Too tired to keep screaming underwater just to have his screams drowned.
Too tired to live in the memory while trying to convince himself it was enough. Tired of swallowing the memory of Adrian like poison every single day.
“Logan?” Sandy’s voice cut through the silence, startling him. She stood in the living room doorway, wearing sweats and holding a steaming coffee cup. Her expression was one of surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thoughtyou’d go straight to the office,” she said lightly, walking past him as though the sight of him unraveling wasn’t obvious.
Logan’s chest tightened, his breathing ragged. He stared at her, at the woman he had married, the woman he had lied to, the woman who had no idea who he really was. Something snapped inside him, a dam breaking, a cage shattering.
The crumbling walls, reduced to mere dust, adorned the house like a delicate shroud, leaving nothing to support the façade that once stood so proud.
“I’m gay!” he yelled, the words tearing from his throat like a storm breaking after years of drought. His voice rang through the hollow house, fierce and unfiltered, no longer asking permission to exist, shattering the last standing walls of the house. He slammed the door shut behind him, and the echo ricocheted through the rooms like the crack of thunder in a long-silent sky.
Sandy froze, her cup of coffee trembling slightly in her hands. Her eyes widened as the words sank in, but Logan couldn’t stop now. It had to come out. Itneededto come out. He couldn’t hold it anymore, couldn’t live in this lie for one more second.
“I’m gay,” he repeated, quieter this time, but no less firm. His voice cracked, carrying the weight of years of denial, years of pretending, years of suffocating under the expectations that had been forced on him, and the ones he had forced on himself.
He couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t look at her, at this house, at this life, and keep lying. The truth had been caged inside him for so long, clawing at his ribs, demanding to be free. And now it was out, skinned, exposed, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except breaking free.
This house wasn’t just his prison—it was a monument to the cage he had built for himself. Admitting who he was, unleashing the truth, was the first blow to those bars. He knew it wouldn’t be the last. But for the first time in years, Logan felt something other than numbness. He felt the faintest flicker of release, the promise of a life he might still have the courage to reclaim.
She stared at him, her eyes wide, almost unseeing, as if the words had knocked something loose inside her. Her hand trembled violently, and a ribbon of cream-colored coffee spilled over the rim of her cup, splattering onto the pristine, shiny floor. The faint sound of liquid hitting tile echoed in the heavy silence between them.
Logan stood frozen, staring back at her. This was his wife—his wife—a stranger who had shared his name, his house, his life, but not his heart. She looked at him with eyes that trembled, eyes that had once trusted him, held warmth for him, but now held only the ruin he had made. He searched her face and realized he didn’t know her anymore. Maybe he never truly had. The girl he once dated felt like someone from another life. And the woman in front of him? A stranger forged by years of distance and unspoken grief.
They hadn’t slept in the same bed since the first time he’d been with Zack. The thought twisted his stomach with guilt. They hadn’t touched in months. Not a brush of fingers, not a glance that lingered. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her laugh, or the last time he’d made her feel seen, or the last time he’d seen happiness in her eyes. There were no more soft goodnights. No more conversations that meant anything. He couldn’t even recall when he’d last asked her how her day had been. There was only the mechanical passing of time, like two ghosts pacing through a shared grave.
He hadfailed her in every way a man could fail. Not in a moment, but in slow, silent degrees, like erosion, like a tide pulling away piece by piece until all that remained was absence.
He had dragged her into a life built on scaffolding, not foundation. A lie dressed in wedding vows. A façade polished with good intentions, meant to shield him from the truth that pulsed in his blood like a secret sickness. And in doing so, he had ruined them both.
She had handed him her heart, tender, trembling, alive. And he had shuttered it. Sealed it behind glass like something too delicate to touch, too inconvenient to hold. He had taken it in his hands and did not know what to do with it, because his own heart had never been his to give. That damned organ… it didn’t beat for her. It never had. It had belonged to Adrian from the first breath he pulled into Logan’s drowning lungs. From the first glance of those whisky eyes that saw him, not as a lie, not as a man pretending, but as something divine.
There was nothing left inside him for anyone else. Not even a sliver. Not even a single thread. He couldn’t offer her a corner of his chest, couldn’t spare a single bloody tissue from the muscle that had always, always belonged to another man. And yet, he had stood beside her. Kissed her. Married her. Asked her to make do with an empty room and call it home. Offered her nothing, and expected her to fill it with love. He hadn’t just broken her heart. He had starved it.
“You fucking son of a bitch!” she snarled, her voice low and venomous, trembling with fury. Her eyes burned into him, twin pools of anguish that made him want to flinch away, to run, but he forced himself to stay rooted in place.
“I’m sorry,” Logan said softly, his voice cracking under the weight of the words. They felt too small, too weak, and they couldn’t even begin to bridge the chasm between them.
She glared at him, her whole body shaking, her hand gripping the coffee cup like it was the only thing keeping her upright. He saw the moment it happened, the moment the pieces clicked together in her mind. Her gaze sharpened, her expression twisting as realization dawned. He saw her relive every moment, every lie, every night he hadn’t come home or had slept in another room. Her eyes filled with hurt and disbelief as she connected the dots.
“I knew you were fucking someone else,” she spat, her voice breaking with emotion. “Don’t think for a second you were subtle about it. Staying out late, lying to me, avoiding me at every turn, you did a lousy job hiding it. But…” She shook her head, her voice rising. “But I didn’t think you were screwing a man!”
Logan dropped his gaze to the floor, his shame clawing at him, hot and relentless. He felt the weight of her words like punches to his gut, each one leaving him weaker than the last. When he looked back up, he saw her crying. Silent tears streaked down her cheeks, and yet she hadn’t moved a muscle. Her hand still held the coffee cup, the liquid inside long forgotten, shaking with her every breath.
“I’m sorry,” Logan repeated, his voice hoarse and breaking. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do—”
“Please, don’t!” she begged, her voice raw, her free hand waving him off like she couldn’t bear to hear him speak. “Don’t you dare try to make excuses, because there are none!” Her tears fell faster, her voice trembling with every word. “I’ve been sitting in this house for months thinking it wasme. That I wasn’t enough for you. That I wasn’t what you needed. I cried every night, Logan. Every night you were here, in this house, but not in our bed. I was losing my mind trying to figure out what I did wrong!”
Logan opened his mouth to respond, but no words came. Her pain washed over him, drowning out everything else, leaving him powerless.
“I thought…” Her voice cracked, the sound choking her. “I thought it was a phase. I don’t know, I thought maybe you’d get over whatever it was, this need to screw around, and you’d come back to me. I loved you so much, Logan. I’ve loved you through everything. I waited for you when you needed time after graduation, and I waited for you now. I thought it was just a physical thing, something you had to get out of your system, but…”
She trailed off, unable to finish. The weight of her heartbreak hung in the air, suffocating. Logan could feel his own tears welling up, hot and stinging, but he didn’t let them fall. He didn’t deserve that release. Not when she was breaking in front of him, her love for him twisting into a pain so deep it seemed to hollow her out.
And he couldn’t argue. Couldn’t tell her she was wrong. Because she wasn’t. She had been everything he wasn’t: committed, patient, loyal. And he had shattered her in return.
Logan wiped his tears as he watched Sandy—really watched her—for what felt like the first time in years. She was standing up to him, her voice no longer soft, no longer willing to be drowned out by his lies.
“Sandy—” he began, but she cut him off.
