” He chuckled looking directly at Sienna.

  “Wait a minute…does he have three legs?” he asked suddenly leaning up on his elbow.

  “Yeah…”

  “And creepy blue eyes just like…Sméagol? And is super wrinkly?”

  “Yes! You know him?” Siena asked excitedly.

  “That was Amber’s cat. She called him Botox.” He said quietly.

  “Oh my god! This world is way too small. What a strange coincidence!” she exclaimed with a baffled smile on her face loving the name. It soon faded as she saw the look of concern pass his face.

  “What is it?” she asked softly.

  “Sienna, Botox died like a year ago.”

  “Its…probably not the same cat anyway.” She said with a shaky smile and shook her head. She could tell what he was thinking, but no. She wasn’t Hayley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense; she wasn’t going to start whispering, “I see dead people” all creepy like. She was fine. She had been taking her medication. She was fine, wasn’t she?

  “Logan, you never did tell me about how you knew about Annie being your sister?”