Dean nodded, his jaw tightening as he studied Adrian for a moment. “I figured.” His voice held a quiet resignation. He paused, his gaze searching Adrian’s face as though looking for the answer to a question he couldn’t ask. “I’m not his biggest fan, Adrian, and you know that. But I think…” He hesitated, then pushed forward. “I think you need this. I think you need to hear his side of the story. Because if you don’t, it’ll be something you carry with you forever. A question you can never answer. A regret you can’t undo.”
Adrian looked away, his hand brushing the wall as if he needed to feel something solid beneath his fingertips. Dean’s words cut deeper than they should have, because he knew they were true. If he didn’t face Logan now, the uncertainty would fester, leaving scars even deeper than the ones he already bore.
“Be careful,” Dean added, his voice softening. “You’ve been through hell because of him before. I just… I don’t want to see you hurt like that again.”
Adrian nodded, unable to meet Dean’s gaze. A silence settled between them, weighed down by two years of countless words, fights, and pleas. For a moment, Adrian could almost feel the ghost of two years ago—the cabinin Australia where Dean had found him hollowed out and drowning in heartbreak, and the frantic flight to the United States when Adrian had tried, futilely, to stop Logan’s wedding. Every time, Dean had been there to pick up the pieces. Every time, Adrian had returned to Israel, with his heart bearing another crack and a strip of himself carried away by the wind.
Adrian wondered… did the future hold another heartbreak, another unraveling of the life he barely managed to stitch back together? Would some new fracture wait on the horizon, unseen, because he was too naïve to sense it coming? And if it did, would Dean be the one, once again, forced to gather his scattered pieces?
Dean didn’t need to say what they both knew: that something inside Adrian had never fully mended after Logan left. It was as if a switch had been flipped, a light extinguished. It wasn’t just a wound—it was an unraveling, a slow, merciless attrition of the man he used to be. It was in the way he no longer woke before dawn to chase the waves like he used to, his board gathering dust in the corner of his room only coming out on occasions, and every time Adrian spent chasing the waves in the depth of the ocean, he returned hunted. It was in the way that his drifting mind found working out too much to handle. It was in the way his laughter had faded, no longer the careless, sun-drenched sound it once was, but something hollow, something forced, as if it had forgotten how to be real. His smile was a fragile echo of what it once was, never quite drowning out the loneliness woven into his eyes, into his very foundation. Adrian used to move like the world belonged to him—wild and reckless, full of fire—but after Logan left, he moved carefully, deliberately, as though he had learned that one wrong step could break him, as if he knew his pieces were stacked together without any true tether, one fragile hold away fromcollapsing into the earth, breaking into a million shards that might never fit back together again. He spoke less, as if words were an unnecessary burden, as if silence was the only thing that didn’t betray him. He stopped taking pictures, stepping out whenever someone held out a camera or a phone to take a meaningless selfie with friends, because after being the sole focus of Logan’s lens, even that was meaningless. And the nights, Dean knew they were the worst, he knew Adrian didn’t sleep much, he knew he was scrolling through photos and videos of him and Logan together, he knew that sometimes Adrian dreamed of Logan, of their time, and that would shatter him for the next day. Dean never spoke about it, never asked, even when he saw the remnants of it in Adrian’s quietness, in the way he would turn his head too quickly at the sound of a familiar voice as if hoping—just for a moment—that it was Logan. He never mentioned the way Adrian had become a little less himself—a little less golden, a little less alive. Because some things didn’t need to be said. Some things were written in the way a person exists, or in Adrian’s case, the way he barely did.
But now, standing before him, Dean saw something shift. A flicker of that old light, faint but undeniable. Logan’s return had stirred the ashes, breathed life into something long buried, something Adrian had convinced himself was lost. And though Dean resented Logan for what he had done, though the wounds ran deep, he knew—heknew—that Adrian would forgive him. That he had already begun to. The proof was there, shimmering in his eyes, in the way his soul seemed to drift toward the past, toward the man who had shattered him and yet, somehow, had also stitched him back together, mended him, and guided him back to safety.
“Just… don’t let him crush you again,” Dean murmured finally, though he knew the warning was futile. Adrian had never been able to guard his heart when it came to Logan. He gave too freely, loved too deeply. Even now, he was already gathering the crumbs Logan had offered and holding them as if they were treasures.
Adrian took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. He didn’t respond, but his silence spoke volumes. There was no logic to what he was about to do, no reasoning that could explain it. This wasn’t about logic. It was about love—the kind that defied sense, the kind that hurt as much as it healed. And Adrian had made his choice.
Without another word, he stepped past Dean and headed for the door, the sound of the ocean outside echoing faintly in his ears. Logan was waiting, and Adrian was no longer sure if he was walking toward redemption or ruin. Logan was an unstoppable force that Adrian had always been too weak to resist, and now was no different.
Chapter 12
The Weight of the Surging Waters
In the heart of the ocean, a connection was born; we were destined to meet. How else can one explain this union, drawn together from the farthest corners of the earth? We shared the same breath, allowing the ocean’s embrace to guide us as we emerged from the water’s grace, revealing the light of day. Yet, a moment of folly, a human decision, severed our bond. But the ocean is stronger, the tide relentless, and the waves eternally return to the shore, so I returned. Not by choice but by the pull of something greater. The ocean called me home; its whispers threaded with your name.
I am the wave that, no matter how far it is cast, will always return to the shore.
To you.
November 20, 2020—Tel-Aviv,Israel—The Same Day
TheoceansurgedwithinLogan as he fumbled with his thoughts, trying to anchor himself to the dull glow of his laptop screen while holding his phone to his ear. The faint voice on the other end of the call was nothing more than white noise, a distant hum beneath his own guilt and longing.
His mind floated aimlessly, like a castoff branch carried by indifferent surges, buoyed and battered by a current he couldn’t control. Every thought was centered around Adrian. The echo of their last encounter, fresh and unresolved, merged with the sight of him now, two years older, two years farther away. And with every breath, his ache sharpened a reminder of what he had shattered with his own fear.
Logan’s chest tightened as the reality of Adrian’s illness gnawed at him.
Cancer.
The word was slicing through his thoughts over and over again, each time gutting him and twisting him as if it were the first time he’d learned about it. It was a slow thief, stealing pieces of Adrian with every passing day. He felt paralyzed, drowning in a sea of his own helplessness. What could he do? How could he fight a war inside Adrian’s body when he had already lost the battle within his own heart?
The room felt too small, the walls pressing in with the weight of his mistakes. He needed to do something, to break free from the inertia that held him.
A sharp knock at the door rattled Logan out of his fragile reverie.
“Ada Mae, I’ll have to call you back,” he said, his voice tight as he snapped the laptop shut with a decisive click.
“Alright,” came her brisk reply, but Logan barely heard her. “I’m emailing you the calls to make and the meetings to reschedule. The ASAPs are going to your dad.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he muttered, already halfway to the door. “Good night.”
The phone landed carelessly on the couch, a forgotten artifact in the rising swell of anticipation. His breath came shallow and quick as he crossed the room, each step weighed down by the gravity of what could be on the other side of the door. His hand trembled slightly as it hovered over the handle, the seconds stretching like the horizon at dusk, infinite and unknowable.
When he opened the door, it was as though the world tipped over and spilled into the room. Adrian stood there, a storm on the threshold, his face carved with the weariness of streams that had battered him too long. His eyes, the whisky-colored hue Logan adored, appeared darker under the hotel lighting, conveying pain that reverberated within the narrowed space. They were an immeasurable sea of yearning, heartache, and whispered secrets yet to be unveiled.
Logan’s breath caught, a ragged sound torn from the depths of his chest. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Adrian’s presence was like the scent of rain after a long drought—sharp, fresh, and overwhelming, filling the air with something electric, something alive.
They didn’t speak at first. Their gazes met, a fragile bridge between them, carrying the weight of years in a silence that buzzed with all the words left unspoken. Logan couldn’t tell if the intensity and hardness he saw in Adrian’s eyes was edged with anger, layered with hurt, or if a softer, more hesitant warmth lingered just beneath the surface.
