“My brother and two of his friends.”
“Are they home?”
His gaze holds mine. “No. They’re out at an arcade in Brooklyn for someone’s bachelor party.”
“Then I’m coming in with you.”
His expression is blank.
He doesn’t say a word as he turns to open up the door, and I almost think he’s going to shut me out.
But then he holds the door open for me after he walks in.
CHAPTER 22
CHASE
In my mind, I’m holding a paintbrush to a colossal, razor-thin piece of glass, holding my breath with every brushstroke as I watch a spiderweb pattern of cracks appear on the surface. Every shred of my focus is being spent on one thing andonlyone thing. I can’t let the glass break. A heavy brushstroke could splinter it to pieces, but I can’t stop painting, and painting, like there’s a pack of hungry, wild dogs pawing at the inside of me and I have no chance of taming them.
That’s how it feels, inside, as I slowly walk up the steps with Logan.
Is that how everyone feels when they realize they’re falling in love?
Or that they’ve already fallen in love, long ago, and it only came to land on their head like a brick out of nowhere?
When Logan put his hand on my back, I thought it, clear and bright in my mind.
I love you.
I almost said it.
Offhandedly, like it was nothing.
And then when he kissed me in public, it shot through mymind in more vivid color, screaming out of me, in every cell of my body.
I’m so, so fucking in love with you.
I shoved the words back in my mouth because I felt crazy, but everything with Logan feels a little bit like that.
“It’s too dark in here,” I say as we head up to the third-floor.Oh, and also, I love you.“My landlord George is a very sweet, kind old comic book nerd who lives on the top-floor apartment, but he never remembers to replace the lightbulb for the landing.”
I’m saying more words about my landlord now than I’ve spoken to Logan in the past half an hour, practically.
But there’s that glass, between us, in my mind.
This time, it’s one that I put up, instead of him. The one that’s already threatening to break.
Because I love him, and I have no idea if it’s okay to, yet.
We take the wooden stairs to the third-floor landing. There's at least a little wall sconce hanging beside each of the doors up here, and I no longer feel like I’m taking Logan up into a dark, dilapidated shack.
“This building is amazing,” Logan says. “So much original wood. They didn’t get rid of all of it when they did the remodel.”
I grab my keys and get us in, swinging open the door.
“This place is going to make you crazy. My brother is the only person who’s sometimes neat and organized like you, but my roommates and I are… well. You know how I am.”
I turn on the lamp on the entryway table and cast the room in its glow.
