Logan did. For a moment too long, his eyes roamed over the lines of Zack’s body, the sharp edges of his muscles. But then he shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to push that feeling down where it couldn’t reach him. Ducking low, he grabbed their discarded clothes, tossing Zack’s shirt toward him. The fabric unfurled in the air, landing neatly against Zack’s chest.
“So,” Logan began, trying for casual, trying for cool, “is this the second suit you’re ruining for me, huh, Zack?”
Zack grinned, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Can’t wait for the third,” he said with a wink, his voice playful and shameless.
Logan forced a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He made a mental note to tell Ada Mae he’d need new suits again. His shirt had survived the night, somehow, but his jacket—soaked in liquor, its fabric torn and embedded with shards of glass—was a lost cause.
“You know you’re helping me clean this up, right?” Zack said as he tied his shirt around his waist with a practiced flick, his tone light but insistent.
Logan let out a weary laugh, though it sounded hollow to his own ears. “Don’t you have someone whose job it is to clean this mess up?”
“Yeah,” Zack replied, grabbing an empty crate to collect the glass shards. “Me. And I’m guessing explaining the broken bottles is not in the job description.”
Logan smirked faintly and knelt to the floor, picking up the larger pieces of shattered glass. “Tell them it was a very… productive night,” he said, his voice tinged with mock amusement. Zack’s laughter was genuine, full-bodied, and for a brief second, it lightened the oppressive weight pressing down on Logan’s chest.
But as he worked, his hands slowed. Among the fragments, the light caught on something that made his stomach churn. His wedding ring, glinting like a cruel reminder. And just below it, Adrian’s bracelet, worn with the years it spent first around Adrian’s wrist and then his, resting in the usual spot, always there to remind him what he had and what he had lost. The sight of the two together struck him like a blow, shame spreading through his body like ice water.
How had he managed to betraybothof them?
His fingers tightened around the glass, and for a moment, he thought of Sandy, probably at home now, wondering where he was. Worrying, maybe.
She hadn’t called this time, but the texts were there when he pulled out his phone. Brief, restrained messages, each one heavy with the weight of their strained silence.
Are you coming home tonight?
It’s late.
I'll assume you’re working again, even though it is 1 AM.
You didn’t say you’d be out.
It’s almost morning, where are you?
He typed a quick response, his fingers moving like he was erasing a crime scene.
I’m okay
He shoved the phone back into his pocket, as if putting it out of sight would make it disappear.
“Hey,” Zack’s voice interrupted his thoughts. He was standing over him, broom in hand, his brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
Logan nodded too quickly, brushing the question away. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, rising to his feet, avoiding Zack’s gaze. “Let’s just clean this up.”
Zack shrugged, taking his cue to let it go. “Fine. But hurry up. I actually want to sleep this morning,” he said, flashing a lazy smirk. Zack’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he glanced at it, grinning as he typed. Logandidn’t need to ask who it was; another text, another hookup waiting for him.
By the time Logan slid into his car, the sky had begun to lighten, streaks of soft pink and orange breaking through the horizon. His hands gripped the steering wheel, heavy with the weight of the ring on his finger, the bracelet brushing against his skin. Shame twisted in his chest, tangling with something darker.
How could he look Sandy in the eyes now?
How could he look at himself?
The worst part wasn’t the act itself, but the fleeting moment afterward—a breath suspended in time when his body remembered how life could feel again. It wasn’t pure joy, but a reflex, a tremor, a glitch in the machine of his senses. A mere second when his flesh recalled the touch of a man. It wasn’t the blessing he shared with Adrian; that had been genuine, raw, a blaze of love that both burned and mended. No, this time with Zack was different—a salve, temporary and hollow. He used Zack’s body like a buoy amid stormy seas, clutching at something to silence the chaos, a borrowed vessel to quiet the noise. But it only sank him deeper into emptiness, the same void he desperately sought to escape.
Zack had always been fire, heat without hesitation, something that burned because it could. Zack was ephemera, blazing flames that quieted, leaving ash in their wake, but Adrian… he was perdurability, the eternal song of the ocean, the crushing waves.
And Logan had never been built for fire. What he craved, what he returned to again and again, were the streams of water that had already carved their mark into him. He yearned for the quiet strength of thecurrent, the promise of waves that held memory, the pull of a tide that spoke in truths rather than sparks.
How could he choose flame when water had already shaped him, when a love written in the waves and echoed in the tide had remade him entirely, sculpting him with every rise, every fall, every returning stream?
