The Mistake

Elle Kennedy

57 pages 1-hour read

Elle Kennedy

The Mistake

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015

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Chapter 29-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses

Content Warning: This section of the guide features discussions of sexual content, sexual violence, cursing, substance use, and addiction.

Chapter 29 Summary: “Grace”

On Friday evening at Logan’s house, Grace expects the night to end in sex after dinner, but Logan surprises her by suggesting a horror movie. She explains she doesn’t find horror films frightening, claiming that they frustrate her because the characters make foolish choices. Logan bets her five dollars that the characters will have a legitimate reason for staying in the haunted house. The film is predictable, and when a character insists they’re staying because science needs them, Grace collects her winnings.


To avoid sitting through the rest of the movie, she seduces Logan until he suggests going upstairs. He tells her she is beautiful. She undresses them both, initiates a kiss, and snaps him out of his effort to take things slowly. They fall onto the bed laughing. Grace feels insecure about her inexperience, but, she urges him to continue. They climax together.


Logan admits he has never lain around naked talking with a woman. Grace tells him about her high school boyfriend Brandon, and Logan shares that he lost his virginity at 14 and that a junior-year girlfriend cheated on him. He then reveals he has been celibate for six months, since meeting Grace. He kisses her, saying being with her feels right.

Chapter 30 Summary: “Logan”

Sunday morning, Logan reflects that the weekend has been the best of his life. They had sex frequently all weekend, and he recognizes he is in love with Grace, resolving to wait roughly three months before telling her. When Garrett and Hannah return home, they tease Logan about having a girlfriend. Garrett makes omelets, and Hannah explains they came home early because her roommate, Allie, is in a serious fight with her boyfriend. Over the meal, the four share a warm, easy atmosphere, and Logan is pleased that they all get along.


“Grace”


While doing dishes, Grace notices Garrett and Hannah’s obvious affection and correctly deduces that Hannah was the woman Logan had feelings for. Logan clarifies that he wanted the kind of devoted relationship they have. Grace then invites Logan to dinner with her father, and he accepts.


That evening, Logan and Grace’s father trade good-natured arguments about hockey versus football, and Logan wins. Her father mentions that Grace’s mother may visit for Thanksgiving. On the drive back, Logan praises how well Grace’s parents remain friends after their divorce, then says her father seems like someone who would never desert his family. Pressed by Grace, he recounts a childhood memory. When Logan was seven or eight years old, his mother shattered her ankle shoveling snow, and his father disappeared on a three-day drinking binge, leaving both sons stranded at school and their mother to recover from two surgeries alone. Logan defends his father, arguing his actions are the result of an illness, and rejects the idea of cutting him off. Moved by the depth of his loyalty, Grace realizes she is in love with him.

Chapter 31 Summary: “Logan”

After a humiliating 0-5 preseason loss to St. Anthony’s, Logan declines his teammates’ invitation to the bar and goes to Grace’s dorm instead. After they have sex and start a movie, Grace ignores two calls from Ramona until a text reading “SOS” arrives. She explains that she and Ramona reserve that code for genuine crises only. Grace calls back and learns Ramona is being held against her will by hockey players at a motel.


“Grace”


Logan speeds them there, where he identifies the St. Anthony’s team bus and explains the team’s reputation for dirty conduct. At the room, players block the doorway and taunt him. He threatens to alert their coach, then notices cocaine residue on one player’s face and uses it as leverage to push his way inside. He emerges with a shaken Ramona, then confronts the group again to retrieve her stolen phone.


In the truck, Ramona explains that Jess was supposed to join her but bailed, leaving her alone when the players began making aggressive advances and refusing to let her leave. Grace worries that she caused Ramona’s crisis by distancing herself, and she notices how gentle Logan is as he checks that Ramona is alright. She wants to tell Logan she loves him but holds back, afraid of rejection, and decides to wait for him to say it first.

Chapter 32 Summary: “Logan”

Three days before the season opener, Logan is scheduled for dinner with Grace and her father when his brother, Jeff, calls asking him to check on their father, who sounded incoherent and possibly injured. Kylie cut herself cooking, so Jeff took her to the hospital, leaving Logan to handle Ward. Logan understands and texts Grace that he may be late.


At home, he finds his father unconscious on the floor, face down in vomit. He cleans him, dresses him, and puts him to bed. The realization that this will be his daily life after graduation causes Logan to have what he believes is a panic attack.


He arrives at Grace’s father’s house three hours late with a dead phone, only to learn Grace has already left. Noticing Logan’s distress, Mr. Ivers invites him inside, addressing him as “son.” When Mr. Ivers jokes about offering Logan a drink, Logan breaks into tears, and Mr. Ivers hugs him.

Chapter 33 Summary: “Grace”

The following afternoon, Grace cabs to Logan’s house after her father calls with a vague suggestion that she check on him. She finds Logan withdrawn in his room. He erupts, saying that the previous night he saw his future: a life of servitude to his father that will make him miserable and eventually cost him Grace.


Furious, Grace points out that Kylie has stood by Jeff through the same circumstances. When Logan goes silent, she decides to leave, telling him to reach out after his self-pity has run its course. She declares that she loves him, calls him a “stupid jackass,” and slams the door.


“Logan”


Logan is stunned, and by the time he sprints downstairs, Hannah is already driving Grace away. He sends an apology by text, but she replies that she needs time. Garrett and Tucker, who heard the argument, tell Logan he needs a grand gesture, calling him a “stupid jackass” in unison.

Chapter 34 Summary: “Grace”

Still angry, Grace goes to the campus radio station to produce a show and finds Morris in the booth with a disheveled Daisy. Daisy admits that she and Morris have been hooking up for a couple of weeks, and Morris tells Grace that he already screened the first caller. The show begins, and Logan is the first caller. Live on air, he asks the hosts for advice on winning his girlfriend back and confesses he has been in love with her for months but was afraid to say so too soon. He then appears outside the producer’s booth window while still on the call, identifies himself, and declares his love for Grace by her full name.


Morris takes over producing so Grace can go to Logan. She runs out and embraces him. He tells her this was his grand gesture, promises he will never break up with her, saying he thinks he will marry her someday. He acknowledges the difficult years ahead but promises not to let them ruin him or their relationship. Grace laughs, tells him she loves him, and they reconcile with a kiss.

Chapter 35 Summary: “Logan”

The next morning, Logan wakes with Grace beside him, content. Jeff calls asking him to come to Munsen for an urgent family meeting. Grace offers to wait in the truck for support, and Logan accepts.


At the house, Ward reveals that Coach Jensen drove out to Munsen to explore ways for Logan to still play hockey professionally, forcing Ward to confront his shame directly. He announces that a slot has opened at a state rehabilitation facility and he is checking himself into a six-month inpatient program. Logan and Jeff listen with guarded skepticism, having heard similar promises before. Ward adds that he will apply for disability benefits and either sell the garage or hire a manager until Jeff is ready to take over. Before leaving to pack, he tells Logan to attend the Providence Bruins tryout and not to waste the opportunity.


The realization crashes over Logan that he is free from the future he had resigned himself to. He sprints out to where Grace waits in the truck with a textbook, still grinning.

Epilogue Summary: “Grace”

Two years later.


Grace and Hannah watch a Boston Bruins game from a luxury suite at TD Garden. Logan spent a year in the AHL before Boston signed him, while Garrett had an outstanding rookie season the year prior. Logan’s mother, Jean, joins them and teases Grace for still preferring football. Grace notes that David is boring but treats Jean well and that Ward has been sober for nearly two years—gradually winning Grace, though she struggles to reconcile Ward’s personality with Logan’s experiences. Grace and Logan share an apartment between Hastings and Boston, and they plan to move to the city once she graduates. Garrett and Hannah already live there. As the warmup ends, Hannah muses that Logan and Garrett’s shared dream of playing for the Bruins has finally come true. Watching Logan on the ice, Grace agrees.

Chapter 29-Epilogue Analysis

In the final chapters, Grace’s internal development culminates in her ability to empathize with Logan’s complex struggle with loyalty to his family through her own interpersonal challenges. When Grace rescues Ramona from a threatening situation involving the St. Anthony’s hockey team, she reflects that her willingness to assist a flawed, sometimes toxic friend despite poor decisions mirrors Logan’s refusal to abandon his father. Earlier, Logan defends his father’s past negligence by explaining that his loyalty is rooted in a desire to be unselfish, insisting he treats his father “the way I’d want to be treated if I was ever in his position” (258). This parallel experience shifts Grace’s perspective. Grace understands the burdensome nature of unconditional loyalty, even if she wants to see Logan achieve his dreams. This realization marks the apex of The Journey from Insecurity to Self-Empowerment, in which Grace can express herself openly while still understanding someone else’s position. This emotional maturation stands as a hallmark of the New Adult genre’s focus on navigating independent, mature connections outside the immediate family.


The narrative amplifies The Conflict Between Familial Duty and Personal Aspiration by contrasting Logan’s suffocating reality with the idealized parental support provided by Grace’s father. After discovering his father passed out in a pool of vomit, Logan experiences a panic attack as he confronts the prospect of the caretaking role he must take on after graduation. When Mr. Ivers gently calls him “son” and embraces him, Logan breaks down sobbing. Mr. Ivers represents the stable, protective paternal figure Logan lacks, highlighting the painful inversion of the parent-child dynamic in the Logan household. The simple term of endearment shatters Logan’s stoic exterior because it offers the comfort he does not receive from his own father. This breakdown completely dismantles the barrier insulating his private struggles from the outside world, forcing Logan to recognize that his familial obligations are actively destroying his personal well-being.


The climax of the novel utilizes the motif of making mistakes to test the resilience of the central relationship and cement Grace’s newfound agency. Driven by fear of his bleak prospects, Logan pushes Grace away, arguing that she will eventually resent his obligations and leave him after asserting that he just saw his “fucking future” (282). Rather than retreating into her former timidity, Grace confronts his self-pity, yells that she loves him, and walks out. Logan’s preemptive rejection is a defense mechanism born of panic, essentially repeating his earlier error of pushing Grace away to avoid emotional risk. However, Grace’s refusal to accept his narrative demonstrates her empowerment; she dictates the boundaries of their conflict, demanding that he take ownership of his fears rather than projecting them onto her. Logan then orchestrates a public grand gesture on her campus radio show to win her back. This public confession dissolves Logan’s secretive persona, fulfilling the genre expectations of New Adult romance, where protagonists must achieve internal self-actualization and external emotional vulnerability to secure a lasting partnership.


The resolution of Logan’s overarching conflict heavily relies on the symbolism of hockey, which shifts from a representation of sacrificed ambition to a vehicle for familial redemption. The impasse regarding Logan’s future breaks only when Briar’s Coach Jensen visits Ward to discuss Logan’s professional potential. Confronted with the reality that his son is abandoning a lucrative professional hockey career because of his addiction, Ward checks himself into a six-month rehabilitation facility and orders Logan to attend the Providence Bruins tryout. Coach Jensen’s intervention forces Ward to see the tangible cost of his struggle with addiction, stripping away the justifications that allowed him to ignore his sons’ sacrifices. Hockey becomes the catalyst that shocks Ward into taking responsibility for his own recovery. The epilogue’s confirmation of Ward’s two-year sobriety and Logan’s successful professional career with the Boston Bruins neatly resolves The Discrepancy Between Public Personas and Private Struggles. By entering the NHL alongside his best friend and maintaining a committed relationship with Grace, Logan successfully merges his public identity as an elite athlete with an authentic, unburdened private life.

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