Logan shook his head frantically, the words slicing through him. “No,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “That’s not true. It’s not true, Adrian. Please, sit down. Please… finish your story.”
Adrian didn’t move, didn’t yield. He let the weight of his streaming tears speak for him in the silence, clinging to those memories—willing them not to slip away—because the sight of Logan, so close, was already eroding the last fragile defenses he had left.
The space between them yawned wide, an abyss that no hand could cross, though Adrian stood within arm’s reach. Logan’s fingers twitched with the urge to close the gap, to gather him in, to confess that he was not the man Adrian believed. He had cared. He still cared. He would always care. Yet the weight of restraint pinned him still, a silence heavier than touch.
Adrian straightened his spine, his hands trembling as he brushed away his tears, an instinctive movement that was useless.
“No,” Adrian interrupted, his voice resolute, though it fractured like ice under pressure. He locked eyes with Logan, refusing to be the one to look away, to yield under the crushing weight of their dying love story. “The entire flight,” he began, his words trembling on the precipice of emotion, “I felt sick. Like my heart was clawing its way out of my chest, desperate to escape. I was terrified, Logan. So fucking scared. But I told myself it was worth it. That you were worth it. That I had to fight for you.” His voice faltered briefly, but he pressed on, each word carrying the rawness of an open wound. “Because you wereitfor me. You were everything. I was so damn in love with you that I couldn’t let fear win. I had to go. I had to show you how much you meant to me.”
Logan’s breath stuttered in his throat, his chest clinching tight, the room had flooded, and he’d forgotten how to swim. His hands twitched at his sides, impractical, adrift, like they belonged to someone else. Adrian stoodbefore him, not shouting, not accusing, but unleashing, his voice the kind of quiet that cleaves.
And Logan could do nothing. Just stand there, still and splintering, as Adrian’s words swept through him—not like waves, but like undertow. Silent. Sudden. Merciless. They didn’t crash. Theydragged. Pulled him inward, downward, into the hollow places he’d spent two years pretending weren’t there.
Adrian didn’t need to raise his voice; truth was doing the shouting and tearing for him. And Logan felt it in his bones: not the rage of a man betrayed, but the sorrow of one left behind with too much love and nowhere to place it.
“And then…” Adrian continued, his voice softening, hollowed out like driftwood worn down by time and tide. “When I got there, I saw you. I saw your family. Your father, sisters, and you.” He inhaled sharply, his chest heaving as though each breath cost him a piece of himself. “And I still didn’t blame you. God help me, Logan, I felt sorry for you. You looked so fucking scared. Terrified. Like you were trapped in a life you didn’t choose, a life that didn’t belong to you. All I wanted in that moment was to help you.”
A bitter laugh escaped Adrian’s lips, sharp and raw, unraveling into something that sounded more like a sob. It was the sound of a heart breaking all over again. “I remembered what you told me. That you didn’t have feelings for her—for Sandy. That you were just running. Running from yourself. Running to make your father proud. And I thought…” His voice cracked, and he paused, his shoulders trembling as he steadied himself. “I thought I made the right choice by coming there. That I could save you. That I could still be what you needed.”
The words hung between them, weighted with a despair so sharp it toppled the fragile citadels they had once built from love. Logan felt Adrian’s truth press into him and understood, with a hollow certainty, that no apology could ever mend what had already been broken.
“But then…” Adrian’s voice cracked, and his hands clenched into fists. “Then you talked to me. And I didn’t know who you were anymore. The man standing in front of me, in that suit, with that smile that didn’t reach your eyes—I had no idea who that was. And that’s when it hit me.” He looked at Logan, and the tears did not thaw the ice in his gaze. “It was all a scam. The man I loved? The man I thought I knew? He wasn’t real. The Logan I saw at that wedding… that was the real you.”
“No!” Logan’s voice was a roar, raw and desperate, as he surged forward. His hands grabbed Adrian’s face, trembling with the intensity of his emotions. “No, Adrian, you’re wrong. I swear to God, you’re wrong. The real me was the man who was with you. That wasme! The Logan you saw at that wedding was the fake. A puppet for my father. A shell. Please, Ad, you have to believe me. It was real. Every second of it was real. Me, you, us. It was the only thing in my life thatwasreal. I was the happiest with you. I wasme.”
“I don’t believe you.” The honesty in his words struck Logan harder than any scream could have, the weight of Adrian’s distrust tying knots in his gut.
Adrian reached up, his hands trembling, and pried Logan’s hands away from his face. The warmth of Logan’s touch, the familiar scent of him, the way his body felt so close—it was too much. Too much for Adrian to bear without shattering completely. His heart ached with longing, his bodyscreaming for what his mind refused to allow. He wanted Logan so much it hurt, and that wanting was tearing him apart.
“And then I saw you getting married,” Adrian uttered. “I stayed, Logan. I stayed because I had to. I needed to see it with my own eyes. To convince myself that what I thought we had was a lie. To prove to myself that I could never come back for you. That no matter how much my heart begged, I’d know—I’dknow—that it was yearning for something that was never real.”
Adrian’s voice trembled, the words raw and serrated, like shards of shell driven into wet sand. “I stayed because my memories of us were too beautiful, too vivid, and I couldn’t trust them anymore. I had to see the truth, to force myself to distinguish between what I thought we were and the reality of what you chose. I had to remind myself how foolish I’d been.”
Logan’s eyes burned, the world warping in a shimmer of salt, as Adrian’s words crashed through every defense, leaving him flayed, every nerve exposed.
“You looked like shit,” Adrian whispered, the words cracking like thunder. “You looked like you were in physical pain, like standing there in front of everyone was agony. Anyone could’ve seen it. A blind man could’ve felt it. But that didn’t stop you. You still took a wife.” His voice hitched, trembling as though the words themselves wounded him. “You still kissed her. And then… and then you vowed…”
Adrian broke, his voice shattering like glass against stone. “You vowed to love her. Until death.”
The air seemed to shatter, the weight of his words cracking the fragile silence between them. Adrian’s breath came unevenly, his chest heaving with the effort to hold himself together. But his body betrayed him,trembling as though the weight of everything he carried—the heartbreak, the betrayal, the loss—was finally too much.
Logan couldn’t stay still anymore. The distance between them was unbearable, an ocean he refused to let separate them again. He stepped forward and reached for Adrian’s hand, gripping it tightly but gently, as if grounding him. “Adrian,” he said softly, his voice filled with desperation. “Please. Sit. You don’t have to do this standing up. You don’t have to carry it all right now. Just… sit with me. Please.”
Adrian paused. His breath hitched—a fragile thread threatening to snap. Tears swelled in his eyes, shimmering like saltwater diamonds before trailing down, tracing the silent story of his grief across his cheeks, soaking into the collar of his shirt. Each drop a quiet surrender. His face trembled, not with fear, but the ache of love remembered and lost.
For a heartbeat, Logan feared he would turn away—retreat behind the walls time had built. But Adrian didn’t. Instead, with the weariness of a man who knew he had lost a battle, he let Logan guide him to the couch. His body folded into the cushions, not sat, butfell, every limb heavy with unshed sorrow. He looked hollowed, as if the ocean he once conquered now lived inside him, crashing quietly against the bones and empty space of his chest.
Logan knelt before him, his knees pressing into the floor, his hands resting lightly on Adrian’s knees. His eyes searched Adrian’s face, pleading for a glimpse of forgiveness, of something that could undo the years of hurt he’d caused.
“I’m sorry,” Logan whispered brokenly. “I’m so fucking sorry. For everything.” His hands tightened slightly, trembling as he held on, afraid that if he let go, Adrian might drift away again.
Adrian didn’t respond, his gaze distant as if he were still lost in the memory of that day. Logan’s heart ached as he watched him, knowing that no matter what he said, no matter how many times he apologized, it would never undo the damage he had done.
Adrian sat with a rigid stillness that felt like a dam about to break. His gaze was fixed on his hand, where Logan’s fingers had just been moments ago, on his knees, where Logan’s hands touched faintly, burning him with sensations he had longed since felt. He stared at that spot as if it held answers to questions he couldn’t ask, as if it were a wound he didn’t know how to heal.
Logan’s heart raced, the hazy flicker of hope sparking in his chest—a realization that his presence, his touch, still had some influence over Adrian, no matter how faint.
“Finish it,” Logan breathed, his voice trembling with tears he didn’t bother to hide. He knew he deserved this—deserved to hear every word Adrian needed to say. He also knew that Adrian needed to say it, to purge the decaying poison he’d been carrying. “Please, Adrian.”
