Adrian opened his mouth, then closed it, glaring. His ears were turning pink now, and Logan lived for it.
“Uh-huh,” Logan said, leaning in, smirking. “And what exactly were you contemplating, then?”
Adrian huffed dramatically. “Whether or not I should throw you back into the ocean.”
Logan laughed, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “Yeah, yeah. Sure you were. But third—” he grinned, tapping Adrian’s nose, making Adrian scrunch his face—”you kept looking at my mouth.”
Adrian groaned loudly, his face heating up, because he remembered. He had looked at Logan’s lips too long, remembering the feeling of them as he had given Logan his breath on the edge of the water, the way Logan’s lips had been soft even in the middle of a raging storm.
“I was making sure you weren’t foaming at the mouth from lack of oxygen!” he tried to cover, but his voice was an octave too high to be convincing.
“I was already breathing and sitting down on the beach!” Logan countered, grinning like he had won. “You,” he wagged a finger, “are really, really bad at lying, Ad.”
Adrian gave up, flopping back dramatically against Logan’s chest. “God, I should’ve just let the sea keep you.”
“Fourth,” Logan continued smugly, “you ran to find me my board. That was really chivalrous of you, by the way.”
“You were not breathing! You had just drowned! I was being considerate!”
“Fifth, you gave me that bracelet, and while I still didn’t fully grasp its significance to you, come on, no one gives a gift to a virtual stranger without some intention behind it,” Logan remarked, his voice light, imbued with a laughter he was keeping at bay. Adrian contemplated a clever retort, but his mind drew a blank. He felt his cheeks flushing, warmth creeping all the way to his ears as he was caught off guard. With aswift motion, Logan captured his lips in a fleeting kiss, a moment that both pierced through him and whisked him away to his next thought. “Sixth would be the way you were all over me for like the entire evening,” Logan went on, waving a hand. “But that is beyond the point.”
Adrian gasped, hitting Logan’s chest. “You’re impossible!”
Logan just chuckled, clearly reveling in Adrian’s fake outrage. It felt like them again, bantering, laughing, falling into the easy rhythm they had always had.
“I should have left you and your board there!” Adrian muttered, but his voice was all fondness, all warmth. “So smug.”
Logan snickered. “You say that, but admit it—” he wiggled his brows, “—you were already into me.”
Adrian groaned into Logan’s shoulder. “You are unbearable.”
“And yet, you love me,” Logan sing-songed, happiness basically pouring out of him as he pressed a wet, teasing kiss to Adrian’s temple.
Adrian sighed heavily, so dramatically, as if this were the greatest burden of his life, though his arms were already winding around Logan’s neck, pulling him impossibly closer.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered softly. A breath lingered between the words as he gazed at Logan, with shine in his eyes, the spark of life, of happiness, of something like bliss. He took in the bright, magnificent smile Logan wore and felt his very soul and every one of his cells melt. It was impossible not to smile back. To be loved by him felt unreal, almost beyond what he deserved. “I do. More than anything. And I was gone for you from the first moment I saw you.” He admitted it like Logan hadn’t already known that.
Logan’s teasing grin faded, his gaze softening into something devastating, something endless.
“Yeah?” he murmured.
Adrian nodded, running his fingers absently over Logan’s arm. “Yeah.”
Logan exhaled, his lips brushing against Adrian’s hair. “Good,” he whispered. “Because I’ve been yours since the moment I woke up and saw you looking at me like I was the most beautiful thing in the world.”
Adrian closed his eyes, resting his forehead against Logan’s chest, his heart full, heavy, overflowing.
Logan smirked, his voice dropping to a near whisper, low and teasing. “Truth?”
Adrian swallowed, nodding.
“On the beach, I suspected it. Nothing more.” Logan traced his fingers along Adrian’s shoulder absentmindedly, his touch gentle, a slow caress, his touch drifting over skin like an angel passing through a private heaven. “After our first date, I kinda knew there was something there. And the fact that you gave me the bracelet just after I woke up? And later, when I realized what it meant to you…”
He hesitated for a moment, pressing a soft kiss to Adrian’s temple before continuing, his voice gentler now.
“From the first moment, I felt it, Ad. That’s why I held on to you so tight. And I figured, based on how you were looking at me that day—and how terrible you are at lying—that you said something else.”
Adrian blinked at him, his breath catching, his heart swelling with something too big to name. He had always known Logan was smart—too smart for his own good, too perceptive when it came to him. But knowing Logan had thought about it, held onto that moment, analyzed it in his overthinking way?
