When the cab stopped, Logan handed the driver a hundred-dollar bill, not waiting for change. The driver’s wide-eyed expression and blubbering suggested it was far too much, but Logan didn’t care. He grabbed his suitcase and stepped out, finding himself in front of a modern and eleganthotel. Logan walked through the grand entrance, dragging his suitcase behind him as he approached the reception desk. “Hello, I need a room,” he said, his voice flat with fatigue. “Just me. I don’t know for how long.”
The receptionist, a young woman with wide eyes and a shy smile, typed into her computer, sneaking glances at Logan every few moments.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized eventually, her voice laced with a thick accent. “Only the suite is available.”
Logan nodded, not hesitating as he reached for his wallet. “Then the suite it is,” he stated, sliding his credit card across the desk.
The woman blushed faintly, clearly flustered. “Do… do you need help with your luggage?” she asked, her voice soft.
“No, thank you,” Logan replied, taking his card back and pocketing it.
She offered him another shy smile while she continued typing on the computer. Then, she handed him the keycard, softly mentioning the room details and letting him know she’s available for the night if needed, as he headed toward the elevator.
The suite was on the twentieth floor, high above the city. When Logan entered, he barely registered the luxurious surroundings. It was just a waypoint, a place to gather his frayed edges before the moment he both craved and feared.
He tossed his bag onto the bed, ignoring the neatly arranged amenities and the sweeping view from the floor-to-ceiling windows. All he wanted was a shower—to wash away the grime of the journey, the weight of the hours spent staring at his laptop, trying to distract himself from the emotions threatening to engulf him.
In the bathroom, the water poured down in a steady stream, hot and cleansing as it cascaded over his back. Logan leaned his hands against thewall, letting his head fall forward. “Breathe,” he whispered to himself, the word almost drowned out by the sound of the water. He closed his eyes, willing himself to stay calm. The thought of seeing Adrian, of hearing his voice, was enough to make his heart race with both joy and terror.
What if he doesn’t want to see me? What if I’ve already lost him for good?
But there was no going back now. The water carried away the dust and sweat, but it couldn’t touch the ache in his chest or the hope that flickered brighter with every passing second.
Logan stepped out of the shower, tying a white towel low around his slim hips. The air in the suite was cool against his damp skin, brushing over him like a whisper he didn’t ask for. As he moved toward the full-length mirror by the closet, his steps slowed. And then—he froze.
The reflection staring back at him was almost unrecognizable.
For the first time in two years, self-doubt struck him, not gently, not gradually, but with a force so raw it drove him back into his body. It was a cruel thing, self-doubt. Quiet and patient, it waited in the shadows until the right moment to break through. And now it did.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt happy. Not truly. There had been flickers, moments so faint they could be mistaken for joy. Fleeting glimpses where he wasn’t aching for his breath to just stop. Sometimes, lost deep enough in a memory of Adrian, he might’ve passed for someone content. But it wasn’t happiness. Not the real kind. Only the faint aftertaste of it, like perfume clinging to an empty room.
The past two years came back to him in fragments. Shards of days. Long, dragging hours heavy with silence. An ache that settled into his bones like winter. He remembered existing more than living, drifting, drowning, vanishing in slow motion.
There hadn’t been enough of him present in those years to feel anything so trivial as vanity. He hadn’t thought much about his appearance over that time. There hadn’t been time or, truthfully, the will to care.
But now, standing there under the harsh hotel lamps, he was forced to look. What returned his gaze revealed no softness, no light; only the haunting silhouette of a man bleeding internally while the world continued to turn.
The man in the mirror bore the ballast of a soul too long unanchored, too long submerged, too long entombed in the eidolon of its long vanished half, dissolving like sea foam swallowed by the shore.
A face etched with the pain of surviving something that had already taken the best of him.
He didn’t recognize himself. And yet, there he was. He was the living embodiment of the ruin of what love had made, and what loss had left behind.
Knowing he was about to see Adrian, he couldn’t help but catalog the changes.
Back then, his life had revolved around the sea. Surfing every day had kept his body strong, his spirit free. He would run along the shore, race the waves, and bask in the golden light that seemed to follow Adrian wherever he went. But now… now he was simply lean, stripped of the vitality that had once been so integral to him. The sun had become a stranger. He had stayed away from beaches, from the water, from anything that reminded him of what he’d lost. His skin had thinned to a pallor, spectral, only accentuating the dark circles under his eyes, a testament to sleepless nights and restless days.
He wasn’t the same Logan who had walked away.
His heart clenched painfully as his thoughts turned to Adrian. From the pictures Mr. Boyed had sent, Adrian hadn’t changed much. He still looked strong, his body broad and tanned, his golden hair wild as the wind and waves seemed to embrace him. Logan hadn’t let himself look at those pictures for too long; the sight of Adrian had been too much, too raw. And as for the others, the ones Mr. Boyed had sent but Logan hadn’t yet opened… they remained untouched in his inbox, their presence a weight he wasn’t ready to bear.
Logan dragged a trembling hand through his damp hair, breath breaking loose like something cornered. He knew this was not about appearances—Adrian had once loved him, not for flesh or form, but for the marrow of who he was. Yet the thought of standing before him now, emptied of the light Adrian had once kindled, left him hollow. Diminished. A ghost of a man, small beneath the weight of his own undoing.
He was no longer the Logan who had walked away.
That Logan had been burnished in gold, carved by sun and salt, hair stiff with seawater, arms forged from chasing horizons across continents. He had been beautiful without intent, magnetic without awareness. He had been a creature of radiance, and radiance had answered him in kind.
The man in the mirror was only his residue, a specter inhabiting the void husk of what remained. His reflection bore the sallow stains of neglect, the erosion of self-contempt, eyes dulled to ash, extinguished of their fire for two long years.
