His hand stops moving, and he raises it to tilt my chin up, forcing my attention back to his face. My skin burns where he touches me, but it’s the sincerity and warmth in his eyes that sears me to the bone.
“You’re not less than anyone else. Your learning disability doesn’t make you inferior. If anything, working twice as hard—having to persevere despite wanting to give up—makes you stronger than the rest of us.”
A knot forms in my throat, and I find myself struggling to accept what he says as the truth. After all, having always been the friend looked at as the clown, the dumbass, the comedic relief…how am I supposed to believe him? Even if it is so clearly written in his expression.
But the thing is, ever since telling Logan, he hasn’t done or said anything that’s made me feel stupid or inferior. Sure, he’s had small slips, like thegeniuscomment when I took a drunken tumble over the goddamn sofa last month, but that was probably merited. At every other turn, though, he’s done the exact opposite; teaching me to have grace and acceptance forsomething I have no control over. Framing it in another light.
I don’t think there’s any way I can thank or repay him properly for that—or anything else he’s done for me.
Swallowing down the knot in my throat, I nod rather than answering. Mostly because I don’t trust my voice right now, knowing it’ll sound like it was just put through a meat grinder if I tried.
My phone dings with a notification, effectively breaking the moment by making me jerk away from him. My heart plummets straight into my asshole as I look back at the ceiling, freezing me in place as the panic ensues all over again.
“Are you gonna check that?” Logan asks when I don’t make any attempt to move.
“Nope.”
“It’s probably your scores, though.”
“Probably,” I agree.
“So then why…” He trails off, letting the question linger in the air.
With a groan, I scrub my palm over my face. “Can I have five more minutes to still be a hockey player before I open it?”
“You’re only delaying the inevitable, regardless of what it says.”
Leave it to Logan to operate on logic in times like this.
“Then you open it,” I mutter, motioning to where my phone rests on my dresser. “God knows you’ll be able to read it faster than I will.”
Logan lets out a little noise, a combination of a scoff and a laugh, before he rolls off the bed to grab my cell. Standing over me, he holds it to my face so it unlocks, then taps the screen a few times to pull up my email. I watch him the entire time, his eyes moving quickly over the words written there, and every nanosecond he spends reading causes my blood pressure to skyrocket another ten points.
At this rate, I’ll have a heart attack before I find out if I—
“Looks like you’re gonna have to pump the brakes on your pity party,” he tells me, lifting his gaze to meet mine.
I swallow roughly. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you passed.”
I jolt off the bed, grabbing for the phone he’s already holding out toward me, allowing me to see for myself. Because there’s no way that can be right. And yet, there it is, in black and white.
B minus.
I shake my head a couple times, not trusting that the dyslexia isn’t messing with me. But I know it isn’t, because Logan saw the exact same thing.
“I fucking passed,” I whisper, still slightly in shock.
“With a B.”
A disbelieving laugh slips out, and I shake my head some more. “So much for Cs getting degrees.”
Logan’s soft chuckle drags my attention away from the screen, only to find a grin pulling up his lips. But it’s the way he’s looking at me—with amusement, yeah, but also with pride—that has my heart stumbling a little in my chest.
“Do I get to say I told you so, or—”
Without thinking, I toss my phone on the bed, wrap my arms around his shoulders, and haul him in for a hug. I squeeze him tight against me, feeling every rise and fall of his breaths and beat of his heart against my chest. Is it a stupid move? Probably, since I told him I wouldn’t initiate any kind of physical contact during this deal of ours. I just hope it’s a rule he understands me breaking, at least this once.
