“You never answered your phone!” Adrian’s voice quivered. Tears streamed down Adrian’s cheeks, revealing the depth of the wreckage Logan had left, the aching longing that still haunted him even now. “You fucking blocked me! Threw me away like I was nothing! You vanished after everything we shared—and then you got married!” His voice crescendoed, not just in volume, but in the unbearable weight behind each word—grief, betrayal, love twisted into something unrecognizable. It was thick with anguish, each syllable drenched in the heavy burden of years filled with heartbreak.
The words spilled from Adrian in a torrent, a mess of grief and rage born of sleepless nights, of replaying the same cruel moments over and over untilthey poisoned his very being. Adrian’s body trembled, not with weakness, but with the sheer force of emotion that had gone unspoken for too long.
He had carried this hurt for years, letting it eat him alive, turning every memory into a weapon against himself. And now, faced with Logan, all of it erupted, raw and unrestrained. “You didn’t even care what it did to me, did you? You ruined me!” Adrian shouted, his voice breaking as his fury gave way to despair. His words hung in the air, a chorus of betrayal that Logan knew he would never be able to erase.
“I’m so, so sorry!” Logan choked, his voice breaking, but the words sounded hollow even to him.
“I don’tcarethat you’re sorry!” Adrian spat, his voice trembling with rage and grief. He shoved Logan harder this time, his tears mixing with the venom in his voice. “How dare you come here like this! Aftereverything!” The words tumbled from him, sharp and jagged, cutting Logan deeper than anything he could have imagined. “How could you leave—aftereverything!” Adrian’s voice cracked as tears streamed down his face, his hands shaking as they held Logan. “How could youleave me?!”
Logan opened his mouth, but no words came. He could only cry, watching as Adrian unraveled before him. Adrian’s tears fell faster now, his breaths coming in shuddering gasps as he repeated the question again and again, as though searching for an answer that didn’t exist.
“After everything! After… after everything!” Adrian’s voice broke, unable to fully articulate the depth of their connection, the love they had shared, the unspoken promises Logan had shattered. His chest heaved with the weight of unsaid words, unhealed wounds. His eyes, filled with anguish, locked onto Logan’s for a fleeting moment before he turned his gaze away.
“I’m sorry,” Logan whispered again, his voice trembling. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry…” It was all he could say, the only words his guilt-ridden mind could muster.
Adrian let him go, his hands falling to his sides as though they no longer had the strength to hold on. He turned his back on Logan and walked toward the sliding doors, the ocean stretching endlessly before him. He stood there, his silhouette framed by the fading light, his shoulders sagging as though the weight of Logan’s presence was too much to bear.
“What cancer?” Logan asked, his voice barely audible as he straightened his shirt, his hands still trembling.
“It doesn’t matter,” Adrian uttered, his voice quiet and hollow, his gaze fixed on the horizon. He couldn’t look at Logan, not now, not with every glance threatening to tear him apart. Every moment in his presence was a reminder of what they had been, and what they had lost.
“It matters to me,” Logan said softly, his voice pleading. “Please, Ad… talk to me.”
“Logan.” Adrian’s voice was softer now, somehow sounding more broken than his anger. “Please go. I’m begging you… go.” Tears spilled from his eyes again, silent and remorseless. “I can’t look at you.”
Logan took a step closer, his heart shattering with every tear that fell from Adrian’s eyes. He saw the pain written all over him, the love Adrian tried so hard to hide, but couldn’t. It was all there, spilling out, raw and exposed.
Adrian clenched his jaw, his hands balling into fists at his sides as he tried to steady himself. He had thought about this moment so many times, imagined Logan coming back for him, begging for a second chance. Butreality was crueler than any fantasy. Having Logan here, so close, only magnified the ache he had spent two years trying to bury.
“I can’t,” Logan said, his voice firm despite the tears streaming down his face. “I won’t leave you again. Not like this. Not until we talk. I’ll drive you crazy if I have to, but I’m not walking away this time.”
“Why?” Adrian cried, spinning to face him, his tears glinting in the dim light. “Why now? Why? Two years, Logan.Two years!” His voice cracked with the weight of his pain. “And I didn’t hear a word from you. Not one fucking word. And now—now you come? When I’m dying?”
Logan flinched as if the words had struck him physically, but Adrian wasn’t done.
“You cut me out, Logan. You left me bleeding.” His voice dropped to a whisper, trembling with anguish. “I had nothing. And now, when I’m finally at peace, when the pain is about to be stopped,you show up?”
Logan felt his knees weaken, his breath coming shallow. Adrian’s eyes, usually so full of fire and life, were dark, distant, like a sea pulled too far by an unreachable moon. He searched for the words, something, anything, to stem the devastation he had caused. But there were no lifeboats here, no calm waters to be found.
“I know I hurt you,” Logan whispered, his voice breaking against the silence between them. The words fell like pebbles into the ocean, swallowed instantly by the depths. “I know I don’t deserve to be here. But I can’t—I can’t let you go through this alone, Adrian. I can’t lose you.” His voice cracked, tears spilling down his face. “I can’t lose you, again.”
Adrian’s gaze, steady and hollow, pierced through him. His tears fell without sound, tracing the planes of his face, a testament to the stormhe refused to unleash. Behind him, the waves mirrored his turmoil, their restless movement a reflection of his fractured soul.
“You already have,” Adrian said, his voice soft but cutting, a whisper that echoed louder than any shout.
Logan staggered under the weight of those words, his heart splintering like driftwood in a tempest. “Ad…” he began, his voice trembling. “There wasn’t a second—there hasn’t been a second in the past two years when I haven’t thought of you.”
The words tasted like salt on his tongue, and he fought the urge to reach for Adrian, to close the unbearable distance between them. He longed to hold him, to anchor him, but his hands stayed by his sides, trembling with the weight of his guilt. He knew he had forfeited that right.
“Why?” Adrian’s voice cracked, the anger surging to the surface like an undercurrent breaking free. “Why did you go, Logan? How could you leave me? How could you leave us behind, how could you leave that cabin without a second glance? How could you walk away like I didn’t matter?” His voice broke again, and his hands clenched at his sides as though bracing against the flood of emotions threatening to drown him.
Logan’s chest heaved, his own tears a stream flowing from his eyes. “I was a coward,” he admitted, his words tumbling out like debris caught in the waves. “I was scared. Of my father. Of what the world would say. But not a day went by that I didn’t regret it. Not a day went by that I didn’t wish I had stayed. With you.”
Adrian shook his head, a bitter laugh slipping past his lips, bleeding and sharp, like the cry of a seabird lost in the fury of a storm. His eyes glistened, not with hope, but with the sheen of heartbreak too familiar, too enduring. “And yet, you didn’t,” he said, his voice trembling, carrying the weight ofinjuries long left to fester. “So don’t stand here now and tell me you care. Don’t tell me you cared back then. Because if you did, Logan, you wouldn’t have left. You wouldn’t have shattered me into pieces too small to ever put back together.”
His voice cracked as the truth spilled out, a flood of bitterness and sorrow that he could no longer keep contained. “You built a life with someone else, Logan.Days.Daysafter you ruined me. Days after I touched you, after I stood there with everything I had left to give, you went back to your life like I was nothing. Like I was disposable. Like I never even mattered.”
Adrian took a shuddering breath, his shoulders rising as if he were summoning the last of his strength to keep standing. His gaze bore into Logan, his eyes filled with the kind of agony that only came from someone who had replayed every moment, every word, a thousand times over. “So even if, at some point, I might have believed you were scared—believed there was some part of you that cared about me—I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. To run it through my mind, over and over, until there was nothing left but the truth.”
