My jaw tightens. “Stop psychoanalyzing me.”
“I’m not,” he says. “I’m just asking.”
I look away, staring at the now blank TV screen like it’s going to rescue me.
I can hear my own thoughts too loudly.
If I leave and something happens?—
If he needs me?—
If he wakes up, and I’m not here?—
Logan’s voice softens. “Sloane.”
I flinch at my name.
“You’re not leaving him alone,” Logan says quietly, like he can read the fear off my face. “Cam is on his way. It would be good to give them some one-on-one time anyway. You can go.”
My throat tightens. “You shouldn’t have to stay.”
Logan’s mouth twitches with an almost bitter-sounding laugh. “Yeah. Because you hate when anyone does anything for you. I forgot.”
“I don’t?—”
“You do,” he says calmly. “Pretty sure you’d rather bleed out than accept a bandage. Especially from me.”
I glare. “That’s a bit dramatic.”
Logan gives me a look. “So are you.”
I want to throw something at his smug, pretty face.
No one else talks to me like this. Everyone else tiptoes. Everyone else tries to soften me like I’m made of glass.
Logan doesn’t.
He just stands in the fire with me and acts like we can both survive it.
“Thirty minutes,” Logan says, voice casual again. “You go. You laugh at Jade’s idiotic jokes. You let Blakely stare at you like a disappointed mom. Then you come home.”
“I don’t want to be stared at,” I mutter.
“You’re always stared at,” he counters. “You’re prettyandslightly terrifying. People can’t help it.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “Shut up.”
Logan’s mouth twitches. “See? Banter. You’re already socializing.”
I glare. “This isn’t socializing. This is you being annoying.”
“Same thing,” he says.
I try to hold onto my anger, because anger is safer than softness.
But then Logan’s gaze flicks down the hallway—toward Pops’s room—and his voice drops.
“Let him see you live a little,” he says quietly. “If he wakes up and hears you laughing…that’s not a bad thing.”
