Cancer.
Six months.
Cancer.
Cancer.
Six months.
The words rolled in his brain over and over, refusing to leave him, refusing to let go.
Cancer. Six months. Cancer. Six months. Cancer. Six months. Cancer. Six months. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer.
It pulsed, a drumbeat that cracked against his skull, a blast in the form of a handful of words.
His breath splintered, shallow and ragged, as if air itself had betrayed him. The world tilted sideways, colors draining, the ground beneath his feet nothing but shifting sand.
Cancer. The sound wrapped around his chest like barbed wire, cinching tighter, each syllable a thorn pressing deeper. His heart clawed against thecage of his ribs, desperate, suffocating, as if it, too, could not bear the weight of Adrian fading from the earth.
The man he had crossed oceans to find, the soul he had begged the stars to return, was dying. And the universe etched the word into his marrow until it burned: cancer.
Adrian’s face didn’t falter. No flicker of fear, no crack in the mask. His gaze was steady, his tone almost casual, as though he were speaking of a stranger’s fate, not his own. The merciless and heavy words hung between them, but his expression carried the stillness of someone who had already surrendered to the surge. Then, with a grace that cut deeper than any violence, he turned. Each step back toward the house was measured, unhurried, as if time itself bent to his indifference.
Logan stood there, frozen, his feet anchored in the sand, and the roar of the ocean was the background sound to his entire world collapsing around him. The love of his life had just spoken the words that shattered everything, and yet he walked away as if he had said nothing at all. As if he had merely mentioned that it might rain later or that he was going to grab dinner, like it wasn’t the equivalent of pulling the sun out of the sky and leaving the earth to stumble blind in the dark.
His chest burned, a fire with no oxygen, a scream that never left his throat. He wanted to protest, to undo, to demand that Adrian take it back, that it wasn’t true, that it was a mistake, a lie, anything but real. But the words wouldn’t come, wouldn’t form, wouldn’t save him.
Logan was still standing there, unable to move, as if his feet were cemented to the sand, while Adrian’s figure disappeared into the distance, swallowed by the golden hues of the setting sun. The world around himseemed to blur, the roar of the ocean fading, leaving only the echo of Adrian’s words reverberating in his mind.
Cancer. Dying. Six months.
The words transcended mere syllables; they dissolved, evaporated, then cascaded over him like rain, flooding the ocean within, conjuring waves that battered him and stole his breath. They were tearing Adrian from him, and his name hovered on Logan’s lips, a silent prayer, a profound longing, a forsaken plea that echoed with vengeance when all others had fallen to desolation. He could feel the brumal chill seeping into his bones, freezing him from the inside as the realization began to settle in his chest, and the frost claimed all the space his lungs could no longer fill.
And then Dean’s words clicked into place.
The realization slowly struck him, as his mind was overwhelmed, with three words ringing louder than all others. Adrian wasn’t just walking away; he was slipping through Logan’s fingers forever. Hot tears spilled down Logan’s cheeks, burning his eyes, as a knot of emotion tightened in his throat. His bottom lip trembled like a child lost and yearning, and he let the tears fall. There was no stopping them. The pain clawed its way through him, overwhelming and raw, leaving him hollow.
Adrian was dying.
The thought made him stagger, bile rising in his throat as his stomach churned. He doubled over, pressing a hand to his chest as if that might somehow dull the ache that burned there. How had it come to this? How could the man who had pulled him from the ocean, who had saved his life in every way that mattered, who was the only source of comfort in Logan’s miserable life, be fading like this?
But the despair didn’t last. It couldn’t. Adrian had left behind too many ghosts, too many fragments of things never spoken. The silence between them wasn’t just empty; it was unfinished. And Logan could no longer live in the ruins of almost.
His breath hitched. His hands trembled. But he straightened, bone by bone, like someone remembering how to stand. Grief would have to wait.
Answers came first.
Movement. Action.Something.
He couldn’t afford the luxury of falling apart, not when there was still a chance to put something back together.
The gray house was visible from where he stood, a stark reminder of where Adrian had gone, and Logan ran toward it, unsteady as the shifting sand beneath his trembling steps. His legs burned, his breaths sharp and labored, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. By the time he reached the terrace, his hands juddered, not with life, but with the shudder of something about to detonate. The sliding door opened beneath his touch, and then he was inside, his body moving before his mind could process the madness of it. The air was thick as stormwater, humming with rage, dripping with grief, heavy with longing, saturated with the unmistakable gnawing pang of regret, the pungent sillage of a love neglected until it soured into ruin.
Adrian stood in the middle of the room, his arms crossed, his jaw locked tight. He was thinner than Logan remembered, and it hit him like a gut punch, the way his skin seemed to stretch over sharper bones, the way his eyes—God, his eyes—smoldered with exhaustion beneath all that fury. When he saw the photos Mr. Boyed sent, he initially thought Adrian looked relatively the same. He was gravely mistaken; perhaps it was theexcitement of seeing Adrian again, or the camera angle, or the distance between them, but Adrian was no longer the same. Logan was looking at someone who was ill, and that person was the love of his life.
Dean stood beside him, glancing between them with wary eyes, a silent witness to the storm brewing.
“Get out!” Adrian spat, his voice sharp as broken glass, and Logan felt them to his core, felt them slicing him, wounding him. Adrian turned on his heel, heading for the hallway.
