The bartender grinned, his eyes flickering with something that Logan couldn’t ignore. “Nope. This one’s on Zack,” he said. “I’m Zack, by the way.”
Logan gave a single nod. “Logan.”
The silence that followed felt different this time, like something unsaid was hanging between them. Zack’s attention flickered to the bar, but it didn’t last long. Logan noticed the way Zack’s hair was slicked back, shiny and dark, and the sharp lines of his jaw, a little stubble lining his face. He looked good. Too good.
“So,” Zack’s voice lowered, a little huskier now. “What do you say, Logan? Are you joining me at the bar?” Voice suggestive.
Logan felt a sudden spark of excitement flicker in his chest as his eyes tracked Zack’s movements. The black button-down shirt Zack wore clung to his body in all the right ways, accentuating the lines of muscle beneath. The top buttons were undone just enough to show a hint of his chest, the sleeves rolled up casually, exposing forearms thick with strength. Logan’s gaze followed the way Zack’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he spoke, a subtle, rhythmic motion that drew his focus. His eyes then drifted to the cross necklace hanging loosely around Zack’s neck, the metal catching the light in the low-lit bar.
Logan couldn’t look away.
“Tell you what,” Logan circled his finger around the rim of his glass, a soft chuckle escaping his lips. “For now, I’m good here. But tomorrow… maybe I’ll sit at the bar. You won’t have to wait to see me then.”
Zack’s grin widened, and Logan finished his drink. “Another. Please.”
Zack took the empty glass and stood up, his height and broad shoulders filling the space around him. As he walked away, Logan’s eyes followed, taking in the way Zack moved, the way his jeans clung to his hips, the confident swagger in every step.
Logan couldn’t help but watch as Zack ignored the rest of the bar and the long lines of patrons that had piled up during the moments that they’d talked, as he poured the drink with deliberate ease.
As their eyes met across the room, Zack gave him a slow, teasing wink. Logan felt a jolt of heat shoot through him, his body reacting instinctively, tightening in his pants. Everything about Zack screamed “Bad Boy”—the raw confidence, the daring smirk, the mystery. There was a wildness in his presence, an allure that was both dangerous and magnetic. Logan could feel the pull, the rush, the undeniable drawing toward something unfamiliar, something thrilling. Zack exuded sex in every movement, and it was impossible for Logan to look away.
It was a subtle thing, but it was enough to make Logan’s pulse quicken. Something was happening, something neither of them had fully acknowledged yet. But Logan could feel it—something had shifted.
June 27, 2020—Seattle, Washington—Three Months Later
The world had dimmed, as if someone had turned down the contrast, bleeding everything into dull shades of gray. I moved through my days like a man watching his own life from behind a pane of glass—close enough to touch, but never quite able to. I breathed, but it never reached my lungs. I spoke, but the words felt borrowed. I existed, but I wasn’t there.
There was a house, warm and filled with things that should’ve felt like home. A woman who loved me, whose laughter should have been enough. But I never stayed long enough to feel it. I was always somewhere else, lost in the spaces between memories and regrets, slipping further from myself with each passing night.
Maybe I had drowned that fateful July back in Hawaii. Maybe the ocean had taken me, pulled me under, swallowed me whole. Maybe the waves had claimed me, the currents wrapping around my limbs like silent hands, dragging me down, down, down—until there was nothing left of me but a ghost in the water.
Maybe I had never been saved.
Maybe Adrian had never dived in after me, never reached for me through the tide, never pulled me unbreathing back to the surface, never breathed life back into me. Maybe that moment had never happened. Maybe it had only been a cruel trick of the mind, a dream spun from desperation, a false memory to make me believe I had ever truly been found.
Because wasn’t I still drowning?
Logansatatthetable, the clinking of silverware and the low hum of conversation drifting in and out of his awareness like the soft tide of a distant ocean. His body was anchored to the chair, but his soul had drifted far, carried by currents he couldn’t see, couldn’t control. The world moved on, its laughter like the rolling surf, but he was stranded, stuck in the sand of a life he never wanted. His eyes stayed fixed on his plate, the food untouched, a reflection of the emptiness that had grown inside him. His appetite had abandoned him long ago, along with everything else he used to care about. The laughter around him—light, genuine, carefree—seemed to ripple over a surface he could no longer feel. It wasn’t real; none of it was real.
He used to be part of that world, once. He used to surf until his muscles burned with the ocean’s rhythm, smile without effort, laugh with ease. He was a man, whole, the kind of person who didn’t have to think about the world to make it his. Now he was like the food on his plate—left behind, discarded. He pushed the meat around with his fork, wishing it were something more. Something he wanted.
The chatter about Jane’s baby was loud enough to feel the weight of it in his chest, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t cared since... well, since Adrian. His fingers clenched tighter around the fork, the wood of the chair creaking beneath him.
The laughter around him was like the sound of waves crashing, but it only made him feel smaller. More alone. The air was thick with warmth, but all he could feel was the cold ache of something long lost, a tide that had pulled away and never returned.Adrian, the name swam in his mind, a current too strong to resist, too powerful to escape. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the rhythm of those days, the way Adrian had beenthe sun in his sky, the one who lit up everything, who made him whole. Before he had let him go, as if love were a thing that could be cast into the sea and disappear.
Logan blinked, pulled from his reverie by Jane’s voice—sharp like a sea breeze cutting through the haze. She stood behind him, hands warm on his arm, urging him to leave the table and follow her to the safety of his old room.
“Logan,” Jane said, her voice trembling. “What’s going on? You’ve—” She paused, searching for the words. “You’ve disappeared. You’re fading, Lo.”
Logan’s gaze fell to his hands, his fingers white-knuckled around the edge of a chair, only now realizing he had grabbed it—perhaps unconsciously, as a last resort to keep himself from slipping away entirely. The truth was there, rising inside him like the swell of an unseen wave. But he couldn’t let it break. Not now. Not here.
“I’m just tired,” he whispered. “Work, stress... It’s nothing.” He let go of the chair and sat on the made bed.
Jane wasn’t fooled. She never was.
“Lo, don’t lie to me,” she said, sitting beside him, her eyes searching his face, trying to decipher the language of his heartbreak, of his whining, trying to give meaning to his wavering frame and eye bags, to this thinning frame and lost mind. “You’re not eating. You’re not sleeping. And you’re not… you’re notyouanymore.”
Logan flinched, as though the words had splashed against him, too cold to ignore. The wave of guilt crashed hard, pulling him under for a moment, but he fought it back. He couldn’t drown here. Not yet.
