“Yes, I believe he did,” Logan agrees, never taking his eyes off of his younger brother. There are many emotions clear to me in Logan’s eyes. He’s angry, of course, but he’s also disappointed and irrevocably decided about the fate of their relationship.

Dammit! This was not supposed to happen! I know Taylor’s a supersonic, cataclysmic asshole, but I can’t help feeling angry with me. I know better than to let someone like him get under my skin, I should’ve walked away, I should’ve let him implode on his own rage rather than putting up my own target.

The nine of us are immersed in this tense standoff in the very centre of the otherwise lively and happy partygoers.

“I, uh, I’m going to take Abigail to the dance floor,” Buddy says, holding her hand and walking away, removing her from the boiling tension that’s about to explode.

“Apologise to Gemima right now,” Logan orders.

“No,” Taylor shakes his head. Then looking at me once more, he says, “I’m trying to help you, before you get hurt.”

“Bullshit,” I snarl, losing my patience. “You are the hurtful one, Taylor, not Logan. You are the one who holds your entire family locked in the past.”

“Now I think it’s you who knows fuck all,” Taylor says. He couldn’t look at me with more contempt even if he tried.

“Watch. Your. Mouth,” Logan hisses at him.

I take a defiant step closer to Taylor. “I know everything,” I tell him with immense satisfaction. Was he hoping to alarm me by telling me about his past with Logan? Was he hoping that I would be shocked and disgusted and break Logan’s heart by ending our relationship right here in this room?

“Apologise, Taylor,” Logan tells him again.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Taylor shakes his head. He steps up to Logan, looking him straight in the eye. “Are you going to make me?” he taunts him, daring him to make a scene in the middle of this important night.

“Have you lost your ever-loving mind?” Mary-Gene shouts at Taylor, making all of us jump.

“I will deal with him,” Logan says to our parents. “Get the fuck outside,” Logan tells him, pushing him hard on the back towards the double doors of the ballroom.

He goes readily. I hand the drinks that I’m still holding to my mom, before Karen and I follow them out into the corridor, leaving Logan’s parents and my mom in our wake. As we leave them, neither Mary-Gene nor Rupert protests against Logan dealing with his younger brother, which tells me instantly that they trust him implicitly. They know that Logan won’t do to Taylor what he did nineteen years ago, they know the kind of man he is today, even if Taylor does not.

As soon as the four of us are alone in the long corridor, Taylor starts laughing. “Are you going to hit me, Logan?”

Tension fills my body. I study Logan carefully. The same energy that was running through him before he punched Jerry is evident to me once more, though now it’s tenfold. He’s tempted, I know he is, but right now he’s still in command of himself.

“I’d love to, Tay,” he admits, “but I won’t give you the satisfaction of thinking you’re right about me.”

“Oh, but I am right about you.” He just keeps pushing.

“I’d expect you to saying nothing less about me,” Logan allows. “But what I didn’t expect, and what is wholly unacceptable, is how you spoke to my fiancé.”

Predictably, Taylor’s eyes widen.

“That’s right, my latest fix as you called her, and I are getting married. Not that you’ll be there,” he adds coldly. That’s one less guest to think about. Shaking his head, Logan then speaks out loud the decision I knew he’d come to, “Now you and I — we are done, Taylor. You are not my brother, you are not my family. I disown you completely, but if I ever, ever hear you speak to a woman like that again, and not just her,” he says, referring to me, “but any woman, then I will make what happened nineteen years ago look like child’s play, and I won’t waste one minute feeling guilty about it,” Logan spells it out very clearly. “I truly believe that beating the shit out of you would be kinder than the words that you just said.” He stares at his younger brother in a mixture of anger and disbelief. “You think she’s my whore, Taylor, really?” he says, his voice getting louder and angrier with each syllable. “You think it’s acceptable to speak to a woman like that? For fuck’s sake you have a daughter,” Logan shouts, smacking him squarely on the chest. “I don’t ever have to see you again, but Abigail? That poor girl is stuck with you!”

It’s clear from the expression on Taylor’s face that Logan’s hit a nerve. “Leave my daughter out of this, Logan.”

“No, I don’t think so. She deserves so much more than a man like you to be her role model—”

Abruptly, Taylor lunges at Logan, throwing a wild punch. My breath catches in my chest, my heart beating over time. Logan just manages to avoid it, bending low and tackling Taylor around the stomach, pushing him forcefully into the wall of the corridor. Please, don’t hit him, I beg Logan in my mind. I know, despite his own words, that he will feel guilty, not for hurting Taylor, but for letting himself down; he doesn’t want to be that kind of man anymore, and this, right now, is his ultimate test. They struggle against each other for a brief moment, before Logan pins him securely, and I at last breathe a sigh of relief.

He shouts at Taylor, “You had better get the fuck over yourself and lose your pathetic attempt at anger—”

“Attempt at anger?” Taylor shouts back. “You don’t think that I’m really angry?” He tries to push Logan off of him, but Logan’s too strong. Mentally, physically, and emotionally, Taylor is the weaker of the two.

“You don’t have the balls to be angry, you’re too much of a coward,” Logan yells at him, his hands tightly gripping Taylor’s wrists so that he can’t throw them again. “I was angry, I went to war with myself, but you?” he shakes his head. “No, you’re not angry, Taylor, what you are is much, much worse than what I ever was.”

“I’m the coward?” Taylor exclaims, with so much disbelief that he almost laughs. “You were twice my size when you beat me to a bloody mess!”

“Yes, I know! We all know! So if your intention was to shock Gemima with your sad little story, then it’s not going to work,” he informs him.

“How can you be so callous? So lacking in compassion about what you did to me?”

“Because it was nineteen fucking years ago!” Logan bellows, getting out any last deep-seated frustrations. His noise level is starting to get alarming. I turn to close the doors to the ballroom, blocking the view for those few who are standing around, conversing near the entrance; they don’t need to see the man of the night like this. As I do so, Logan continues, “I did a cruel thing. Once. You’ve been doing cruel things for years.”

“Enlighten me then, you sanctimonious piece of shit,” Taylor spits in his face.

“You are a leech,” Logan says, pushing him harder into the wall. “You suck the happiness out of every room you walk into. You’re too jealous and insecure to be around people who feel good about themselves and so you always, always, always bring them down. And you know it, Taylor. You take pleasure in it, you feed off of it. But it doesn’t work on me anymore, and that’s why you can’t stand me. I don’t let you make me feel bad, I can see straight through you, which only makes you hate me more. There’s a constant anger inside of you, and it’s destroying you. Slowly, sadly it’s ruining your life. You’ve got to let it go, you’ve got to let it go,” he says, almost imploringly, as he himself lets his bother go.