Logan stared at her, stunned. Becausehow?
How did she know?
How did she connect the dots—the way Logan changed after that wedding, the way he had spent years afterward spiraling, drowning, unraveling?
Jane had always seen him.
“He looked at you…” she started, then hesitated, her lips parting like the words were caught somewhere deep in her chest. She glanced away, as if she was trying to piece together something that had always been there, waiting to be spoken.
Then, her gaze snapped back to Logan. “Like he was seeing the light,” she eventually said. “Like you were the only thing in the room that mattered,” she continued, her voice barely above a whisper. “Like the world had stopped turning just so he could look at you a second longer.”
Logan forgot how to breathe.
Becauseyes.Adrian had always looked at Logan like that.
And now, Adrian wasn’t just Logan’s anymore. He had become part of the family.
Ann hadn’t met him in person yet, too busy with med school and routines to fly home.
She came to know him through late night phone calls and fleeting glimpses via video chat, and through that learned the story. But more importantly, she knew what he truly meant to Logan. Logan never needed to voice it aloud. It was in the way his breath caught when he spoke of him, in the lingering silence that stretched too long when words failed.
Tomorrow, she would finally see Adrian for herself.
Logan let go of Adrian’s hand and reached for the bag he’d brought with him, emptying the contents into the bedside table.
This was their life now.
A balancing act between hope and fear, between exhaustion and resolve. A life held together by whispers in the dark, by desperate prayers to a God neither of them fully believed in, by the silent promises exchanged in the press of fingers against skin.
It was terrifying. It was painful. It was fragile.
But it wastheirs.
And Logan, who had once been so afraid of love, of himself, ofthem, was holding onto it with everything he had.
Adrian had always been there. Woven into the fabric of his life in ways Logan hadn’t even realized until he was gone. Like the rhythm of the ocean, like the pull of the tide, like something inevitable, something constant.
Something he had once taken for granted.
But not again.
Never again.
Adrian stirred, a faint shift beneath the thin hospital sheets. Even that small movement cost him something now.
“Lo,” he whispered. “You can go. It’s okay.” His gaze flickered, weary but determined. “You look exhausted. Go home. Take a shower. Get some real sleep.”
“No.” The answer came without hesitation, sharp and low. “I've already stopped by the apartment to take a shower.” Logan would never risk exposing Adrian’s frail body to airport germs, so he took a quick shower and put on clean clothes before coming in.
He grasped his hand once more, as if the mere idea of leaving Adrian drove him into a frenzy. “I want to be with you.” The words came rough, caught on something deeper than exhaustion, thicker than fear.
For a moment, Adrian’s lips twitched, almost a smile, though there was no strength behind it.
“Are you tired?” Logan asked, his thumb brushing lightly over the fragile line of Adrian’s knuckles.
Adrian hesitated. Just for a beat. “No,” he whispered.
They both knew it was a lie. Logan could see it in the way his body sank deeper into the mattress, could hear it in the rasp of his voice, feel it in the way his pulse fluttered faintly beneath his skin.
