Logan is captivated by this girl. She's just as broken and shattered as him, and she didn't even flinch at his name when he was introduced, which, given his fame adjacent nature, means she probably knows and doesn't care. Part of him is really hoping she knows and doesn't care, because he so desperately wants to move past everything that had happened this summer.

"Why? If you don't mind me asking."

"He and my... boyfriend at the time, Jebediah, were close friends, and they were out one night together, got mugged, and because Stefan resisted giving up something he had of our mothers, Jed got shot. And he died. Between the fact that looking at him still hurts me, and some of the stuff he said to me, as if he could come up with a good reason not to say sorry for his part in the death of yet another person I loved, we haven't spoken in what feels like 10 years." 

Even though most of the story is a well woven lie, the hints of it rooted in truth hurt her. As emotionless as she may be, it's not complete, and when things hurt enough, it aches in her chest. Thinking of Stefan's betrayal, of the brother she lost when he murdered both her and her husband. When she thinks of the last moments with the very first man she ever had in her life, with the last time she saw her twins as babies as she left them on Honoria's doorstep, when she had to compel her daughter Stefanie to leave and never return. Her last words to her son as she did as he and his daughters asked, and they were still lost, so Toni left alone. All of it, hurts her so much that it shows so clearly on her face, the knowledge of complete and total loss.

"Jebediah? What a name. That's, uh, that's horrible. I can relate. I just found out my Dad slept with my girlfriend and then murdered her. And my sister is still on the 'Dad is innocent' roll and it isn't like we got along before that so it's not some great loss." Logan sympathizes mostly, but part of him is a little numb to the terrible nature of life, so he's sad, but he visually seems to be over the whole debacle.

"Hence me calling him Jed usually. And besides the fact that Antonietta isn't any less of a weird name, it was a family name, passed down through many generations. Jebediah Fell the 5th. But yeah, I heard about the whole Aaron Echolls - Lilly Kane thing. Tragic. Truth be told, our waitress kind of caught us up on some of the finer details of the gossip surrounding you. So, if you never wanna talk about it, you don't have to, but I do have to say, you seem pretty well held together considering everything you've been through."

Toni is intentionally blunt here, because if her brash personality is going to run the boy off, early in their friendship would keep her from getting attached at all.

It does surprise him, given most people tiptoe around the subject of the woes of his life, but he actually finds he appreciates her factual nature. He doesn't have to pretend he's fine, and normal, and not horribly emotionally scarred. In fact, its more than a little comforting.

"Truth be told, after Lilly's death, and the video of her crime scene being leaked, I don't think I have any more really left in me. Or at least I thought I didn't. Then I dared to date again, our very own snippy hostess in fact, and after the summer from hell, here I am, single again, accused of murder, and at this point, I don't think I can be bothered to feel awful."

"A feeling I can understand. After the dead Dad, who sucked at parenting by the way, and the dead boyfriend, a bunch of my cousins died in Italy, and the last person I tried to date in any sort of serious capacity disappeared off the face of the earth when I went to visit my brother for a family emergency. Neptune is supposed to be my new beginning. A town with no ghosts roaming the streets with their ever pervasive memories, a place I can be Toni, Shakespeare enthusiast, not Toni, the girl made of grief."

Part of her wants to tell him the truth, that the cousins who died were more her grandchildren, great grandchildren, and more, that the emergency was another of Damon's idiotic murderous rampages, that she didn't so much date as spend a lot of her time alone in a mansion with Katherine. Something about Logan makes her want to tell him the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God, but she knows better, knows that she can't.

"Trust me, my Dad probably sucked worse."

What Logan doesn't know, is that she feels exactly the same as he does, wanting to spill her guts to him the same way he wants to tell her absolutely everything.

She snorts, the same unladylike way she used to when joking with Jed, and for a moment, she almost feels like she's back in 1863, or 64, or 65, in the golden years of her courtship, or her marriage. But now she's still amused, but in the present time.

"Doubt it. But, uh, this isn't really the right place for a conversation about whose Dad was more abusive."

That does make Logan look up and take note of his surroundings, for the first time since the boys left, he realizes they're in public, and mostly surrounded by semi-strangers, all of whom are, as per usual, staring at him like he's in a fishbowl, including his ex-girlfriend. 

"Point. Wanna take this somewhere where everyone isn't staring. With a dead Mom, my sister off doing Oprah to campaign for Dad's innocence in the court of public opinion, and Dad himself in prison, I have a whole house to myself."

"Sure, but only if you promise to keep your hands to yourself. I just met you and I'm a respectable young lady don't you know?" The flirtatious smile on her lips and the mischievous glint in her eye make it obvious that it's a joke, which definitely leaves it open for Logan to flirt back.

He picks up on the flirtation, and smiles lightly, he likes this girl, she's got a side to her that isn't all doom and gloom, so with that in mind, he flirts right back.

"I'm afraid it can't be done young miss, because I'm known round these parts as a real bad boy, can't lose my reputation now can I?"

He proffers an elbow to her after he stands, letting her choose if she wants to take it as they walk

Toni loves the little hint of old school gentlemanly behavior, the elbow reminding her again of Jed, so she takes it and lets him lead her to a big ugly yellow car, clearly expensive, but also, in her opinion, in very poor taste. Once sitting in the front passenger seat, she turns to him as he turns the car on.

"I have to ask, what's with the paint job? Did you ask for blinding yellow or was it a trend that year?"

"Part of my whole 'thing'. Dad can't be threatened by his son if his son wears baggy neon surfer dude clothes and drives a hideous neon yellow car. Then, I don't know, somewhere along the way, I fell in love with her. Couldn't imagine life without her now." He pats the dash lovingly as he drives them back to the Echolls mansion, remembering with a little bitter wistfulness the make outs with his dead ex, and his living ex, in the back seat behind them.

"Threatened?"

"He was an aging action star, and it always made my day worse when they called him old, and me handsome. So I dress badly enough on the day to day and they stopped calling me that, and he stopped getting upset by it."

"Fair enough. I played mousy sweet little girl, always happy to do anything her father asked of her. Overachiever to the nth degree. I can play two instruments, plus I'm trained in modern, classical, and opera singing, I know four languages beside English, and I'm an excellent cook. I was his prized jewel, he liked to show me off, and I had to make sure I was worth doing so."

"That does sound kind of worse, at least I never had to try at anything. And woah, so you know five language, and you're musically talented, and you genuinely like English. You're a little scarily perfect."

They've now made it in the automatically closing gates of his estate, and after he exits the car, he has time to saunter around to her side before she can get down.

The latter fact is mostly due to the fact that getting down from his four-wheeler is not an easy job when you're short, which Toni is, so she takes his offered hand of help to get down, and follows him inside when he leads the way.

"Your place is nice. I like the decor."

"Thanks. My mother's interior designer picked it out." He flops down on to the couch, his words emphasized by one of his signature hand movements that are all flair, and gestures for her to join him. "So, I believe I lured you here with the promise of a quid pro quo on stories about abusive fathers. Do you want to spill first or should I? Be warned, my stories ruin the perfect image of the hunky and much beloved Aaron Echolls; Movie Star."

"Don't worry, your stories won't disillusion a young fan. I prefer actors with real talent... Or any at all."

That makes him laugh out loud. "I wish he was here, just so he could here you say that. That is priceless. Just for that gift, I'll happily go first."

He settles down in to the couch, seemingly readying himself for the conversation he is having with this veritable stranger, but apparently she has some magic power that makes him want to bare his entire past, so it's only a small part that feels anxious revealing this to her.

"My Dad's big thing was belts. He made me choose them, and if I chose one that obviously wouldn't hurt, then he'd go and pick the worst one, the thinnest one, the one that left scars, that made me bleed. It was always only when I'd done something he'd deemed punishment worthy. Admittedly, that included honest mistake, like dropping something, or accidentally changing the channel. The belt wasn't the only thing. He liked putting his cigarettes out on me, for no other reason than the fact that his father had done it to him and he thought it would strengthen me up, make me more like him. And if he didn't have a belt on him when he wanted to punish me, he'd just do something simple, like slam my head in to a flat surface, or trip me down some stairs and call it my bad balance. Whatever was within reach really."

Toni breathes deeply, because there's a part of her that wants to break in to the prison and murder the son of a bitch just because of Logan's story, but instead, she breathes, and tells him her story.

"Look, uh, my story might freak you out so, pinky swear you won't react fully until it's done?" She holds out her pinky to him from her seat on the couch.

He takes her pinky in his own with a questioning look, remaining silent even as he promises exactly what she asked.

"Well, my Dad hit me since... before I can remember I guess. He was strictly a fists and feet kind of guy. But it was never about anything really, he said it was, that it was punishment for one thing or another, but the truth was, he was just angry all the time, and so sometimes he just made up and excuse to hit us. One day, he hadn't seen me for about a month because I was 7 and by that time had figured out how to avoid him mostly, so I'd been eating at irregular times of the day, and spent most of my time in our library, where he refused to step foot in because it was our mothers domain. I guess it made him sad maybe. Anyway, it was the first time he'd seen me in about a month, and I guess I'd avoided him too long, a mistake I never made again, because he was furious with me. That time, he hit me so brutally for hours... The one hit I knew changed my life forever came so suddenly, so out of the blue. It was barely anything in the grander scheme of things. A way he'd hit me before. A place he'd hit me before. It was nothing new. But I guess it was one inch to the left, or the right, of the usual, it was just a little harder than usual, and it knocked me out the minute it struck me. Took our family doctor, a friend of my Dad's, two weeks to figure out what was wrong with me." 

Her face doesn't speak to any emotion, it's just purely blank, and for the first time this entire conversation, she's put down the mask.

"I... Jeez. So, what was the doctor's verdict."