Don't you dare stop the music.
pairing: John Logan x readerfem
summary: When you confessed your love to the idiot on the hockey team and he rejected you like a coward… only to write you 22 letters later, ignore your silent treatment, and confess everything to you in the rain like he’s in a Nicholas Sparks movie. Because of course, talking like a normal person is too hard, but declaring eternal love while soaking wet is totally reasonable.
warnings: Prepare yourself for some angst with a happy ending, fueled by heavy pining and absolute emotional constipation. This story features miscommunication (but make it dramatic) and, yes, literal kisses in the rain. Expect Logan being a simp in denial, lots of crying in aprons and on shoulders, and friends who consistently give much better advice than the main characters actually listen to. Fair warning: you will experience severe secondhand embarrassment, endure excessive dramatic monologues, and encounter plenty of swearing along the way.
a/n: hey guys, I’m back! I hope you like it. You have no idea how fucking much I love kisses in the rain. Sending you a kiss — I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. xoxo
'Cause all I know is we said, "Hello"
And your eyes look like comin' home
All I know is a simple name
And everything has changed
I don’t know what to do with this. With all this love I have for him. I don’t know where to put it now.
The world kept spinning like nothing had happened. And I hated it a little for that.
Every morning I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror of my room with that question stuck somewhere inside me, unanswered, with nowhere to go. Love doesn’t disappear just because you want it to. It doesn’t work like that. There’s no switch, no drawer where you can stash it and lock it away. It was just there, huge and useless, taking up space that no longer had anyone to belong to.
When was the last time I actually slept?
I wasn’t trying to be dramatic, but fuck, not talking to him had hit me hard.
I washed my face with ice-cold water until my cheeks burned to bring down the swelling, then I put on concealer under my eyes and a little blush so I wouldn’t look so dead. War paint, I told myself. As if calling it that turned it into something that required courage instead of just the small, sad act of trying to look like a functional person.
Today I finally decided to leave my cave—my incredible, comfortable bed—to dignify myself with going to work. One of the perks of your mom being the owner is that she really doesn’t care if you miss work. I think she’s even at peace when I’m not at the café. It must be exhausting to see me moving around like a ghost in an apron.
The walk was twelve minutes. Janis was still at the car wash, so I had no choice. I usually didn’t mind walking, but now I couldn’t stand those twelve minutes alone with my thoughts. Before, I’d spend them with music or my phone in my hand, answering Logan’s messages like a dumb teenager. Now I just wore the headphones without playing anything. Just the dead weight of them as an excuse for no one to talk to me. So I could be, for those twelve minutes, exactly as broken as I was before having to pretend I wasn’t.
I’d been replaying the same moments all weekend. The feeling of his lips against mine. His big, warm hands closing around my hips. The way he looked at me right before he kissed me, like he’d been holding back for years. The hoarse sound that escaped his throat when I kissed him back. Everything played on loop, sharp, cruel, perfect.
And then came the memory of the next morning. His voice in the kitchen.
“I fucked everything up.”
I shook my head and picked up my pace, as if I could leave the memories behind on the sidewalk.
“The only thing I learned that night,” I muttered, dropping my forehead onto the table with a dull thud, “was that I should’ve stayed home.”
We were sitting at one of the outdoor tables in the central courtyard at Briar, under a sun that felt way too cheerful for my mood. I had a coffee that had already gone cold between my hands. Sarah was nibbling on an apple with a bored face, and Alison was stirring her chocolate milkshake with a straw while listening to me repeat the weekend story for the thousandth time.
Sarah let out a snort and ran her hand down my arm in a caress that was supposed to be comforting but mostly looked like she was holding back laughter.
“What if he’s gay and just hasn’t realized it yet?” she whispered mischievously, leaning toward me.
Alison let out a short, dry laugh.
“Men,” she said ironically, clinking the ice in her drink. “Tell them you love them and you’ll never see them again. They disappear faster than my patience on a Monday morning.”
“God, my life sucks,” I lamented, letting out a pitiful groan against the cold wood of the table.
The silence lasted barely two seconds before Sarah leaned in closer.
“For God’s sake! You’re twenty-two years old, what do you know about life?” she exclaimed, though her voice had that protective tone she always used when she saw me like this. “You’re beautiful, smart, and never apologize for feeling things, for setting boundaries, or for having ambitions, babe. Got it?”
I lifted my head enough to look at her. Sarah had that kind of confidence I envied with all my soul: short hair, sharp gaze, and a tongue that could destroy male egos in less than ten words. Alison was the same, only more cruelly funny. Both of them were like a man’s ego put into the bodies of beautiful, fearless women. The exact opposite of me right now.
“Besides,” Alison continued, pointing at me with her straw, “if John ‘Eat Me’ Logan is dumb enough to let you go after you told him you loved him, then fuck him. There are more guys at Briar. Most of them are worse, but at least some know how to use their mouths for something more useful than babbling excuses.”
I tried to smile, but it only came out as a crooked grimace. I knew they were saying it to cheer me up. I knew their words came from a good place. But none of that took away the weight I felt in my chest.
“Who needs therapy when I have you guys? Hooray…” I said in a tired but sincere voice.
Logan was walking along the path that crossed the courtyard with that stride of his I knew by heart—not too fast, not too slow, that way of moving that had always felt somehow inevitable. Tucker was beside him talking about something, hands in his pockets, and Logan had his head slightly tilted toward him with no expression at all.
I don’t know if it was instinct or bad luck, but his eyes went straight to mine. Without searching. Without hesitation. Like he already knew exactly where I was before he looked.
His brown eyes locked onto mine.
And I saw everything on his face in the space of a second: the impact of finding me there, the tension that rose up his jaw, something that could have been relief or pain or probably both at the same time. He had dark circles. A tight line between his eyebrows that I hadn’t seen before, or maybe I had and just didn’t know what it meant at the time.
Tucker took two more steps before realizing and turning around. I saw the exact moment he processed the situation—his eyes going from Logan to me and back to Logan—and something in his face closed off with an expression that wasn’t exactly pity but was too close for my comfort. Logan watched me with a mix of pain, regret, and something else I didn’t dare name. He took an involuntary step toward our table, like his body reacted before his brain. Tucker, beside him, noticed immediately and grabbed his arm firmly, stopping him.
Logan didn’t even look at him.
His eyes moved quickly over mine, my mouth, the line of my jaw, scanning my expression with an urgency that almost hurt.
He didn’t even like me. Why was he torturing me like this?
His lips parted slightly and then closed. I could see him working inside, the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers briefly clenched into a fist and then opened. His entire posture was a question. Almost a plea.
Give me something. Anything.
I felt my heart rise to my throat and stay there, huge and inconvenient, pulsing with a force that I’m sure showed on my face.
No. I’m not going to be the one who does it this time.
I can’t be the one again.
I looked away with effort, breaking the contact like I was tearing off a piece of my own skin. I lowered my head and tightened my fingers around my coffee cup until my knuckles turned white.
“I’m not taking the first step,” I whispered, more to myself than to them, though the words came out loud enough.
“Bravo girl, Bravo” Sarah said proudly, giving me a gentle pat on the back. “Let him crawl this time.”
I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands, feeling like my chest was going to explode. In my head, the same image played on loop without stopping: the way her eyes filled with pain. And then she looked away. Like looking at me burned her. Like I was something she could no longer stand.
Like I was something she could no longer stand.
The three of them looked at me in silence. It was weird seeing the guys so quiet. Disturbingly weird. Normally Dean would’ve already said some shit to lighten the mood, but even he didn’t dare. Garrett had his arms crossed and his jaw tight, staring at the floor. Tucker was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, looking at me… with a lot of pity.
“…I ruined everything,” I muttered, my voice hoarse.
Dean let out a dramatic sigh and threw himself onto my bed like it was his.
“Yeah, we already know that. The question is: what the hell are you going to do about it?”
I stayed quiet for a long time. The knot in my throat was choking me. I ran my hands through my hair, pulling harder than necessary, as if the physical pain could organize the chaos inside me.
“I’m in love with her,” I admitted almost angrily. “I love her eyes… fuck, I love the way she looks at me like I’m someone decent. I love her hair, the way it falls in her face when she’s focused. I love her smile when she hears the stupidest thing that comes out of my mouth… like I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to her.” My voice was shaking by the end. I stood up without really knowing why. I needed to move, I needed to do something with my body because if I stayed still I was going to explode. I stood in the middle of the room like an idiot. “She confessed everything to me… and I told her I couldn’t. What kind of son of a bitch does that? After what happened that night?”
Dean, for the first time in a long time, didn’t make a joke. He just looked at me seriously.
“Bro… you’re really fucked.”
He’d been silent the whole time, staring at some point on the floor, and that silence from Garrett was what had me the most nervous since they arrived.
He leaned forward. Looked straight at me.
“So what are you going to do now? Because avoiding her and looking at her like a lost puppy isn’t working.” He said it without cruelty, but without softening it either. “Listen to me, Logan. You’re a mess, I know. But you can’t go dump all of this on her at once.” He paused, choosing his words. “She’s hurt. Really hurt. If you go now and tell her everything you’re feeling, she’s going to think it’s pity or that you’re confused. You have to take it slow… but don’t drag your feet. Do it right. Approach her little by little. Start by asking for forgiveness. Be honest, but gentle. Give her room to breathe.”
“You know where she works. You should go. Not like an ambush, just you. Order a coffee, sit down… and talk to her. On her turf. No pressure.”
Tucker pushed off the wall. He nodded slowly.
“Fast, but careful. Show her with actions that it wasn’t a mistake.” His voice was calmer than Garrett’s, quieter, but just as firm. “That she wasn’t a mistake.”
I stood in front of the café door for almost ten minutes, hands in the pockets of my jeans, my heart pounding against my ribs like it wanted to get out. The smell of fresh coffee and sweet bread reached me from inside, but it didn’t calm me. It did the opposite. It reminded me of her. Of her hands moving with that calm motion behind the counter, of how she bit her lower lip when she focused on making a latte.
Breathe, Logan. Don’t fuck this up again.
I pushed the door open and the little bell sounded way too loud in my ears. There weren’t many people. A couple of occupied tables and her behind the counter, cleaning the espresso machine. She was wearing the black apron she always wore, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail with some strands falling in her face. God… she looked beautiful.
I approached the counter with heavy legs. She looked up for a second, her eyes passing over my face without stopping, like I was just another customer. No surprise. No pain. Nothing. Just cold indifference.
“A black coffee, please,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended.
She nodded without meeting my eyes and turned toward the machine. Her shoulders were tense. I knew that body language. She was holding herself back.
Say something, John. Now.
“…I need to talk to you,” I murmured, lowering my voice so only she could hear. “Alone. Please.”
She didn’t respond. The sound of the espresso machine filled the silence between us. She served the coffee with precise movements, placed the cup in front of me, and wrote something on the order slip like I hadn’t said a word.
“That’ll be four fifty,” she said, looking at a point over my shoulder.
“Hey… please,” I insisted, leaning a little over the counter. “Just five minutes. I know I don’t deserve even that, but…”
She took the bill I held out without brushing my fingers. She gave me the change with the same empty expression, like she was serving a stranger. Her eyes didn’t meet mine even once. It was worse than if she had screamed at me. That indifference was destroying me inside.
She’s hurt. Really hurt. Shit, Garrett was right.
“I understand that you don’t want to see me,” I continued, almost in a whisper. “But I can’t keep going like this. What I did… was shitty. I was shitty. I need to explain…”
“Here’s your change,” she cut me off in a neutral voice, placing the coins on the counter. Then she turned back to the machine and started cleaning again, giving me her back.
The knot in my throat tightened so much I thought I was going to choke. I stood there like an idiot, the coffee burning my hand and my chest on fire. I wanted to jump over the counter, grab her by the arms, and force her to look at me, to see everything that was eating me alive inside. But I couldn’t. Not after what I’d done to her.
I took the coffee and sat at one of the tables in the back, where I could see her. I wasn’t moving from there. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not for as long as it took.
I’m not giving up on you. Even if you ignore me. Even if you look at me like I no longer exist. I’m going to prove to you that you weren’t a mistake. That you never were. That you’re the only thing I want in this fucking life.
A strong, decisive voice snapped me out of my sleep. I blinked, confused, my cheek stuck to the table and a trail of drool that didn’t even embarrass me. The café was empty. The chairs were already up on the tables and the main lights were off. Only the dim light from the counter remained.
In front of me was her mom. And fuck… she was just as pretty as her daughter. The same expressive eyes, the same way of tilting her head when she was half amused and half serious, the same hair falling softly over her shoulders. Seeing her was like seeing a more mature, confident version of her. It hurt my soul.
“What, you think this is a hotel?” she said in a half-mocking, half-annoyed tone. “You’ve been sleeping there for like three hours, drooling on my table. We closed a while ago.”
I sat up quickly, wiping my mouth with my sleeve, my face burning. I looked around desperately.
“Did she… already leave?” I asked, my voice thick.
She let out a soft, almost maternal laugh and shook her head while picking up a rag.
“My daughter left a while ago. She said she had things to do.” She looked at me for a second longer, with that warmth she’d always had toward me. “You okay? You look… tired.”
Ma’am, I’m trying to prove to your daughter that I’m not a complete son of a bitch.
“Yeah, I’m… I’m fine,” I lied, standing up. My neck hurt like hell. “I just wanted… to talk to her for a bit.”
She pointed at the door with the mop. “Come on, out. I have to open early tomorrow and I’m not leaving you here as decoration.”
I got up unsteadily, still half-asleep and with a sore neck. I tried to keep some dignity, but it was hard with the table mark on my cheek and my hair a mess.
She took the mop and gave me a gentle but firm push toward the door, like she was shooing out a big, clumsy dog that didn’t want to leave.
“Out, out,” she cut me off playfully, opening the door. “I open early tomorrow and I’m not tripping over you drooling on my tables. I don’t know what happened between you and my daughter, but I hope you can fix it soon. It kills me to see her walking around like a ghost. Good night.”
The cold of the night hit me as I stepped out. The door closed behind me with that cheerful little jingle that now sounded like mockery.
I stood there on the dark sidewalk, running my hands over my face.
“Hi…” The low, close voice startled me so much I let out a small scream and nearly dropped the cup from my hands. I spun around, heart hammering in my throat.
Tucker took a step back and clutched his chest with one hand, eyes a little wide.
“Fuck… you scared me,” he muttered, breathing deeply, clearly surprised by my reaction. “Got a minute?”
I didn’t answer. Instead I stood there, pressing the cup against my chest like a shield. My pulse thundered in my ears.
He ran a hand over the back of his neck, uncomfortable, and looked down for a second before speaking. “I’m sorry,” he said simply, with that calm but heavy voice. “I’m sorry about what happened.”
I looked at him in silence. Tucker had always been the quietest. Seeing him here apologizing squeezed something in my chest.
“It’s not your fault, Tucker,” I answered quietly, forcing a weak smile. “Really. You didn’t do anything. You don’t have to apologize for something that wasn’t your responsibility.”
He frowned slightly, like he didn’t fully agree, and still insisted, but before he could say anything I beat him to it:
“It’s okay,” I added, trying to sound firmer than I felt. “I’m fine. I don’t need anyone carrying this. Not you… not anyone.”
What a huge lie. I’m not fine. Nothing is fine. But what else can I say?
Tucker nodded slowly, still with that pitying look I hated so much. He stayed one more second, like he wanted to add something, but in the end he just murmured:
“How are you feeling?” he asked quietly. “Don’t lie to me.”
I couldn’t hold it anymore.
The knot that had been tightening in my throat for days, weeks, broke all at once. Tears flooded my eyes and I started crying uncontrollably, right there. Everything came out in a shaky, broken torrent.
“I really… I really didn’t want to like him,” I sobbed, covering my face with one hand. “I didn’t want to, Tucker. I tried not to… but it just happened. And now I miss him so much it hurts to breathe. I miss his stupid voice, the way he looks at me… I miss feeling safe with him. But he told me he couldn’t and… and I had to walk away. I needed to walk away. I don’t know how to keep pretending I’m okay when everything reminds me of him. He’s been coming nonstop, leaving these stupid letters I haven’t even bothered to open, and fuck, it complicates everything when I see him on campus… I’m drowning. I regret going to that stupid party. I regret confessing my feelings. If only… if only I’d held back a little.”
The tears kept falling, soaking my cheeks and my apron. I felt pathetic, exposed, but I couldn’t stop.
Tucker walked around the counter without saying anything. His steps were quiet, steady. Suddenly his arms wrapped around me carefully, pulling me against his chest in a warm, protective hug. I tensed for a second, but then I collapsed against him, crying harder into his sweatshirt.
“Shh… it’s okay,” he murmured against my hair, rubbing my back with slow, comforting strokes. “Cry as much as you need. You don’t have to be strong all the time.”
I felt pathetic. I admit I really tried not to cry, but I just couldn’t hold it back anymore.
When will this suffering end?
I had to rip it out by the roots.
Maybe not right now. When I’m ready.
They said it at the same time. Both of them. With the same incredulous face that made the lady at table three look up from her newspaper and stare at me like I was the problem.
“Shh, lower your voices.” I leaned on the counter with my arms crossed and waited for the echo to fade. “Eight days in a row,” I confirmed, lowering my voice.
Alison and Sarah were sitting on the high stools in front of the counter, their half-finished milkshakes in front of them and that look on both their faces that meant they weren’t letting me out of this conversation easily. The café was quiet at that hour, only four tables occupied and my mom in the kitchen making muffled clattering noises from the back. It was the kind of afternoon I normally liked. Calm. Manageable.
“And what does he do?” Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow while pointing at Logan’s table with her straw.
“He writes?” Alison repeated, like the word didn’t quite fit, looking at me with a “Seriously?” face.
“He sits down, takes out paper, and writes. At first I thought he was studying, taking notes, whatever. Something normal.” I grabbed the rag from the counter and unfolded it, wiping the drops of chocolate Sarah’s straw had left. “But then on the third day he slipped a folded letter into the tip jar when he left.”
Both of them looked at the jar. It was there in its usual spot next to the register, completely innocent.
“In the tip jar?” Sarah pointed out, still not believing it.
“Because I was giving him the silent treatment and every time he tried to talk to me I found something super urgent to do in the kitchen.” I folded the rag. Unfolded it. “So he stopped trying and found another way.”
Alison turned her stool slightly toward Sarah. Then looked at me.
“And what do the letters say?” Sarah asked.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Alison said slowly, her voice showing that something didn’t add up.
“That I haven’t opened them.”
Alison stared at me. Then at Sarah. Then back at me.
“How many letters total?” she asked, and something in her tone told me she was already bracing for the answer.
I wiped a part of the counter that was already perfectly clean.
The silence lasted exactly two seconds.
“Twenty-two,” Alison repeated, toneless.
“Sometimes he leaves me three in one day. He sits, writes, folds the paper, puts it in the jar, and starts again. Like he always has something more to say.”
“But why?” Sarah frowned, not in judgment but with the genuine confusion of someone trying to solve a puzzle. “I mean, what’s the point of him writing you letters if he’s the one who told you no?”
“Exactly what I keep asking myself.”
“And you have no idea what they might say?”
“None.” I shrugged, though the gesture came out a little forced. “Maybe it’s an apology. Or he wants us to stay friends and doesn’t know how to tell me in person. Or he just feels guilty and this is how he’s dealing with it. I don’t know.”
“Or maybe,” Alison said finally, measuring her words, “they say something that has nothing to do with any of those things?”
“Well, don’t say it.” I grabbed the rag again. “He made it pretty clear where things stood. The letters will be what they are, probably something I don’t need to read, and when I get the courage I’ll open them and that’s it.”
Sarah rested her chin on her hand and looked at me with that calm of hers that always felt slightly destabilizing.
“Do you have them on you?” she asked.
Of course I had them on me. I’d been carrying the wad folded in my apron pocket since Monday, but I had no explanation that made me look good. I took them out and placed them on the counter between the two milkshakes.
Alison and Sarah looked at them.
“Can we take a look?” Alison asked.
I glanced sideways at the table in the back. Logan was sitting with Dean Di Laurentis, a ridiculously hot blond who had always seemed almost unfairly attractive. They both had muffins they’d ordered a while ago in front of them. Logan was saying something with his elbows on the table and Dean was listening, leaning back in his chair with that half-smile of his, like he found the world generally entertaining. Neither was looking at me.
“Whatever you want,” I said, and turned to clean the coffee machine. “They’re probably just apologies or something. I don’t think they’re a big deal.”
I heard the rustle of paper unfolding.
The kind of silence you notice because there should be some comment and worryingly there isn’t. There should’ve been an “aw how sweet” or “look at his handwriting” or anything, but there was nothing, and that nothing started to itch somewhere I tried to ignore.
Alison had the letter in her hands and an expression I’d never seen on her. It wasn’t exactly surprise. It was something quieter, deeper, something that had settled on her face while she read and hadn’t moved when she stopped. Her eyes were still fixed on the paper.
She passed the letter to Sarah without looking at her, pointing to a specific spot with her finger. Sarah read. I saw the exact moment she reached that part because her shoulders dropped a centimeter, she let out a very slow breath through her nose, and then she looked at me with an expression that was half tenderness and half something pretty close to “oh, sweetie.”
I leaned over the counter without realizing it.
The two of them looked at each other like accomplices and let out a small laugh.
Alison picked up the letter from Sarah’s hands.
“Come on, it’s probably just a long apology—”
“It’s not an apology.” She said it without thinking and then closed her mouth like she’d said too much. Sarah pinched her.
I stayed still for a moment.
“What do you mean it’s not an apology?”
“Alison, if it’s not an apology then what—”
“When you’re ready you’ll read it and that’s it.” She leaned on the counter with a firmness that left no room for negotiation. “And don’t look at me like that, I’m serious. This is something you have to read alone and at the right moment, not here in the middle of your shift because we pressured you.”
“But I didn’t even want to know—”
I shut up. She was right. Damn it, she was right, because ten minutes ago I was perfectly convinced those letters were probably some elaborate apology or a request to stay friends and I didn’t need to read them to know they’d hurt anyway. And now I was leaning over the counter with my heart doing weird things because Alison had said “it’s not an apology” in that voice and—
A shadow fell over the counter.
The three of us looked up at the same time.
Dean Di Laurentis was standing on the other side of the counter. He didn’t say anything. He simply reached out, took the letter from Alison with a calmness that left no room for argument, grabbed another from the stack still on the counter, and placed them in front of me with startling ease.
He held my gaze for a second, nodded slightly like he’d just done the most reasonable thing, then turned his head toward Alison.
And winked at her. Slowly. With total and absolute premeditation.
And he walked back to his table with his hands in his pockets like he hadn’t just dropped a grenade, leaving calmly.
The silence he left lasted exactly three seconds.
Sarah and I looked at each other.
Alison’s cheeks were flushed. Alison, who had once told a guy trying to hit on her at a party that his technique was conceptually deficient. Alison, who in the three years I’d known her had never lost a millimeter of composure in front of any male human being.
She picked up her milkshake. Took a long, absolutely deliberate sip while looking out the window.
“Don’t even think about it,” she muttered.
“Don’t. You. Dare,” Alison repeated without looking at her, with a calmness that didn’t match someone with cheeks that color.
Sarah closed it. But no one could wipe the smile off her face.
I looked down at the two letters in front of me on the counter. White paper, folded in three, nothing written on the outside. Just the paper. And underneath all of that, that phrase spinning nonstop: it’s not an apology.
If it wasn’t an apology, then what was it?
I didn’t want to know. Lies. Yes, I did.
It was past midnight. I was sitting on the floor of my room in my pajamas, with the twenty-two letters spread out on the rug around me in roughly chronological order of when Logan had left them in the tip jar. They formed a semicircle that completely surrounded me. From the outside it probably looked pretty bleak, but there was no one watching so it didn’t count.
I’d taken them out of the drawer where I’d been saving them one by one, with that weird mix of care and denial that didn’t make much sense if you analyzed it. I’d organized them. I’d been staring at them for a while, convincing myself that as soon as I opened them I’d find something manageable. An apology. Maybe several apologies, one per letter, with different wording because Logan had always been that meticulous when he wanted to be. Something that would hurt a little but that I could fold back up, put in the drawer, and move on with my life.
I picked up the first letter.
I held it for a moment without opening it, fingers on the fold of the paper, staring at it like I could read through it. Logan had spent eight days sitting in the café writing things I didn’t understand why he needed to write.
He had told me no. He had chosen to reject me. Those were concrete, verifiable facts and there was no reason for any of this to mean something different from what I had already assigned it.
Logan’s handwriting was exactly as I remembered, a little careless at the edges with some words crossed out and rewritten.
I froze completely. This can’t be real.
“Oh, shit,” I said out loud.
I wasn’t really into hockey until I met Logan. Before, it was just that sport they showed on TV that my dad sometimes watched and that I completely ignored. Noise, ice, guys crashing into each other at speeds that made no sense. I didn’t get the appeal.
Now I know exactly how many points the team needs to advance to the next round. I recognize the plays. I can tell for sure when a referee is calling too many penalties and when a defenseman is being deliberately dirty. Which says a lot—and nothing good—about what John Fucking Logan does to a person’s critical judgment.
I sighed and sank deeper into my seat.
The stadium smelled of popcorn and that weird mix of sweat and excitement that exists in sports venues. The stands were full, Briar colors everywhere, and the noise was that constant, dull kind that after a while just becomes pressure. Sarah was gripping her soda cup with both hands like it was the only thing anchoring her so she wouldn’t lose her mind, while Alison had been taking pictures of a certain player wearing number sixty-six for twenty minutes.
Meanwhile, I just couldn’t stop looking at player number twenty-two.
My conscience scolded me. We’ve hurt each other and I’m still sighing and staring at him like an idiot. Why can’t feelings have an off button? What’s the point of loving him if he doesn’t feel the same about me?
“You okay?” Alison leaned toward me with genuine concern that, in the three years I’ve known her, had never once fooled me.
“Sure,” Sarah said from my other side, without taking her eyes off the ice. “That’s why you have that face.”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t have a response that didn’t incriminate me. Technically, it was the idiot with number twenty-two skating on the ice who had unfinished business with me. Though “unfinished business” was a very generous way to describe a situation that basically boiled down to: I had made the huge mistake of feeling things I shouldn’t, he had told me he simply couldn’t (or didn’t want to) be with me, and since then I’d been trying to disappear from my own life as discreetly as possible.
I knew it since this morning. I knew it the exact moment I opened the reminders app to see what I had pending and found “Briar Game — 8pm” marked in red. I’d written it down weeks ago, in another life almost, when Logan and I were still whatever we were before I ruined everything by being honest. And then, without meaning to, without looking for it, with that masochistic tendency I have and should probably work on with a professional, I went to the messages.
Just to see. Just to remind myself why what happened was the right thing.
And there it was, among three unanswered messages I had left on read with absolute cowardice. One that simply said: Hope to see you tonight.
The message that made me want to check my reminders list and the reason I was here tonight.
I should have ignored it. I should have stayed home with a movie, a pack of cookies, and some dignity intact.
Instead here I was, in the stands at Briar’s stadium, flanked by Alison and Sarah who were pretending—not very effectively—not to monitor me every thirty seconds, with my stomach in knots and my eyes fixed on one spot on the ice so I wouldn’t keep unconsciously searching for number twenty-two.
Because I was searching for him. That was the worst part. That despite everything, despite the days avoiding him and the speeches I’d given myself and the times I’d repeated that I was fine, my eyes found him on their own. Like they had their own memory. Like no one had told them the memo.
Logan skated well. That was the fundamental problem—that he was really good and knew it without being arrogant about it, and when he moved on the ice there was something about him that settled, that relaxed.
The scoreboard was two to one in favor of Briar and the atmosphere had that electricity of the final minutes of a close game. Alison had put her phone down and was standing without realizing it. Sarah was muttering something under her breath.
Logan intercepted the puck in the offensive zone. He dodged the first defenseman with a turn that seemed physically impossible, the second with an acceleration that made the whole crowd collectively hold its breath, and shot.
I stood up with everyone else. I clapped without thinking. Alison grabbed my arm screaming something I couldn’t hear over the shouts. Sarah whistled with her fingers in her mouth.
Then Logan raised his hockey stick.
He turned toward the stands with a smile—that smile I knew by heart and that right now was doing damage to me that had no name—and I saw it before I could prepare myself.
He pointed at me. What the fuck is that supposed to mean.
Straight. Unmistakable. With his arm extended and his eyes locked exactly where I was standing, like there weren’t three hundred other people in the stadium, like there was no chance he was pointing at anyone else, like he wanted to make sure there was absolutely no doubt.
The stands made that collective sound. That “oooh” people make when they smell drama from afar. And the commentator, the damn commentator, didn’t miss the moment:
“Looks like one of our favorite guys had his heart stolen tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t cry all at once, girls—there are still more players on the ice—”
Heat shot up my neck to my ears in about half a second.
Sarah turned her head toward me very slowly, still looking stunned at what had just happened.
They both looked at me. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. And thank God they didn’t.
I grabbed my jacket from the seat. I put it on wrong, one arm inside out, and fixed it with more violence than necessary. My stomach was in a tight knot, my cheeks were burning, and my ears were ringing. I needed to get out of there.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I lied.
“Sure,” Alison said, glancing sideways at Sarah, who returned a worried look.
Neither of them made a move to follow me.
I went down the stands almost tripping twice, dodged three groups of people still celebrating, pushed the exit door with both hands, and the cold air hit me in the face the second I stepped out. Honestly, it was a relief. I needed that hit. I needed something to remind me that it was real, that I was real, that what had just happened inside that sweaty, noisy stadium had also been real.
He had pointed at me. In front of everyone. What the fuck.
I shouldn’t let it affect me. I shouldn’t let it break my decision to stay away from him.
I closed my eyes for a second and the commentator’s voice came back like a horrible echo: “Looks like one of our favorite guys got shot by Cupid tonight, don’t cry ladies—”
I wanted to die. For real. Not metaphorically. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole and not even spit out the bones.
I started walking fast. Then faster. The parking lot was dark and the streetlights made those blurry orange spots that multiplied on the wet asphalt, and I was only thinking about getting to the car, getting inside, and crying with dignity where no one could see me. I had parked Janis in the fifth circle of hell because I arrived late and there were no spots nearby, so when I finally found her I was going to be completely soaked.
Good. Perfect. Great. And it was raining.
Not just raining. Pouring. Like the entire universe had decided that tonight wasn’t humiliating enough and needed a little more drama. The water soaked my hair in seconds, ran down my neck, my shoulders, got into my shoes. Good. Perfect. Great.
I had spent entire days convincing myself that what we had was just a friendship I had misinterpreted, that I had seen things where there was nothing, that when he told me no—when he simply told me he couldn’t give me what I wanted—it was the most honest truth anyone had told me in a long time. I had forced myself to accept it. I had forced myself to keep functioning.
And then he scored and pointed at me. Son of a bitch.
I didn’t want to have stopped. It was a reflex, a betrayal by my own body recognizing that voice before my brain could tell it no, to keep walking, to pretend to be deaf, to die a little.
Logan was running toward me. With his hair completely stuck to his face and still in his team uniform darkened by the water, and his eyes—God, his eyes—searching for me with an urgency I didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand. Didn’t want to understand.
Did he just leave his game? Just to talk?
“Stop,” he said when he reached me, breathing hard. “Please, stop.”
I looked at him. I tried to make my face say nothing. I tried to be a wall. I swear.
“Logan.” My voice sounded calmer than I felt. That was the only miracle of the night. “Seriously, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to apologize or explain anything, okay? It was me. I misread things, I was stupid, and—” I swallowed. “And when you told me about Hannah and I felt this bad, that was my problem. Not yours. So really, seriously, you can go back inside and—”
“For God’s sake, shut up.”
“Shut up.” He didn’t say it cruelly. He said it with something like desperation, jaw tight, eyes bright, rain running down his face like it didn’t exist. “Don’t regret anything. Please. Don’t.”
“I realized too late that she wasn’t you.” His skin was wet from the rain too (obviously), and one drop hung from the tip of his nose, about to fall. His brown eyes traced my face, moving over my eyes, my cheeks, and my mouth, before he said in a hoarse voice:
“I ruined everything.” He ran a hand through his soaked hair, a nervous, desperate gesture, like he didn’t know what to do with his own body. “I didn’t want Hannah. I never did. I just wanted someone to love, someone to spend the rest of my days with, and I was such an incredibly idiot, so completely blind, that I didn’t realize the person I actually loved was standing right in front of me.”
Oh God. My heart stopped. Literally. I swear it stopped.
“And if your feelings are still the same, if you still love me, then right now—” his voice cracked a little there, just a little, but I heard it, I heard it clearly over the rain—“right now I’m telling you I want to spend the eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours, the five hundred and twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes of every one of the three hundred and sixty-five days with you.”
The rain was starting to get heavier. The parking lot lights became orange and white spots behind him and I didn’t know if what was running down my cheeks was water or tears and honestly it didn’t matter anymore because no one was going to notice anyway.
“Don’t pity me,” I said, and my voice was no longer calm. “Don’t. You don’t have to—” I bit my lip. I was nervous, mostly because I really wanted to tell him how I felt and what I wanted. I took a deep breath and he cut me off instantly.
“Every single one,” he continued, like he hadn’t heard me, or like he had heard me perfectly and decided to ignore it. “No exceptions. No conditions. If I stay quiet, if I let another day go by without telling you that you’re the only thing that has made constant sense, I’m going to spend the rest of my life unable to forgive myself.”
“Stop, Logan, seriously, stop—”
“And I’m not going to let you give this story that ending.”
He took one step closer. Just one. But I felt it in my chest like he had closed miles.
“Nor will I allow myself to give our story an ending.” His voice had something broken and something completely certain at the same time and I didn’t understand how those two things could coexist. “A story that hasn’t even begun and that I’m already anxious to know the next chapter of. I’d rather die tomorrow knowing I loved you than live a hundred years wondering what it would’ve been like to be with you.”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
“Even it would be an honor if you broke my heart. Over and over, as many times as it took. Because even broken, even in pieces—” he paused and looked at me, and in his eyes there was something I had never seen before, something I recognized because it was exactly what I had felt all these months—“my heart would come back to you. Thirsty. Without conditions. Without holding anything back.”
“I’ve always been a better person when I’m near you.” He said that lower, almost to himself, and it was what hurt me the most because I believed him. I believed him without wanting to. “And that’s something I haven’t told anyone until now. Because my heart is yours. Not from today. From way before I had the courage to admit it.”
He closed the last few feet between us.
“Forgive me. I’m asking you please.”
I shook my head. I tried to articulate something coherent.
“Don’t… don’t do this to me.” It came out broken, fuck. “Don’t do this to me now that I had already… that I had already…”
“What do you want me to do?” he cut in, and there was something urgent in his voice, something bordering on a plea. “Do you want me to pull the fucking moon down for you? I’ll become an astronaut for you. Tell me. Tell me what you want and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”
The rain pounded my shoulders.
“But I love you,” he said. “And that’s not going to change.”
I don’t know how long I stood there without saying anything. It could have been ten seconds or ten years and neither would have surprised me. I only heard the rain and my own breathing and the beating of something I had been trying to kill for weeks by ignoring it.
Stubborn. Damn stubborn heart. Damn body that doesn’t listen. Damn it.
I threw myself at him, wrapped both arms around his neck, and pressed my lips to his. The smell of his cologne mixed with the rain and completely intoxicated me. John froze for a second, motionless while my mouth was pressed against his. I thought, too late, that maybe he didn’t.
Shut up. He literally just bared his heart to you.
But then, as if lightning had struck him, John took a breath and cupped my face with his hands. He was kissing me back. I was kissing John Logan and he was kissing me. I went from being scared and breathless to a fire burning inside me in an instant.
John tilted his head and kissed me the way John was supposed to kiss—wild, and sweet, and entirely too confident in himself, all at the same time. He knew exactly what he was doing when his big hands slid into my hair, but it was the shudder in his breath and the slight tremble in his hands that drove me crazy. The fact that he had lost control as much as I had.
John pulled me even closer until we were pressed together, chest to chest. For the first time in my life, I understood why people said they could forget where they were, and he gave me a little bite on my lower lip, and then I touched his face, felt the rigid solidity of his jaw, and he kissed me like it was his job and he wanted a raise. He made a sound when I sank my fingers into his hair, like he liked it, and I wished it would keep raining like this forever, and never stop. Until he said my name, until he whispered it against my lips three times, I didn’t come back to reality.
I opened my eyes, but my vision was unfocused.
Logan laughed. Softly, with his forehead almost resting against mine, his thumbs still on my cheeks, he laughed in that way of his that crinkled his eyes and that I had secretly collected for months like they were worth something.
They were. God, how much they were worth.
“Your name,” he said, his voice still hoarse. “I was calling you by your name.”
“Yeah.” I blinked. “I know. It’s just…”
I looked at him. With his hair completely soaked and stuck to his forehead and that expression on his face I had never seen and now couldn’t stop looking at. The rain kept falling on both of us with that absolute indifference water has, that doesn’t distinguish between the most important moment of your life and any other Tuesday.
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“Look,” I said, “I’m not… I mean, I’m not good at this. At saying things. The important things, I mean, the ones that really…” I made a vague gesture with my hand that meant nothing concrete. “You just told me a bunch of really big things and I’ve spent weeks convinced that this was all in my head and that you didn’t… that there was nothing and…” I breathed. “And right now my brain is completely fried and the words aren’t coming out in the right order.”
Logan didn’t say anything. He just looked at me.
“But I love you,” I blurted out, all at once, without elegance, without the firm voice I would have wanted. “I mean, I love you a lot. Too much, probably. For longer than I think is smart to admit out loud. And I tried to let it go, I really did, but it turns out I’m pretty bad at letting go of things that matter to me and you matter to me an amount that frankly seems excessive for my own well-being and—”
And he kissed me again. And for the first time I was glad I had parked Janis so far away.
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