Hey everyone! I am back with another update for you!

I have been planning this chapter for quite some time now but when it came to actually writing it, I had a really hard time getting what was in my head down in words. Hopefully it doesn't feel too rushed to you guys. I found it kind of difficult to get the flow right with this one.

Also, just a quick disclaimer: As I am pretty sure I have mentioned in earlier Author's Notes of this story, this little CME/WaH fanfic series I have going here was started before the release of the ToA series and as such, is not canon to the events in those books. I have not even read past the first one myself, though I do know a bit about what happens in future books, and I have chosen to pretend they don't exist for the sake of the rather long and complex storyline I already have going which involves certain characters who shouldn't and lacks others that should be present according to that series. I just wanted to clear that up because I have gotten some reviews in the past from some of you who were wondering or confused.

Thanks for keeping up with this story and putting up with my inconsistent updates, and I hope you enjoy this next chapter!


"Sounds good, man," I said into the cell phone at my ear, "I'll see you Sunday."

"See you then," Leo replied, "And thanks."

When the call ended, I slid my phone back into my pocket and checked my watch. I needed to leave soon if I wanted to beat the worst of the Friday traffic. I'd be late getting Logan otherwise.


Per the text from Annabeth as I'd been leaving work, I stopped on the way home with Logan to pick up a new lightbulb for the fixture above the sink in our master bathroom. I'd asked him to come in with me. Unsurprisingly, he quietly declined and opted to wait in the car, so I left him with the heat running. It took longer than I expected – apparently no one had anything better to do on a Friday afternoon than run errands on their way home. Logan seemed unfazed, his head propped on an arm against the passenger side door. He didn't say anything as I got back in the car.

He never said anything unprompted anymore. I missed our conversations. I missed everything.

Withholding my sigh, I shifted into drive and headed for home.

Annabeth beat us back, barely. She and Carly were just getting out of the car when I pulled into the driveway. My daughter grinned and waved. Annabeth had her cell phone to her ear as she reached inside the car for the backpack Carly left behind before closing and locking the door.

I parked next to her in the driveway and got out before moving to get Logan's chair from the trunk. Carly reappeared, an excited Ollie at her heels, and watched as Logan slid himself from the passenger seat.

"Hey, Peanut," I said, unlocking the breaks on the wheelchair so hecould propel himself away without a word to either of us. I watched his back for a beat before focusing on Carly again. "How was school?"

She shrugged. "Good. We're making a solar system in science."

"Yeah? The whole solar system?"

She nodded. "Yup. My group is making Saturn."

"Cool."

"It's gonna be the best one," she added simply, walking with me as I made for the house, bag of lightbulbs in hand. Ollie trotted after us, tail still wagging.

I gave a laugh and agreed, "I bet it is."

Whoever Annabeth was talking to, it must have been important. I could hear her voice floating out from the direction of her office when we got inside. Something about a project deadline and a first floor blueprint. I opted not to bother her and continued to the stairs.

Nicky, usually the first one home in the afternoon, was in his room, squinting down at a piece of paper as he scribbled on it with a pencil, what looked like a math textbook open before him on the desk. I called a greeting through the open door but did not bother him otherwise. I definitely understood the need for a lack of distractions when it came to schoolwork. Nicky would come out when he finished or quit for the weekend, whichever came first..

I entered the master bedroom and made quick work of switching out the old lightbulb above the sink. When the bathroom was well-lit once more, I tossed the old bulb and the box in the trash and left. Annabeth was still in her office but she covered the phone for a second and called out as I passed. I peered in. "I'll be done with this in a minute," she said quietly, "Can you preheat the oven?"

"To what?"

"350." I nodded and turned to attend to the task. "Thank you!" she called quietly after me before resuming her call. Carly had taken up residence at the kitchen table with the monster-proofed tablet the kids begrudgingly shared. "Did you put your school things away for the weekend?" I asked her, turning on the oven to heat up.

"Mhmm." She didn't look up.

"You didn't throw them on the floor of your room, did you?" I asked skeptically. Carly met my eyes at this, a guilty smile upturning the corners of her mouth. "You know Mom doesn't like that." It was probably a cheap line, but then, when it came to the kids at least, Annabeth would always be scarier than me. And I was okay with that.

"I'll pick them up when I go back upstairs," she promised. I only half-believed her, but dropped the issue and sat down across from her, wincing at the slight twinge in my back that seemed to be present more and more lately and reminded me that I grew closer to forty every day. Ollie sauntered over, looking decidedly hungry, and put his head in my lap. I ran a hand down his soft neck.

"Who's turn is it to feed the dog this week?" I asked Carly.

It was Logan, however, who answered, wheeling moodily into the kitchen, his cell phone balanced on one knee, a beat-up paperback book on the other. "Mine," he said, opening the pantry door and pulling out the bag of Ollie's dog food, "I'm doing it now."

Ollie, aware of what was happening, was at his side in an instant, circling his chair and waiting impatiently as Logan retrieved the scoop and filled the dog bowl in the corner.

"Thank you," I offered. He only shrugged in acknowledgement.

"I'll be in the living room," he announced, and turned away.

I propped a hand under my chin and watched him leave, resisting the urge to sigh. It seemed to be something I did a lot lately. Carly looked after him for a second before she turned to me and said, "Daddy, I'm hungry."

I refocused my attention and looked at her, then down at the watch on my wrist. Quarter to five. "We're going to have dinner soon," I told her.

"When?"

"Like an hour and a half."

Her eyebrows scrunched. "That's not soon," she protested. "Can I have a snack?"

"What do you want?"

"Cookies?" she asked far too quickly.

I smirked. "Nice try. We bought apples the other day. You can have one of those."

She made a face and then sighed dramatically, "Okay." She crossed to the refrigerator.

"Hey," Annabeth's voice carried from outside the room, "Don't fill up on junk. I'm making dinner." She appeared in the doorway behind our daughter.

"I'm having an apple!" Carly protested, fruit in hand, "Dad said I could."

Annabeth sent a raised eyebrow my way. I spread my arms helplessly. "It's better than cookies," was my only defense.

She pursed her lips in disapproval but apparently conceded that point because she looked back at Carly. "Fine, but you'd better eat every last bite of your dinner."

"I will," the ten-year old promised and stepped to the sink to wash her snack. Annabeth mouthed Pushover at me over her head.

I shrugged. Sorry. She rolled her eyes, but smiled and pulled a covered dish out of the refrigerator. "How was work?"

"Good. Long," I shrugged, "Lots of meetings. Leo called during lunch."

"Oh really? How is he?" She opened the oven and placed the dish inside, not looking up as she spoke.

"Good. He's going to be in town this weekend."

"He is?"

I nodded. "Apparently there's a deposit of Celestial Bronze at the bottom of the Hudson outside Manhattan. He needs more for some new project, so Chiron said if he could get it out, he could have it."

Annabeth looked at me, her eyes slightly narrowed. "Wouldn't you know if there was Celestial Bronze in the Hudson River?" she asked.

I shrugged. "The Hudson's huge and pretty disgusting. I try to spend as little time in it as possible, honestly."

"But you still dive for work sometimes. Seems odd that no fish or anything mentioned it. Maybe it's a recent cast off from Olympus?"

I shrugged again. "Maybe. There's still so much pollution in there though, the fish might not notice or even care."

She hummed in acknowledgement, removing a head of lettuce from the refrigerator. "Want to cut this?" she asked offhandedly, placing it on a cutting board atop the counter. I moved wordlessly toward where she stood as she turned and retrieved more ingredients, presumably for a salad. "Did Leo call to ask you to help get it out?" she guessed, rinsing a handful of cherry tomatoes in the sink.

"Yeah, if I was free and it was okay with you. He's going to do it either way, but knowing Leo, I'm sure it would be easier and more discrete for me to just go down and get it for him than whatever method he'd come up with." We'd learned the hard way over the years that the Mist only went so far to when it came to Leo's inventions.

She nodded down at the tomatoes in her hands. "That's definitely true. What time does he need you?"

I shrugged. "He said about noon, but we can push it back a little if we have to. He's planning to stop by Jason and Piper's anyway, so I doubt it matters to him as long as we do it before dark."

"No, noon should be fine. I don't think we have anything–" Her words were cut off by the sound of a yell, followed by the sound of breaking glass and a crash from the living room. Annabeth was half a step ahead of me as we rushed from the kitchen.

I expected the worst, as I'd unfortunately been conditioned to, as I rounded the corner, my heart thundering in my chest. It took me a second to process the scene that awaited me, and I came up slightly short in the doorway, taking in the broken glass originating from the framed photo of our family dangling above the mantle and now littering the floor, along with a remarkably undamaged cell phone. A distraught-looking Logan sat in his chair on the other side of the room and stared unflinchingly at the mess. Upon realizing there was no imminent threat to anyone's safety, I forced my brain to slow just enough to figure out my son had thrown his phone across the room, apparently with a considerable amount of strength, and taken out the perfectly good picture frame. "What the–"

"Logan!" Annabeth's voice interrupted, aghast and slightly angry, from beside me, "What are you doing?" She might as well have not said anything for all the reaction the teenager showed to her words. "Explain yourself," she demanded. Logan continued ignoring her. We might as well have not been there at all.

To her credit, she waited a solid five count before she grew truly angry. "Logan Alexander–"

"I don't care!" he screamed suddenly, whirling on her.

I blinked, honestly shocked. "Don't speak to your mother like–"

"I don't care!" he yelled again, his voice breaking a bit.

"You don't–"

"You don't get it!" he interrupted again, proving it impossible for either of us to get a word in edgewise. And yet it was probably the most words I'd heard from him all month, like whatever stopper he'd kept tight on his feelings the past few months had finally come out and now it all poured out at once. "This sucks! It all sucks! My life was perfect before! I had friends and a life and legs that worked. Everyone liked me, and I could do things, and everything was great, and now it all just sucks! You should have just let me die! It would have been better. I hate everything. I don't care!" And then, with as much flourish and haste as he could manage in his wheelchair-bound state and ignoring the tears breaking free from his eyes, Logan wheeled himself from the room, leaving us to stare after him in shock. And only then did I notice that Nicky stood silently behind us in the room's entrance, maybe drawn by the noise as we had been. His gray eyes were wide and bright, and his face crumpled with unmistakable guilt. He turned slowly from his brother's retreating form, found us staring at him, and then swiftly turned and walked in the opposite direction Logan had gone without a word.

I was still far too stunned and confused to even think about handling that situation right now. I turned and walked numbly over to the pile of glass on the floor and carefully dug Logan's cell phone from the debris. The screen was unlocked and it didn't take me long to discover the source of his sudden, violent, and apparently very public outburst.

The phone was open to Logan's text message conversation with Jasmine. A series of unanswered messages from the past two days filled his end, ranging from Hey, to Are U okay?, to Y aren't U answering me?" And then, at the bottom of the screen, a single response from her which had apparently been the breaking point for his stoic and silent brooding act of the past several months.

I can't do this anymore, it read, I've been avoiding it 4 a long time but it isn't fair. We aren't the same and it never gets better. Plz don't text me anymore. I'm sry.

"Jasmine broke up with him," I muttered to Annabeth, who'd wandered over as I'd read.

Honestly, as much as I hated to think it, it was probably only a matter of time given the state Logan had been in since the accident. He acted pretty much the same with everyone, and Jasmine was right, that wasn't fair to her. I couldn't really blame her. But still, she'd been his first girlfriend and she'd essentially broken things off because of something that wasn't his fault. And over a text message, no less. Sure she was young, but even for a teenager, that seemed a bit harsh.

And Logan was fragile on the best of days lately. It was easy enough to figure out what happened next.

It was the last straw.

I sighed and showed Annabeth the phone. She read silently. When she finished, she just looked at the remnants of the picture frame barely left hanging on the wall. In what was mostly an unconscious gesture meant to comfort both of us, I reached out to move a loose strand of hair off her face. She brushed me off, turned, and strode from the room without a word.

I stayed where I was, watching her go, and pretended I didn't see the hand she wiped across her eyes as she did.


Thanks for reading!