“We?!” Adrian’s laughter was sharp, almost cruel, the sound of a man who had been devoid of happiness for so long that he had forgotten the taste of it, only remembering how it burned him. “We?! Howdareyou saywe!” Adrian was already gathering up the broken shield Logan had shattered with just a handful of words, piecing it back together with shaking hands, unwilling to let hope make a fool of him again.
“Adrian…” Logan tried to speak, but the words came out thin, as if he’d already lost the right to say them. He stepped forward, reaching, but there was nowhere to place his hands. “You… can’t die.”
Adrian’s composure shattered, all the months of silence and sleeplessness, all the dreams that had soured into nightmares night after night, the hollow ache of Logan’s heartbeat missing from his own, crashing through him in one unstoppable rush. “Fuck you, Logan!” he screamed, his voice breaking on the last syllable, as if it had been sharpened against every night he’d spent alone.
He turned abruptly, striding to the door and flinging it open with a force that echoed in the quiet room. The door then slammed shut behind him.
For a moment, Logan stood frozen, his breath coming in shallow, uneven gasps.
He knew he couldn’t let him go.
Not like this.
Adrian stormed down the hotel corridor, inhaling sharply, knowing that the air might choke him. He wiped at his face with trembling hands, grief spilling from his eyes in a silent flood.
He moved with single-minded determination, not stopping even as his vision blurred.
The hallway stretched endlessly before him, the fluorescent lights above casting harsh shadows that flickered like ghosts of the past. He pressed the elevator button with more force than necessary, willing the doors to open and take him away from the swirling chaos in his mind. He wished he could stop thinking. He wished he could stop feeling.
What did I even think would happen, coming here?The thought spat through him like a cruel laugh.That I could get closure? That I could scrape something real from him?
Adrian had laid out his story, bared all of the raw parts of it, a confession he’d once dreamed of making, but it landed on the floor between them like a broken offering, leaving his chest emptier than before.
The numbers above the elevator ticked downward, agonizingly slow. And even though he told himself not to, he turned. His gaze drifted back down the hallway, back to Logan’s door.
It was an instinctual glance—an echo from the depths of his soul, where a piece of him would forever be tethered to Logan, despite the struggles that raged within. This fragment of his being still clung to tender dreams, to the wistful yearning that perhaps Logan would pursue him, that he would leap through that threshold, seize his arm, andwhisper, “Stay. Don’t go. I need you here with me.”
Adrian found himself entwined in a web of inner turmoil as his gaze went time and again to that closed door. He had sworn repeatedly, with afierceness that echoed in his mind, to shut Logan out, to keep the heartache at bay. Loving Logan devoured him from the inside out, a ravenous burn that left nothing untouched, scouring every corner of him until only longing remained. In defiance of his own vows, his heart reached out in a desperate whisper, yearning for a connection, even as his rational thoughts roared persistently, urging him to turn away and retreat into the shadows, for Logan’s light once more burned his soul.
The elevator dinged softly, the little screen above it showing that it was just two floors away. Adrian forced his eyes back to it, willing himself to move forward. But the part of him that still loved Logan, thatalwayswould, whispered for him to stay, to wait.
To give Logan the chance to prove him wrong.
But of course, Logan won’t chase him.
Because he doesn’t really care.Adrian reminded himself.Logan came to clear his conscience and heard that I am sick, so he felt bad and stayed.
Adrian wanted to kick himself for coming to Logan now, for unraveling every thread of his carefully entwined defenses. All the secrets he had guarded, the soft underbelly of his pain, lay exposed at Logan’s feet. It felt like every note of their hurt-song, every tragic, fractured chord of the love story they had built and shattered, had been stripped bare. Again. A haunting melody emanated from a solitary violin, its screeching notes intertwining with the soft whispers of a broken heart as the streams of water dictated the bow and tore at the strings. Within each note, one could hear a deep yearning—a sorrowful lament for lost love, calling out to the ocean to reunite with the other half of a torn soul.
It was a cruel pattern—time and again, Adrian had bared himself to Logan, each time thinking he had nothing left to lose. He had spenttwo long years reprimanding himself, trying to harden the soft parts of himself that Logan had once held. But standing here now, the truth was undeniable: he was still weak when it came to Logan. Some things never change.
The realization burned through him, a slow ache that twisted beneath his ribs. He had opened himself up, let Logan see everything—the bruised parts of his heart, the raw edges of his grief—and once more, he found himself shattered. It was as if all the scars he thought had healed had split open, bleeding fresh and bright, and Adrian was left holding the pieces of himself, wondering why he had thought this time might be different.
And once more, like an interminable cycle of known scripts, where the end was incorrigible, Adrian was broken.
The elevator dinged softly, offering a lifeline, an escape from the hurricane of emotions spinning wildly between them.
Adrian moved to step inside, to leave behind the man who had once held his entire soul in calloused, surf-worn hands. But Logan’s voice—hoarse, desperate—cut through the hum of the hallway, like that July storm breaking over Hawaii summer.
“Ad!”
The sound of it hit Adrian with the force of an unexpected wave, one that dragged him under and left him breathless. For a whisper, he hesitated, his feet rooted in place even as his mind screamed to flee, to stay, to run to Logan.
Logan ran toward him, his movements uncharacteristically frantic, the cool confidence Adrian had once adored replaced by a raw, unfiltered anguish.
“Please, don’t go.” Logan’s voice trembled, and he blocked Adrian’s path, his tall frame an immovable barrier. His gray eyes, stormy and rimmed with unshed tears, locked onto Adrian’s. “Just… don’t.”
“Logan, move,” Adrian said, his voice low but firm, as though speaking too loudly might crack the fragile shell of his resolve. He didn’t dare touch him, couldn’t risk the electric charge of Logan’s skin against his own. Not again. He tried to sidestep, to slip past him like water through fingers, but Logan followed his every move, his determination as unyielding as the pull beneath a drowning man’s feet.
