“Don’t really know,” Adrian muttered, taking a turn onto a narrower street. “We’re not talking much. He’s been even more resentful since I came back two years ago.”
When Logan stumbled upon the fact that Adrian had a younger brother, his curiosity was piqued, and he started to inquire further. Logan, who had spoken of his own sisters and shared little anecdotes about them, found it surprising that Adrian had never mentioned his little brother before. Adrian elaborated on their strained relationship, revealing that Alon had made hurtful and homophobic comments after Adrian came out of the closet. This antagonistic sentiment was not new; even prior to that event, Alon had nurtured an underlying resentment and animosity towardAdrian, feelings that only intensified and festered over the years, casting a long shadow over their brotherly bond.
Logan didn’t miss the way Adrian’s grip tightened just slightly on the wheel, the way his jaw tensed at the words. He wondered what exactly had happened in those two years Adrian had spent without him—what wounds had been left open, what bridges had burned beyond repair.
Adrian’s eyes flickered for a moment, his mind clearly elsewhere. Maybe back in those first few months after Logan had left.
“He said some things,” Adrian murmured. “When I moved back home. When I was… trying to get back on my feet… it took us, me, Dean, and Tom a few months to find an apartment, so I lived with my parents for those months.”
Logan didn’t ask, but Adrian told him anyway. “Your fag friend ditched you,” Adrian repeated the words Alon had told him.
It had been a mutter, a careless cut from Alon that had sliced deeper than he would ever understand. In the early months, Alon drifted through the house like a ghost, the echoes of his cruel words hanging heavy in the air. Adrian, heartbroken and desperate, felt the chill of Alon’s indifference seep into the very walls, a palpable hatred that threatened to suffocate him. With each moment spent in that stifling atmosphere, Adrian felt as though he might choke, teetering on the edge of despair.
And then, months later, when Adrian had told his family about the cancer, when he had told them he wasn’t planning to fight it, his brother had lookedrelieved.
It had hurt.
Logan clenched his fists in his lap. He wanted to say something, but what could he say? He had no right to be angry on Adrian’s behalf, not when he had been the first blade in his back.
The rest of the drive was quiet. Logan watched the city lights blur past, their glow fading into something dimmer, rougher, as they moved away from the heart of Tel Aviv. The streets grew narrower, the buildings more worn, the sense of abandonment sinking into the very air around them.
“We’re here.” Adrian declared. His stomach clenched as he looked up at the six-story building before them. It wasn’t pristine, wasn’t grand, but it stood firm. The beige paint was streaked with time; the balconies were lined with mismatched chairs, wind chimes, and the soft glow of potted plants reaching for the night air.
That was, in the simplest and most innocent way imaginable, home.
It wasn’t the world Logan had imagined for Adrian, not the one his mind had built in the absence of truth. But it was real. And it was Adrian’s.
Logan’s gaze flickered down the quiet street, where similar buildings stood side by side, like weathered sentinels guarding a lifetime of memories. Some looked newer, some older, but all bore the same quiet endurance. This place wasn’t luxurious, far from it, yet it embodied the essence of simplicity, a simple life well-lived and modestly flourishing.
This was the space that had shaped Adrian—the winding streets, the sun-cracked corridors, the quiet corners that had once cradled his boyhood dreams. Here, the man Logan loved had first been stitched together by time and tenderness and grief. If this place had birthed a soul as fierce and tender as Adrian’s, then somewhere beneath its ordinary skin, it must hold a whisper of something divine.
Then, he glanced back at the car.
The sleek, black Maserati gleamed under the flickering streetlight, a glaring, unwelcome guest in this world. The sight of it made his skin crawl. It felt like an intrusion, an arrogance, a testament to just how little he had understood.
Adrian was already climbing the steps, and Logan followed, though something began to press in his chest with every stride, a quiet storm gathering under his ribs. He had never truly seen the world Adrian had come from, not like this, not the bones of it, not the walls that had once echoed with his footsteps, or the corners that might still remember his laughter.
Were these the hallways Adrian had raced through as a boy, beach-sand clinging to his ankles and sea-salt water drying on his skin after long days spent chasing waves? Were these the same stairs he climbed after the war, when the world had grown heavier, when his soul had become older and more fragile, when the silence between breaths had changed shape? Had he once walked here with sunburned shoulders and lucent dreams in his eyes, only to return years later, not with hopes but with memories too vivid to forget and an unheeded threnody crying Logan’s name?
And now Logan was stepping into that same space, into that same past, as someone who belonged.
And it awakened something in him—something cold yet familiar. He had always existed on the periphery of places, never truly immersed in them. He had always been the outsider; adrift and unanchored, the one who never truly fit in, never truly belonged. The one persistently ready to flee. The one who avoided attaching to anything significant until he met a pair of whisky-colored irises and full, luscious lips framed by stubble, igniting a desire to connect with the man standing before him.
In that first meeting, without understanding why, Logan wanted to be known. Wanted to be held still in someone’s memory, in someone’s hands. And somehow, impossibly, Adrian had looked at him—really looked—and loved everything scattered and unfinished within him. It was the kind of love that didn’t ask for permission, didn’t seek to fix, only to hold, and the weight of that kind of love—pure, wild, undeserved—was almost unbearable.
“Did you grow up here?” The question left Logan’s lips before he could stop it, a desperate need gnawing at his insides. He wanted to see it all, wanted to map Adrian’s childhood, to touch the places that had shaped him, to stand where he had once stood.
More than anything, he wanted to take Adrian back tohisown childhood home. Show him the bed where he had lain awake, night after night, drowning in heartbreak. Show him the walls that had absorbed his screams, his sobs, his mistakes, the ones he had made when Adrian wasn’t there. Show him the spot where he had crashed and burned, after fleeing from the other half of his soul and the one person he had loved wholeheartedly.
“Hm... yeah.”
Adrian’s response came softly, clipped at the edges, but it wasn’t the word that struck Logan, it was the way Adrian turned his gaze, just slightly. There was a flicker there, quick but unmistakable: shame. And that single flash of it tore through Logan like a rip current, silent and brutal, leaving him breathless. Adrian, who had never once been ashamed of who he was. Adrian, who had loved him without apology, who had stood in the fullness of his truth even when the world offered no shelter. But here, now, withLogan beside him on these narrow stairs, something inside him had curled into itself, and that unspoken shift shattered Logan.
At the top of the second floor, Adrian stopped in front of a door. He lifted his hand to knock, but before his fingers could reach the steel door, Logan moved. He stepped forward, closing the space between them, and pulled Adrian into his arms. Their bodies aligned as if made to carry each other. And the way Adrian softened in his hold—the way the tension dissolved from his shoulders like ice melting under summer sun—told Logan he had done the right thing. He could feel it, the quiet surrender, the way Adrian let him carry what had become too heavy.
“I love you,” Logan whispered, the words barely formed on his lips, as if afraid to disturb the stillness. “We’re together.” He pressed a kiss into Adrian’s hair, then gently lifted his face, cupping it with both hands. “You are my entire life. Do you hear me? We’re together.”
Adrian looked at him, and his bottom lip trembled, his lashes flickering, as though he could hold back the storm building behind his eyes by sheer will. He blinked rapidly, fighting back tears, nodding but unable to speak. Inside, his thoughts rushed like floodwater.This place—this life—it’s not glamorous. It’s not the kind of story that fits into Logan’s world.How could he explain the ache in his chest, the way these walls made him feel like the hollow version of himself that he was in the days after Logan had left? Every stair creaked with memory. Every corner whispered loss. He didn’t know how to tell Logan that sometimes his mind dragged him back to those hollow nights, and that no matter how far he had come, part of him still lived there.
