The way Adrian said it, his voice cracking on the last word, felt like a blow to Logan’s belly. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, not out of anger but from the sheer helplessness of hearing just how deeply he had hurt the man standing before him. With the need to grab Adrian and tell him that he was loved, that he was missed, that Logan was here now, and God himself would not take him away.
“Each night,” Adrian continued, his eyes unfocused, his words almost detached, “I broke down. And I called your number. Over and over again. Still blocked. Interestingly, you didn’t block me on Facebook, but I couldn’t do it—I couldn’t let myself message you there. I didn’t want to seem… desperate. Pathetic. Like I was begging for scraps of your attention.”
Logan wanted to say something, to stop Adrian from continuing, but the look in Adrian’s eyes held him back. It wasn’t just pain—it was the need to be heard, to finally say everything that had been bottled up for years.
“I completely trashed that room. I was convinced you’d left a note or some explanation there. I searched everywhere like a damned fool, trying to find a reason—anything that would make sense,” he said, letting out a dry laugh and mumbling “stupid” under his breath. “After two weeks in that room,” Adrian whispered, his voice thick with emotion, “I was going insane. I couldn’t take it anymore. You weren’t answering me. You weren’t coming back. So I called Dean. I told him everything, and he got on a flight and came to that room. The roomwehad shared.” Adrian’s voice cracked, and he paused to catch his breath.
Logan took a step forward, unable to stay seated any longer. “Adrian,” he mumbled gently, seeing the way Adrian’s body shook with the force of his memories. “Please, sit down. We don’t have to do this all today.”
“No.” Adrian’s reply was immediate and sharp. He straightened, his gaze locking onto Logan’s with a fierce determination. “Wedo. You need to hear it, Logan. You need to hear all of it. Because you always get what you want. And now, now, when you don’t, you’ll understand why.”
Logan felt his chest tighten at the words. Adrian’s pain was no longer his alone; it was mist filling the space, curling into every corner, wrapping itself around Logan’s lungs. It slithered into him, suffocating, until he could no longer tell where Adrian’s anguish ended and his own began. Logan moved closer, but Adrian took a small step back, his arms crossed tightly as though holding himself together.
“Dean waited with me,” Adrian said, his voice quieter now, almost like a confession. “I begged him not to leave that room, that was the last thing I had from you, and I thought you’d come back. I was so damn stupid.” He muttered under his breath. “He agreed to another week. We sat in that room, day after day. And then he said, ‘That’s it. We’re leaving.’ But I couldn’t keep traveling, Logan. I couldn’t see the point. How could I keep going when… when you’d left? When everything felt like it’d fallen apart?”
Adrian’s voice cracked again, and he looked away, his jaw tightening as he fought back tears. He didn’t say how broken he’d been, how depressed, how he’d cried himself to sleep every night. He didn’t have to. Logan could see it in the way Adrian’s shoulders slumped, in the chasm of longing in his eyes. It mirrored Logan’s own turmoil—a shared suffering that echoed between them. They both grappled with the same sorrow, wrestling against their own currents of despair, each of them teetering on the edge of surrender, separated by vast oceans of distance.
“Ad,” Logan pleaded softly, his voice trembling. He took another step forward, closing the gap between them. “Please. I—I didn’t know. I didn’t realize… Please, sit down. Let me—let me help.”
Adrian shook his head, his tears slipping freely now. “You don’t get to help,” he hissed. “Not after this.”
Logan froze mid-step, his hands slipping uselessly to his sides, as if gravity had suddenly remembered them. The space between them stretched wide, not in measurable standards, but in memory, in the wreckage of everything. Adrian stood just a breath away, yet felt galaxies removed.
What spilled from Adrian’s mouth wasn’t anger; it was agony, stripped bare. His voice carried the texture of old scars being reopened, not with fury, but with truth too long caged. Logan hadn’t known. Not fully. He hadn’t realized that leaving had been like pulling the spine from a living body, that what he thought was escape had, for Adrian, been an unmaking.
Each syllable did not strike so much as twist, a blade long buried and turned slowly, unpityingly. These were not words but reckonings, carryingthe ache of days left unanswered, nights collapsing in mute despair, the quiet brutality of a love left to rot in its own silence.
Logan stood there, gutted in his stillness, understanding too late that some things, once broken, don’t shatter; they dissolve, slow and soft and irreversible.
“I thought I knew you,” Adrian whispered, his gaze finally meeting Logan’s again. “But you weren’t the person I thought you were. And now, I don’t know if I can trust the person standing in front of me.”
Logan’s tears spill over, his heart breaking all over again. He wanted to say something, to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness, but he couldn’t. Adrian wasn’t ready to hear it. Not yet. So Logan stood there, silent and still, as Adrian’s words were waves eroding a shore.
“And then,” Adrian continued, his voice breaking as his tears streaked his cheeks, “when I came back here, to the country I ran from in the first place, there it was. A wedding invitation.” He choked on the words. “It fucking killed me, Lo. Because while I was picking up the pieces of what you left behind, you were planning a fucking wedding.”
Logan flinched as if struck, his hands curling into fists at his sides, though not from anger. It was the helplessness, the guilt, the unbearable reality of what Adrian was saying.
“I waited for you in that room,” Adrian wept, his voice rising, each word drenched in anguish. “I waited while you were planning a life with someone else.” Adrian stopped for a moment, looking around as if he was gathering strength for the next question. “So tell me,” Adrian asked, eyes locking on Logan with a quiet fury that didn’t need to shout, “how long… how long did it take?”
Logan’s brows furrowed. “What…?” he started.
“How long before you went back to her?” Adrian demanded through clenched teeth.
Logan’s face drained of color. “Adrian, please…”
“Logan,” Adrian uttered. “How long?”
Logan shook his head. The answer was too painful, too shameful to be voiced in the presence of Adrian.
“No,” Adrian cut in, sharp and cold. “How long before you went back to her?”
Logan looked down, as if hoping the answer might be hidden in the seams of the carpet.
“Logan.” His name landed like a sentence.
Logan squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the heels of his palms to them, like trying to hold in something shameful that might leak out.
“The next day.” It came out barely audible. But it didn’t matter. Adrian heard it.
