Check Engine Light // John Logan x Fem!Reader - [Chapter Ten]
Synopsis: What starts as a simple repair turns into late-night diner runs, coffee deliveries to the garage, and a growing attachment neither of you expects. Logan likes that you talk too much when you're nervous. You like that Logan becomes softer when nobody’s watching.
But as pressure mounts with Logan's hockey career and real life starts pulling at you from opposite directions, you begin to wonder if you’re just a temporary stop in Logan’s fast-moving future.
And Logan realizes far too late that somewhere between oil stains and midnight drives, you became the closest thing he’s ever had to home.
Pairings: John Logan x Fem!Reader
A/N: Thank you to everyone who has been reading, reposting, and leaving comments!
Read the previous part here: read here.
Masterlist: Masterlist here.
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CHAPTER TEN
The drive back to your dorm felt longer than it should have. You kept the radio off, which probably wasn’t helping, since you had nothing to distract you from what had just happened.
Normally, after a night at Malone’s, you’d leave with a smile on your face. Sometimes you’d replay a conversation you’d had with Logan. Sometimes you’d laugh, remembering something stupid Dean said. More often than not, you’d leave with Logan and spend the night with him.
Tonight, all you could think about was the look on Logan’s face when you’d stood up from the booth. It wasn’t the irritation or even the surprise; it was the hurt. You hated that part.
You hadn’t left to punish him or because you wanted him to feel bad. You’d left because staying suddenly felt impossible. For weeks, you’d been swallowing little disappointments and brushing them away before they could become real.
Each one had seemed too small to fight about, and too small to make a big deal out of. But sitting in that booth tonight, hearing that sharp edge in his voice, something inside you had finally cracked.
Your phone buzzed when you stopped at a red light. You didn’t need to look to know it was him. Still, you waited until you were parked outside your dorm before checking. There were three texts.
Logan: Did you get back okay?
Logan: Y/N?
Logan: Can we talk?
The knot in your chest tightened. Of course, he wanted to talk. The problem was that you didn’t know what you would even say.
You typed the only honest thing you could think of.
You: yeah. I’m back.
A response came almost immediately.
Logan: Can I call?
You took a breath.
You: I’m tired.
The bubble popped up showing he was typing, and disappeared, before reappearing again.
Logan: okay
Logan: I love you.
The words hit you right in the chest. You believed them. You never doubted that Logan loved you.
You: I love you too
You set your phone on her nightstand and climbed into bed. For a long time, you stared at the ceiling. Sleep didn’t come quickly. Every time you closed your eyes, you found yourself replaying the same thought.
‘What if he doesn’t have anything left to give?’
That thought followed you into sleep.
--
The next morning felt strangely normal.
You woke up to a text from Logan.
Logan: Morning
Logan: Hope you slept okay
You stared at them while sitting up in bed. A month ago, you would’ve smiled immediately at those texts. Now, you felt something closer to sadness. You felt farther away from him than you had a month ago.
You answered anyway, and you texted throughout the morning. Nothing important, just surface-level things; as well as Dean apparently setting off a smoke alarm while trying to make breakfast.
By noon, he called. You answered on the second ring.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
His voice sounded rough. You talked briefly about what was happening that week and about an upcoming game.
Neither of you mentioned Malone’s, not once. The omission sat between you the entire time. When the call ended twelve minutes later, you stared down at your phone.
You used to regularly spend an hour on the phone without realizing it. Twelve minutes. Now, it felt like you were both rushing toward the finish line.
--
Mel noticed something was wrong on Monday. You should’ve known better than to think you’d get away with pretending.
You were sitting in a coffee shop near campus, both working on your laptops and accomplishing very little.
Mel had been watching you for nearly twenty minutes. Every time you looked up, Mel was looking at you.
Finally, Mel snapped her laptop shut.
“Okay,” Mel said.
You blinked, “What?”
“What’s going on?”
You immediately looked back at your screen.
“Nothing.”
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?” you asked.
“The thing where you stare at your phone every five minutes and pretend that you’re not doing that.”
You sighed and eventually closed your own laptop. The fight drained out of your shoulders.
“I don’t know,” you said.
Mel’s expression softened.
“What happened?” Mel asked.
For a moment, you considered giving the easy answer. Instead, you surprised yourself by telling her the truth.
“I just miss him all of the time.”
Mel frowned, “He’s your boyfriend.”
You let out a laugh, “I know. It’s just… I can be sitting right next to him, and he always feels like he’s somewhere else.”
The confession hung between you. Once it was out, you couldn’t take it back. Mel reached across the table and squeezed your hand. And for the first time in weeks, you admitted how exhausted you were, too.
--
By Tuesday, you had convinced yourself that you were being dramatic. Not completely, just enough to make yourself feel guilty. Every time you thought about Malone’s, you thought about everything Logan had on his plate: practice, games, scouts, classes, family, and the garage.
The endless stream of people who seemed to want something from him every hour of the day. Then, you’d think about the look on his face when you’d walked out of Malone’s, and you’d feel terrible all over again.
The problem was that feeling terrible didn’t make you feel better or make you less lonely. It didn’t make you miss him less.
Your phone buzzed while you were sitting in the library trying to finish an assignment.
Logan: Can you come to the garage after class?
You stared at the message. Not because you didn’t know what it meant, because you did. You had spent days carefully stepping around the thing neither of you wanted to discuss, and eventually, one of you had to force the issue. Apparently, that day had arrived.
You: okay
Logan: Around 5?
You: sure
The conversation ended there. There were no hearts, no jokes. Just a plan. The simplicity of it made knots in your stomach.
--
Logan & Sons looked exactly the same as it always did. The glowing, neon sign, the same cracked pavement in the parking lot, the same smell of oil and metal drifting from the open bay door.
You parked and checked the time; it was 4:52. You were early.
You headed inside, seeing Jeff working on a truck. He looked up when he saw you.
“Hey, Y/N,” he said.
You gave a small wave, “Hi, Jeff.”
He took one good look at your face and sighed. That wasn’t encouraging.
“That obvious?”
“Painfully.”
You gave a small laugh. Jeff set his tools down.
“He’s coming, right? I know he’s supposed to work on a car tonight,” he asked.
“Supposedly,” you said, the word slipping out before you could stop it.
Jeff’s eyebrows rose slightly, and you immediately regretted saying it. But Jeff was Logan’s brother, and probably could tell something was off.
“He’ll be here,” he said.
The certainty in his voice should have reassured you, but it just made you tired. That wasn’t really the issue anymore.
You sat on the edge of a workbench near the office while Jeff went back to work. For a while, the only sounds were music drifting through the garage speakers and the occasional clank of tools against metal as Jeff worked.
You checked the time. 5:01.
Then, 5:07. 5:12.
By 5:15, you’d stopped pretending you weren’t watching the parking lot.
At 5:18, your phone buzzed.
Logan: running late, coach kept us
You just stared at the screen. Always something, always another reason, another obligation.
You: okay
The clock ticked toward 5:30. As ridiculous as it was, you found yourself thinking about every other time that you’d waited. Standing outside the locker room after the game, showing up to movie night, checking your phone at night, waiting for him to call you, waiting for plans, and waiting for conversations that never seemed to happen anymore.
The realization made your stomach hurt, because you hadn’t even noticed you’d started keeping score.
At 5:38, you heard the familiar sound of Logan’s truck pulling into the parking lot. Your heart reacted before your brain did, and you felt the stupid, automatic flutter you’d gotten since the day they’d met.
Logan climbed out of his truck, moving fast into the building. He had spotted you immediately, his expression softening and the tension in his face easing. For a second, you remembered exactly why you fell in love with him. Then, he looked at his watch, and the moment vanished.
“Hey,” he said, reaching you and leaning down, pressing a quick kiss to your lips.
You kissed him back, out of habit. Out of love. Out of confusion.
When he pulled away, he let out a breath, “Sorry, coach kept us late.”
His hair was damp from practice, and his shoulders looked tight. He looked exhausted. Somehow, that made you angrier, because you knew exactly what came next. The explanation. The reason for what prevented him from being here. Something inside of you finally gave way.
“You’re late.”
Logan blinked; the words clearly caught him off guard.
“What?”
“You’re late.”
His expression tightened immediately. Not with anger, but confusion.
“I texted you.”
You laughed, and the sound came out sharper than you’d intended.
“Yeah.”
Now Logan frowned. The familiar defensive look appeared almost instantly.
“I don’t understand what you’re upset about.”
The sentence landed very badly. You crossed your arms.
“Really?” you asked.
“Yeah, really.”
The frustration in his voice was impossible to miss now. For the first time in weeks, neither of you backed down. You knew exactly where this conversation was headed.
For a few seconds, neither of you said anything. The tension settled heavily in the garage. Somewhere behind you, a song changed on the speakers. Jeff looked up from the truck, took one glance at your faces, and immediately disappeared into another part of the garage.
“Y/N, I texted you the second I got out of practice.”
You laughed again, the same humorless sound you’d started hating. Every time it came out of your mouth, you felt like someone you didn’t recognize.
“Do you honestly think this is about 30 minutes?”
Logan stared at you, “No. I think this is about something else, and I have no idea what it is because you won’t actually tell me.”
The words hit harder than they should have, mostly because there was some truth buried inside of them. You hadn’t told him, not really. You’d swallowed things down, ignored them. You’d made excuses for him, for yourself, and every time that something hurt, you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t important enough to bring up. Now all of it was sitting in your chest at once.
Logan scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked exhausted. The sight softened you for half of a second, but then you remembered. You remembered standing in the doorway of his house when Dean realized he had forgotten about movie night. You remembered watching Dean’s Instagram story from Malone’s.
“You forgot me.”
The words came out quietly, so quietly that Logan didn’t react at first. Then, his brow furrowed.
“What?”
“You forgot me.”
“Y/N, what are you talking about?”
You stared at him. Part of you couldn’t believe you were actually saying any of this out loud. The other part wondered why you waited so long.
“Malone’s. Movie night. The lack of calls. Texts. Conversations.”
Logan opened his mouth and closed it again. For the first time since you'd known him, he genuinely looked at a loss.
“You think I forgot about you?”
The hurt in his voice made something twist painfully in your chest. You knew how that sounded; cruel, unfair.
“Yes. No. Kind of.”
“Then what are you saying?”
You let out a shaky breath, “I’m just saying I feel like I keep ending up at the bottom of the list.”
Logan stared at you, and then actually looked angry. He wasn’t furious, he wasn’t yelling, but he looked angry. The kind of anger that came from feeling misunderstood.
“That’s not fair.”
There it was, the first real spark.
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
Logan took a step back and ran both hands through his hair.
“I’ve been trying to balance a hundred different things.”
“I know you have.”
“Do you?” he asked.
The question landed hard. Suddenly, Logan wasn’t just frustrated; he was hurt, too.
“I don’t think you do,” he added.
“What?”
“I don’t think you understand what the last few weeks have been like.”
The words were sharp enough to sting. He gestured vaguely toward the garage, and just everything.
“Every day it’s something. Practice, scouts, coaches, classes, interviews, meetings, the garage… everyone wants something from me all of the time.”
You folded your arms tighter across your chest.
“And you think I don’t know that?”
“No, I think you know it. I just don’t think you get what it feels like.”
The sentence hit you like a slap. You stared at him. Then anger arrived. Real anger.
“You’re right.”
Logan frowned.
“Y/N—”
“No, you’re absolutely right.”
You laughed once, and it was bitter.
“Because clearly the last few weeks have only been hard for you.”
His expression changed immediately, but you couldn’t stop now.
“You know what the worst part is?” you asked.
“Y/N.”
“The worst part is that I know you’re trying,” you said. Your voice cracked, “I know you are.”
You swallowed hard and then forced yourself to continue.
“Every single time something happens, I tell myself it’s not your fault. I tell myself you’re tired.”
Logan’s jaw tightened.
“Or stressed, or busy. Maybe that’s true,” you said, the anger draining, leaving something sadder behind.
“Maybe every single reason you’ve given me is completely valid.”
Logan didn’t interrupt; he just stood there listening.
“You didn’t see the look on Dean’s face when I showed up to movie night. I stood there like an idiot.”
“Y/N—”
“No. I don’t think you understand how humiliating that feels.”
The words echoed through the garage, and Logan looked stunned this time. But, you weren’t finished.
“Or seeing everyone at Malone’s because Dean posted a video. Or you snapping at me that night.”
You looked directly at him.
“I feel stupid waiting for you all the time,” you said.
The sentence landed between you. Logan didn’t look angry anymore; he looked devastated.
For a long moment, Logan didn’t say anything. The garage felt impossibly still. All of the anger that you had been carrying for days had finally come out, and now you felt exhausted.
“I didn’t know all of this,” he said quietly.
“That’s kind of the point.”
Logan looked away briefly, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
“I didn’t realize it was this bad.”
You stared at him. Part of you wanted to laugh, and another part of you wanted to cry. Instead, you just shook your head.
“How could you?” you asked.
Logan’s eyes snapped back to yours. The question clearly caught him off guard.
“You’ve been so busy trying to survive every day that I don’t think you’ve noticed anything else.”
The words weren’t meant to be cruel. Logan wanted to argue; you could see it, his instinctive defensiveness. However, he stopped. Maybe he was finally hearing you.
“I spend half of my time missing you. I miss you all the time,” you whispered. The words hit him exactly where you’d expected them to.
Once you started talking, you couldn’t stop.
“I miss talking to you. I miss hanging out with you. I miss being excited to tell you things. I miss sitting next to you without wondering if you’re actually listening.”
You saw him flinch and the guilt arrive. Logan took a slow breath.
“I’m right here.”
The words hung between them, and you closed your eyes. It was the thing you’d been terrified he would say, because you knew he believed it. You knew he meant it.
You felt tears prick behind your eyes.
“I’m saying you’re not.”
You didn’t want to hurt him. You loved him. You loved him so much. If you didn’t love him with your entire heart, none of this would matter.
“You think this is about being late today?” you wiped quickly at her eyes, “I don’t care that you’re late.”
That lie lasted half a second.
“Okay, I care a little,” you said, a small laugh escaping you, “That’s not why we’re here.”
Logan looked exhausted emotionally, like the weight of the conversation was finally settling onto his shoulders.
You took a shaky breath and then said the thing you’d been carrying for weeks. The thing you’d been terrified to admit.
“Why am I always the thing that gets forgotten?”
Just like that, everything went silent. Logan didn’t have an answer, at least not a real one. Not one that would make any of this hurt less. You watched John Logan stand there completely speechless.
The question had been sitting somewhere deep in your chest for weeks, gathering weight every time you waited for a text that never came, or every time you watched Logan get pulled away by something else. Now it was out in the open.
Eventually, Logan looked away first. He dragged a hand through his hair and turned toward the workbench behind you, bracing both palms against the metal surface.
“I don’t forget you.”
His voice was quieter now.
“You make it sound like I don’t care about you, Y/N.”
You hated that you were hurting him. You still wanted to walk across the garage and wrap your arms around him.
“I’m not saying you don’t care. I’m just tired of being understanding all the time. I’m tired of always making excuses.”
“But it’s true.”
“I know it’s true, John. I know every reason. I’ve memorized them.”
“So what? What do you want from me?” he asked quietly.
You didn’t want flowers, or more texts, or grand gestures. You just wanted him back. Not the version everyone else got, just Logan. You wanted the guy who would sit up with you until two in the morning, talking about absolutely nothing. You wanted their dinner nights back at the diner.
“I know I’ve screwed things up. I know I’ve been distracted,” he said, his voice rising slightly, “You think I wanted to forget movie night?”
You looked at him, tears welling up in your eyes again.
“I feel like I’m standing here getting ripped apart over things I already know I fucked up.”
“John—”
“I don’t know how to fix this.”
“You’re going to keep being busy. The scouts aren’t going to go away. I just feel you disappearing. I don’t know what happens now,” you whispered.
The truth was you loved each other, and you were both hurting. Neither of you knew how to bridge the distance that had grown between you.
Logan pushed away from the workbench and made his way a little closer to you.
“I kept telling myself it was temporary, and that I’d get back to normal. Then the next week came, and it was still busy.” He said.
He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated.
“Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like your girlfriend,” you said honestly, “I started feeling like somebody trying to squeeze into whatever space was left.”
“I never wanted you to feel that way,” he said honestly, more sad than anything. That was the tragedy of it. Not once had you thought that he was purposely trying to push you away.
The painful part was that intentions weren’t enough anymore. Some people could love each other completely and still end up here. What scared you most was standing here in the garage, neither of you knew how to make it better.
You wiped the tears from your eyes. Later, when you thought back on the conversation, the details blurred together. The argument itself remained painfully sharp in your memory, every word etched into your mind with clarity, but the ending felt softer somehow.
Maybe because neither of you had wanted it; maybe because there wasn’t a villain. Maybe because you were both standing there, realizing that love wasn’t fixing the problem anymore.
The sun had disappeared by the time you looked at your phone. The sight of the time startled you; you’d been talking for nearly two hours. Both of you just felt exhausted.
For a moment, neither of you spoke. Then, you picked up your bag from the workbench. The movement felt small, but it changed everything. Logan’s eyes dropped to the bag in your hand, and something shifted in his expression. Sadness. As though he knew what the gesture meant.
“I should go.”
Logan nodded once; the motion was barely visible. You thought he might tell you to stay. Instead, he looked down at the floor and shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants. It was a familiar gesture, one you’d seen a hundred times. Only this time, he looked completely defeated.
“Okay.”
That was all he said. No promises. No speech. No desperate attempt to fix everything before you reached the door. A lot of things were said tonight, and you both needed time to process them.
You took a few steps toward the open bay door and then stopped. Despite everything, you couldn’t just leave, not like this. Not after all of this.
When you turned back, Logan was exactly where you’d left him. He was standing beside the workbench, watching you. The distance between you wasn’t very far; it was maybe twenty feet.
“I love you.”
The words slipped out of your mouth before you could stop them. Logan’s eyes closed briefly. When he opened them again, you could see exactly how much those words had cost him, because he looked devastated all over again.
“I love you, too.”
His voice sounded rough, but his answer came immediately and without hesitation. You nodded lightly before forcing yourself to turn around.
The evening air felt cooler than you expected when you stepped outside. You reached your car and opened the door. You looked back one last time, and Logan was still standing in the garage, exactly where you’d left him. The sight lodged itself painfully in your chest, because he looked alone. The same way you’d felt for weeks.
You climbed into your car before you could change your mind and walk back inside. By the time you pulled out of the parking lot, he was still standing there, watching you leave.
