always with love.

Allie Hayes – the confident, beautiful, outgoing girl who managed to lock down Dean fucking DiLaurentis just by wearing a J-Lo costume at a party.

And sure, you shared the same confidence and beauty as her, but following her around like a lost puppy, literally and figuratively, only seemed to reinforce the idea that you were really just known as ‘Allie’s little sister’. The thoughts race through your head as you bike over to the hockey house, Allie insisting you come by and hang out. Music plays loudly in your headphones as you pedal down the street before arriving at the house, pulling up to the steps.

Climbing off your bike, you unbuckle your helmet, running your hands through your hair. Your back faces the front door as you take your bag out of the front basket of your bike. Taking your phone out, you pause the music, removing the headphones and putting them in your bag. Before you can lock your bike up, the front door swings open.

You turn around, seeing Logan rushing down the stairs.

“Lemme grab that for you,” he insists as you step back, hiking your bag up on your shoulder. 

“Oh hey, thanks,” you smile. You toss the lock in the basket as he effortlessly lifts the bike, walking up the stairs as you follow him. He perches your bike up against the house.

“I… haven’t seen you around lately,” Logan says, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets.

“Oh, you know with finals around the corner, studying is taking up most of my time,” you say, nervously laughing, half telling the truth.

The full truth being you’re harboring the world’s biggest crush on John Logan, and you know he’d never feel the same way about you so you’re avoiding him as much as possible in the hopes that your crush will eventually go away. A mission that’s currently failing as his brown doe eyes look into yours, captivating you.

“Huh, I can’t imagine you struggling with finals, or anything really,” he says, the compliment going straight to your heart, a confidence boost radiating through you at the idea that maybe, just maybe, he was flirting with you. A light smile crawls onto your face, the blush on your cheeks definitely noticeable.

“Well, I gotta keep that scholarship somehow, right?” you joke, trying not to blatantly flirt with him, just in case you’re misjudging this entire conversation.

“Right…” he trails off. He looks as if he’s about to say something, when the front door swings open, a mop of blonde hair peeking out behind Logan’s shoulder.

“What up Lil Hayes,” Dean says, peeking out the front door, immediately killing the moment, that same feeling of feeling small rushing over your body once again, depleting any confidence you had. Logan notices the subtle shift in your body language as you press your lips in a fine line before meeting Dean’s gaze.

“Hi Dean,” you reply.

“Allie’s looking for you,” he says, looking from you to Logan before heading back inside. Your eyebrows raise for half a second before your eyes meet Logan’s again. He turns to the side, holding his arm out, motioning to let you walk in first. You smile at him as a ‘thanks’ before he follows you in, shamelessly letting his eyes trail down your body as you walk inside.

Logan knew he liked you after your first interaction. The way your smile lit up the room, your confidence and personality had him whipped from the start. As bubbly as you were, you were a bit hard to read. He struggled to gauge how you felt about him, and the thought of ruining the friendship you had already developed scared the shit out of him, so he just felt it was better to keep these feelings to himself. In the meantime, he resorted to little flirty comments here and there, going above and beyond for you, not just to impress you.

But because he wanted to.

Clearly, he didn’t keep his feelings hidden well enough, Dean winking at him as he makes his way into the kitchen. Logan slightly shakes his head at him in confusion, walking past you and Allie on the couch, chatting about something you clearly had interest in. Your smile big and your eyes widening, him truly thinking your eyes could sparkle if they wanted to. Dean’s eyes follow Logan’s to the couch before looking back at Logan when the realization dawns on him.

Logan approaches Dean in the kitchen, questioning the very smug grin on his face. “You like Lil Hayes, don’t you,” he says, the first time those words ever leaving someone’s mouth making his heart drop into his stomach.

Logan didn’t know why, but he didn’t like the nickname. Sure, it was cute and quirky, but something about it rubbed him the wrong way. It was almost as if it made you seem like you weren’t your own person, you were just Allie’s sister. But you were so much more than that. He could tell you didn’t like it either.

The subtle way your body would tense up when you hear it, trying to hide any discomfort as you swallow down the emotions, it happening just moments ago on the porch. After he saw your negative reaction to it the first time, he made a promise to himself.

He would never call you that.

“She’s really cool and we get along, how does that mean I have a crush?” he asks Dean, trying to deflect.

“I know what it looks like to be captivated by a Hayes,” he says, a hint of humor in his voice as he continues, “And she definitely likes you too, so you should go for it,” he says, making Logan’s head whip towards Dean.

“What?” he says, unsure he heard Dean correctly. Dean just shrugs, taking a sip of Gatorade and patting Logan’s chest before heading out to the backyard where Garrett and Tucker already are, working out. Logan’s eyes find you again, laughing at something Allie said. Your eyes glance over to him, the smile staying on your face that he gladly returns, before he heads up to his room to change to join the guys for a workout.

“You so like him!!” Allie says, grabbing your hands and bouncing lightly on the couch.

“Will you keep your voice down?! And no, I don’t” you deny, the lie falling a little too easily off your lips. 

“I love you, but you are so naive if you think he doesn’t like you back,” Allie sternly says. One of the many things you admired about your sister was her bluntness to call things like she sees it. And Allie was never one to lie to anyone. About anything.

You and Allie go back and forth as Logan eventually catches your eye once more, rushing back down the stairs, before he heads to the backyard. Your eyes follow him as he walks through the living room, the cut sleeveless hoodie allowing your eyes to be blessed with the sight of his arms flexing, while he ties the red bandana behind his head as he continues walking outside.

“Yeah, that wasn’t subtle at all,” Allie sarcastically states, watching you basically eye fuck him. You look back at her, rolling your eyes, laying your body onto the back of the couch, hugging a pillow close to your chest.

“I don’t like him.” 

“Whatever you say…” 

✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧

“Thank you all for coming,” Allie says, having a presentation style hangout a few days later as Hannah, Garrett, Dean and Tucker sit around the couch watching her.

“Aren’t we missing two…? Tucker asks, looking around noticing you and Logan missing.

“No no my sweet Tuck, they are the reason we are all here right now.” Allie says very adamantly before continuing, “It’s so obvious they like each other but they’re both too scared to do anything about it. We have to intervene,” she finishes. The rest of the group looks around at each other, waiting for someone else to speak up. 

“I’m in,” Dean says, “I talked to Logan about it the other day in the kitchen and he clammed up. He totally likes her,” he says. The rest of the group nods, more than willing to help their friends out. Allie’s eyes widen in excitement.

“Exactly. I love my sister, but I also know her, she’s gonna clam up the second he makes some cute comment, which is his passive way of trying to let her know he’s into her and then that stupid voice in her head is gonna sike her out and she’s gonna shut down,” she rambles, exhaling at the end.

“Okay, so how do we do this?” Hannah asks.

“It’s gotta be something good, no inviting her to a game or any of that crap,” Garrett chimes in.

Allie smirks, “I have the perfect idea.”

✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧

“You stole her fucking bike chain??!”

Allie stands there, having not been gone 30 minutes, her hands now all greased up, a bike chain dangling in one hand, a pair of pliers in the other. “Just trust me, okay? She’s gonna get out of class, realize it’s stolen and go to the one person we all know who can fix it. We all just need to be out of the house when it happens so they’re alone when they get back here,” Allie says, a smile on her face.

The group looks at her with a mix of emotions – impressed, shocked, concerned – as Garrett checks his watch.

“Logan’s probably still at the rink,” he says, mentioning how lately he’s been staying after practices to get extra skating time.

“Perfect, she gets out of class any minute now, that’s enough time for Logan to still be there while she realizes she’s screwed and reaches out to him all ‘damsel in distress’ like. This is gonna be great you guys, trust me!” she exclaims, the group just nodding in agreement, not wanting to hurt her feelings at the extremity of her way of trying to get the two of you together. It really was sweet how she just wanted you to be happy.

✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧

Your heart sinks as you approach your bike, the chain clearly missing from your bike. Who the hell even robs someone of a bike chain? The bike route from the campus building to your place was long enough as is, having to lug a broken bike all that way definitely not an ideal situation. You sigh, eyes darting around as you try to come up with a solution.

Logan’s phone buzzes repeatedly in his hockey bag, him catching the tail end of it after his shower before rushing over to his bag. Pulling his phone out, a light smile on his face seeing your name. Then, a wave of concern. You never call him. 

“Hey, what’s up?” he asks. The panic in your voice sets alarm bells off in his head.

“Hey, sorry, are you free right now? I just got out of class and some asshat stole my bike chain. It’s a long way to my place to have to drag the bike with me. I didn’t know if you had a spare chain or anything to help me…” you trail off, sighing, embarrassed at your rambling.

“I’m actually still at the rink, I don’t have any tools or anything with me, but I can come by and take a look at it,” he offers. He grins, hearing the sigh of relief that came from the other end of the call.

“You’re a lifesaver,” you say, telling him which building you’re at before the calls ends. Logan arrives about ten minutes later, the sad look on your face making his heart ache before that look turns into your face brightening up when you see him. You greet each other before he takes a look at the bike.

“Yep… It’s definitely missing,” he says, a hint of sarcasm in his voice as you look down at him blankly, trying not to laugh. “Wow, thanks” you reply sarcastically, crossing your arms.

“It’s weird, it looks like it was yanked it out with pliers or something,” he says, confused.

“Yeah, who steals a fucking bike chain?” you rhetorically ask, rubbing your hands over your face, this being the last thing you need right now. The tense sigh that leaves your lips catches Logan’s attention, him standing up, wiping his hands before coming up to you. Your hands go back down to your sides as he speaks.

“Hey, we’ll figure it out. We can just take the bike to the hockey house, I’ll stop by the shop on our way to get a chain and it’ll be as good as new,” he reassures you, a light smile arriving on your face, incredibly thankful for his willingness to help you.

“There’s that pretty smile. Alright, let’s go,” he says, turning his back to you to grab the bike and put it in the bed of his truck.

Your brain nearly malfunctions, replaying that in your head, making sure you heard him correctly. He pulls the passenger door open for you. You hop in and before he can shut the door, you turn your body towards him. “Thank you so much, seriously, I owe you,” you say sincerely. 

“I’d help you any time,” he replies, closing the door gently, the butterflies swarming inside your stomach.

✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧

One new bike chain later and you and Logan are sitting on the hockey house couch facing each other, the conversation flowing effortlessly. Your elbow is perched on the top of the couch, your head resting in the palm of your hand as Logan’s arm is sprawled across the top of the couch, his fingers dangerously close to your arm.

“I don’t know that we’ve ever hung out just the two of us… It’s nice,” you admit, his eyes softer than ever as he looks at you.

“It is nice,” he reaffirms, adjusting his arm as his hand gets even closer to you. Your eyes flicker down to his hand before quickly making eye contact with him again. The tension in the air feels incredibly thick, you both soaking in the moment.

“You are so beautiful,” he says, the intention in his voice clearer than ever, all the negative thoughts swarming in your head dissipating as you look down shyly, a blush creeping up on your cheeks, smiling as you look back at him.

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Before you can come back with any self-deprecating comments hidden inside a joke, Logan continues,

“I know sometimes it can feel like you’re living in your sister’s shadow. But I want you to know that I see you for you. And I think you’re incredible,” he finishes, the warm feeling in your body radiating all throughout as your eyes slightly well up, lightly smiling at him.

“Thank you,” you say, your eyes telling a much larger story. And Logan was an expert in reading.

Logan’s position on the couch changes, him still facing you as he sits up, scooting even closer to you. You sit up too, the air getting heavier as he leans in slightly, gauging your reaction. Your eyes flicker from his eyes to his lips as Logan leans in, connecting your lips.

Describing the kiss as fireworks would be an understatement, his hand coming up to hold your face as you lean into him, deepening the kiss. His other hand finds your waist, pulling you in even closer, your hand placing itself on his shoulder, slowly trailing down to his arm, squeezing his bicep, taking full advantage of the opportunity.

Smiling into the kiss, you slowly pull away, giggling lightly. Fighting the smiles growing on your faces was a lost cause, the both of you feeling giddy like kids again.

A smack on the window snaps the two of you out your bliss, your heads whipping over to the window, catching several heads quickly ducking, including a very delayed duck by a bright blonde mop of hair. You stare in bewilderment,

“Are they fucking watching us?!”

✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ*✧

It was your grandma’s camera, a gift she gave herself back then. You stole a quick peek at her, only to meet her eyes already twinkling with approval that made you even more excited. She gave you an encouraging nod, and then it happened.

There was pure fascination as you turned on the small device—that you soon realized was too heavy and too big for a five year old to be holding—and pressed the small button that triggered the flash as it captured the whole living room. The result left you in bewilderment. While the photo remained still, the room kept moving. Your cousins were talking, the adults were sharing a drink, kids your age were still running around the house, and the lights were blinking in the same pattern. But you and the photo staring back at you from the camera remained still.

The initial bewilderment changed to awe and that awe grew to something you love: a hobby you spent most of your time doing. And ever since then, working behind the cameras has been your most favorite thing to do. What was once a hobby eventually turned into a program you chose in college and suddenly, it was your whole life.

Because, how amazing it was to see a single photo, but it could tell a lot of different stories at the same time?

Your love for photography also became a part of your extracurricular activities when you became one of the photojournalists of Briar University’s journalism club when you applied during your freshman year. You cover different events ranging from sports, academics, musical showcases, theatrical plays, and even parties Dean and Beau love to throw every now and then. Though, the last one wasn’t the kind of media your journalism adviser would like to see in newspapers or social media accounts, you sure enjoy capturing moments when people are not paying attention. When the world is moving and you have to stand still in the middle of it to savor what is happening and forever store it in your camera.

You found a sense of adoration and beauty in it. It was your very kind of poetry. If for Justin, it was in the way he wrote his songs; if for Allie, it was in the way the stage embraced her talent; if for Hannah, it was in every ounce of emotion and vulnerability she poured in singing; and if for Garrett, it's in the ice rink and the adrenaline it made him feel; for you, it was this—the silent shutter of the camera in a rather loud and fast pacing world.

Because while everyone else was busy living their lives aloud—laughing, fighting, talking—you were observing quietly, hiding behind your camera, the blinding flash of it, the shutter sound it makes, and the continuous click of the small button that captures frame after frame.

It’s not like you hate catching the attention of your audience, or that you hate when people look directly at your lens, or that you hate doing planned photographs. But you learned early on that people change when they know they’re being watched; their posture practiced, their smile instantly too wide, asking if they look a bit much or a bit less, or sometimes, they turn away altogether. But if you stay still enough, if you become a presence that blends with the wind carrying a lens, they will let you do your thing while you let them do theirs without any mask.

And you enjoy it, people enjoy it. The members of journalism praise you for capturing the best moments. The subject of your photos during different events asking for a copy for their own use because it should be posted too outside Briar’s official account and sent to their families and friends. The praise was just a bonus because you loved doing it and you promised yourself that you’ll never let the praises get inside your head.

But most of all, you love how it allows you to admire someone without giving away so much of yourself.

“Job well done, ma’am. Did you take a good shot of me earlier?” You jolted from your seat when Dean unexpectedly appeared from behind you and slung his arm around your shoulders, peeking over at your laptop as you finished transferring files from your camera that you covered earlier during their game and the afterparty at Malone’s.

“Jesus, Di Laurentis! Why can’t you be normal and appear without giving me a fucking heart attack?” Dean laughed as he straightened his posture before getting distracted when he saw himself on the screen of your laptop. “Wait! I like this one! Please, post this one. Allie will love it.”

You’re currently at their place off campus after having a blast at Malone’s. They just won another game against Eastwood and the energy just kept rolling and was brought to the diner until Della literally had to push everyone outside. You didn’t bother going back to the dorms at Bristol’s since Hannah and Allie practically dragged you with them to the house, drunk and ready to call it a night.

Tucker was sleeping peacefully beside you, who kindly offered you his room for the night despite your protests. You knew you won’t be sleeping soon since you still have to edit the raw photos from the game earlier and Tucker deserved to sleep peacefully inside the comfort of his room. But his Mama didn’t raise him like that, he said. Still, from his room, you ended up joining him in the common area where Dean is currently giving you hums and nods of approval of your shots. Logan also told you that you can sleep in his room, you can take his bed and he’ll sleep on the floor. But you can’t stay with him, especially not with your camera and laptop that’s been keeping your secret safe for so long.

“Oh, Logan totally ate here! Look, you captured every single moment of his goal perfectly.” While Dean was still busy assessing your photos, pointing out the best ones and the funny ones, your mind started drifting elsewhere at the mention of his name.

John Logan.

The man with the number 22 on his back whenever he’s on ice, the man carrying the red toolbox whenever he needs to fix things, the man whose arms always wrapped protectively around his sibling’s shoulders, the man who’s always ready to help carry your heavy equipment whenever you have events, and the man who occupied not only the storage of your camera but also the space in your mind ever since you met him almost three years ago.

And it was all because of your camera.

It all started during Briar U’s Freshmen Day and you were busy setting up your camera when someone accidentally took out your entire setup with a stray foam hockey puck—that travels with a frightening speed—straight from the athletic department’s promotional booth.

You had just carefully leveled your tripod on the campus quad, dialing in the settings on your brand-new DSLR you gifted yourself, when a loud, panicked voice yelled not too far from where you were standing, “Heads up!” Before you could even make sense of what’s happening or where the voice even came from, a piece of orange foam smacked directly into your lens hood. The impact wasn't enough to break anything, fortunately, but it sent your tripod spinning. Your eyes widened in panic as your body twisted in the direction of the puck and your camera. Automatically, your hand reached to save the expensive equipment and in an instant, you lunged forward, tripped over your own camera bag, and fell.

When you looked up, a pair of muddy, dirty sneakers and the hem of faded blue jeans met your line of vision. A crease on your forehead immediately formed as you felt your cheeks heating up. But no, it’s not because you were embarrassed, it’s because you were furious. Clearly, whoever that person was who sent your setup flying to the ground with the puck, and you with it, wasn’t being careful.

“Oh, shit! I am so, so sorry. Please tell me you’re alive.” You squinted up into the blinding September sun with your hand trying to cover your eyes, breathing out a sigh of frustration that soon turned into a silent gasp when you got a good look at the person.

Kneeling down in front of you was a guy you thought just fell from your favorite romantic book. His messy and fluffy dark hair swaying like a curtain that frames his face perfectly, his stupidly mesmerizing brown eyes glinting with both amusement and concern, his cheeks are dusted with a hint of flush—from embarrassment or heat of the sun, you’re not entirely certain, and he’s flashing you a smile too easy for the disaster he just caused. 

The camera!

And that snapped you out of your thoughts, gasping and scrambling to your feet to check your DSLR. “Fuck, my camera.”

But before your hand could make contact with the device, the guy quickly but carefully picked up the tripod and handed it to you like the action in itself was an apology. You quickly snatched the equipment from him, rather with force, and meticulously searched the lens with the rest of the parts. When you made sure that the camera wasn't damaged, you turned toward the guy, who’s patiently waiting for you to notice him, and glared. He raised his arms and offered a sheepish smile this time. “Hey, I am really sorry. Garrett, my friend, dared me if I could hit the tree from fifty yards away and I guess, my aim was a little .. off?”

“Right, hockey puck guy. And I guess that makes you a very, very qualified hockey player, yes?” You grumbled sarcastically while rolling your eyes, setting up the tripod once again and expertly fixing the settings, completely ignoring the presence behind you. This earned you a snicker from him and that earned him another sharp glare from you.

“Woah, hockey puck guy has a name and it’s John Logan.” He held out his hand, expecting you to give him your name in return like the rest of the girls he met that week. But when you just stared at his hand, annoyance still clear on your face, he only grinned. That’s when he noticed a nametag on your left chest, your name written in a funny font. You noticed him staring at it, which prompted you to cover it with your hands as his grin widened. “So, that is your name. Gorgeous.”

“Okay, hockey puck guy has a name and it’s John Logan, you got my name, we made sure my camera is okay, I’ve set it up again, you said sorry, apology accepted, and I have things to do, what else do you want from me?” You didn’t know how your voice reached the booth where Logan came from since you’re sure it was at a normal level, but you heard a blonde guy and a man wearing a pink apron hollering from their booth, “Yeah, Logan, what do you want from her?”. Yet, the moment you raised an eyebrow at them, they immediately closed their mouths and turned their backs on you, while one of them, which you assumed was Garrett, gave you an encouraging thumbs up.

“Ignore them. They are a bunch of kids.” This time, you gave him your full attention. Meaning, he is now at the receiving end of your deathly glare. Logan really finds everything amusing, and he’s wondering if it’s possible to glare at someone with so much passion because that’s what you’re doing now.

“Alright, I do really feel bad for what happened so please, allow me to make up for my terrible aim. That being said, I am officially volunteering to be your personal muse for today and I will abandon my hockey booth just for you. Do you need photos? I am your guy because if you haven’t noticed yet, I am highly photogenic.” And to make his point, he did random poses with the foam hockey puck, with his jersey, and even made faces which contradict being photogenic. This almost made you laugh because he looked ridiculous doing so, but you instantly composed yourself.

“Logan, right? Okay, Logan, I appreciate the poses, but my assignment for today is candid photography and not sports modeling.” You tried to sound uninterested, bored even. However, you noticed how your voice shook when you said his name the second time, your heart suddenly doing weird thumping rhythms against your ribs. There’s no denying that Logan is truly and utterly attractive, but he didn’t need to know what he’s already aware of. 

“Oh, that’s perfect. I can do that.” He insisted and true to his words, he linger in your booth totally abandoning his very own one. The guy who gave you thumbs up earlier, which you correctly guessed as Garrett, even came up and gladly gave Logan the permission to be your personal muse—assistant, actually—for the day. And for the past two hours? You confirmed that Logan both can and can’t do candid things, depending on the situation.

Another two hours passed and this time, it was you going around campus to capture the activities prepared by the students themselves. Logan was just tailing behind you, carrying your equipment while saying hi to the people you and him passed by, which are mostly girls—that you soon learned are called the puck bunnies.

Sometimes, when you have your camera up and ready to take candid shots of the events in your surrounding, Logan’s face would suddenly pop into the frame. That will either draw an exhausted or entertained reaction from you.

There were shots of him where he was being completely normal, photogenic. But most of it? You didn’t even want to describe. The a capella group booth? You did a good job framing everyone in the shot. Except, Logan was suddenly behind one of the alto singers, his hands clasped together and looking at the maestro with so much focus. The cheerleading squad doing stunts in the oval? You captured the timing perfectly when they tossed the cheerleader up in the air and then there’s Logan, who just did a jump shot with both his arms stretched out. Then a photo of their booth, where Tucker is currently giving a masterclass of some sort to the interested student, except, yes, except, Logan is beside his friend acting attentive, but his hand is very busy and very actively doing evil works above Tucker’s head.

When you finally returned to your booth to take a rest and to review your shots, you let out a laugh as Logan handed you a bottle of water that he already had open which you blindly reached for before he gently guided your hand to it. “Alright, ma’am, hydrate yourself first.” 

“Logan, you completely ruined my photos!” You laughed once again, but it’s more delightful this time. Your eyes are still studying the photos, your finger is busy clicking the small button beside the small screen, and you are entirely unaware of your surroundings, already lost in your bubble. 

The sound of your laughter also drew a smile on Logan’s lips, chugging his own bottled water while stealing glances at your face. He couldn’t help but think how natural you are acting toward him. It wasn’t something bad and he wasn’t sure if it’s good either. Maybe he wasn’t just used to this anymore and it’s refreshing. Girls fawn over him because he’s a hockey player, popular, good-looking, an instant boost in their social status, but even after knowing these things the past four hours you’ve spent together, you treat him just the same.

“I mean, look at this! You just made a face while Coach Jensen was lecturing the team earlier!” That brought him back to the present, wiping the side of his mouth as he got reminded of copying their coach while he was just literally behind him.

“Nope, I didn’t ruin anything. I added a new flavor to your techniques.” Logan jokingly corrected and walked the short distance to where you were sitting and peek over your shoulder at the playback screen. The proximity almost made you jump, but you condition yourself to stay calm even though the closeness is slowly making your heart beat rapidly just like what happened earlier. You could smell his cologne, fresh like citrus with a hint of sandalwood and felt his breath fanning beside your cheeks as he spoke, “See? Your shot was so good I looked like an art. Knew it, I belong in the gallery.”

“Nope.” You said, mimicking him, trying your best to stay grounded. “It belongs here in my camera because anyone who sees it will be traumatized.”

“Wow, we just met a few hours ago and here you are hurting my feelings.” A playful chuckle bubbled inside you and was about to throw in another remark but decided to stay silent at the last minute and smiled instead. But Logan took your silence seriously, as he scrambled to sit beside you. He stole your camera from your hand and turned it off, carefully placing it in your bag after capping the lens. And all of a sudden, he seemed so shy under your confused gaze.

“Look, to fully make it up to you, from the foam puck incident to ruining your photos, can I buy you a drink? We can go to Malone’s. What do you say?” You paused and looked intently at his ridiculous, hopeful smile, then at your bag that appeared to be small atop Logan’s lap, and got reminded of the things he did for you today. Even the most unhinged one like photobombing your shots. “Please?”

“Alright, fine.” You sighed in surrender, packing up the rest of your things and watched as Logan rose to his feet with a triumphant fist in the air. “But hey, I was just joking earlier. You didn’t ruin any of my photos. If anything, you made my freshmen day memorable. So, thank you. But! I am gonna have to ask to stay ten feet away from my camera from now on.”

“Okay, okay, that’s fair.” You started walking after asking someone to cover for you for a few hours, with Logan easily falling into step just beside you. And naturally, he took your things from you and carried it himself without even asking you. As if he had done it multiple times in the past even though you only met him today. “But just so you know, the camera loves me. Your camera loves me and you're gonna have a hard time keeping me out of the frame.”

You and Logan reached Malone’s and spent the rest of the afternoon talking. Everything just fell into place in its own way. Fitting, not awkward, comforting, but also thrilling at the same time. And both of you have no idea yet about how right he was about his last statement.

You’re gonna have a hard time keeping me out of the frame.

And sure enough, you spent the next years keeping him in it.

“Hey, you okay?” You snapped your head up toward Dean’s direction and soon realized that you spaced out, his elbow nudging you gently. He’s now holding a glass of water with one hand and the other a bottle of beer. But instead of behind you, he’s now occupied the seat beside you. He passed you the glass of water, in which you said thanks before taking a sip. “Gotta keep you hydrated. Logan will kill me if he learns that I find you awake and didn’t even offer you anything to keep you hydrated.”

“Yeah, he’s very keen on turning me into this online game character, watergirl.” You joked as you keep scrolling, categorizing, and watermarking the photos you’ll soon upload on the university’s website and social media accounts. Making sure that the best ones are chosen carefully while the rest are saved if the students requested for a copy. “How’s Allie, by the way? She was so drunk when we left Malone’s.”

Dean smiled at your question, remembering how he carried Allie earlier and mentioning how they looked like a married couple. “She’s fine. Peacefully sleeping on my bed while reciting random lines from Drunk Shakespeare. I’m scared of her sometimes, you know? She’s—that photo of Tucker is impressive, let me mark this one, can’t miss it—yeah, as I was saying, she’s making me lose my shit with just a smile and that’s fucking terrifying for me and—Logan is so fucking hopeless.”

Surprise etched on your face at the sudden change of topic to Logan. You glanced at Dean and then back at your laptop screen, trying to make sense of what’s going on. Then he pointed at three of the photos and when you observed what’s in it, you immediately understood what he meant.

Photos you took at Malone’s. Photos you took from the entrance with a clear vision of the bar and the small stage at the center. Three photos that appeared to be identical until you saw the shift in Logan’s facial expression. Because in the photo, he was at the side of the stage. At first, he was having a blast and cheering for Tucker; the second one, he was looking over at the bar where you left Hannah and Garrett to spend their time together; and the last one, he got this frown plastered on his face.

Then, it slowly dawned on you.

Dean is also aware of Logan’s one-sided feelings.

“How long have you known?” You silently asked, your voice shaking a little at the end. For the longest time, you thought you’re the only one who knows since everyone seemed to be clueless about it. Logan is really good at hiding his emotions. Before anyone else could figure him out, he’s already way ahead and moved on or at least, he tries to. But your camera, like your own version of a mask to hide yourself and your own feelings, always captures the moments when Logan is looking at Hannah, with or without Garrett.

“Logan’s feelings for you?”

“Yes—what?! Di Laurentis, what the fuck?!” And if that wasn’t enough confusion and surprise for the night, another figure in the form of Tucker appeared from your other side, exhaustion evident in his eyes but he decided that listening and joining in on your conversation with Dean is suddenly very appealing than falling back to his previous slumber.

“Yes, Logan’s feelings for you. Let’s talk about it.” Tucker rubbed at his right eye like a baby, while the other one was blinking at you slowly.

“What—oh, my, you two. Let’s not read too much into my friendship with Logan because he doesn’t have any feelings for me. Not in that way.” Dean and Tucker stared at each other, as if asking themselves if you’re being serious. Then at the same time, they turned to look at you, as if they were asking you the same thing this time.

“Be for real.” The way that they are so in sync almost spook you if it weren’t for the fact that they seemed to know something you don’t. Or that it’s giving you hope and you didn’t want that. Especially if it’s not directly coming from Logan, especially if it could potentially ruin something so precious.

“I’ve known since she first attended our game.” Tucker said, stealing your laptop from your lap to check out the photos himself. He unmarked the photo of him that Dean just saved earlier and chose a funny one of the latter in replacement.

“I've known since day one.” This time, it was yours and Tucker’s turn to look at Dean rather incredulously. He got this proud look on his face as if he just decoded the answer to the country’s greatest national treasure. “What? Come on, Tuck! I’ll understand if our beautiful friend right here doesn’t see it, but haven’t you really noticed the way Logan is always tailing her like a lost puppy ever since they met during Freshmen Day? At this point, he’s become the second shadow of her figure.”

Gears seemed to be twisting and turning inside Tucker’s head as he focused his gaze on you. Your laptop was now left deserted on the center table as he made sense of what Dean just said. “You’re onto something here, D, because I remembered Logan asking if she’s going to cover the first game for that semester.”

“Right? And he never played so well his entire hockey career when he saw her behind our bench taking photos. Dude scored 2 goals and secured our win.”

Dean also pointed out that one event organized by music major students which Logan was too lazy to attend even though Hannah and Garrett asked them to volunteer. Yet, the moment he saw a photo of you with Birdie posted by Jules on The Fifth Line page with the caption, “The artist and her muse?” Logan drove back to the university at an impossible speed and looked for Jules just to say, “Excuse me but I am her first and only muse.”

Tucker also pitched in his observations and before you know it, they are fully discussing your ‘friendship’ with Logan without filter and how you guys are not just friends as if you’re not present in the room with them. You couldn’t deny that they are making a fair point, but as much as you want to believe them, your photos are literally staring back at you. The sequence of Logan’s change of emotions and facial expressions whenever he sees Hannah are too obvious to ignore. And the most shattering part? This is not the only evidence you have, because you got tons of it.

You breathed out a sigh unconsciously as Dean’s and Tucker’s voice faded into distance.

For years, you find comfort in every click of your camera and the way the photos freeze in time. It even got to a point that your camera became an extension of your nervous system. You’ve learned that if you’re anxious, the framing is always slightly tilted to the side; if you’re sad and down, you avoid having humans in your photos because in that way, no stories could be told; and for almost three years that you’re in love, the focus was entirely on Logan.

You had tons of photos of him. Him laughing at a crowded party with Tucker pushing his whole body on the sofa. Him mid-air on the ice, a fierce focus and determination plastered on his face that his head gear couldn’t hide. There was a photo of him sitting on the hood of his car at the beach, a summer getaway with your friends, the sun behind him creating a halo over his head and turning his hair a shade lighter. Your camera bears witness to the feelings you’ve buried and every snap was a quiet confession you never dared to say out loud. So you did the easiest thing—frame him and make him the masterpiece of your own gallery: your heart.

Yet like a double-edged sword, your camera grants you to hide your feelings while it also shows you reality. And that was how you figured it out.

You and some of the journalism club members were spending the night, once again, in your designated office, tweaking raw files, editing online newspaper layout, and writing headlines and captions, immersing yourselves in the comfort it provides. However, there’s something you’ve noticed the past three nights that you’ve been there.

A devastating pattern your photos showed you.

It started with a photo during their game. You stood up from where you were sitting with Allie and Hannah to find a good spot because you noticed that Logan was making a move to score a goal and you didn’t want to miss the moment. And sure enough, he did. You were so proud of that series of shots because you perfectly captured Logan’s winning goal followed by him sending an arrow celebration to the crowd, directly to where Hannah was clapping and screaming in joy.

Once you observed the photo, you pulled up folder after folder, going through your archives as curiosity drove you to check your photos of Logan. 

There was a photo during your group hangout at Malone’s. Garrett was telling a story about his date with Hannah with the latter responding with an angelic laugh. You were directly seated on the same side of the booth with them, pressed against the wall with Logan standing beside them at the aisle. This gave you a perfect view of the couple and unfortunately, Logan’s reaction. There was a soft smile on his lips, but there was something in his eyes that you can’t quite figure out.

Then a bonfire by the lake during Friendsgiving. Logan and Tucker disappeared inside the rented house to get more food and left you sitting with Hannah, Garrett, Allie, and Dean. You thought that the angle from your side was a bit off so you stood up and walked toward a tree not far from them, just enough to frame the bonfire and the two couples acting so lovely. There was the shutter of your camera and Logan’s perfect timing to appear once again, his confused eyes immediately landing on Garrett and Hannah.

Then comes the latest one, a party at Beau’s home. Logan was in the living room talking to Tucker and Birdie, a red cup in his hands that he chugged down in one swing. He looked extremely good under the lights so you raised your camera, adjusting the lens, and ready to freeze the moment when Logan moved. He spun toward the kitchen’s doorway where you left Hannah a moment ago, waiting for Garrett. You noticed that her boyfriend was already standing behind her, and you turned to check the digital preview of your shot just to see Logan already frowning.

You stopped scrolling, you stopped comparing the moments, you closed the folders, bid good night to your fellow journalists, and packed up your things. It was cold outside when you stepped out of the building despite the thick coat you were wearing, but there was nothing colder than the newfound information that made home in your mind. That you weren't the only one hiding behind a lens to cover the fact that you’re hopelessly in love. Because Logan was doing the exact same thing with his own eyes. The only difference was, your camera captured everything—including the fact that he would never see you, because he was too busy watching her while you were looking at him.

And for the first time in years, the comfort you find in every click of your camera became a sound of the slow and quiet breaking of your own heart.

The present only settles once again when you smelled something close to a beef soup and saw that Tucker prepared three cups of instant ramen, which you’re not sure if they are even allowed to eat. Dean carefully handed you your own cup, a bit of smoke escaping the slightly opened lid, and let the heat warm up your hands. And then you realized something, they are still talking about you and Logan.

“Tucker, you are a genius! Because there was one time during—”

“Guys, in case you forgot, which I know you didn’t, I’m still here. And I’m telling you, Logan doesn’t see me that way.” You stared at both of them, fully opening the lid of the ramen and cautiously sipping the hot broth as your friends started doing the same thing. Dean slurped at the noodles, only to regret it right away when he spat it back to his cup. You and Tucker shared a disgusted look, but your friend is too busy eating and too busy thinking to even pay attention to you both.

You thought that the conversation would end there, the three of you sharing a hot, comforting, and much needed midnight snack in the living room. But the universe decided otherwise. Because just when Dean finished his food, a bit red due to the heat with sweat covering his forehead, he blurted out something that made you choke.

“Alright, bestie, let’s say Logan is not totally and utterly and hopelessly and disgustingly in love with you, how are you going to explain the folder in your laptop that said ‘the muse’ with hundreds of Logan’s photos?” It was your turn to get flushed, but you’re sure it wasn’t because of the ramen you’re eating. It wasn’t because it was slightly spicy, no. It’s because they caught you. Your secret.

You could’ve easily denied it, but there’s no way you could’ve hidden the way you froze. Your hand mid-air, the noodles dangling from your fork, your mouth slightly open, and the way your eyes darted around the room, downright ignoring your friends, gave it away. You put down the cup beside your laptop to properly look at Dean and Tucker. There was no judgment in their eyes, the playfulness gone as well. They are just present and gazing at you with understanding. As if telling you that they also know and that your secret is safe with them.

“Well, there’s really no explanation for it. It’s there and you know, Logan isn’t exactly hard to like. And even if there is an explanation, I’m not going to explain it to you, D. Maybe to Tucker, yes.” Dean gasped at your words and clutched at his chest, mouth opened wide in fake offense while Tucker raised his brow at his friend proudly, raising his hand to high-five you.

The night continued on like that. The three of you joking around, throwing banters here and there, you showing them the Logan folder and telling random stories that you’ve witnessed while taking them. Eventually, it became a night of throwbacks as you pulled up your archives and reminisced the past three years you’ve spent with them.

The clock strikes at four AM and all three of you decide that it’s time to sleep. They helped you pack your things and cleaned up the cups of ramen after. Once everything is at their specific places, Tucker told you to go and occupy his room but you only shook your head.

“Tuck, it’s okay. Take your room, I’ll crash at Logan’s. Although maybe my camera and laptop could stay in your room? I mean, I know Logan wouldn’t snoop into my things, I trust him. But yeah, I don’t want to take my chances.” Tucker gave you an ‘Are you sure?’ look, but when he saw that you’re being serious, he nodded and took your things with him. When you turned around to finally go up, you bumped into Dean who got a teasing grin on his lips, eyes twinkling with mischief.

“Oooh, she’s going to sleep in Logan’s room. Are we going to hear some—” He didn’t get the chance to finish what he was about to say when you elbowed him at his side, walking past him and toward the stairs. You heard him mumbling something to Tucker but the moment he saw you looking, he just smiled and gestured for you to keep going.

Once you all made it on the second floor, you all bid each other good night. Tucker was the first to disappear inside his room still carrying your equipment but not before giving you a hug. “Sorry for prying into your folders. We shouldn’t have opened it since we already know that it’s Logan’s. But promise, we won’t tell him. So proud of you today. Your photos are outstanding, like always.”

You smiled at his words and returned the hug, patting his back in the process and sent him to his room. You were about to do the same until Dean called out for you, his head peeking from behind his door.

“Hey, there’s no denying that you are incredibly good at capturing genuine feelings in your photos. It shows, and I wish I have the same talent. But maybe you’re missing something in Logan's photos? What I meant to say is, just—just try not to hide too much behind your camera, okay? I know you love it and we do too, but don’t forget to live in the moment as well. Good night, bestie!” He already closed his door before you could even ask what he meant, his words replayed in your mind in a loop. You didn’t dare to ponder too much about it, though you might have an idea, because you felt the exhaustion catching up on you and decided to think about it once you have the energy.

The moment you made it inside Logan’s room, you saw him peacefully sleeping under his covers. His bed is enough to fit two people and you could easily sleep beside him, but you decided to choose the safe option. So, you took two blankets from his cabinet, stole one of his pillows, and sat on the floor just beside his bed to look at him once more.

He was hugging a pillow and his body is facing you so you have a clear vision of his face that is illuminated by the moonlight peeking from the window. He looks so beautiful like this. Sleeping so serene without a care in the world. You smiled as you felt your eyelids getting heavier and with one last glance at Logan, you lay down on the floor and turned your back on him, muttering a silent good night—a picture of his calm resting figure the last thing you saved in the space of your mind before you drifted off to sleep.

The smell of Logan’s cologne greeted your senses when you woke up, followed by the comfortable and fluffy feeling beneath your body. You blinked against the morning sun and stretched your arms, becoming aware of the fact that you were buried under a thick, navy-blue comforter rather than the blankets you wrapped around yourself with last night. You were pretty sure that you passed out on the floor. Not unless you crawled all the way up to his bed last night.

Before you could fully process the confusion of how you got up there, the bedroom door slowly opened and Logan’s head appeared, his wide and cautious eyes directly landing on you as if to check if you’re still sleeping. When he saw that you’re already awake, though still a bit out of it, an easy smile graced his lips as he walked in. Then you notice the paper bag he was carrying. The mouth-watering scent registered in your mind and with one look at Logan, you quickly catch on that he bought your favorite food.

“Look who’s alive.” His grin widened when you made space for him on his bed, silently inviting him to sit beside you. He handed you the brown paper bag and helped you with the food, setting the drink on his nightstand after telling you to take a big sip. “Good morning, ma’am. You look good.”

“Yeah? I probably looked like a mess right now, but thank you?” You laughed at his words, taking a bite of your meal. Logan just waved it off and urged you to eat while he scrolled at his phone. “Also, you should really stop calling me ‘ma’am’. Even Dean is calling me that.”

“Well, you are the boss in this dynamic and I’m just happy to follow your lead. And believe me, D is calling you that just to tease you.” Logan replied without even looking at you, still busy using his phone, as if what he just said didn’t hit you in a whole different way. As if you shouldn’t be saying such a thing because it’s obvious, like both of you have already established that a long time ago. But at that moment, for you, he just basically admitted something beyond his words. And suddenly, you were reminded of what Dean told you last night.

Maybe you’re missing something in Logan’s photos.

Try not to hide too much behind your camera.

Don’t forget to live in the moment.

You don’t want to overthink it, you don’t want to make something out of pure observation, you don’t want to give meaning into his words especially after what they mentioned to you last night. You don’t want to believe their words, not when your photos show an entirely opposite thing.

Logan has feelings for you, Tucker and Dean said.

Logan is always looking at Hannah, what your camera captured for you.

You couldn’t even bring yourself to develop any kind of negative feelings toward Hannah. The girl is very kind and she helps you out a lot if you have events and vice versa. She made sure that your ‘Welcome Back to Uni’ video for last year’s semester has good and upbeat music and you were always the one she calls to film her music videos with. You’ve always been present in each other’s lives since Logan introduced you to her and there’s no way you could hate her.

You shake off the thoughts in your head and focus on the present.

Live in the moment.

Logan is still beside you, but you noticed that he’s closer now. His leg is touching yours, his body leaning on you that you could feel the heat radiating off of him. He tilted his head until it landed on your upper arm, a soft sigh escaping his lips at the contact.

The proximity isn’t something new between you and Logan. After hanging out with him a couple times, you’ve learned that he’s rather clingy when he becomes comfortable.

At the hockey house during movie night? He’d plant himself beside you just to pull you against him. Or sometimes, he’d make you his personal pillow and will lay his head on your thighs. Whenever you have university events to cover? He always had his arms around your shoulders when you’re not taking photos, or he’d play with your fingers while you’re checking your images. And even when he’s carrying your equipment, he’d still find a way to stay close to you. At parties? He will always place his warm hands over your hips or waist whenever someone is standing too close for your own comfort. And even if it’s just the two of you, his body will just automatically cling to you like a magnet.

But just because it’s not new doesn’t mean it makes you feel normal. No, you’re far from feeling normal. You even got to a point that you feel like the closeness will be the death of you because your heart rate always spikes up. You seemed calm outside, a relaxed smile on your face, joking around with your friends, but inside? A total chaos. And that’s happening right now.

Logan appears to be unaware of this since he just stole a bite of your breakfast by bringing your hand with the food to his mouth and took a gulp from your beverage that you’ve been drinking. Given, he was the one who bought it and maybe he intends to have it shared, the whole thing just happened so naturally it almost gave you a heart attack. So before it could actually happen, you tried to focus on something else.

“Hey, did you carry me onto your bed?” You cautiously asked, trying to stabilize your voice.

“Yeah. Well, actually, you kinda did it yourself when I was about to. I think you felt my arms because you literally said, ‘Logan, leave me alone’, but still let me guide you toward my bed anyway.” Logan chuckled at the memory as he copied you and you raised your eyebrow at his overexaggerated execution of what happened, a sarcastic smile on your lips. “But no, even if you tell me to leave you, I won’t. The floor is bad for your back so, yeah.”

“Then I guess that deserves a, ‘thank you, Logan’.”

“Always, ma’am.” He shrugged casually, his attention back on his phone even though there was a satisfied gleam in his eyes. He didn’t dwell on it though, and instead watched the video currently playing on his screen. But not even a minute passed, he locked his phone and glanced up at you. “By the way, where are your camera and laptop? You didn’t leave them in my room so I assumed it was downstairs, but I didn’t find them.”

The question caught you off-guard. You took a moment to let the question hang in the air, diverting your attention to the last of your food. It wasn’t like you’re planning to lie to him or avoid the question altogether. However, lately, Logan is always eager to see your photos of him. But due to the amount of it that you haven’t let him see, it’s getting harder and harder for you to hide the folders. Especially when he borrows your laptop to send himself a copy of the available ones that you allowed him to see, separated from the original transferred file folder. And the rest where he was just the sole focus while the rest of the world blurred behind him? Those, he cannot see just yet.

“Oh, they’re in Tucker’s room. I was supposed to stay there last night since he offered his room but we kinda ended up in the living room with D—”

“I have my room, you can always stay here.” Logan’s eyebrows shot up at the information, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face and he did the thing with his lips that he always does whenever he’s thinking. But before you could read him, he already turned away.

“You know what? I am giving you my full permission to access my room whenever you want to. And before you protest, which I know you will, don’t. From now on, this room is yours now as much as it is mine. That’s why, you should grab your things from Tucker’s room so we can check the photos you took last night—forget it, I’ll go get it myself.”

Logan was about to stand up when you grabbed his arm that was just leaning on you earlier. There was an unsure smile over your lips, not used to this side of Logan. Sure, you’ve seen him talking a lot, but that’s when he’s playing video games or on ice with his teammates. And on other occasions, when he’s reviewing for his exams. But not like this, not in this kind of situation. He almost sounds envious of the fact that your things are staying somewhere else other than his room. But you pushed the thought at the farthest back of your mind and instead, teased him.

“Logan, relax. If you want me to move in with you and be roomies, all you had to do was ask. There’s no need to use the photos as an excuse.” Logan plopped down beside you again, his eyes studying your face to see even a hint of your seriousness in it. He sighed when he saw none, it was just you joking around with him.

“I mean, think about it, it’s not a bad idea. It would be like a work-university-hockey-life balance for me and you can ask me for help or annoy me whenever you want to.” This time, faux confusion swims on your expression as you ponder over his words. 

“I’m not sure I understand. Am I gonna be part of the university and hockey category so you can have professional and unlimited photos of yourself, in exchange of me annoying you—hold up, did you just call me annoying? Excuse me, John Logan?” He laughed out loud at your words, throwing his head back in the process. When his laughters died down, there was an adoration pooling in his eyes that you weren’t prepared to see.

“You’re not annoying.” He softly said. “And my life, you fall in the life category. The whole of it, but only if you want to.”

Your stomach did a violent flip as silence enveloped the room. You didn’t even know how long it stretched out, but you are pretty sure that you just kept staring at each other. The moment was vulnerable and it’s scaring you, especially when Logan’s gaze didn’t waver. The same adoration is still present but now mixed with honesty and yearning.

“Life category, interesting.” You swallowed hard, anchoring yourself to stay calm when you heard that it came out a little breathier than it should. “And you didn’t deny the unlimited photos. In case you haven’t realized the severity of your silent acceptance, that means a lot of storage space in my hard drive. Are you willing to buy me storage space for the whole of it?”

You didn’t know how you managed to say those. Maybe you’ve finally mastered the art of masking it up, of not acknowledging what this might be, of ignoring the insinuations, of accepting that Logan is really just like this and there’s nothing real special about how he treats you.

But Logan’s lip twitched, a fond smile spreading across his lips that reached his eyes as they smiled with him, leaning forward in your direction. “Anything you asked me to, ma’am, you got it.”

“You’re so annoying, Logan. Get out of my face.” 

Logan moved a bit, but his body is still pressed slightly against you. He watched you for a moment as you started cleaning up the paper bag, his smile now softening into something curious. The bubble of vulnerability floating around inside the room a moment ago shifts into a much comfortable state. Like the conversation itself made peace with the two of you, like it understood that whatever occurred isn’t just something that came and passed, but it stayed and will live with the both of you.

“Hey, we’ve been friends for years now and I’m sure I haven’t asked you this, but why did you choose candid photography? Of all styles, why do you love it so much when people are not looking?”

You paused, looking back on the reason on how your love developed for that certain style. Soon, a small smile tugged at the corner of your lips and then you realized something. Over the course of three years, aside from the main reason why you kept doing candid photography, Logan unknowingly spent it being your favorite subject and he never knew about it.

Eventually, you let out a sigh, the smile still maintained which didn’t go unnoticed by Logan. “There we go, there’s that smile.”

“It actually started when I was five. When I took a photo of my family while they were busy doing their own things, it was Christmas that time. The world kept spinning, but time froze and so was the moment when I used the camera.” A soft laugh escaped you as you tried to find the right words, your voice dropping just a little.

“And that’s beautiful. Because I learned that they don’t just freeze in time, it holds stories as well. When I asked my mom later on if she remembered what happened, she told me a version different from my uncle. My cousin said she was chasing her cat, my grandma said she was just watching me, my other cousin said she was busy critiquing her mom’s roasted chicken, and my story? I was the one who took the photo and it was so, so beautiful, Logan.”

Logan was just silently listening beside you, studying your every word and making mental notes on how this certain conversation is making you feel. What do you look like, how you talk about it, your hand gestures, and how your face contorts into different expressions. His silence urged you to keep going, the words pouring out.

“Also, people are more honest when they don’t know there’s a camera. Because when they know, they put up a wall. I have nothing against that, I do that too sometimes and I love it when they pose for the camera, I pose for the camera. But candid photography? It captures how people actually look around them. What they’re feeling in that instant and who they are looking at.”

Then suddenly, you were thinking of the photos you had of him. During his hockey games, at parties, at Malone’s, at a group vacation, and a few completely random moments where your camera happens to be with you and you can’t resist taking photos of your surroundings. Logan dwells on your words, still quiet but present.

Then all of a sudden, he took your phone from his nightstand and asked you to open it. He pulled up your gallery and clicked on one of the photos, handing the phone to you.

“Tell me a story then.” And of all the photos that he chose, he chose the one where you guys spent Friendsgiving on the lakehouse. The photo you took where he suddenly appeared from inside the house and directly looked at Hannah. 

“Uhm, suddenly? Well, I remembered Allie complaining that Dean was leaning too close to her and that Garrett was starving and he wanted more of Hannah’s lasagna and Tucker’s turkey.” You purposely skipped out the part where he was visibly seen in the background. You ignored the look he has on his face and focused on the sole subject of the photo, the couples. 

“I’m in the photo too. What’s my story?” You turned to look at Logan, your mouth suddenly dry. You cannot possibly say, “Oh, you’re looking at Hannah, right? And you had this look on your face because you wished you were in Garrett’s place instead.” So, once again, you chose the safe option.

“How could I possibly know? You were too far.” You laughed dismissively and locked your phone, but Logan wasn’t finished.

He didn't say anything for a moment, thinking over his words as he bit his lower lips. He just stared at you, his dark eyes shimmering with courage and searching your face as if what he wanted to say was something that could make or break the moment, as if you are what he wanted to say. The silence grew heavy with unsaid words until Logan opened his mouth.

“I know. You were—” But the harsh buzz of his phone cut him off. He pinched the bridge of his nose at the intruding sound, breathing out heavily as he pulled his phone from his pocket. He cursed at the small device, reading the message before tucking it back inside his jeans.

“Sorry to interrupt our conversation, ma’am. But I have a plumbing business to attend to and apparently, a car that suddenly broke down.” He sighed, collecting the garbage from his bed and the nightstand. He offered you a regretful smile, standing beside his bed, not ready to leave just yet. “Anyway, stay as long as you need if you don’t have classes but shoot me a message if you need a ride back to campus, okay? Make sure to get your things from Tucker too. Remember, my room is yours now.”

“Wait, I thought I’m the boss here? Why are you giving me orders?” He walked toward the door, but stopped right at the threshold at the sound of your teasing voice. He turned back, his gaze locking onto yours one last time, his own tone copying yours.

“You’re still in charge, but even you have house rules to follow. Like, Rule No. 1: You are not allowed to walk back to campus when I’m capable of driving you back there—”

“And I’m also capable of walking, Logan.” The playful glint in his eyes is still present, but it’s softer now. He exhaled, knowing well that you have something to say in return. But he stood his ground and stepped out of his room, only to peek inside once more just to tease you.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot seem to comprehend that statement so I’m still driving you back to campus, alright? See you later.” With a quick wink he threw your way, he disappeared down the hallway, leaving you alone in his bed with your heart hammering against your ribs. And you finally let out the heaviest huffed you breathed out your entire life. The past hour that you’ve spent with him almost felt like a lifetime and you were nearing your death. You silently thanked whoever that was who called him for a job, because if Logan stayed a bit more, you’re not sure what’s going to happen.

You were still recovering from everything when your own phone buzzed between your hands, the notification sending your heart in shock at the unexpected sound. When you’ve calmed down, you check to see what it’s all about.

The notification was from the journalism club group chat. And it’s about the annual exhibition related to media and arts. However, this year’s theme wasn’t about the usual subject. It wasn’t about “what the journalism club covers?” but it’s about “who makes the coverage happen?” The editor-in-chief, Meadow, who is a senior, wanted to shift the attention to the students that keep the Briar university media alive and the adviser approved it.

You opened the link and it directed you to a private document where the complete details of the exhibition laid out. There, in bold letters were BEHIND, the overall theme for the exhibition. You scrolled through the document until you saw the part specifically for photojournalists, the assignments and guidelines carefully listed out.

BEHIND: The Lens.

Each photojournalist must showcase a minimum of 10 (20 at maximum) high resolution and raw images where they were the subject. (Photos taken during an event, party, personal getaway, etc. as long as they are the subject are acceptable.)

It is important that they are carrying their camera, doing their usual task as photojournalist.

Those were some of the important ones that you read. And it said twenty days. You only got twenty days to prepare everything. That includes the photos, the captions, the stories, the editing, the perfect printing, the exhibit setup. You love Briar U, you love your adviser, you love being a journalist and a photographer, but doing everything in twenty days? While also juggling other courses and activities? You thought you might as well just disappear.

You’re already thinking about how you’re collecting the photos. Maybe your fellow photojournalists have stolen photos of you while you’re covering, maybe your friends got a few as well. But it’s a very rare occasion for a photojournalist to be photographed. There’s a reason why you’re the ones carrying the camera and for a moment there, you started stressing out. You’re lucky to get at least five or eight, but ten to twenty? You really hope your friends have some photos, even the blurry ones would suffice.

You were still reading the guidelines when you received a message from Logan.

And that was enough to forget the stress as you started getting ready for the day, the corner of your lips beaming with anticipation. The only thought in your mind is Logan and how he always knows when to appear, even unknowingly.

“They changed the guidelines, guys! Imagine that! And now, they wanted a maximum of twenty photos. Like, how would over a hundred photos fit in the gallery? I only have ten photos at the moment, which met the initial guideline. We only have seven days left. We barely got everything together, Ms. Rodriguez is sick, and at this point, I’m not sure if the exhibit is still feasible at all.” You all but ranted at your friends at the diner, pushing a fry around your plate in which Logan picked up to bring near your lips so you could finally eat. “Stop feeding me, Logan. These fries are just as stressed as I am, they taste so bad.”

Allie and Hannah gave you a sympathetic look, offering you a light squeeze on your shoulder since that was the only thing they could do for now. Three out of your ten photos actually came from them, four were from Tucker, Garrett, and Dean, while the remaining three were from Logan. They have asked around themselves but to no avail, and the stress is slowly eating at you.

That moment, it dawned on you that being a candid photographer means literally blending with the wind because none of your subjects notice you which you don’t mind in many cases, but you do now. Even your friends from journalism don’t have photos of you. Well, they have. But you were not carrying your camera, you were instead posing for theirs. 

“And I mean, I can’t fake it. I can’t just ask you guys to take pictures of me right now because that’ll be unnatural which kills the sole reason why I’m doing this in the first place. Candid is my brand, my trademark.”

Garrett then chimed in, a memory flashing in his mind during your rant. “Wait, I think I have another photo of you during my birthday but it’s in my old phone. I’ll check it later, okay? Can’t promise you it’s good though.”

You almost cried at that, sending Garrett a grateful smile. This made you turn to your friends, the same look on your face, while Logan was still busy feeding you fries from time to time. “Guys, any photo will do at this point as long as I have my camera. It’s not even important now whether I’m checking photos or just simply holding it, I just need the photos because they must be printed by Friday this week and it’s already Tuesday. I swear, I’ll treat all of you to dinner once this is over.”

Hannah shook her head as she reached for your hands, enveloping it with hers as she smiled at you. “Hey, we got this, okay? I’ll double check if I missed anything from our beach trip last summer. You’ll complete the twenty photos, babe, trust me.”

You didn’t know if it was the dread of the upcoming deadline playing with your mind but you saw Hannah throwing Logan a look. But when you glanced at him, he didn’t say anything, he also stopped tending to your fries. He just took a slow sip of his drink, his eyes looking back at Hannah before landing on you for a second longer than usual until he looked down at his phone. You felt the familiar ache in your chest before you turned away from him yourself. He was probably thinking about something else, or someone else. And he didn’t speak anymore for the duration of your stay after that.

Time passed by quickly in the diner as you spent it sending out messages to your friends to help you collate photos for the exhibit. You even got Beau and Dexter to help when they joined your table. And before you know it, all of you call it a day.

By the time you got back to your dorm, with Logan driving you, he still hasn’t said a word. You didn’t know what’s going on or what he was thinking about, but his silence is affecting you. Logan was never this quiet when he’s with you, so you’re not very sure how to approach the situation.

“Thanks for the ride, Logan. Be safe on your way to the house.” You muttered quietly as you unfastened your seatbelt. When he stayed silent, you started to collect your bag and camera between you and him, refusing to look his way. But when you were about to hop out of his truck, he stopped you, his hand reaching out to gently grab your arm. However, even with the contact, he still didn’t say anything. “Logan, are you okay?”

“Yeah, uhm, let me walk you to your room.”

You just nodded in response and waited for him as he parked his car. On your way to your dorm room, that’s when he started asking questions about the exhibit. How many more photos do you need, can’t you really just take new photos, what else is lacking, what kind of photos do you want the audience to see the most for your entry, and the like. You were surprised how attentive he is now compared to when you were at the diner, but you weren’t complaining.

When you reached your room, you offered to invite him inside but he kindly declined and mentioned there’s something important he needs to do tonight. You shook your head in understanding and gestured that he should go back home.

“Thank you, again, for the ride, and for listening to my rants. Message me once you’re back home, okay? Good night, Logan.” You stood there for a moment, waiting for Logan’s response that didn’t come. Instead, he engulfed you with a hug. His warmth quickly spreads throughout your body, your arms automatically wrapping around him.

“Research shows that hugging can reduce stress so let’s stay like this for a moment.”

It was completely random, you thought. But it’s true, you felt yourself melting against Logan as he held you close to him. His arms only tightened on you when you tugged at his sweater, trying to be as close to him as possible. It wasn’t the first hug that you shared, but there’s something about this one that felt different. It felt intimate and not just for the sake of physical contact.

You didn’t know how much time had passed when you loosened your hold on him, pulling a foot away to look at him. “I don’t know how many times I’m gonna say thank you tonight but thank you. That hug really helped a lot.”

Logan gave you a slight tap on your nose as he completely let go, though reluctantly. The silence came back, but it’s much more comfortable now unlike earlier. Logan busied himself by fixing your clothes that wrinkled during the hug and gazed directly at your eyes.

“Don’t stress, okay? I got you. Tonight, allow yourself to relax. You’ll be okay, I promise.” And then he left, right after sending you inside your dorm, after hearing you lock the door, after making sure that you’re safe.

And especially after gracing your forehead with a kiss that he couldn’t help himself to give.

You weren’t sure what to do with what happened.

Logan, who was supposed to like Hannah, just kissed your forehead and just left. He hugged you for who knows how long and then he kissed you. After telling you not to stress and to relax for tonight, he did the exact thing that kept you from doing so. Obviously, you couldn’t relax. You don’t kiss your friend on their forehead. Because that will blur the line between being friends, nothing in the friendship would feel normal after that.

Not unless Logan kisses all his friends to their forehead, you wouldn’t react this way. Well, he did kiss Garrett one time on the same spot but you were playing some drinking game that time. Do the dare, tell the truth, or drink the weird mixture prepared by Tucker. But that was a totally different scenario. See, that’s the thing, Logan doesn’t kiss all his friends that way and he wasn’t definitely playing with you earlier. And that is a territory that you’re trying to understand at two AM in the morning.

You’re currently sitting on the floor of the journalism club office after accepting the fact that sleep is miles away from your reach because of two things. One was obviously because of Logan, and two, you’re still contacting friends about your photos while also brainstorming possible layouts and captions. Ms. Rodriguez allows students to stay for as long as they need in the office. Especially at times like this when everyone is busy preparing for an event. 

A few other members also came to do their assignments. But unlike you, they are actually accomplishing something. You glanced at the door when one of the editorial cartoonists bid good night, wishing the rest of you good luck to finish your tasks. And you hoped that it’d work because you badly needed it.

Puffing out a breath, you put your attention back to your laptop and continued scrolling on your archives. You knew it was no use since the photos were not you, but looking at them brings you comfort. Until you pulled up Logan’s folder.

The Muse.

You clicked at the small icon and patiently waited for it to load. The photos appeared one after another, the pixels forming into clarity. You gasped, the small numbers on the left down corner of your screen still surprising you whenever it stops at a certain amount. You’ll never get used to it, because you know that as long as the lens of your camera catches Logan, you’ll click that small button to capture him. The sequence of his whole existence turning into pages inside your album.

I am your guy because if you haven’t noticed yet, I am highly photogenic.

He mentioned during your first meeting, and did he lie? No, he didn’t. Because keeping his words, he wasn’t just photogenic but he also became your guy. The last years proved that, the present proved that. You just didn’t know how much longer you could keep it in considering the observations of your friends and the way Logan acted the past few days, especially earlier. And you thought to yourself—hiding his photos is one thing, suppressing your feelings is another, and a girl can only do both for a long time.

“Ruin the friendship, babe. He’s a senior, who knows what will happen after graduation?” Meadow suddenly appeared behind you, balancing her laptop with her left hand while the right one was carrying probably her third cup of coffee since 12 AM. “And before you deny it, I’ve seen the way you look at him and the way he looks at you, and I’m telling you, it’s worth ruining the friendship.”

“Meadow, it’s not—” But she’s already backing toward the door, her playful eyes never leaving your form. And before she completely left, she pointed at your phone beside your laptop. “He sent you a message, by the way, but you were too busy looking at his photos. Live in the moment, babe. Good night!”

You didn’t get to respond to her as she briskly went and closed the door, leaving you dumbfounded and realizing that she said the same thing as Dean. Your phone buzzed again, preventing you from thinking over the words. You picked it up to see four messages from Logan.

Curiosity and excitement clouded your mind as you opened your email, thinking that maybe he collected the photos Garrett and Hannah promised to double check for you and a few more from him and the others. When the page loaded, Logan’s mail sat at the top of your inbox which contained a shared drive link with a camera emoji as the title.

When you click the link, you expect to see blurry and casual frame phone snaps. The photo Garrett said was probably bad, the photo from the beach getaway by Hannah, but you saw none of those. Instead, you had to wait a full minute for the folder to fully load.

Your breath caught in your throat as the sheer volume of files flashed before you, each thumbnail beginning to clear.

There are hundreds of them. Hundreds of candid photos of you.

It was all you.

Holding your camera, browsing the photos, capturing others.

You were completely in your element.

And they were all taken by Logan. You confirmed this by seeing the small watermark, JL22, located at the uppermost right corner of the photos. A watermark you helped him design a year ago that you never see him use. But now, you understand. He never intended for it to be seen by other people, it was solely just for you.

You scrolled at the shared folder, your heart hammering against your ribs as if it wanted to jump out. The corner of your eyes started to sting without permission, tears forming the longer you browsed. The photos weren’t accidental nor taken with low-effort, and as someone who has been doing photography, Logan’s angles were so good he might be mistaken as part of the club. The lighting was perfect, the focus was measured, the background fading behind as you stood out.

You’ve taught Logan how to use a camera one time, but you didn’t realize how much attention and effort he put into that day for his photos to turn out this way. They were taken so carefully.

Or maybe because he’s been observing you, he’s been paying attention. That while you were too occupied adjusting your lens, his focus was already on yours.

The tears in your eyes fell one by one but you weren’t sure what the reason was. All you know was you’re overwhelmed, you’re confused, and you really want to talk to Logan about this. Because this completely changed everything. The hug and the kiss? It was just the start, but this? You’re crossing a whole foreign zone in this predicament.

You clicked on the photos and observed each one, remembering the moment and what you were doing—what was your story.

There was a picture of you during an off-campus party, your face half-hidden by your camera as you try to capture Justin and his band. Another photo was you sitting behind Logan’s truck during your beach getaway as you set up your tripod to shoot the sunset, looking for the best angle. And there was a candid shot of you from a random day in the library but this time, you were transferring files, your camera resting safely beside your laptop.

You continued scrolling, too mesmerized to stop. Because at that moment, you felt seen, you felt loved. It feels like Logan learned how to appreciate you and what you do based on how you appreciate the world, and it was destroying your walls—both in good and bad ways.

Until you noticed something. A pattern, again. But it wasn’t the kind that breaks you, it was the kind that showed you another side of the story, Logan’s side of the story. And there was only one way to prove these patterns. You opened the tab containing your own archive, splitting the screen so you have it side-by-side with Logan's shared drive.

The photos you took at Malone’s to celebrate their win, the same night you spent hanging out with Tucker and Dean. Your photo was taken from the entrance and Logan was looking at Hannah and Garrett over at the bar where you left them to hang out. And Logan’s photo was you, laughing and capturing the couple in front of you, right before you left them.

The photo during your group hung out at the same diner. You were pressed against the wall as you pictured the same couple teasing each other. But looking at Logan’s photo, he didn’t even include Hannah and Garrett, he just focused on you while you were still holding your camera.

And there was Friendsgiving by the lake. He was in the background emerging from the lakehouse, confusion obvious on his face. Then you glanced at his version, and the picture was taken inside the house, you were still sitting beside Hannah, preparing to photograph your friends.

Then Beau’s party. Logan was frowning at your photo, looking at the kitchen’s doorway where Garrett stood close behind his girlfriend. But then there was you, perfectly captured by Logan, at the same kitchen doorway where you were showing Hannah something in your camera.

Realization hit you at once. Logan hadn’t been looking at Hannah all this time, he had been looking at where he last saw you, which was usually beside the latter. He wasn’t tracking her movements, he was tracking yours. He wasn’t paying attention to her in ways that you thought, he was paying attention to you. He positions himself in every possible corner of the room to give himself the clearest sight of you—the person holding the camera, the person who’s always engaged behind the lens of her camera that she totally missed the eyes of the person she wanted to catch the most.

Live in the moment. Maybe you’re missing something in Logan’s photos. 

That instant, it occurred to you that the reason he rarely looked at the lens of your camera was because he was too busy trying to catch your eyes. You're too occupied watching Logan and the way he's looking at Hannah, that you missed who he's actually looking at.

Sitting on the floor of the journalism club office, the overwhelming feelings slowly dissipate as your mind clears out. Your heart goes back to its normal rhythm, while your mind is gradually absorbing the new information you’ve found out. Your emotions are still not at its one hundred percent best, but the ache of the last year believing that Logan likes someone else is now being replaced by a cure you didn’t know existed.

A breathy laugh escaped your lips as you stared at the split screen in front of you. Because all along, you thought that you and Logan were in the same heartbreaking situation of being in love with someone you could never have.

Turned out, both of you have been harboring a secret and hopeless love for each other.

You then looked at the printer a few feet away from you, then back at the laptop. You already printed out the first ten, you just have to choose ten more. And after a few careful consideration, you’ve chosen the best ones from his folder, a satisfied smile crossing your lips at the last one.

The night is getting deeper, but you know that Logan is still awake. So, while the printer was doing its job bringing the photos in its form, you took your phone from your bag and messaged him.

The last of your photo was printed out when you heard the entrance door open, Logan’s head peeking behind as he glanced inside the empty office. You smiled at his presence, gesturing for him to come inside as you picked up the final photo to put beside the other ones to dry down.

He didn’t come in right away, he just stood at the doorway, hands tucked in his pockets as a slow and knowing grin spread across his face. He had his eyes locked onto yours, watching you organize the things you used for printing and at the photos hanging just behind you.

His photos.

Logan felt a sense of pride knowing that you were able to complete the twenty photos because of him. He always calls you ma’am, he always says that he’s happy to do whatever you ask him to, but what he doesn't say is that he likes taking care of you. In ways that you allow him, without making you feel like you’re dependent. And this is just one of the ways he shows it. Making himself present, but not hovering.

“You weren’t kidding, those are mine.” He softly said, his voice carrying a gentleness to it that made you look at him. At the same time, he glanced down to meet your gaze. “They’re beautiful.”

For a moment, none of you speak. You just let the silence take over the both of you, his words lingering like a reminder of what’s about to come, of the reason why you messaged him. Both of you understood that it wasn’t just about the ride, but it’s also about the path you’ll navigate after tonight.

“They are, and you were the person behind these photos.” The way you said it went straight to Logan’s heart, because you said it with ease, with normalcy. You sound so proud and it did something to him. “Come in, please. We need to talk.”

Logan walked over, the gap between you disappearing instantly and suddenly, the room felt small. But he didn’t push, he didn’t crowd your space, he just let you take the next step. Just like he always did. He always patiently waits for you, in many ways that you could name. Then you nudged at your laptop so the device was facing him, the screen displayed your folder and his; showing him that both of you kept an archive of each other.

“First of all, thank you. For the photos, it truly helped me complete my entry for the exhibit. You have no idea how grateful I am for these.” You began, your eyes casting toward the ten printed photos that hung in a line above you. You started tracing the outline of yourself and the way Logan made you appear like a main character in his photos, an intimate tug at your lips forming. “And I’m sorry, for not seeing it sooner.”

You exhaled shakily, twisting around to face Logan who’s already looking at you. “When I saw your email, what it contained, your photos, I realized that I relied on my camera too much and what it showed me. Dean was right, there was something missing in your photos. I missed to capture the way you’re looking at me, because I thought you were looking at someone else.”

Logan’s expression softened, it was a subtle change in his eyes but it was enough for you to notice. He was hanging on every word that you’re saying, longing for it to unfold. But being the man that he is, he didn’t say anything, he just let you find the right path through your thoughts.

“Then, it dawned on me that you were not hiding your feelings for someone else—you were not hiding anything at all. It’s always been laid out there for me but I was too scared to ruin what we have. Because what we have is good, Logan. You’ve been such a good friend to me and I can’t ruin that. But looking at my photos, at your photos, I feel like I only captured a fraction of what is actually happening.

“And that it was actually me that has been hiding a lot. Behind my camera, behind the blinding flash of it because it was easier for me. It was easier to look at you when I have my camera because it lets me control how I see things, how I see you. And that’s not fair.”

The admission almost broke Logan’s heart, because in the past three years that he’d known you, this is the first time that he saw you totally break down your walls. Sure, there were the vulnerable times when you allowed yourself to rely on him, to cry in front of him, but he never saw you this way. And he wanted nothing but to tell you that it’s okay, that he doesn’t find it unfair. That he understands because if he were being honest, he didn’t exactly come clean himself. He never actually admitted his feelings for you and he could only hope at that moment that he had done it a long time ago.

“I always say that I love candid photography because there is always a story behind it. But you, you’ve always been my favorite person to picture yet I didn’t exactly give you the chance to tell your side of the story.” Then you took a step forward, there was still space between you but it’s almost nonexistent now. “If you want, I wish to hear every single version of the stories you have through your lens. I’m done telling mine, Logan, I choose to listen this time, I choose to see this time.”

Logan let out a quiet, breathy laugh, keeping his emotions at bay. He doesn’t know whether to slap himself to confirm if this was a dream or just put you in an embrace, in his arms, and hold you for the rest of time. But he stopped himself and moved forward, and he swore he could almost feel your heart beating the same rhythm as his.

“Oh, baby, it wasn’t unfair. You have every right to interpret this however you want, because I didn’t say anything sooner. And I’m sorry too, for making you feel that way.” He said, his tone dropping to a velvet whisper that seemed to absorb the remaining space between you. His hands hovered beside your arms, testing the moment, and when he didn’t see any hint of hesitance on your face, he wrapped his hands around yours. 

“I wished I did things differently, there was no reason for me to keep my feelings a secret. But I believe I was just terrified as you are because you were right, what we have is really good. And I will never be able to handle knowing that I could potentially break what we have because I started seeing you more like a future than a friend.” He confessed, his gaze dropping to your joined hands, staring at the way they fit perfectly together. Like it was sculpted to be that way. You felt your tears build up once again and you looked up to prevent it from falling, your throat constricting as you do so.

Logan drew comforting circles against your skin before his eyes met yours again with a raw and obvious vulnerability, yearning to look at you and to be looked by you. He let go of one of your hands just so he could wipe a stray tear that fell, and eventually, he gently cupped your cheek.

“I cannot go back and change what happened, but I can definitely make up for it starting now. And if you wanna know what I want? I want us. I want what you want and everything that you don’t. I want myself with you, not just for now but for—”

“The whole of it.”

“Yeah, baby, the whole of it. But only if you want to?” You laughed, the glee sound of it echoing in Logan’s mind, taking note of how you looked right now. And while you’ve always been beautiful in his eyes, he couldn’t help but notice the way you appeared so breathtaking in his gaze that second.

“John, did you just use the same words you told me a week ago?” His hand that was holding your cheek dropped back to his side as he sheepishly smiled at you, but you saw a depth behind it. He genuinely wanted to know the answer, because that time in his room, you didn’t give a clear response and he understood why. But now, things have changed. You knew that the moment the both of you walked out the journalism office, you’ll no longer be just friends. Your relationship will be more, and that includes making decisions.

“Hey, you didn’t have to say anything now. We have time, love, there’s no rush.” Logan gave your hand a squeeze, a final assurance to his words. But you shook your head, your mind swirling with something else.

“Logan, I spent—we spent a lot of years not saying anything and I don’t want to do that anymore. And this is not us rushing, this is you and me finally choosing us. And I want more of it, I want the whole of it.”

Logan exhaled heavily, like he wasn’t expecting you to say the words he’d been dying to hear. None of you said a word, but the silence was enough to speak for itself as you tugged him closer to your body. Logan’s hands automatically held your hips, while yours wrapped around his neck, drawing him toward your face.

Your foreheads bumped together as your eyes meet, the connection palpable. He didn’t move, he was just waiting again on your next move. But his grip tightened on your body when he felt you gently grab the back of his neck, a hint of coyness on his expression.

“I want it, Logan. I want you.”

And with one pull, the gap completely disappears as your lips connect for a kiss. The hesitation, the holding back, the years you’ve spent watching each other from lens’ reach, all of it evaporated the second your lips met. It was everything both of you have expected and more.

Logan’s tightened grip on your hips moves toward the small of your back, pulling you flush against him as if the proximity wasn’t enough; while his other hand cradled your cheek, guiding your head as he deepened the kiss. You felt everything at once instantly—the yearning, the warmth, how the contentment settled in, how both of your bodies melted into each other.

You pulled back just a little to catch your breath, only to dive back in for another kiss. A low ragged breath escaped Logan and it turned to a quiet rumble against your chest as he started laughing in between kisses.

“Point proven.” Logan’s forehead rests against yours, the smile lay permanent on his lips. His voice is a little rough, but it was laced with affection that touched your heart. He leaned in again, but the kisses this time are lighter, softer, as it lingered and traced down your jawline up to the spot just below your ear, and back to your lips.

You naturally arched into his touch as the kiss grew more desperate, hungrier. His tongue swiped at the top of your lips, as if asking for permission to explore your mouth, and you didn’t hesitate to let him in. Despite the growing passion, both of you made sure to savor the moment. Memorizing the pattern of the kiss, which angle makes Logan heave a breath, and what makes you shiver when his hands explore what he can touch.

He broke the kiss for a second just to gaze at your eyes, a glint you’ve never seen before swimming in them, and buried his head at the junction of your neck to inhale your scent. You still felt him leaving small kisses on your skin, his hands engulfing you in another hug.

“This is per—you’re so perfect.” The admission left you chuckling as you played with the back of his neck, massaging his scalp, while your other hand rubbed at his back. The comfort and solace it brings made Logan sigh in your arms. “I didn’t even want to think how I managed to go on the last years without this. If I had known that it'd feel like this, I would’ve shown you how I feel for you.”

“Well, you never have to think about it now. You got me.”

A few minutes have passed when Logan lets go, glancing around the office as his eyes land on the wall clock, realizing that it’s time to go home. You quickly caught on at the change in his posture and started gathering your things, which Logan took from you right away.

“You ready to go, ma’am?” Logan stretched out his hand your way, waiting for you to clasp your own ones with his. And when you did, he tugged you beside him to lay a peck on your forehead, satisfaction filling his system. “Alright, let’s get you home.”

Once outside, you started locking the doors but Logan stole another scan of your photos from the glass window. Then he caught the last photo you printed out and it made him pause. He didn’t think you’d notice, but he should’ve thought better than to believe you wouldn’t. His expression softened at the realization that you picked out his most favorite photo from his own folder.

It was a perfectly angled and photographed image of you in the hockey house. You were holding your camera toward his direction, your lips curved in a smile as you took a picture of Logan. At that time, you thought he was busy looking at his phone. But that was proven wrong because while you definitely stood out in the picture, Logan was in the background, his reflection clear on the mirror just behind you. A perfect image that showed how the camera works in two ways.

With one last glance, Logan pulled you to walk alongside him, a newfound peace settling in. 

And as you turned a corner going to the parking lot, you looked up just to see Logan already staring back at you. And as much as you don’t want to admit, Dean has always been right all along.

You should live in the moment.

Do not hide behind your camera all the time.

So you’ll not miss what’s happening in front you.

And as you’re nearing his truck, it struck you that while you're busy loving him through the lens of your camera, he's spent the past few years loving you through his very own eyes and you can’t wait to do the same.

BONUS: Exhibit day, opening.

I think we're like fire and water | @mutantvampireearthquake

John Logan meet cute

Best Friends Sister | @bitchinbarzal

logan falls for garretts twin sister. garrett is not happy.

Find You | @/bitchinbarzal

you broke up but still call logan when you need help.

PUCK ME SIDEWAYS | @conradsmirrorball

John Logan and Dean Di Laurentis are special guest on Puck Me Sideways podcast after Y/n said in a lie detector machine that he was her crush.

The Deal With The Devil | @/conradsmirrorball

Y/n is tired of her friends keep assuming she has a crush on Garrett Graham, her best friend’s boyfriend. Her best solution? Make everyone believe she’s dating John Logan.

Idiots in love | @residentheartache

you are at party when you get cornered by a guy who can’t take a hint luckily Logan is there to save you

Death Wish | @g0ldendesiree

john logan may be in love with you, only problem? if your brother finds out then he’s a dead man walking.

Unclaimed Baggage | @/g0ldendesiree

what happens when you've got the right person in front of you, but your pasts haunt you to the point of holding back?

Mom and Dad | @/g0ldendesiree

what happens when the mom and dad of the group become, well, mom and dad?

Things Unsaid | @/g0ldendesiree

you're in love with logan, but what happens when you think he doesn't feel the same way?

NUMBER TWELVE | @edawgz

John logan was a firm believer that love at first sight was fake, then he saw you get checked into the boards at full strength. That was enough to convince him you were his soulmate.

My Brothers Best Friend | @saturx5

while watching your best friend and brother start to fall in love you try your hardest to hide that fact that you’re dating your brothers best friend

Jealousy | @writingsforfandoms-multi

reader gets jealous at a party

a rom com kind of love | @buckpunny1

You’re a hopeless romantic who loves romcoms. John Logan is determined, through a series of grand gestures, to prove to you that true love can be even better than the movies.

Forever | @/buckpunny1

Your exes have left you with a ton of trust issues. Lucky for you, John Logan is the most patient, perfect man for you.

Unparalleled | @/buckpunny1

Your relationship with John is freshly in bloom and you find yourself struggling with puck bunnies throwing themselves at him. Logan is right there, through it all, to prove your love is truly unparalleled.

best friend’s brother | @/buckpunny1

You’re Jules’s best friend, having grown up with the Logan siblings from early childhood on. One party, a sexy Peter Pan costume, and questionable decisions are all it takes to make the tension between you and your best friend’s brother snap.

Imagine | @sourcherryandsprinkles

smutty imagine | @/sourcherryandsprinkles

Ruin the friendship | @alierecss

Falling for your brother’s best friend is already a terrible idea. Falling for John Logan, while Garrett Graham watches the two of you like a security threat, is even worse.

I said “I love you”. You say nothing back  | @/alierecss

the arrangement was simple: keep it casual, don’t catch feelings, don’t ask for more than what’s on the table. 338 days later, you’re starting to think simple was never really an option with john logan.

I can see you | @/alierecss

Three months ago, you and Logan quietly became something. You forgot to tell anyone. That was fine, it was yours, and you liked it that way. Then you found out your friends had started a betting pool on when you’d finally get together, and suddenly keeping the secret became a lot more fun.

Night Skates, part 2 | @baby-alien11

as long as you want | @folkloure

the first time you stay with him until the morning.

good luck charm | @/folkloure

logan looks really fucking hot in a suit and it just makes you a little unhinged.

tender loving care | @/folkloure

reader gets a minor head injury when logan is not around and everyone jumps to help. core characters mentioned but mostly dean and allie.

Late-Night Fuel | @andy-15-07

Roadside Rescue | @/andy-15-07

Aisle Five, Half Asleep | @/andy-15-07

Midnight Baby Duty | @/andy-15-07

Bed on Fire | Masterlist | @natywrites

No one knew about John Logan’s crush on Hannah Wells except for Y/N L/N, because every time she was looking at him, he was looking at her.

unprofessional conduct | @puckingcuckbunny

The Briar hockey team treats the sports medicine clinic like their personal emergency room, Logan Tucker treats it like a second home. But the team can’t confirm nor deny your relationship… well until now

pretty little baby | @/puckingcuckbunny

It’s the end of finals week! that means that John Logan’s long time girlfriend can finally let loose at the first party post-exams, but letting loose, means a whole lot more for this man than he thought. OR you teasing Logan by calling him pretty alot.

clinical notes on loving him incorrectly | @/puckingcuckbunny

They were never casual enough to survive pretending they were

Mr. Dating Coach | @gwellsy

you pour your thoughts to logan saying you've never fallen in love and he says that you should open your heart to be able to find your person, yet when you do, he regrets giving you that advice

GRAHAM’S LITTLE SISTER | @darkkdamsel00

You return to Boston for spring break determined to keep your secret relationship with your brother’s best friend hidden, but one look from John Logan is enough to unravel every boundary you swore you’d keep.

happy thanksgiving, baby | @myfictionalcorner

logan never had a proper thanksgiving, and his girl is about to change that...

John Logan x Garrett!Reader, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 | @0miffytiffy0

ICE HEART | @beeewee

A frustrated figure skater who transferred from Illinois has only one goal: keeping her athletic scholarship this season, and she’ll do anything to change the way people on campus see her — especially if it means improving her image for pairs skating. Even if it costs her a fake relationship with the same person who spread the nickname that turned her into “Ice Heart.”

Seven steps, one word | @fezrus

from an irritated "oh, fuck!" to a confident "fuck it", your entire relationship with John Logan can be mapped out in seven specific exclamations of his favorite four-letter word.

Twelve Hours | @briarafterdark

Three weeks ago at Hannah's Halloween party, John Logan almost kissed you in a hallway. You panicked. You laughed. You stepped back. Neither of you has talked about it since. Now you're trapped in the hockey house during the worst snowstorm of the year — just you, just him, just twelve hours and nowhere to go.

NO HOCKEY PLAYERS | @jacksabbotts

Check Engine Light // Masterlist | @wildflowerxwords

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.

Behind Closed Doors, part 2 | @/wildflowerxwords

Behind closed doors, Logan kisses you like you're the only thing he wants. The problem is, being private feels a little too much like being hidden. When you unexpectedly show up at a Briar athlete house party, and Logan suddenly acts like he barely knows you, every insecurity you've tried to ignore comes crashing down at once and Logan is forced to realize your relationship stopped being casual long before either of you admitted it.

look at yourself | @ivysprophecy

Logan’s older brother Jeff was leaning against the workshop desk and sipping on a can of Coke when he saw you strut in. He sighed, “Here comes Lottie.”

The nickname was a running joke between the brothers. Jeff had muttered it under his breath when you first visited the shop and asked a question about diesel gas. He took one look at you and knew you were a clueless, rich girl who shouldn’t be visiting garages such as theirs.

Logan hadn’t entertained the nickname so much. He thought it was unnecessarily mean. Besides, Lottie was always a sweetheart in Princess and the Frog.

Jeff turned on his heels and disappeared into the garage’s office, leaving Logan to deal with you on his own.

Logan put down a spare part he was working on and turned around, leaning back against the counter.

You waved excitedly with a cheerful grin. “Hi, Logan!”

He smiled politely, “Hey…”

“Did you save my girl?” You asked, batting your lashes.

Logan nodded, “She’s all fixed up for you,” he said, walking over to the wall of car keys hung on hooks to retrieve yours.

You clapped your hands, “Yay!”

He chuckled whilst shaking his head. You got happy over the simplest of things. He thought it was endearing.

You walked over to your car. Nebula, as you called her. A fitting name for a sleek, black convertible with dark purple leather upholstery and shiny silver rims.

Logan came over and handed you your keys. “You wanna try her out?”

You nodded and unlocked your car before opening the driver’s side door. No beeping. Perfect.

You beamed at Logan. “You did it!”

He smiled with an easy laugh, feeling proud of his work. In reality, your car issue was a minor one; the door sensor just needed a replacement. Nothing about it required a lick of rocket science, and yet you looked at him as if he hung the stars in your galaxy.

You put your designer bag into your car and bent over to fish out your wallet. Logan stared at your body for a second before he caught himself, clearing his throat and looking away respectfully.

You stood up straight, holding your leather wallet between both hands, looking at him with a doe-eyed expression.

He scratched the back of his neck and gestured for you to follow him to the counter. The gritty sounds of his boots crunching the gravel below and the rhythmic click click click of your heels echoed through the garage.

Logan went around the counter and pulled out a receipt and wrote down the service you needed with the price. He slid the piece of paper to you but you just kept looking at his face with a smile. He blinked before realizing you didn’t care for the price. Right, he thought. Rich girls don’t worry about those things.

“Cash or card?” He asked.

You held up your metal black credit card.

Logan pursed his lips and nodded as he pulled out a card reader. You tapped your card without even glancing at the screen and clapped your hands when the machine beeped in satisfaction.

“Thank you, Logan,” you told him kindly.

He shrugged politely, “It’s no problem.”

You smiled at him. He returned it, “Do you want your recei—“

Before he could even hand you your proof of service, you were walking back to your car. He nodded to himself and stuffed the receipt into the cash register.

He watched as you exited the garage, waving at him enthusiastically as you drove by. He gave a small wave back.

+

A week later, your BMW pulled into the garage whilst Logan was working under a car.

He didn’t hear the sound of your heels this time as he had headphones in, blasting a classic rock song. He felt a shadow looming nearby so he turned and saw your heels appear. He paused and rolled out from under the car, meeting the sight of your broad smile peering down at him.

“Hi, Logan!”

“Hey…” He sounded confused. His eyebrows furrowed and he glanced around, “Didn’t you pick up your car last week?”

You nodded. “Yep. But my AC is broken now…” You pouted.

Hm, Logan thought. He sat up, “Oh, I didn’t see that when I did the diagnostic last week—“

“Must be a new issue, then. These foreign cars are all funny,” you replied, tilting your head.

He cleaned his hands with a rag before standing up. He had oil stains on his shirt and just a little smudge on his face. You thought he looked so ruggedly handsome.

“Let me take a look,” he said and you stepped out the way for him to crank open your hood and inspect the situation.

As he got to work, you leaned against your car and watched. After a moment, you asked, “How was your weekend?”

People don’t usually talk to Logan when he repairs their cars. Especially not pretty, rich girls like you.

“It was good, played hockey, worked here in the shop,” he responded casually.

You nodded along even though he couldn’t see you.

“Did you win?” You asked.

He laughed, an amused sound. “Yeah…yeah, we won.”

You clapped your hands, “Yay!”

Logan laughed again. It was cute, he thought, how you always clapped at good news.

“You like hockey?” He asked, looking over your hood to meet your eyes.

You hummed, “I only recently got into it. My family prefers watching polo, golf, or tennis.”

Rich people sports, he wanted to say. That made sense.

“Recently, huh?” He said instead, ducking his head to keep working. “Who should I thank for putting you onto hockey?” He joked.

You smiled shyly and said, “You…”

His hand paused. The parts of your car suddenly looking like alphabet soup moving in jumbled letters. He lifted his head to meet your gaze again. But before he could manage a reply, you changed the subject. “Is it broken beyond repair?” You asked, turning your attention to your car parts.

He snapped out of his daze and shook his head. “Uhh, no. No, you just need AC coolant.”

“Is that an easy fix?” You asked.

He nodded, “Yeah, the easiest.” He said.

You smiled in relief. “Thank goodness I have you fixing my car,” you told him.

He smiled at that.

He fixed your car, you chirped out a “Thank you, Logan!”, you paid without looking at the bill, and waved goodbye as you left.

“That the BMW girl again?” Logan’s dad asked as he stepped out the office.

“Yeah,” Logan replied, wiping his hands.

“Lottie back again so soon?” Jeff teased. Logan rolled his eyes at the jab.

“You overcharge her?” His dad asked.

Logan looked at him, “Why would I do that?”

His dad shrugged, “Luxurious car fee?”

Logan squinted his eyes, “We don’t do that.”

Jeff piped in, “We could. She doesn’t even check her receipts.”

Logan looked between his dad and brother, “So what? We charge her fair and square.”

His dad shared a looked with Jeff before he went back inside the office.

+

Week after week, you came by to the garage. First it was an oil change, then a rim replacement, then a loose window ribbon, then a tire with low air, and so on.

By week 7, Logan had had enough. It’s not that he didn’t like seeing you, no. Far from it. He actually enjoyed your company. He often looked forward to when you’d come by and say Hi, Logan! in that sing-song voice of yours, your joyful smile, and innocent questions.

But now he was noticing a pattern.

So when you rolled in that Thursday night like clockwork, he didn’t go up to you. He stayed by the workshop desk and watched you with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Hi, Logan!” You beamed with a gleeful wave.

But upon meeting his stern expression, your smile faltered and your hand slowly dropped back to your side. You looked around the empty garage before walking over to him in hesitant steps. The sound of your heels filled the space between the two of you. You stopped in front of him and flattened down your skirt, a nervous tic of yours that you never noticed before.

“Y/n,” he said, his tone serious. “This is the seventh time you’ve come to the garage.”

You nodded, “Nebula keeps acting up—“

“No, she doesn’t.”

You looked at your feet. No smile, no lively clapping.

His arms uncrossed and he stepped closer. He wasn’t angry. No, it wasn’t that. Logan isn’t an idiot. He knew. He knew you had a crush on him, knew the only reason you showed up time and time again was just to spend time with him. Why else would you come? He knew families like yours had their own repairmen at fancy dealerships who could fix any problem. You didn’t need to come into his family’s garage.

Yet, you did.

Logan figured it out by week 4. But truth be told, he never mentioned it because a part of him liked being around you too. He liked hearing your upbeat voice, the familiar tap of your heels, the sound of your laugh. So he stayed quiet, he fixed your tires, and refilled your car’s oil. He went along with it. Because he liked your company just as much as you liked his.

Unable to lie to him, you lifted your head and met his eyes. “I did those things to my car on purpose.” You confessed quietly.

Logan blinked. His stance eased at your admission and he looked at you with soft eyes.

“I watched a YouTube video on how to drain AC coolant,” you added. “And drove around until my tires lost some of its pressure, and—”

“Y/n,” he held your chin with his hand. “You didn’t have to do all that to see me.”

Your eyes widened as you stared at him. He smiled gently, “I…like seeing you. With or without Nebula.”

“You do?” You asked.

He nodded, “I do.”

He leaned in slowly, giving you the chance to pull away. But you stayed. His lips met yours in a gentle kiss. Not hungry or desperate, just a soft sealing; a mutual understanding—I like you and you like me.

When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against yours. You looked at him with a honeyed, dazed expression. He smiled down at you and pecked your lips once more. You weren’t a spoiled, rich girl to him. Not clueless or ditzy. You were just…you. A sweetheart with a crush on a cute guy who would do anything to see him. You were Lottie.

He glanced behind you at your car. He pulled away with a reluctant sigh, “What did you do to her this time?”

You smiled sheepishly, “I jammed my gearshift…”

He chuckled softly, both amused and fondly exasperated by you. “Okay…let me take a look.” He said, lacing his hand with yours and bringing it up to his lips to press a kiss.

"I'm so sorry, babe," Logan said the second you climbed into the passenger seat, his eyes heavy with exhaustion.

"No problem," you replied, your voice clipped.

But there was a problem, and you both knew it. Logan knew you well enough to pick up the subtle signs in your texts and body language. Your reply to his text had been short; your clipped response now was unusual; you looked unimpressed, all clear signs. But the biggest one was the fact that you hadn't leant over to give him a kiss. Hadn't tried to soothe the tired lines in his face.

Logan noticed it all, but he chose not to press. He'd had a long day too and was wound just as tightly as you were at the minute.

The silence in the car stretched as he pulled away from the curve, driving you to the party hosted by the Lacrosse team. The silence allowed your thoughts to ruminate unnecessarily over the situation, working yourself up until the irriation boiled over. Under your breath, you muttered a tight "I should have just walked."

It was meant as a throwaway comment, a petty jab to vent, and you truly didn't mean to start something, but it hit its mark.

"I said I was sorry." Logan's grip on the steeting wheel tightened.

"I know."

"Then what's that supposed to mean?" He snapped, his already low patience wearing thin.

"Exactly what I said," you snapped back, crossing your arms. "I just meant I should have walked."

"Yeah, because I was late, right?"

You knew you should have stopped the conversation there, apologised, let him know you'd had a bad day, and moved on. But a stubborn part of you needed this fight, needed to get out the emotions you were bottling up.

"I don't know why you're being like this. I wasn't trying to start anything."

Logan let out a sharp exhale through his nose. "Kinda feels like you were."

"Well that doesn't make it true," you retorted, continuing to stare straight ahead through the windshield.

"Look, I'm exhausted," Logan said, voice dropping low. "I barely slept last night. Practice was hell. Coach was on my ass the whole time. I got stuck in traffic on my way here, and now the only thing I'm hearing from you is that I should have gotten here quicker."

"There's no need for that tone, Logan."

Logan's head snapped to look at you, his eyes flashing before he forced his attention back to the road. "I'm only giving you a tone because it seems like nothing I'm saying is good enough for you."

"I never said that!"

"You've been in a mood since you got in the car." You were about to protest when he interuppted, "Don't deny it. You're picking a fight. What am I supposed to think?"

"Maybe think that I was just frustrated."

"And so was I, but I didn't take it out on you."

That made you pause. Deep down, you knew that Logan was right. He hadn't taken out his crappy day on you the way you were with him. But, at the same time, the longer this conversation went on, the more unheard you felt.

"Okay, but I am allowed to be frustrated too," you muttered.

"I didn't say that you weren't." Logan pressed his foot on the brake, pulling the car over to the curb with more force than necessary. Turning in his seat, he shifted to look at you.

"What do you want me to say?" He asked, throwing a hand up. "I apologised. I texted you. I told you practice ran over. What more do you want from me?

"A text twenty minutes later than you were supposed to be here."

"Did you want me to pull out my phone while coach was talking?"

You opened your mouth before closing it again. "Obviously not," you admitted. "Maybe I just wanted you to understand why I'm upset, rather than acting like I'm attacking you."

"I do understand," he said, voice softening a little. "But every time I apologise, it feels like you find another way to tell me I screwed up."

Your stomach dropped.

"Forget it." Stubbornly, you turned your hear away, staring out of the passenger side window.

Logan sighed heavily, turned the engine back on, and drove you both the rest of the way to the party. As he pulled into crowded driveway of the party, he broke the silence that had settled over you both, keeping his eyes glued to the steering wheel.

"You don't need to come in if you're just going to be pissed at me all night," Logan muttered.

You folded your arms tighter across your chest, his words leaving you seething. "If you don't want me to come with you, just say that."

"Can you stop twisting my words?" You could hear the frustration in his voice, and it only made you more frustrated. "I never said that."

"Whatever, Logan."

"Have fun," he said flatly as he shut off the ignition.

"Oh, I will."

You slammed the door to his car a little harder than necessary and stormed into the party.

Inside, the party was in full swing. Someone called your name, but you only offered a tight smile before disappearing into the kitchen. Within seconds, a drink was in your hand. Less than a minute later, the first drink was gone and you were pouring a second, heavy on the booze, light on the mixer.

You welcomed the burning heat of the drink as it hit the back of your throat. It felt better than the ache in your chest. As the drinks, and music, kept flowing through you, you forgot why you even needed it in the first place.

But the alcohol could only make you forget for so long. Every couple of minutes, you found your eyes scanning the crowd to find Logan. And when you finally did, your chest tightened. He was standing with Garrett and a few of the lacrosse team, head thrown back in laughter, unaffected and carefree.

'He hasn't even looked for me,' you thought, a bitter lump forming in your throat. 'He didn't text to see if I wanted to talk. He doesn't care. As usual, he'd rather drink with his buddies than deal with his emotional girlfriend.'

Suddenly, every emotion you'd been trying to bury came bubbling to the surface. Tears blurred your vision, turning the fairylights into halos. You stumbled towards the exit, desperate for fresh air.

"Whoa, steady there. I gotcha."

Strong hands caught your forearms, holding you steady as you practically fell into a chest.

Blinking hard, your vision focused on Tucker's worried face.

"Hey, what happened?" Tucker's brow furrowed as he took in your dishevelled state, mascara streaked down your flushed cheeks and eyes brimming with tears.

Before anybody else could notice, he carefully steered you toward the kitchen.

"Here," Tucker said gently as he handed you a cup. "Drink this, it's water."

You frowned at the cup as if it had offended you. "I don't want water."

"Please? For me?" He coaxed, using that soft gentlemanly tone he was so good at.

"Fineeeee." You downed the first cup, and let him refill it. By the time you finished the second, your head was pounding slightly less, but the emotional dam was still broken, stray tears still running down your face.

Tucker guided you to a quieter hallway near the downstairs bathroom, leaning against the wall. "Do you want me to go and get Logan for you?"

"No," you wailed, the sound muffled as you hid your face in your hands. "He doesn't care, he hates me."

Tucker sighed sympathetically, you were obviously shit-faced drunk, so he didn't expect much logic from you. "I don't think that's true. Tell me what happened."

"He hates me," you repeated, a hiccup interrupting your words. "He's gonna break up with me for being difficult."

"What makes you say that?" Tucker asked, completely baffled.

"Because he said I was pissed off and picking fights," you cried, wiping at your nose with the back of your hand.

Tucker stared at you for a minute, fighting the amused twitch of his lips. "And... were you?"

"Yes," you hiccuped loudly. Falling into Tucker's arms, you buried your face into the front of his shirt.

Tucker wrapped his arm around you, rubbing your back in soothing circles as you began dramatically retelling the car ride. Between slurred and jumbled sentences, you explained how he arrived late because he only cared about hockey, how he 'yelled' at you, and how he basically told you to go away.

Tucker listened patiently, nodding along, knowing damn well that this was a result of two tired people knowing how to push each other's buttons, rather than the hateful breakup you were telling him it was.

"Alright, let's just breatheeee," Tucker said slowly, gently pulling you away from his shirt. "Listen to me, that boy is crazy about you, like literally crazy. You're just really drunk, alright?"

You nodded slowly, wiping the snot from your nose.

"Come on, let's go get your boy."

Half-carrying, half-guiding your body, Tucker navigated you through the sea of college students. You stumbled along, clinging to his arm and still crying softly and mumbling about how Logan wouldn't want to see you.

Logan was still standing where you'd last seen him. He was talking to Garrett, but he wasn't really paying attention. His eyes were scanning the crowd, clearly looking for you.

The moment he spotted you clinging to Tucker, tears streaming down your face, his posture changed. He pushed through a couple of people to get to you.

"What happened?" He asked frantically, scanning your body for injuries. "Did someone hurt you?"

He didn't wait for you to answer, he pulled you from Tucker's hold into his arms, tucking you against his chest.

"She's fine, man," Tucker said gently, "she just missed you and is very sorry about earlier."

Before you could say anything, Tucker turned back into the crowd, giving you both space.

Your tears had stopped the moment you were in Logan's arms, instantly calmer. "I'm sorry," you mumbled into his shoulder. "Don't be mad anymore and please don't break up with me."

Despite himself, Logan laughed softly. "It's going to take a lot more than a stupid argument for me to even consider breaking up with you. You're stuck with me."

"I'm so sorry," you slurred, eyes closing as you swayed. "I-."

"Let's talk about it later," he interrupted, already pulling you towards the exit. "First, let me take you home."

It wasn’t like you never spend time at the house anymore, you still do. However, you’d always tell Logan that it’s time for you to go back to the dorms and what’s more surprising is Logan complying to your requests without any question; which in most cases, he’d grumble about just staying the night in his room because he doesn’t want you to go. There was even a time where Dean thought that you and Logan were having a rough patch in your relationship to the point of breaking up. But whenever the two of you see each other on campus, that doesn’t seem to be the case since the public display of affection always gagged him, as if he’s not one to do the same thing with Allie.

Now, they are only left confused on what’s going on between you two. Because while Logan spent his time in his room and at the ice rink, you were also by yourself. Sometimes in Allie’s and Hannah’s dorm, sometimes in the library, or sometimes alone in Malone’s. The confusion only lessened when they realized that it was midterms season and in Logan’s words, “We made a bet about having the highest grade.” But then, even examination days never stopped you from being all over each other. Until, you barged into their home, holding your exam papers and waving it in the air, a smug smile on your face,

Midterm season finally came to an end. Meaning, exam results are also out.

The boys were chilling in the living room, playing a video game that you didn’t pay attention to,  when you came. All four of them turned to you, surprise etched on their faces before it landed on the white sheet of papers you were waving above your head. Your eyes automatically met Logan’s and the latter understood immediately what it meant—you’re asking for his results.

Your boyfriend ran up to his room while you occupied the seat he was on earlier beside Garrett. They paused the game, waiting for things to unfold because whatever is happening is much more confusing than when you didn’t stay at their place for a week.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” Dean was finally the one who broke the silence, gesturing to the stairs where Logan just disappeared. You chuckled as you heard objects falling from upstairs. “Is he moving out? Or is this about the bet?”

“Oh, so you guys know about the bet.” You leaned back against the sofa, the smile still on your lips, and used the stack of papers to fan yourself. Tucker, who suddenly emerged from your other side, even tried peeking but you slapped the papers onto your thighs, completely hiding the red ink that showed your grade, keeping the results all to yourself to prolong the anticipation.

“Yeah—well, no. Logan just told us you and him made a bet but he didn’t actually—” But before Dean could finish his sentence, Logan appeared with his own exam papers in his hands, mimicking your earlier actions. The same smug smile, the same proud strut as he approached you. He squeezed himself between you and Garrett, while the latter could only wait for what’s going to happen next.

“Alright, gorgeous, let’s see your results.” You took Logan’s hand with yours and inhaled a deep breath, building up the suspense, and slowly laid your paper face-down on the coffee table. Logan did the same, his chest puffed out slightly, completely confident that his week of absolute isolation in his room had paid off. Because there is no way that he’d lose when he almost went insane whenever he had to send you back to the dorms when the only thing he wants is to be with you.

The three boys leaned forward, the video game completely forgotten. Tucker was practically falling off the armrest of the couch just to get a closer look on your exams. Clearly, they are as invested as you and Logan, because they really are. They spent one week watching the two of you treat each other like strangers. Well, except during the PDAs.

“On three.” You said, your eyes locking onto Logan’s with a challenging gaze. One, two, and three. Both of you flipped the papers at the same time and all five sets of eyes settled on the big red ink at the top of the pages, alternating between yours and Logan’s.

Silence stretched across the living room before a massive and satisfied grin painted your lips, a triumphant laugh following as you threw both your hands in the air, Tucker celebrating with you as he raised his hand to give you a high five. Logan stared at the numbers, his jaw dropping in disbelief. Not because you beat him, but because there was only a decimal point difference in your scores.

A 96.5 and a 96.3.

“No way, a zero point two difference? Sweetheart, how?” Logan raised the paper near his face as he skimmed over the details and saw that the difference came from the essay part of the exam. He froze for a moment and you took that as a chance to steal your paper back from his hands to hide inside your bag. You stood up from your seat and faced him, the proud smile never once leaving your lips as you held your hand in front of him.

“Accept the defeat, Johnny, I earned it.” There was an underlying meaning behind your words and it didn’t go unnoticed by Logan as he quickly recovered from his initial disbelief. The air between you immediately turned thick as your eyes darkened with want. The week of just pure kissing and making out didn’t satiate the hunger you both have for each other. Not after what happened in his room, not after knowing the feeling of having his cock inside your mouth, not after knowing how good it is to be fucked by him while tears run down your cheeks.

“Hold the fuck up. Was the bet about sex? Because oh my fucking goodness, someone help me. I just watched you guys ‘ghosted’ each other for a week to the point of thinking that you were breaking up and now, you’re eye fucking each other? Please, send help. Please!” Dean only received a flying pillow that landed directly on his face from Garrett as the latter mentioned how dramatic he was. The three of them looked traumatized, but they also looked defeated as all they continued the game, turning the volume up to the max knowing what will happen next.

Logan is already dragging you with him upstairs, tossing his exam papers in your bag that he initiated on carrying. But you swore, even with the loud volume, you heard three of his friends still talking about what happened with Tucker finally saying, “I mean, they might be unhinged but they are smart. Imagine using sex as a motivation to get a high grade? I’d do it too.”

Logan didn’t waste time when you reached his room as things escalated so quickly when the door locked behind him. Your back was still facing him when you felt his hands gripping your waist, pulling you back against him. You sighed when you felt the outline of his dick pressing on your ass and you couldn’t help but move with him as he started grinding behind you.

“You feel that, gorgeous? That’s all yours.” You weren’t able to respond, especially when Logan squeezed your ass, pulling you impossibly closer to him. For a moment, you forgot that you should be taking the lead since you got the higher grade. But that one week of depriving yourselves of each other is finally catching on both of you and you’d be grateful to feel him however. But a bet is a bet and like you said, you earned it.

“Remember the bet, Johnny? I got to have you first.”

You turned around in his arms, your eyes searching for his own as you slowly sank to your knees. Logan immediately took the pillow from the foot of his bed and motioned for you to move a little so he could place it below you for comfort. Both of you laughed at the action, because it was a stark contrast to what’s about to happen.

“I mean, I’m allowed to think of fucking you and still respect you, right?”

Logan caressed your left cheek and you leaned into the touch. One of your hands took his as you turned his palm toward your lips, gracing a soft kiss against the rough skin. It was a completely soft gesture from you that made Logan’s heart flutter, but it didn’t last long when you guided his thumb inside your mouth. You sucked at his finger as you slowly worked on removing his pants, pulling it all the way to his feet.

Logan’s breath hitched when he felt your hands wrapped around his hard length, your eyes still locked on his blown out ones and not once you turned away.

“I missed your cock, Johnny. Missed sucking it.” And to prove your words, you tugged him forward on the back of his thigh, his dick now closer to your face. You didn’t waste any more second and replaced your hand with your mouth, your tongue swirling around the head as you pumped the rest with your other hand.

Logan groaned at the feeling of finally having your mouth on him again. He didn’t know how he survived the last seven days without your touch and now that you’re on your knees in front of him enjoying yourself, he’s not sure if he can let you go again.

“Take more, gorgeous. I know you can take more, come on.” And you obliged, taking him deeper into your mouth as you felt him hit the back of your throat. You choked a little, relaxing your jaw just like he taught you, and started moving your head. You started slow, taking your sweet time feeling him going in and out of your mouth. Logan’s hand guided your head, only halting your movements so he could go all the way in, your tears brimming in your eyes due to how good it feels and you’re certain that you’re soaking for him right now.

The thick and heavy length makes you adjust the pillow below you so you can feel some kind of relief but when Logan saw the movement, he pulled away from you. Your tongue darted out in the air to chase after his cock, but you ended up swallowing the spit and his pre-cum that oozed out a bit.

“Don’t do that.” Logan’s deep voice was laced with warning and it should’ve scared you. But you knew him, you knew he wouldn’t do anything that will hurt you even if you disobey him. So, you didn’t listen and put your whole weight on his pillow, grinding your still clothed center on the material. Your eyes are still glued to him, but you caught his dick jerking as he watched you hump his pillow.

You took it further when you started removing your shirt, followed by your black bra. Your tits spilled out and your nipples hardened immediately, your hands slowly moved upwards to cupped your breasts, squeezing one to tease Logan.

“Gorgeous, please, don’t do that.”

“Hmm, why? You wished it was your hands? You wished it was you underneath me and not your pillow? You wanna be the one I’m riding?” You stopped playing with yourself and asked Logan to come near you again. He absentmindedly nodded at your question, walking toward you like a man who just fell under your spell.

“Then lay down on your bed.” Logan knew he’s fast, but he never realized he was that fast when he heard your words. At one moment, he was standing in front of you, and the next second, he’s on his bed, fully naked and waiting for you as you removed your pants and undies.

Logan swallowed hard when he saw your pussy for the first time in a week. He’d seen it a lot of times, but being denied it made him feel like a stray dog without a bone. When you walked toward him, he helped you climb on the bed and put your legs on either side of his face.

“Fucking finally.”

Your eyes almost rolled at the back of your head when you felt Logan’s mouth on your folds, lapping at the entrance up to your clit where he expertly sucked and flick at the nub. He kept his eyes on you to watch your expressions, making mental notes of what makes you feel good and what makes you tug at his hair to pull him closer to your center.

Logan is having the time of his life, you can tell by the way he’s switching from abusing your hole, his tongue fucking your entrance and from licking all over your core. You moved forward when you felt yourself getting closer to the edge, pulling at Logan’s hair tighter and that was an indication for him to keep going.

“Johnny, please—fuck, yes. Don’t stop.” And he didn’t. Logan didn’t stop even after you came, even when you tried to pull away from him. He kept you in place as he lapped up every single drop you gave him. He didn’t stop until he saw your tears falling down your cheeks, your whimpers getting quieter but needier. He guided you beside him, but you refused to as you adjusted your position on top of him. You’re now straddling his waist, your head buried on his neck, and for some twisted reason, Logan grew impossibly harder when he felt the dampness of your cheeks on his shoulder.

“You did so well for me, gorgeous. So, so good for me.” Logan rubbed your back slowly, the touch of his fingertips giving you goosebumps. The soft moment lasted for a few more minutes before you lifted your head from its place, your eyes quickly meeting Logan’s and the glint in them showed that he’s ready for more, only if you are too.

And it only took one mischievous grin from you for him to take the hint.

You remained on top of him, sitting up slowly while tracing kisses all over his neck and chest, leaving marks in the process. Your lips outlined his jaw down to his collarbone, his pectoral muscle, and sucking a little on his nipples. He let you do it while he tried to control his movements, especially his hips where his cock is patiently waiting for you.

Logan groaned under his breath when he finally felt your hand guiding it toward your entrance, the head of his cock brushing against your slick opening. The slight friction drew a low growl from his chest and it took everything in him not to thrust upward. So instead, his hands, which had been closed in fists beside him, just gripped your hips firmly—anchoring you, but mostly himself.

“Oh, god, you’re gonna be the death of me, gorgeous.” He rasped, his voice rough and laced with desperation. You smiled at his words, stalling your movements just to tease him, and Logan couldn’t do anything but to watch you with amusement despite the intense hunger flashing in his eyes.

“Well, at least, you’re going to die fucking me.”

Then, with a slow and agonizing movement, you began to fully sink down on him. The gasp that left Logan's lips was swallowed by you as he pulled you down by your neck to meet his mouth in a searing kiss. His willpower and patience completely disappeared when he felt you clamped down on him, your hole swallowing his length with ease. His hips thrusted upward automatically, meeting your movements with force that made your mind go blank.

The sound of your gasping together with Logan’s deep growl went straight to your cunt, your wetness dripping down all over his legs. And he felt it. He felt the stickiness between you but it only urged him more as his grip on your waist tightened. He picked up his pace as his thrust became powerful, leaving you breathless and a whimpering mess on top of him.

“Look at me.” He commanded softly, his voice dropping down as he waited for your eyes to regain their focus to meet his. And when you did, his eyes were completely dark with lust and he smiled up at you. Not the kind one, not the soft one. His smile caused you to clench on his cock, riding him faster. And you felt your eyes watering again due to how completely whole and wrecked he made you feel. His words didn’t help at all, causing you to sob at every thrust and every ministration.

“That’s it, that's my girl. You like how that feels, don’t you?”

“Take all of it. This is what you want, right? Then take all of it.”

“I know, I know. You love it. You’re so tight around me, it’s driving me fucking insane.”

“Tell me, is it good? Yeah? Then say it, let me hear you, come on.”

A broken whimper would escape your lips in every word he threw your way, which only seemed to fuel his lust. A dark, breathless, and proud laugh vibrating in his chest as his hips relentlessly fucks into you. And of course, you'd reply to him. Matching the intensity of his passion, allowing yourself to be completely at his mercy.

“Yes, I love it. Keep fucking me, baby. Please.”

“Harder, Johnny. I want it, please, give me everything.”

“It’s so big—too much—but don't stop. I love it, don't ever stop.”

“It’s so good. Your cock is made for me. It's only mine, baby, mine.”

Your replies made Logan sit up and with his cock still buried in you, he lay you down below him switching the position. Once he made sure that you’re comfortable, he continued slamming his hips into yours, hooking one of your legs to his arm to hit the spot he knew would make you cum. The new angle caused you to writhe underneath him, but his strong grip on your body prevented you from moving.

“Come on, pretty. You want my cock so bad, right? Prove it, come for me.”

And with one final sob, your back arch from the bed as you completely fell apart. Logan grunted on top of you when he felt you tightened around him, his hands giving out for a fracture of second before he regained his composure. He watched as your body twitched in sensitivity, his thrusts  persistent as he fucked you through your orgasm. He was almost at the edge too, but what made him reach his climax was your voice as you asked him to come inside.

“Inside, baby. I want to feel all of you.” And he did, after asking you a second time just to make sure. He filled you up, his cum spilling inside as you sighed at the feeling of his warmth overtaking your senses.

Logan laid down beside you once he recovered from his high, his hands holding you protectively against him. His lips peppered kisses onto your skin as his hand gently caressed your body, patiently waiting for you to return to your right headspace. You buried yourself deeper into his arms when you slowly became aware of how cold it was in his room.

“I’m so proud of you, gorgeous. You did so well.” You hummed in response, laying soft kisses on his chest as you pat his back, copying his actions.

“I did so well? The exam? Or for you?” Logan chuckled, lifting your head to meet his and left a peck on your lips, bumping your nose with his. Your eyes closed at the feeling, relishing in the warmth he’s emitting and Logan can’t help but stare, the answer he prepared vanishing as he studied your face.

You looked absolutely beautiful in his arms; all flushed and soft and pressed up against him. He feels incredibly lucky to get to have you like this—safe in his arms where you allowed yourself to be entirely vulnerable, marveling in the aftermath of your activities, and how you trusted him to make you feel good. He feels lucky to be the one to show you love and to receive yours in return, with the same energy and intensity, no matter how normal and crazy.

Your eyes fluttered open when he didn’t reply and caught him staring at you. The once lustful gaze was now replaced with adoration you became familiar with as he always looked at you that way. Logan’s heart thumped so fast, your question totally forgotten until you asked again. “So?”

Logan let out a breathless sigh, melting under your gaze and guided your head back to his chest.

“Both, sweetheart. But you’re more perfect right now.” You laughed at his words, your breath tickling his skin but stayed glued to you nonetheless. Both of you remained tangled in each other’s embrace, but the moment you started drifting off to sleep, Logan spoke again.

“Just so you know, this is not the end. We still have the final exams and I’m gonna crush it.”

If Logan scores at least three goals in a single game, he can have it whenever and wherever he wants.

The roar inside the arena was deafening when Logan hit the puck to the opponent’s net, earning his third score for the night which also secured their win, maintaining their position and winning streak. It was pure chaos as the Hawks brought him up in the air, celebrating the victory he brought for the team.

Yet, despite being in the rink; his friends chanting his surname, the crowd rejoicing in triumph, and the rest of the surrounding stuck in a cheering frenzy, Logan’s eyes still found yours. His lips morphed into a playful and teasing curve, before sending a wink and a kiss your way. While the crowd who saw what Logan did thought it was just the usual “This win is for you too” action that became a norm for him, you knew better than that, thinking of the deal you made two days before his game.

“Three to five goals, baby, and you’ll gain the right to decide when and where you want it to happen.”

“So, I’ll earn that right at three goals, correct?”

“Mm-hmm, correct.”

And now, as much as this whole thing excites you too, you thought that you should’ve said a minimum of five. However, knowing Logan, he would’ve reached that score too especially if the motivation is very tempting. Too tempting for him to not do well in the game.

One by one, the players started disappearing in the shower room while you, Allie, and Hannah decided to wait by the parking lot. The three of you were buzzing with joy as well, feeling the adrenaline as if you were also at the rink. However, you knew that the adrenaline that started shooting throughout your body was caused by something else. You hopped in the passenger seat of your car and started the engine while waiting for Logan. A few minutes later, you received a message from him.

You should’ve known it was a warning; when he asked about you being in the parking lot,  when he told you he’ll miss the celebration of their victory, when he thanked you for heating up the engine as he hastily drove at the back of the university where no one really passed by unless the guards did their usual night patrol, when he pulled up at the side hidden by a bush. Because at least, you would’ve been prepared for his plans, you wouldn’t be so surprised.

Because the second he made sure that no one was around, he was all over you. You two ended up at the back seat, your legs spread out as Logan claimed his prize, the sound of your combined, ragged breathing filling the confined space. The leather of the seat was cool against your skin, a sharp contrast to the heat radiating from your boyfriend. His hair is still damp from the shower as you gripped on it to pull him closer.

“Fuck, Johnny, someone might see us.” Despite the pleasure, you still made sure to check on your surroundings. The window is tinted, that’s for sure. You knew Logan wouldn’t intentionally put you in a situation where you might feel even a tad bit uncomfortable. And your mind is really just as twisted as Logan’s, because at the back of your mind, you find this exciting. The thrill of someone might pass by, the possibility of getting caught—everything about this made you ecstatic.

“Baby, please—” But your words turned into a surprised gasp as Logan leaned forward, pushing your knees further against your chest as one of his hands joined his mouth, two of his fingers playing with your entrance as they slowly disappeared inside you. His fingers stayed still for a second before he deliberately curved his knuckles upward, hitting the exact spot that made you arch your back from the seat. 

Logan pulled his mouth away just to admire how wrecked you look with just his finger and he bit his lips thinking how bad you’ll get once his cock replaced his fingers.

“Three goals, gorgeous. I did it. And a deal is a deal. Whenever and wherever. And I want it here, I want it now.” He growled softly, his fingers working nonstop as you thrash and twist below him. He chuckled darkly when you tried to reply, only for you to end up choking out a moan when he hit your spot again, and again, and again. Until he felt you contracting around his fingers.

“But holy shit, pretty, you’re impossibly tight when you’re scared it makes me wanna fuck you already.” The devilish grin on his lips widened when your hips lifted off the seat, chasing after his fingers, his thumb pressing you down to keep you in place. You gripped the back of the seat, anchoring yourself at the thought of having your favorite part of him inside you.

“Fuck, you want it? Want me to fuck you?”

“Yes, yes! Fuck me, please. I want it, baby. Want your cock in me.” 

“Then you better come for me first and I’ll give you what you want.”

After a few more pumps, you completely shattered. Your whole body shook under his gaze, your fingers digging into the headrest as a loud cry tore from your throat, which you muffled by clamping your other hand to your mouth. And Logan watched every second of it; every whimper that went straight to his dick, every involuntary movement that he feels proud to see. He didn’t pull his fingers right away, he just let you ride out your high, stroking your forehead with his free hand to let you know that he’s there and he’s got you.

“So beautiful, sweetheart. Always so perfect. Do you still want it? Or do you wanna take this back home?” You shook your head at his question, tugging at his jeans to give your answer.

“You said, here and now, Johnny. I want it too.”

Logan didn’t make you beg the second time. Instead, he leaned toward you to catch your lips in a chaste kiss, his hands working to unbutton his jeans and pushed it down enough to free his hard cock. He gripped your hips as he aligned himself to your hole and you let out a desperate whimper when the tip of his length brushed against your dripping entrance. Yet despite how sensitive you are, your thighs naturally parted wider to welcome him. Your body became so familiar with him it knew how to respond even before your mind could register what’s happening.

“Is it not too much, gorgeous? Can you take more?” Logan asked softly, his hot breath hitting your face as he leaned down to connect your foreheads together. He watched your face, searching for any kind of hesitation but he didn’t find any. But he did see how unguarded you become, hooking your foot at the back of his knees to invite him closer.

“Yes, it’s not too much. I can take more.”

The moment your eyes met his in confirmation, that’s when he drove forward. Logan buried himself inside you in one swift motion, stretching you so perfectly that a moan quickly escaped your parted lips. His size and the lingering sensitivity of your climax were overwhelming, but Logan made sure to stay with you, holding your hands as his thrust got faster and deeper.

“Look at you handling it so well, so warm and so perfect.” The praise caused hot tears to form in your eyes and with every powerful thrust, they fell one after another. It was silent at first, but the longer Logan fucked you, the louder your cries became.

“Look at you crying for it. It's okay, I won't stop.”

“So fucking tight, pretty. All for me.”

“Shh, it’s okay, gorgeous, I got you. Tell me if it’s too much.”

But you’re shaking your head at him as your own hips begin to move on their own to meet him, desperate for friction, desperate for another release. When Logan felt your walls twitching, he knew you were close and that was enough motivation for his pace to turn inhumanely possible. The sound of your skins slapping together echoed inside the small space of your car and by the way he’s moving on top of you, any person passing by would know what’s happening inside. The sheer thought of it sent you over the edge, a more violent climax ripping through you.

Logan locked his lips over yours, muffling your cries, tasting your tears as it continuously fell on your cheeks. The moment he registered that you’re fully sobbing in his arms, his body went still as he completely buried his cock inside you, not an inch left unattended as he spilled everything inside, his thick and warm cum filling you up.

After a while, the heavy atmosphere began to settle as both of you recovered from your activities. Logan still has his length inside you, his head resting against your shoulder. Your hand was tangled in his hair, while the other remained holding his. Slowly, he lifted his head to take a look at you and you saw a completely different version of him—there was still the playful grin but the soft gaze in his eyes told you everything.

He kissed the path toward your lips and once he’s face to face with you, he bumped his nose against yours; a practice intimacy he got used to doing after sex.

“Hi, Johnny.”

“Hi, gorgeous.” Logan shifted his weight, moving away from you a little to carefully pull out of your center. His absence caused you to whimper and the sound had him wrapping his arms around you immediately, uncaring of the cramped space as he tugged you toward his embrace. His lips landed on your forehead, sending warm kisses. He also took your bag from the floor of the car, taking your wet wipes to clean you up.

“Look at you, pretty. A beautiful mess, handled everything so well, and you’re all mine.” Logan whispered in your ear, his hands still busy wiping at yours and his skin. He discarded the used wipes at the car console where you keep a small trash bag before tending back his attention to you. He is now fully devoid of the man that he was earlier, consumed by lust and passion. What’s now left was a man caring for his girlfriend, eyes bright and entirely soft.

“Shut up, you didn’t make it to five goals.” You teased him as you hid your face in his chest, patting the hard muscle. Logan let out a low chuckle and kissed the crown of your head, his arms tightening around your waist.

“Watch me make it to five goals next game and we’ll do it in the announcer’s booth.”

“Johnny, not there! That’s Hannah and Garrett’s favorite place.” Both of you laughed at the statement before you settled into a comfortable silence. Logan moved slightly so you can have more space to rest comfortably against him, his chin now resting at the top of your head.

“Alright, not there. Anyway, let’s just stay like this for a little bit, then I’ll drive us back to the hockey house. Is that okay?” You nodded your head, cozying up in his arms as you wrapped yours securely around his torso. 

After a while, you told Logan that you should head back home. Your friends understood why Logan missed out on the celebration, but that didn’t stop them from sending you tons of messages. Saying how unhinged you guys are and the way you’ve been using sex as a motivation should be studied, that there’s gotta be an explanation to your ways.

But you already know the answer to that. Aside from how good the sex was and how intimate you both are, after what you’ve found out about each other, it became clear to you and Logan that you trusted each other enough to talk about things you don’t usually talk about and do things that you once thought you wouldn’t do because of how risky it was—like having fun in the car.

It occurred to the both of you that it wasn’t entirely about the actions, the plans, the bets, and the deals, it was also about the person you’re doing it. And you’re just lucky that you’re doing it with Logan.

As you near the hockey house, Logan took your hand in his and pressed a kiss at the back of it.

“I love you, gorgeous. You know that, right?” The gleam and soft yearning swimming in his eyes drew a small grin on your lips and you leaned forward to kiss his cheeks. The warmth of his hand steadied you as you looked ahead, your reply caused Logan to mirror your smile, safe and satisfied.

“I know, Johnny, I love you too.”

Logan woke up to a rooster, a dog, and your elbow in his ribs.

The rooster came first, somewhere outside the open window, tearing through the soft grey-blue morning with the kind of confidence usually reserved for fire alarms and drunk men outside bars after closing. Logan opened one eye, saw nothing but the faded blue wall, the dresser mirror across the room, and a pale strip of daylight beginning to crawl along the floorboards, and decided with the exhausted logic of a man who had gone to sleep in a house full of antique furniture and relatives who seemed genetically incapable of whispering that if the rooster was not physically inside the room, it was not his problem.

Then came the dog.

A thump against the door.

A scratch.

Another thump.

Then a long, offended sigh from the hallway, like whatever creature had arrived outside the blue room considered closed doors to be a personal failure of hospitality. Logan lifted his head just enough to look toward the sound, then froze when the old bed gave a thin, accusatory creak beneath him.

You made a small noise into his chest, asleep and offended.

He looked down at you. Your hair was everywhere, soft from being washed the night before, one loose wave caught near your mouth. Your cheek was pressed to his bare chest. One leg was tangled with his under the sheet. At some point in the night, you had stolen both the lighter blanket and the side of the bed nearest the window, which he had allowed because he was generous, in love, and unconscious.

The scratch came again.

You shifted and, without opening your eyes, drove your elbow into his side.

“Ow,” Logan whispered.

“Make Hugh stop,” you mumbled.

“That’s not Hugh.”

“Then make it Hugh and stop him.”

He bit back a laugh, “There’s a dog at the door.”

Your eyes cracked open.

Logan caught enough of your gaze to understand the betrayal.

“Already?” you whispered.

“What do you mean already?”

“These dogs run on a schedule.”

The dog whined again, soft and dramatic.

You sighed, rolled off him with the tragic exhaustion of a woman being asked to rise before destiny intended, and sat up with the sheet clutched to your chest. The early light moved over your shoulder and the messy fall of your hair, turning the whole room softer around you. Logan watched you rub one eye with the heel of your palm, your mouth pouting unconsciously with sleep, and felt something in his chest loosen in a way that had nothing to do with last night and everything to do with this morning.

The dog scratched again.

“I’m comin’,” you whispered, as though the dog had accused you of cruelty, “Lord.”

You reached for the robe folded over the chair, wrapped it around yourself, and padded toward the door. Logan sat up against the pillows, hair a mess, sheet low on his hips, still trying to remember where he had thrown his shirt.

You opened the door a cautious crack.

A shape immediately tried to shove its entire body through the gap.

“Biscuit,” you hissed. “No.”

The old beagle from dinner pushed his nose past your shin, tail wagging with slow, ancient entitlement.

“No,” you repeated, firmer, though Logan could hear the affection underneath, “We are not beginnin’ this.”

Biscuit stared up at you.

You sleepily stared back.

The beagle won.

He trotted into the room like he had been formally invited, crossed the floor with his nails clicking against the boards, and began sniffing Logan’s discarded shorts by the bed.

Logan looked at you, “Does he do this to everyone?”

“No.” You shut the door softly, then turned with narrowed eyes as Biscuit shoved his nose into one of Logan’s boots, “Apparently this is personal.”

Biscuit finished investigating the boot, sneezed, then came to the side of the bed and put his chin on the mattress, gazing at Logan with damp-eyed expectation.

You crossed your arms, “Don’t encourage him.”

“I’m not.”

“You are lookin’ at him kindly.”

“That’s just my face.”

“No, your face is saying, come here, old man, I have never once enforced a boundary against a dog.”

Logan held out a hand.

Biscuit immediately licked his fingers.

You made a soft little sound of defeat and threw both hands up, “Traitors.”

“He likes me.”

“He also eats horse manure if unsupervised.”

Biscuit, apparently satisfied with Logan’s moral weakness, attempted to climb onto the bed. He got his front paws up, failed to lift the rest of himself, and made a noise so sorrowful that Logan moved without thinking, reaching down to help haul him onto the quilt.

The bed creaked.

You winced at the derelict sound.

Biscuit gave no indication that he cared about structural integrity and settled heavily across Logan’s lap.

You stared at them.

Logan scratched behind the dog’s ear, “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You look like you’re about to say something.”

“I’m decidin’ whether to tell you this is a bad sign.”

“Because of the dog?”

“Because of that dog.” You pointed at Biscuit, who was now melting across Logan’s thighs with the boneless satisfaction of an animal who had manipulated a stronger species successfully, “Biscuit doesn’t sit with guests.”

“He sat under my chair at dinner.”

“I know.”

“So maybe he likes me.”

“Maybe he has identified you as emotionally available.”

Logan grinned, “Is that bad?”

“In this family?” You padded back toward the bed, robe loose at your shoulders, voice still rough from sleep, “It’s how they get you.”

The rooster screamed again outside.

Biscuit did not move.

You glanced toward the window with deep, quiet hatred, “I hope something eats him.”

“The rooster?”

“Yes.”

Logan laughed then, unable to help it, and the sound made you look back at him.

For a second, the room softened around both of you.

Morning. Blue walls. Old quilt. Dog across his lap. Your robe tied messily at your waist but slipping from one bare shoulder. The ranch outside already awake and demanding labour. You stood there for a moment, still sleepy, still half-warm from his bed, and then you came closer.

You bent down and kissed him.

It was meant to be quick.

It turned into something slower because he caught your wrist before you could pull away, and because you let him, and because you still tasted like sleep and cherry balm.

Biscuit sighed between you.

You pulled back, eyes half-lidded, “We cannot scar the beagle.”

“He came in here.”

“He’s elderly.”

“He’s nosy.”

“He is a respected member of this household.”

“He licked my boot.”

“He contains multitudes.”

A knock came at the door.

You straightened immediately, dragging your robe tighter. Logan nearly launched Biscuit off the bed with how fast he reached for the sheet.

Sarah’s voice came through the door, bright as a knife, “Breakfast in thirty. Mama says if you’re late, she’ll assume you’re helping with dishes.”

You closed your eyes, “Thank you, Sarah.”

A pause,“Is Biscuit in there?”

“No.”

Biscuit barked once.

Sarah gasped, “Slut.”

“Sarah!”

“I meant the dog.”

Logan stared at the ceiling while you pressed your fingers to the bridge of your nose.

Sarah’s footsteps retreated down the hall, “Thirty minutes!”

You looked at Biscuit.

Biscuit looked at you.

“He’s your problem now,” you told Logan.

Logan scratched the beagle’s head, “Morning to you too, buddy.”

Cowboy Week’s first official morning did not begin gently.

By the time you and Logan made it downstairs, the ranch had already become several different operations pretending to be one household. Breakfast was laid across the kitchen and dining room in practical abundance, biscuits under cloth, eggs, fruit, bacon, yogurt, toast, preserves, coffee in industrial quantities, pitchers of juice, and a basket of pastries that Hugh had stationed himself near with the suspicious focus of a man planning theft.

The kitchen doors were open to the back porch, and people moved in and out with plates, mugs, clipboards, work gloves, and the general urgency of a group that considered sitting down a brief inconvenience between tasks.

Your mother was at the long counter, hair pinned up, boots already dusty, reviewing a clipboard while spreading jam on toast. Your father stood beside her with coffee, talking to Travis, the stable manager, about the north pasture transport. Nana sat at the head of the kitchen table in a pale blouse and red lipstick, eating fruit with a small fork as though everyone around her had not been up since dawn. Grandad was reading a printed schedule with his glasses low on his nose, making dissatisfied noises at intervals.

“You’re late,” Sarah said as you walked in.

You checked the clock, “It is eight-oh-two.”

“Late.”

“Mama said breakfast at eight-ish.”

Your mother looked up, “I said eight.”

“You said eight-ish.”

“I said eight with the tone of ish.”

“That is not binding.”

Logan went to reach for a mug and found Hugh already holding one out to him.

“Coffee, Boston.”

Logan narrowed his eyes, “Is there something in it?”

Hugh looked offended, “Hospitality.”

Sarah took the mug from Hugh, sniffed it, and handed it to Logan, “Safe.”

“Thank you.”

“Do not thank him. It encourages him.”

Hugh leaned against the counter, “How’s Biscuit?”

You turned sharply, “How do you know about Biscuit?”

“This house has no secrets.”

“This house has too many floorboards.”

“Same thing.”

Your father, without looking away from the schedule, said, “Hugh.”

“I didn’t say anything improper.”

“You were approaching it.”

“Feels unfair to discipline intent.”

“Feels familiar,” Jordan said, walking in behind Maddie.

Jordan looked entirely awake in a way Logan found suspicious. His shirt was crisp, his boots clean, his hair neat, and his expression already faintly annoyed by the day’s inefficiencies. Maddie beside him looked softer but no less prepared, her hair pulled back, sleeves rolled with quiet purpose. She kissed your cheek when she passed and touched Logan’s arm in greeting like they had moved past introduction and into shared survival.

“You slept?” Maddie asked.

“Some,” you said.

Sarah’s mouth opened.

You pointed a piece of toast at her, “Finish that sentence and I will pour coffee in your boots.”

Sarah shut her mouth, smiling.

Logan found himself seated beside you at the long kitchen table with a plate he did not remember filling. Your mother tapped the table twice with her pen, and the room quieted in waves rather than all at once. It was not silence; no family this size could manage silence without medical intervention. But conversations dropped enough that her voice carried.

“Right. Monday. Officially, today is setup and first prep. Public events don’t start until Wednesday evening, but this ranch does not prepare itself, despite Hugh’s long-standing belief that chairs migrate.”

Hugh lifted one hand, “I have never said chairs migrate.”

“You have behaved like you believe it.”

“Different.”

“East yard needs lantern lines checked before lunch. South beds need watering before eleven because the zinnias have apparently given up on living. Small barn needs clearing for the scholarship displays. Texas branch is using the west arena for polo practice at one. Kitchen prep continues all morning. Flowers for the porch need cutting and cooling. The partners table is on labels, beans, and programme folding after breakfast. Anyone who thinks they are above folding programmes can discuss humility with Mrs. Alvarez.”

Mrs. Alvarez, at the stove, did not turn around, “I have time.”

“Nobody doubts that,” Grandad said.

Your mother continued, “Baby, I need you with Travis after breakfast. One of the ponies has a puffy eye, and the mare arriving from north pasture needs a quick look. After that, Mama’s side needs you in the beds because the zinnias remain dramatic.”

You sighed softly into your coffee, “They were dramatic yesterday.”

“They remain dramatic today.”

Sarah leaned back in her chair, “Maybe they need therapy.”

“They need water,” your mother said.

“That is therapy for flowers.”

“Sarah, you’re on west arena check with Hugh after breakfast, then barrel tack inventory.”

Sarah groaned, “Why am I with Hugh?”

“Because he cannot be trusted alone with confidence.”

Hugh pointed at Logan, “Put Boston with me.”

“No,” you, Sarah, and your mother said together.

Logan raised his brows.

Hugh looked wounded, “Conspiracy.”

Your mother glanced at Logan, “You, sweetheart, start with Bennett and Theo. They know where bodies are needed.”

“That sounds ominous,” Logan said.

“It is,” Bennett called from the far end of the table.

Theo lifted his coffee, “Welcome to the partner labour pool.”

Logan looked at you, “The what?”

You patted his knee beneath the table with the false comfort of a doctor about to give bad news, “The partner labour pool.”

“Why does that sound like an initiation into a cult?”

“Because you’re perceptive.”

Hugh leaned forward, “Technically, he should start on a horse.”

Your father, without missing a beat, said, “Technically, you should move the boxes out of the dining room.”

“I am being silenced.”

“You are being redirected,” your mother said.

Grandad folded the schedule and looked at Logan over the top of his glasses, “You ever handled fence posts?”

Logan sat up slightly, “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Better than Hugh, then.”

Hugh threw a biscuit at him.

Grandad caught it with one hand and put it on his plate.

Nana looked at Logan with calm interest, “Eat more before they take you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good boy.”

The table went briefly, devastatingly quiet.

Logan’s ears went pink. You pressed your lips together, fighting for your life.

Hugh’s smile spread slowly, “Good boy, Boston?”

You pointed your fork at him, “Don’t.”

Breakfast dissolved the same way it had assembled, not ending so much as turning into tasks. Plates were cleared by whoever had hands free. Your father carried a stack of mugs to the sink. Hugh stole one last biscuit and fled before Mrs. Alvarez could catch him. Jordan took a call by the back door, face sharpening into business. Maddie moved toward the mudroom with a folder tucked under her arm, already speaking to Travis about the retired racehorse demo later in the week. Sarah caught your sleeve, whispered something that made you swat her arm, and then disappeared after Hugh with the air of a woman going to war against male confidence.

Logan had barely stood before Bennett appeared at his side with a pair of work gloves.

“These fit?”

Logan took them, “Probably.”

“Good enough.”

Theo, behind him, handed him a bottle of water, “Hydrate before the ranch begins extracting value from you.”

“Is that the official motto?”

“It’s on the rejected merchandise.”

Bennett nodded toward the door, “Come on. Lantern posts.”

Logan looked at you across the room.

You were already being pulled toward the back hallway by Travis, who had a veterinary kit in one hand and the resigned expression of a man who knew exactly how many things could go wrong before nine. You caught Logan’s eye, pointed at him, then at the water bottle.

He lifted it in acknowledgement.

You mouthed, Drink it.

He took an exaggerated sip.

Your smile flashed, soft and pleased.

Then you were gone.

Logan had expected to be treated like a guest.

Watched, maybe. Tested, probably. Your family was warm, but it was also enormous and layered and full of people who seemed to understand invisible systems he did not yet know existed. He had expected to be asked questions, to make polite conversation, to carry things only after offering.

Instead, the ranch began using him.

Bennett and Theo took him to the east yard, where half-built lantern lines waited along a stretch of fence near what would become, by Wednesday, the pretty public-facing route between the main house and the converted barn. The posts were heavier than they looked, and the sun got mean fast. Logan found himself sweating through his shirt by nine-fifteen, holding one end of a wooden post while Bennett checked spacing and Theo read instructions from a folded paper he had apparently stolen from Sarah’s event binder.

“Does Sarah know you have that?” Logan asked.

“No,” Theo said, “That’s why I’m reading quickly.”

Bennett drove the post into place with practical efficiency, “Rule one.”

Logan adjusted his grip on the next post, “There are rules?”

“There are always rules.”

Theo held up a finger, “If Mama’s side offers food, take it.”

“That’s rule one?”

“That’s survival,” Bennett said.

Theo lifted another finger, “Rule two. Never accept an empty hand.”

Logan looked down at his empty hand.

Bennett immediately placed a coil of twine in it.

“See?” Theo said.

Logan stared at the twine, “That was educational.”

“Rule three,” Bennett said, “If the family delays explaining something, stretch.”

“Why?”

Theo smiled, “Tuesday.”

Logan looked between them, “Everyone keeps saying Tuesday.”

“Then start stretching,” Bennett said.

By ten, Logan had learned that Bennett had married into the Montana-Wyoming cattle branch and possessed the kind of calm that came from being yelled at by both weather and relatives. Theo belonged to one of Mama’s side cousins and worked in something polished and city-adjacent, which made him look like he should hate manual labour, except he folded programmes better than anyone and had the survival instincts of someone who had made peace with doing whatever an older woman holding a clipboard asked.

Together, they formed what Logan was beginning to understand was the partner class. A group of people who had chosen in, been tested, survived, and now treated incoming partners with the grim kindness of veterans.

“You play hockey in Boston, right?” Bennett asked, driving another post down.

“Massachusetts, yeah. Briar.”

“You trying for NHL?”

Logan had answered the question a thousand times in a thousand versions. From coaches, classmates, girls at parties, guys who wanted to compare injuries, men who had not skated in twenty years but still had opinions. There was usually something in it he had to navigate- expectation, disbelief, projection, a need for him to perform ambition in a way that was palatable to whoever had asked.

Bennett’s tone had none of that. In fact, it was the same tone he might have used to ask whether a fence line was straight.

“Yeah,” Logan said, “That’s the goal.”

“Draft?”

“Not yet. There are a few paths. Camps, scouts, development. Depends on the season, depends on who’s looking.”

Theo glanced over, “That sounds like horses.”

Logan huffed a laugh, “Does it?”

“Everything here becomes horses eventually.”

Bennett stepped back to look at the post, “He’s not wrong. Bloodlines, performance, timing, money, politics, everyone pretending luck is strategy.”

Logan thought about that for a second, “Yeah. That’s actually not far off.”

“Jordan will like that answer,” Theo said.

“Jordan likes answers?”

“Rarely. Enjoy it if it happens.”

The first time Logan saw you again, you were crossing the yard with Travis, your hair pulled up messily, boots dusty, a vet kit hanging from one shoulder. You had changed out of your breakfast clothes into jeans and a red top that already had a faint smear of something near the hem, and you were listening intently while Travis spoke, nodding at intervals, your face focused in a way that made you look older than you did when you were laughing with Sarah. A chestnut pony followed behind a groom at the end of a lead rope, blinking one swollen eye with offended dignity.

You looked up as you passed, saw Logan holding a coil of lantern wire, and smiled.

Just for him.

Then Travis said something else, and your attention snapped back to the pony.

Theo, from the fence, looked between you, “That’s another rule.”

“What is?”

“Do not interrupt her when an animal is involved unless someone is bleeding.”

Bennett considered, “Even then, depends who.”

Logan watched you disappear toward the shade of the small barn, “Noted.”

The second time he saw you, you had a hose over one shoulder and murder in your eyes.

He was walking back from the kitchen with more twine, two pitchers of iced tea, and an instruction from Mrs. Alvarez to tell Theo that if he wanted to steal her scissors, he could do it “like a man and admit it,” when you came around the side of the house dragging a green garden hose behind you, muttering disgruntledly to yourself.

The red top clung at one side of your waist where water had splashed you. Pieces of hair had escaped your clip and stuck to the damp line of your neck. Your boots were muddy at the toes. You were muttering under your breath with such focus that Logan slowed.

“Everything okay?”

You looked up, the irritation softening around the edges the second you saw him, “The zinnias are suicidal.”

“The flowers?”

“They wilt if you look at them without optimism.”

He fought a smile, “Can I help?”

“You are carrying enough.”

“I’ve got hands.”

“You have one hand. The other is holding emergency tea.”

“That feels important.”

“It is.”

You stepped closer, stole one of the pitchers from him, took three deep swallows straight from the lip, and handed it back.

“Drink more,” you said.

“You just drank half of it.”

“I am medically qualified.”

“You’re a vet student.”

“I know bodies.”

“That is not comforting in context.”

Your eyes flicked over him then, quick but not quick enough.

His shirt clinging at the chest from sweat. Forearms dusty. Gloves tucked in his back pocket. Your mouth curved slightly before you could stop it.

Logan caught it, “What?”

“Nothin’.”

“That’s a face.”

“I have a normal face.”

“You absolutely do not.”

You stepped closer still, your fingers brushing the back of his wrist as you reached for the twine. It was the lightest touch, almost accidental, except nothing about you ever felt accidental to him.

“You look useful,” you said softly.

His stomach tightened, “Useful?”

“Mhm.” You dragged your fingers once over the back of his hand before letting go, “Mama’s side loves useful.”

“Do you?”

You looked up at him through your lashes, dusty and damp and far too pleased with yourself, “I love many things.”

Then Travis called your name from the barn, and you were gone again, taking the hose with you. Theo appeared beside Logan two seconds later and took one look at his face.

“That gets worse,” he said.

Logan blinked, “What does?”

“The drive-by affection.”

Bennett nodded, coming up behind them, “You start expecting it.”

Theo sighed. “And then one day she walks past without kissing you because she’s holding a chicken or a clipboard or rage, and suddenly you’re the fool standing by a table wondering what happened to romance.”

Logan looked toward the direction you had gone, smiling before he could stop himself.

“Yeah,” Bennett said, “Already bad.”

By late morning, the sun had pushed everyone sensible into shade or denial. Logan ended up at the partners table on the side porch, folding programmes because Sarah had apparently designed them herself and now trusted approximately four people on the property to crease them properly.

“Logan,” Sarah said, hovering over his shoulder.

He paused mid-fold, “Yeah?”

“That is almost correct.”

He looked down at the programme, “Almost?”

“The edge is flirting with wrong.”

“Paper can flirt?”

“You’re dating my sister. You know objects can have energy.”

“That’s unfortunately true,” you said from the kitchen doorway.

The crate in your arms was emanating a high, frantic, peeping chorus that turned six heads at once. You looked furious at what was in your hold.

Logan stared, “Are those birds?”

“They are chicks,” you said, with the strained patience of a woman who had been handed one more living thing than the day had budgeted for, “Because Aunt Maribel thought they would be useful.”

Maribel looked up from the end of the table, serene behind her iced tea, “They will be.”

“This is a horse ranch.”

“It is a ranch. Diversification is healthy.”

“These are pocket poultry.”

“They were on the way.”

“They were not on anyone’s way. You brought them in a hatbox.”

“It was ventilated.”

Sarah leaned over the crate, delighted, “Oh my God, they’re tiny.”

“Do not bond with them,” you said, “I need them in the temporary brooder by the garden shed, but Travis just texted me that the mare from north pasture is warm to the touch, and Mama needs me in the south beds again because the zinnias are apparently still pursuing death, and if one more person hands me a living creature, I am going to become one.”

Logan stood before he thought about it, “I know where the garden shed is.”

You looked at him.

He held out his hands.,“We were just heading that way for the lantern hooks.”

“You know where the brooder is?”

“I know where the shed is. Brooder sounds like something I can identify with some hope.”

Sarah made a noise, but you kept staring at him, something shifting in your face that made him feel like he had done something more impressive than remembering the location of a shed.

“You’re sure?” you asked.

“Give me the tiny birds.”

Your mouth parted, then closed.

For half a second, you looked at him with such sudden, inconvenient warmth that Logan nearly forgot there were ten people in the kitchen and twenty chicks between you.

Then you passed him the crate carefully.

“They need to go in the brooder with the red heat lamp, not the white storage bin, because the white storage bin has seed packets in it, and if Hugh sees them, he’ll think it’s a snack container.”

“Hugh eats seed packets?”

“Hugh eats anything if it’s labelled right.”

From the far side of the kitchen, Hugh called, “I can still hear you.”

“Then stop eating decorative things,” you called back.

Logan adjusted the crate against his side. The chicks peeped louder in protest, “Red heat lamp. Not white bin. Don’t let Hugh name one.”

“Exactly.”

A voice from the back porch yelled, “Are you done flirting with your man, or is the horse healing itself?”

You turned toward the door, “I am coming!”

Sarah collapsed against the table, laughing.

You stepped closer to Logan, grabbed his face in both hands because your hands were finally free, and kissed him quickly on the mouth, then the cheek, then the bridge of his nose in a rapid sequence that made Theo cough into his fist.

“I love you,” you said, “Thank you. Don’t drop them.”

“I won’t. I love you too.”

“If Maribel tells you they’re useful, don’t believe her.”

“I’m right here,” Maribel said.

“I know.”

Then you were gone before Logan could answer, hurrying out through the back door toward the stable yard while someone shouted another question at you from across the porch.

Logan stood in the middle of the kitchen holding a crate of peeping chicks.

Everett, one of the uncles Logan had met twice and still could not place on the family tree, appeared in the doorway, looked into the crate, and sighed.

“Maribel brought chicks again?”

Logan glanced at him, “Again?”

“Every year she claims there’s a reason.”

Maribel lifted her iced tea, “There is.”

“No one has found it yet.”

The garden shed was not far, but distance in this place had already proven deceptive. Logan and Theo carried the chicks and lantern hooks across the yard, past the side porch where two kids were being instructed to sweep and were mostly using the brooms as weapons, past the revived flower beds from yesterday, past a water trough where Ranger, a red heeler with suspicious eyes, paused to examine Logan’s worth.

The dog followed them for thirty feet, then seemed to decide the chicks were a security risk and trotted alongside.

“You’ve got Ranger,” Theo observed.

“Is that good?”

“Too early to tell.”

The brooder was, thankfully, identifiable by the red heat lamp and the fact that three small children had already pressed their faces to the wire like they were witnessing a miracle.

One of them was Caroline. Or Cricket, as she had informed Logan yesterday with the grave authority of a child who had clearly corrected grown men before.

She was crouched near the brooder in little denim overalls, one ribbon hanging loose from her pigtail, both hands braced on her knees as she stared at the chicks with total, devastating seriousness.

Logan slowed with the crate in his arms, “You in charge here?”

Cricket looked up at him.

Then at the crate.

Then back at him.

“I’m supervisin’,” she said.

Theo coughed into his fist.

Logan nodded solemnly, “Good. I could use supervision.”

That seemed to satisfy her. She stood, dusted her tiny hands on her overalls, and pointed toward the brooder, “They go in there. Not the bucket. The bucket has dirt.”

“Important distinction.”

“Last year Hugh put a frog in the wrong bucket.”

Theo murmured, “Of course he did.”

Cricket stepped closer as Logan lowered the crate. The chicks peeped louder, frantic and offended by the entire concept of relocation. Ranger sat three feet away, ears pricked, deeply suspicious of poultry as a category.

“Are they scared?” Cricket asked, voice smaller now.

Logan glanced down at her, then softened, “Maybe a little. New place, lot of noise.”

She nodded like she understood this personally.

Then you appeared behind them, breathless from the stable yard, hair half-fallen from your clip and one sleeve pushed up past your elbow, “There are my babies,” you said.

Logan looked over, “The chicks?”

You blinked at him, then at Cricket, then at Ranger.

“All of you, I guess.”

Cricket immediately held her arms up, “Auntie, he didn’t drop ’em.”

“I see that,” You bent to kiss the top of her head, your voice gentling without you thinking about it, “Thank you for keepin’ him honest, Cricket.”

Logan watched your hand smooth over Caroline’s messy ribbon.

Something in his chest went warm and helpless. Cricket looked at him with sudden suspicion, “You know how to hold a chick?”

“Not professionally.”

“That means no.”

You laughed softly and came around the crate to help him, your shoulder brushing his arm, “Here, baby. Like this.”

The word was for him, casual and sweet, but Logan still felt it low in his ribs.

You reached into the crate carefully, cupping one chick in both hands. It quieted almost instantly, tucked against your palm in a tiny puff of yellow down. Caroline’s eyes went enormous.

“Gentle,” you murmured.

“I am gentle,” Cricket whispered, offended by the implication.

“I know, honey.” You smiled, “Just remindin’ everybody else.”

Logan looked down at the chick, then at your hands, then at your face.

You caught him staring, “What?”

“Nothing.”

Your cheeks warmed, but your smile stayed soft, “You’re doin’ that face again.”

“What face?”

“The one where you look like you’re thinkin’ too hard.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Cricket, still watching the chick, said, “Grown-ups lie a lot.”

Theo laughed so hard he had to turn away.

You bit your lip, fighting your own smile, and Logan looked at Caroline with a betrayed sort of respect, “Noted,” he said.

Cricket nodded, “Good.”

By lunch, Logan understood why dinner the night before had felt like both a feast and a warning. This family did not rest so much as change categories of effort.

Lunch was set out casually in the shade, sandwiches, fruit, leftover biscuits, chips, cold chicken, pitchers of tea and lemonade. People sat on porch steps, benches, folding chairs, overturned crates. The dogs moved through the groups with a level of strategy that suggested generations of selective breeding for emotional manipulation.

Biscuit found Logan within three minutes.

“Of course,” you said, dropping onto the step beside him with a plate balanced on your knees.

Logan looked down as the old beagle flopped across his boot, “He’s persistent.”

“He’s embarrassing me.”

“How?”

“By validatin’ you.”

Logan took the apple slice you offered him before you could put it on your own plate, “Maybe he has taste.”

“He once ate a beeswax candle.”

“Complex palate.”

You leaned your shoulder into his.

You were dusty, warm, and beautiful, and it made him want to put his hand on the back of your neck and keep it there. Your hair had been clipped up badly, pieces falling out around your face. There was still a damp mark near your waist where, based on your expression, the hose had betrayed you. You looked tired and bright and entirely in your element.

“You surviving?” you asked.

“Yeah.”

“Lying?”

“No.” He paused, “Maybe a little.”

You laughed softly, “That’s normal.”

“I delivered chicks.”

“You were very brave.”

“I watered flowers.”

“You were supervised.”

“I’ve been told I’m big and should eat.”

“That was Camille. She says that to everyone above five-nine.”

“I fixed a hinge.”

Your eyes flicked to him, pleased, “Did you?”

“Everett found out I own tools.”

“Oh, no.”

“That bad?”

“He’ll propose a truck sound to you by tomorrow.”

“He already did yesterday.”

You nodded gravely, “Then you’re doomed.”

A shout came from across the yard where Hugh was standing with one boot on a fence rail, gesturing with a sandwich.

“Boston! You ever play polo?”

Logan opened his mouth, but you clamped a hand over it, “No,” you shouted back.

Hugh grinned, “Didn’t ask you.”

“He says no.”

Logan looked at you over your hand, amused.

“You,” you said quietly, “know enough not to lie.”

He gently pulled your hand away, “I was going to say no.”

“Were you?”

“I was going to say I’ve seen horses.”

“That is not better.”

Hugh called, “We’ll start you on a slow pony!”

Sarah, from somewhere behind him, yelled, “That is what he says before bloodshed!”

Your father’s voice followed, calm and final, “Hugh, leave Logan alone.”

Hugh dropped his hands, “Everyone here hates growth.”

You smiled into your lemonade.

Logan watched you for a second, then leaned in and kissed your temple, “I thought you were exaggerating.”

“About what?”

“All of this.”

You looked out over the yard: the tables half-set, the horses moving beyond the fence, the cousins arguing, the partners eating in a tired cluster, your mother pointing toward the flower beds with a sandwich in hand, your father listening to a ranch hand near the gate, Nana under the porch shade like a queen in exile, Grandad reading the schedule as if it had disappointed him.

“I probably was,” you said.

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

Your smile turned softer, “Wait until Tuesday.”

“What’s Tuesday?”

“Allocations.”

“For what?”

You patted his knee, “Don’t worry about it.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Biscuit sneezed on his boot.

Logan looked down, “Even the dog knows something.”

“The dog always knows something.”

The afternoon was slower only in the sense that fewer people were actively shouting.

The heat pressed harder after lunch, sending some tasks indoors and others into pockets of shade. Logan spent an hour at the partners table folding programmes with Sarah hovering like a design tyrant. He spent another half hour helping Bennett and Theo shift a stack of folding chairs into the small barn, where Wednesday’s scholarship displays would be set. The converted space still smelled faintly of wood, hay, and polish, and even half-finished, Logan could see what it would become, long tables under string lights, old beams, open doors to the evening, framed photos waiting to be hung, ribbons and saddles and signs that made the family history look curated without making it fake.

Maddie was there, standing beside a grey horse with intelligent eyes and a scar near one knee, speaking quietly to a young groom while Jordan watched from a few feet away.

Logan paused at the doorway, chairs in hand.

“That the aftercare demo?” Bennett asked.

Maddie looked over, “Part of it. This is Foxglove.”

The horse flicked an ear.

“Ex-racer?” Logan asked.

Maddie’s expression warmed, “Yes. He hated retirement until he realised retirement involved peppermints and being admired.”

Jordan said, “He still hates inefficient handling.”

Maddie turned to him, “He hates your tone.”

Jordan looked at the horse.

The horse looked back.

Logan was almost certain the horse won.

Maddie smiled at him, “You’re doing pole bending, aren’t you?”

Logan stilled, “I’m doing what?”

Bennett made a low noise that sounded like pity.

Jordan looked at Logan for one brief second, then back at the horse, “No one told him?”

“Told me what?”

Maddie’s smile widened by a fraction, “Maybe wait for Tuesday.”

Logan looked at Bennett.

Bennett set down the chairs, “Rule three.”

Logan stared at him. “Stretch?”

“Stretch.”

That was how the day went- work, warning, work, affection, work, another warning disguised as a joke.

By five, Logan had enough dust on his boots to feel like he had earned them. His shoulders were tight from lifting and carrying. His shirt had been sweated through and dried twice. His phone contained three messages from Tucker asking whether he had been sacrificed yet, one from Garrett saying, Do not let them put you on a horse without your girl present, and one from Dean that simply read, cowboy logan era? send proof.

Logan sent back a photo of Biscuit lying across his boot.

Dean replied immediately.

that dog looks like he knows your secrets.

Logan glanced down at Biscuit, who was asleep again, this time against a porch post like he had been overcome by the moral weight of attachment.

Accurate, maybe.

The first official work day ended the way it had begun, with your mother clapping once and making the entire property shift categories.

“Enough,” she called from the back porch, voice carrying over the yard, “Everyone who is not necessary to animals, irrigation, or dinner emergencies, go clean yourselves. We are eating outside tonight because I refuse to waste this weather and because the dining room is full of boxes someone was supposed to move.”

Theo, beside Logan, whispered, “Someone is Hugh.”

“I heard that,” Hugh called.

“Then move boxes,” your mother said.

Hugh pointed at Logan, “Boston has arms.”

Your father did not even look up from speaking to Travis, “Boston has been useful all day. You have been ornamental since three.”

Sarah made a wounded sympathetic face at Hugh, “Pretty, though.”

Hugh threw a napkin at her.

It missed.

You appeared at Logan’s side then, sudden and warm, your shoulder brushing his arm, “You look dusty.”

“You look like you fought a hose.”

“I won.”

“There’s water on your shirt.”

“Battle scars.”

His eyes dropped before he could stop them.

The red cotton of your top had dried mostly clean but still clung in one place near your waist, and he hated himself only a little for noticing.

You saw him notice, mouth curving slowly, “John.”

He looked back up, “What?”

“We are surrounded by my family.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

“My face is innocent.”

“My sister already used that lie today.”

You stepped closer anyway, because you were merciful or cruel, and brushed dust off his shoulder with your fingertips, “Shower before dinner,” you said.

“Yes, boss.”

“Don’t encourage Mama’s side by lookin’ handsome while carrying things tomorrow.”

“I can’t control that.”

“You absolutely can. Slouch.”

“I play hockey. I don’t know how.”

You laughed, quick and unguarded, and leaned up to kiss him once.

Your mouth brushed his, soft and tasting faintly of lemonade, and for one second, the whole yard narrowed again. Then Sarah yelled, “Stop kissing near the programme boxes. It’s affecting the brand heritage.”

You pulled away, laughing into Logan’s chest.

Logan looked over your head at Sarah, “Brand heritage?”

Sarah lifted both hands, “It is not content.”

You turned, still tucked against Logan’s side, “Nobody said content.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I was thinking you’re annoying.”

“That too.”

The room felt smaller when the door shut behind you.

Maybe it was the heat still clinging to both of you from outside, or the dust on your boots, or the fact that the whole ranch seemed to hum through the walls even when you were alone. Voices moved somewhere down the hall. A door closed. Someone laughed from the porch below. The shower waited through the open bathroom door, already seeming like the responsible choice.

You dropped your towel onto the bed and started unbuttoning your shorts.

“We have twenty minutes,” you said.

Logan leaned back against the door, watching you with the kind of quiet that was never really quiet.

You looked up, “John.”

“What?”

“You’re doing the face again.”

“I have a normal face.”

“You have a face that says you’ve been thinking unhelpful thoughts since the hose incident.”

His mouth twitched.

You slid the shorts down your legs and stepped out of them, standing there in your little cotton underwear and the bra you had worn under your work shirt, skin still warm, hair half-fallen from its clip, a faint smear of dust on one thigh. Logan’s eyes followed every inch like he was trying to be respectful and losing by degrees.

“You were yelling at flowers,” he said finally.

“I was watering zinnias.”

“You told them to stop being dramatic.”

“They were being dramatic.”

“You had a hose over your shoulder like you were going into battle.”

“I won.”

“I know,” His voice dropped, “That was the problem.”

Your stomach warmed.

He pushed off the door and crossed the room slowly, already pulling his shirt over his head. His skin was sun-warm and dusty, his hair a mess from the day, belt half-undone. He looked tired in the good way, the way that came from being used properly, from lifting and carrying and sweating under the Texas sun until the ranch had left proof of itself on him.

“You like me bossy and covered in hose water?” you asked, softer than you meant to.

His hands found your waist, “I like you here.”

You blinked up at him, the teasing catching somewhere behind your ribs, “Here?”

“Yeah,” His thumbs moved over your skin, slow and rough from work gloves, dragging little half-circles into the soft place above your hips, “With the animals. Your family. Telling everyone what to do like you own the place.”

“I do not own the place.”

“Feels like you do.”

“That’s because you’re easy to intimidate.”

“No,” He stepped closer, backing you gently until your shoulders met the bathroom door, “It’s because everyone listens when you talk.”

The breath left you all at once.

He kissed you before you could answer, one hand sliding up to the back of your neck, the other braced at your waist. It was not sweet in the way his kisses sometimes were when he was trying to slow you both down. It was hot from the start, deep and full of the whole day’s restraint. The glances across the yard. Your fingers brushing his wrist when you passed him on the porch. The way he had watched you with the pony, the chicks, the flowers, your family, and had apparently been collecting all of it somewhere inside him until he could not keep it still anymore.

Your hands went to his hair.

He made a low sound against your mouth.

“Quiet,” you whispered.

His laugh brushed your lips, “You first.”

“You’re the one startin’ things.”

“You took your shorts off.”

“To shower.”

“Yeah?” His hand slipped down your side, over your hip, catching beneath your thigh. His fingers spread there, palm hot against bare skin, thumb pressing into the crease where your thigh met your hip, “Then why are you looking at me like that?”

You opened your mouth.

Nothing clever came out. His smile softened, but not for long, because you tugged his hair just enough to pull his mouth back to yours and he forgot himself beautifully. His body pressed yours into the door, warm skin and hard muscle, his boxers rough against the inside of your thigh as he stepped between your legs. The contact made your breath break.

Logan felt it, his hands found your hips properly, fingers digging in with a little less patience, “There?”

You should have said shower.

You should have said dinner.

You should have said something responsible about thin walls and family and the fact that Sarah had the instincts of a fox near scandal.

Instead, you nodded.

He shifted his thigh between yours.

Your eyes fluttered.

“Use your words,” he murmured, mouth at your jaw.

“Yes.”

That was all he needed.

His hands tightened at your hips and guided you down against him, slow at first, a firm drag of cotton and heat over the hard muscle of his thigh. Your head tipped back against the door with a soft thud, and he kissed your throat immediately, catching the sound you made before it could become too much. His fingers flexed with the motion, not just holding you but leading you into it, pulling your hips forward, then back, then forward again until your body understood the rhythm he wanted from you.

“Quiet,” he reminded you, but his voice was already rough.

You gripped his hair harder, “Then stop lookin’ so pleased with yourself.”

“Can’t,” he moved your hips again, rougher this time, grinding you down against him with enough pressure that your knees nearly gave, “You feel what you’re doing?”

You did. You could feel everything. The pressure of his thigh. The damp heat gathering between your legs. The door cool at your back. His fingers bruising and careful all at once, one hand low at your hip, the other sliding up your ribs with a maddening lack of hurry, tracing the line of your side until his thumb brushed the underside of your breast.

You could feel the whole house around you, full of people and noise and family, close enough to make every breath risky and far enough that Logan’s body felt like the only solid thing in the room.

“Logan,” you breathed.

His hand slipped under the cup of your bra, calloused thumb finding your nipple and circling with slow, deliberate pressure. Your hips stuttered against his thigh.

“I know,” he murmured.

“You don’t.”

“I do,” His mouth brushed your ear as his thumb dragged over you again, firmer this time, “Spent all day watching you. With the horses, with the chicks, with that damn hose.”

You tried to laugh, but it came out as a whimper when he pinched lightly, rolling your nipple between his thumb and forefinger while his other hand tugged your hips into another slow, dirty grind.

He went still for half a second.

Then his hand moved again, “baby,” he whispered, almost like a warning.

You arched into him before you could stop yourself, spine leaving the door, chest pressing into his palm, your fingers twisting in his hair so hard he sucked in a breath against your neck.

His forehead dropped briefly to your shoulder, his breath hot and uneven against your skin, “Fuck.”

“You said quiet.”

“You’re making that difficult.”

“You’re the one with your hands on me.”

“Yeah,” His fingers tightened at your breast, thumb brushing again, making your hips jerk against his thigh, “I know.”

The words were too low. Too pleased. Too wrecked around the edges.

You pulled his hair until his mouth found yours again, messier this time, all teeth and breath and the taste of the lemonade you had both been drinking outside. He swallowed your sounds like he knew they belonged to him, one hand at your breast, the other guiding your hips in a rhythm that made the room blur at the edges. It was not enough and too much at once, the friction building fast because the day had left you sensitive, because Logan knew how to angle his thigh just right, because every time you tried to slow down, his hands encouraged you back into it.

His hand slipped from your breast to your back, unclasping your bra with a practised flick that should not have been possible when both of you were supposed to be hurrying. The straps loosened over your shoulders. He dragged one down with his teeth, then followed the path with his mouth, lips hot against your collarbone, the upper curve of your breast, the sensitive skin his thumb had already made tender.

You bit down on the heel of your hand.

He saw.

His eyes lifted to yours, dark and focused, “Look at me,” he said.

You shook your head against the door, eyes squeezed shut.

His hand left your hip and came to your jaw, gentle but firm, thumb pressing beneath your chin to tilt your face down to his, “Cherry.”

That did it.

Your eyes opened.

He was right there. Sun on his cheeks, dust still at his temple, hair wrecked from your fingers, mouth swollen from yours. He looked as desperate as you felt, like he had started this thinking he could control it and had realised somewhere between your first whimper and the way your body rolled against his that he was in just as much trouble.

“There you go,” he murmured.

Your whole body went hot, “That’s mean,” you whispered.

His mouth curved. “A little.”

“You like bein’ mean.”

“With you?” His thumb brushed your cheek, “Only when you look at me like that.”

Your breath caught. His hands moved to your hips again and pulled you harder against his thigh, the sound that escaped you was too loud.

His palm covered your mouth instantly.

Both of you froze.

Voices passed in the hallway.

You stared at each other. Logan’s eyes were dark, his breathing heavy. His palm stayed over your mouth, warm and steady, while his other hand held your hip with careful restraint, thumb moving once over the bone like he was reminding you he had you. The footsteps moved past the door. Someone laughed farther away. A door shut.

Only then did his thumb stroke once over your cheek.

“You okay?” he whispered.

You nodded against his hand.

His eyes searched yours.

You nodded again, fingers closing around his wrist, not pulling him away. Holding him there. Something in his face shifted. Heat, yes, but softness under it. The kind that always undid you worse than the rest.

He lowered his mouth to your ear,  “Then keep quiet for me.”

Oh. Your body answered so quickly it was embarrassing.

He started moving you again, slower now, deeper, controlling every roll of your hips with his hand over your mouth and his thigh pressed exactly where you needed him. His fingers at your hip changed from guiding to gripping, dragging you down with more force each time your movements began to falter. Your head fell back against the door. Your fingers tightened in his hair, tugging, then smoothing, then tugging again when the pressure built too sharp.

Logan watched every second, jaw clenched, his own control fraying in the way he shifted against you, the way his breath caught whenever your hips stuttered, the way he pressed his thigh up harder as if he needed to feel you fall apart against him.

“That’s it,” he breathed, “Just like that.”

You whimpered against his palm.

“I know,” His voice was rough now, almost strained, “I’ve got you.”

It hit you harder because he was holding you through it.

Because the world outside the door kept moving.

Because dinner was waiting.

Because your family was everywhere.

And still Logan had made this tiny, impossible pocket of heat and trust and his hands on your body. Your orgasm rolled up slow and then all at once, your thighs tightening around his, body shuddering against the door as he kept his hand over your mouth and his forehead pressed to yours.

He held you there until the worst of the shaking passed.

Then he kissed your temple.

Soft.

Almost apologetic.

You were still trying to breathe when a knock landed on the door.

Both of you went rigid.

Hugh’s voice came through, bright and horrible. “Dinner in ten. If anyone is naked, that’s between you and God, but Mama says punctuality is a family value.”

You closed your eyes.

Logan’s shoulders shook once.

“Hugh,” you called, voice miraculously steady, “go away.”

“I have done my civic duty.”

His footsteps retreated down the hallway.

For a second, neither of you moved.

Then Logan dropped his forehead against your shoulder and started laughing under his breath, helpless and warm and still a little wrecked.

You pushed weakly at his chest, “Shower.”

He lifted his head, eyes still dark, mouth curved, “Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“I thought we were timing things efficiently.”

“You lost efficiency privileges.”

“You were the one—”

You pointed at him. “Do not finish that sentence unless you want to sleep with Biscuit.”

He kissed your finger.

Then your wrist.

Then, because he was apparently committed to making you late and insane, the inside of your palm.

“Logan.”

“Shower,” he agreed, though he was still smiling.

You stepped away on unsteady legs and immediately had to grab his arm. His smile softened into something dangerously fond.

“Don’t,” you warned.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought it loudly.”

He brushed your hair back from your face, thumb grazing your flushed cheek, “You look pretty.”

You stared at him, “That’s worse.”

“I know.”

The shower was quick after that.

Mostly quick.

There was one moment where he pressed you against the tile and kissed you like he was trying to finish a thought Hugh had interrupted, but you shoved shampoo into his hand and told him to be useful. By the time you both made it back into the bedroom, damp and cleaner and only slightly ruined, the hallway had gone quieter.

You pulled on a sundress in record time while Logan buttoned his shirt with the concentration of a man still recovering from his own bad decisions. You fixed your hair in the mirror, twisted the front pieces back, dabbed on cherry balm, and tried to make your face look like you had not just come apart against your boyfriend’s thigh ten minutes before dinner.

Logan came up behind you, adjusting his collar.

There was a red mark low on his neck.

You froze.

His eyes narrowed, “What?”

You turned slowly, “Nothing.”

“What did you do?”

“I expressed myself.”

He looked in the mirror and found the mark.

His face changed, “Cherry.”

“You have a collar.”

“Your family—”

“You’ll live.”

He stared at it for one more second, then at you, and the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

“You’re smiling,” you said.

“No, I’m not.”

“You like it.”

“I like you.”

“That is not a denial.”

He leaned down and kissed your shoulder, careful this time, sweet enough to make the heat in you turn soft, “Dinner?”

You took his hand, “Dinner.”

As you opened the door, Sarah appeared at the end of the hallway with a glass of iced tea and one eyebrow raised.

You stared at her. She stared back. Then her eyes dropped to Logan’s collar.

Logan went very still.

Sarah took one slow sip of iced tea, “I am choosing,” she said, “inner peace.”

You pointed down the hallway, “Go.”

She smiled sweetly, “Mama says five minutes.”

“Sarah.”

“Five minutes,” she sang, already walking away.

Logan looked at you.

You looked at him. Then both of you started laughing, quiet and breathless, as you hurried after her toward dinner.

The evening meal on Monday was less formal than Sunday’s dinner and somehow louder.

Long tables were set outside under the porch lanterns and along the edge of the yard, mismatched chairs pulled together, plates passed family-style, dogs weaving underfoot like small, furry negotiations. The Texas air cooled slowly, heat lifting off the ground in waves as the sky went peach, then lavender, then deep blue over the darkening pastures. Someone had put music on low near the porch. Someone else had started a debate about Friday’s rodeo scoring before the rodeo had even been properly allocated.

Hugh was arguing with a Texas cousin about polo horses. Sarah was telling an aunt that the printed programmes were not to be touched by “sticky children.” Jordan was on the phone for six minutes, returned, and immediately corrected a detail about one of the horses in the scholarship display without needing to be asked. Maddie sat beside him, calm and amused, feeding Foxglove’s story to an older donor who had arrived early and somehow been absorbed into dinner.

Logan sat with the partners this time because you had been pulled two chairs down by Travis to discuss the warm mare and then by your mother to identify which cousins could be trusted with watering cans. He could still see you. That seemed to be the arrangement of the day: separate currents, same river.

“You did well,” Maribel said, handing him a bowl of potatoes.

Logan blinked, “At what?”

“Day one.”

Theo raised his glass, “You made it to dinner.”

Bennett nodded, “And still have both boots.”

“Low bar,” Theo said.

“Important bar,” Bennett replied.

Maribel leaned around Theo, “Biscuit likes him.”

“Biscuit liked him yesterday,” Theo said.

“Yesterday was lust. Today is commitment.”

Logan almost choked on his water. Across the table, you looked over, saw his expression, and immediately narrowed your eyes at the partners, “What are you saying to him?”

“Nothing,” Maribel said.

“You are all terrible liars.”

“Necessary skill,” Bennett said.

A small child ran between the tables with a bread roll in one hand and a toy horse in the other. Behind him, a woman called, “Henry, if you drop that in the dirt, you are eating dirt bread!”

Henry sped up.

Logan watched as your mother, without breaking conversation with your father, caught the child by the back of his shirt, rescued the roll, turned him around, and sent him back to his table with one smooth motion. Your father kept talking like this was normal.

Maybe it was.

By dinner, Logan had been handed enough things that he stopped questioning it.

Plates. Napkins. A basket of rolls. Someone’s hat. A jar of pickles. Biscuit’s leash, though Biscuit himself had not agreed to the concept of being leashed and was currently lying under the table like a retired monarch.

So when a soft, sleepy weight was deposited against his side with no warning, Logan only looked down.

Baby Willa stared back at him.

She was not technically a baby anymore, you had told him, though everyone still called her baby Willa because families had no respect for linear time. She had round cheeks, one little curl stuck to her forehead, and a cracker clutched in her fist with the intensity of a tiny woman preparing for famine.

Logan froze.

Across the table, Sarah grinned.

“Congratulations,” she said, “You’ve been chosen.”

“By who?”

“Willa.”

Willa lifted the cracker toward his mouth.

Logan glanced at you.

You had gone very still beside Travis, a glass of lemonade halfway to your lips, your whole face softening before you could stop it.

“What do I do?” Logan asked carefully.

Your smile came slow and warm, “You take the cracker, baby.”

“I can’t take her cracker.”

“She’s offerin’.”

“It feels important.”

“It is important,” Sarah said, “She doesn’t share with Hugh.”

Hugh, from three seats down, looked wounded, “She shared once.”

“She threw it at your forehead.”

“It still made contact.”

Willa pushed the cracker harder against Logan’s hand.

So Logan accepted it with the seriousness of a man signing a treaty, “Thank you.”

Willa stared at him. Then patted his cheek with one sticky hand.

Your mouth tucked into the softest smile he had seen from you all day. Logan looked at you over Willa’s curls, “What?”

“Nothin’.”

“That’s not nothing.”

“It is.”

But your voice had gone a little sweet around the edges, your accent slipping softer with the tiredness of the day. You reached over and wiped a crumb from Willa’s chin with your thumb, then brushed the same hand lightly over Logan’s wrist.

“You look real comfortable there,” you murmured.

His chest did something stupid.

Willa leaned against him like she had settled the matter. Across the table, Maribel raised her iced tea, “Biscuit and Willa in one day. That’s serious.”

Logan looked down at the toddler now trying to feed him a second cracker.

“I’m starting to understand that.”

You smiled into your lemonade, “Cowboy Week gets you one way or another.”

Your family, Logan was learning, did not divide love and labour cleanly. They fed while scolding, kissed while assigning, teased while helping, asked about futures while handing over boxes. If they liked you, they used you. If they trusted you, they gave you something breakable. A crate of chicks. A table. A dog. A toddler. A question about your plans.

Their affection was not soft in shape, not always, but it was everywhere once you knew how to look.

After dinner, when the plates were mostly cleared and the younger kids had begun running in sleepy circles that suggested bedtime had become aspirational, you found your way back to him.

He was sitting on the porch steps with one beer, Biscuit asleep against his thigh, Ranger lying three feet away as if still deciding whether he approved. Bennett and Everett were talking beside him about a tractor part. Logan was following most of it, which felt like a victory.

You stopped at the top of the steps and looked down, “Oh, my God.”

Logan glanced up, “What?”

“You have two.”

He looked down at Biscuit, then Ranger, “They’re not both on me.”

“Ranger is within emotional range.”

Everett nodded, “That one doesn’t lie near strangers.”

Logan looked at the red heeler.

Ranger looked back, unimpressed.

You sat down one step above Logan, your knees on either side of his shoulders, and rested your hands lightly on his hair. The touch was casual enough that anyone could see it and intimate enough that his chest warmed under it.

“You’re collecting dogs,” you said.

“They’re collecting me.”

“That’s worse.”

Bennett lifted his beer, “Happens.”

Theo, from a chair nearby, called, “By Wednesday he’ll have pocket treats.”

“I will not,” Logan said.

Maribel walked past and dropped a small paper-wrapped biscuit into his shirt pocket without slowing.

You gasped, “Maribel.”

“What? Biscuit has blood sugar.”

Logan pulled the biscuit from his pocket and stared at it.

You leaned down near his ear, “Do not feed him at the table.”

“We’re not at the table.”

“That is the kind of reasoning that creates monsters.”

Biscuit opened one eye. Logan broke off a tiny piece anyway.

You sighed like he had disappointed generations of training.

Later, when the night settled properly and the lanterns made warm pools of light across the porch, you sat beside him instead of above him. Your shoulder tucked into his arm, your knee pressed to his. The conversations around you loosened with beer and exhaustion. Someone brought out leftover cobbler. Someone else started telling a story about the year Hugh fell off a pony and blamed the moon. Hugh objected from across the porch. Nana corrected the details. Grandad corrected Nana. Sarah filmed none of it and claimed this was restraint.

Logan did not say much.

He listened. Laughed when you laughed. Accepted a second plate because your mother looked at him like refusing would damage relations. Answered your father’s questions about preseason training, strength work, and whether he was taking proper care of his knees with more honesty than he expected to give.

Your father listened the way horse people did, Logan thought. To sound, to hesitation, to the part beneath the answer that told you whether something was being managed or ignored.

“You want it badly,” your father said eventually.

Logan looked down at the beer in his hand, “Yeah.”

“Good.”

That was all.

But beside him, you went very still, and he felt the moment land for you too.

Your father took a drink, then nodded toward the yard, “Tomorrow they’ll start trying to put you on a horse.”

Logan laughed, “I’ve been warned.”

“Listen to Sarah.”

“Sarah?”

Your father’s mouth twitched, “For speed. Cherry for form. Jordan if you want the horse judged more harshly than you. Hugh if you want to end up in a story told for twenty years.”

You leaned forward, “Daddy.”

“He should know.”

“I know enough not to lie,” Logan said.

Your father looked at you, “He does listen.”

You smiled down into your glass, “I know.”

It was nearly midnight when the porch finally began to thin. People drifted toward rooms, guest cottages, barns, late checks, lingering conversations by trucks. You were tucked against his side, warm and sleepy, your head tipping briefly onto his shoulder before you caught yourself.

“Tired?” he asked.

“No.”

“You just fell asleep upright.”

“I was resting my eyes.”

“For two seconds?”

“Efficiently.”

Biscuit, traitor and emotional opportunist, had his chin on Logan’s boot again. Ranger had disappeared at some point, likely to file a report. The lanterns hummed softly with insects. Somewhere beyond the yard, a horse shifted against a fence. The night smelled like dust, grass, smoke, sugar, and the fading heat of a long day.

You looked around the porch, at the last clusters of family, the plates still stacked near the door, the dogs sleeping under chairs, the glow of the kitchen windows.

“So.”

Logan looked at you, “So?”

“Day one.”

“Official day one?”

“Yes.”

He considered, “I carried chicks.”

“You did.”

“Watered flowers.”

“Supervised.”

“Got adopted by a beagle.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Was chosen by Willa.”

“That was serious.”

“Talked about my knees with your dad.”

“He does that.”

“Got warned about Tuesday.”

You turned your face into his shoulder, hiding your smile, “Hm.”

“What happens Tuesday?”

“Allocations.”

“You said that like it’s supposed to mean something.”

“It does.”

“Cherry.”

You lifted your head and kissed him, soft enough that his question disappeared for a second, “Come upstairs.”

He looked at you.

You widened your eyes innocently, “To sleep.”

“Right.”

“Mostly.”

Biscuit sighed loudly, as if disappointed in both of you. You stood, stretching your arms over your head, and Logan watched the movement before he could stop himself.

“John.”

“What?”

“Dogs are present.”

“Biscuit has seen worse.”

“You are impossible.”

“You asked me upstairs.”

“To sleep.”

“Mostly.”

You tried to glare. Failed and took his hand instead.

As you led him inside, stepping carefully around the floorboard Maddie had warned you about, Logan glanced once more toward the porch. Bennett lifted his glass in silent farewell. Theo gave him a thumbs-up that could have meant goodnight or good luck. Maribel, somehow still awake and holding iced tea, smiled like she knew exactly which one.

Upstairs, the blue room waited with its old walls, open window, and infamous bed.

Tomorrow, apparently, came allocations.

Tonight, there was your hand in his, the quiet hall, the soft drag of your thumb over his knuckles, and the feeling that Cowboy Week was not simply something he was surviving anymore.

The past three months have been the happiest of your life.

It’s an embarrassing thought. Not because it isn’t true, or because of some stupid reason, but because 3 months is too little time to fall head over heels for John Logan. It’s too soon to get this attached, too soon to be smiling every time you see a notification from him on your phone, too soon to be unconsciously making space for him in your future plans.

And yet, every small thing reminds you of him. You smile when you see his favourite cologne on the shelves of a shop. You laugh as you make toast in the morning, remembering that one time he tried (and miserably failed) to make you breakfast in bed. You send him reels on instagram with the message “saw this and thought of u”.

And he makes it so easy.

You don’t have to second guess yourself around him. He listens when you speak, remembers the little things, and never makes you feel unsafe or uncomfortable. He always makes sure that you know that being with you is exactly where he wants to be.

So maybe that’s why it hurt more than it should have, that Friday night.

You were at the hockey house for yet another party, not that you minded. This was your zone. The music, the dancing, you were in your element, and you really loved it. You were currently dancing with Allie, having the time of your life. She left to go get more drinks, so you turned around to find your boyfriend. You spotted him sitting on the couch beside a head of blond hair that could only belong to Dean. Grinning to yourself, you crept up behind the couch, planning to scare him, when you caught your name in their conversation.

“So, what’s the deal with you and her?” Dean asked Logan seriously. “I’ve never seen you stick around with one person for so long. Are you guys serious?”

The air stills as you wait for Logan’s answer, still hidden. For a brief second, you smile to yourself. You don’t know why you’re nervous, you already know the answer. You know what you and him are. Atleast, you thought you did.

He laughs.

That sound is sharp enough to drive itself into your chest, sharp enough to stab straight through your heart.

“She’s just a puck bunny, man.” Logan says dismissively. “You know the routine. It’s nothing serious.”

The party suddenly seemed too overwhelming. The blinding lights. The suffocating crowd pressing in from every direction.

You don’t hear what Dean says next. You can’t hear anything, your ears ringing and your head pounding.

Just a puck bunny.

That’s all that you were to him.

Nothing serious.

That’s all the past three months, some of the happiest of your life, were to him.

You feel sick. Your stomach churns, your chest aches, your head reeling and overwhelmed. Your feet are rooted to the spot for one endless moment before you find the smallest shred of strength to turn around and move, rushing to the front door.

You hear someone calling out after you. Allie. She catches up to you outside, concern evident on her face, the drinks abandoned on some nearby table. She says your name so softly, her laced with the utmost concern, and just that’s all it takes for the dam to break.

Your vision blurs as tears spill down your face.

“What happened?” Allie asks gently. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”

You shake your head, unable to form coherent words.

“John, he-”, the words catch in your throat as another wave of tears crashes over you.

Allie’s expression hardens. She knows all about you and Logan; it’s not exactly a secret.

“What did he do?” she asks, her voice tight.

“He- he said that I’m just another puck bunny.” You sniff, trying to steady your breath. “We’re not serious, apparently.”

“This is the same John Logan that got you soup last week when you were sick?”, she asks incredulously. “Not serious, my ass.”

At that, the flow of tears starts again. Allie winces as she realises that might not have been the best thing to say.

“Okay” She says even more softly. “Let’s get you home first.”

She guides you down the porch steps and to her car, helping you in first before seating herself in the driver’s seat.

“Luckily I haven’t had much to drink.” she mutters as she puts her keys in the ignition.

An idea pops up into your brain, and you act on it before doubt can creep in. With shaky hands, you pull out your phone from your pocket and unlock it. Your thumb hovers over the screen before you open your chat with Logan. The empty text box stares at you. You look at the last message he sent in reply to a mirror selfie of your fit for the party.

You look absolutely gorgeous, love.

You sit there for a few seconds before you begin typing. Then delete. You write another word, before scrapping that as well.

Eventually, you settle on a small, concise message. Simple. Nothing overly emotional, but it says everything that needs to be said.

Hey. I think we’re both looking for different things, and maybe it’s not the best idea to continue… whatever this is. It was fun while it lasted. Goodbye, Logan.

You read it over once. Twice. And then press send before you second guess yourself.

For a long moment, you do nothing but look at the small ‘delivered’ under your text. You lock your phone and let it fall onto your lap.

You see Allie glancing at you from the driver’s seat. To her credit, she waits a minute before your tears have calmed down and your breathing is steady before asking you questions.

“You wanna tell me exactly what happened?” she asks quietly.

Your chest tightened for a second before you spoke.

“I heard him talking to Dean.” You say quietly, throat hurting with every word you push out. “He said that I’m just a puck bunny with whom he has nothing serious going on.”

There’s silence for a minute in the car before Allie curses under her breath.

Logan feels his phone buzz with a notification from you. For a split second, warmth blooms in his chest. He opens the message and the warmth disappears.

It feels like a bucket of ice cold water has been poured over him.

His heart starts racing, and panic fills every inch of his being as he reads the message again.

“No…” he whispers, more to himself, but Dean hears.

He turns to Logan in concern, a frown replacing that easy going smile for the first time that night.

“All good, man?” he asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Logan tries to say something but the words catch in his throat.

“She-” he tries again, voice cracking. “She broke up with me.”

Silence hangs between them for a second before Dean speaks up, clearly confused.

“Who?” he asks, brows furrowed. “The puck bunny? Didn’t you just say that you guys were like, a casual fling?”

Logan lets out a hollow laugh that sounds more like a choke.

“No… I mean, yes, I did just say that, but-” Logan stumbles over his words. He runs a hand in his hair before speaking again. “Fuck. I think-”

His everything hurts. His chest hurts so sharply that it hurts even to breathe.

“I have to talk to her.”

He presses the call button in your chat, not surprised when, against all hopes, it goes to voicemail.

He calls again.

Voicemail. Again.

Nothing.

“She’s not answering.” he says, panic rising with every call directed to voicemail. “Fuck, Dean, she’s not answering!”

He shoots a few quick texts to you, all left on delivered.

‘Please pick up, baby.’

‘Let’s talk this through, what happened??’

‘Are you okay?’

“What did I do, sweetheart?’

‘Please tell me’

He frantically looks for you everywhere in the house, pushing through the suffocating crowds of people as Dean follows. He checks the kitchen, the backyard, the bathrooms, and his room upstairs. You’re nowhere to be found, and nor is Allie. He goes out onto the road outside and notices that Allie’s car is gone, which confirms that you both have left.

“She’s gone.” he says to Dean, swallowing painfully. “She’s not here, nor is your girlfriend. Can you call Allie?" Logan pleads him.

As Allie pulls into the parking lot outside your dorm building, your phone starts buzzing. You glance at the screen and huff when you see that the incoming caller is none other than Logan, before silencing your phone and shoving it in your pocket. A few moments later, it buzzes again. And again. You can feel the constant vibrations from more missed calls and texts, but you ignore them as both of you climb out of the car and head up to your room.

The room is dark, only the light of the tv illuminating Hannah and Garrett’s faces. They hadn’t gone to the party because Hannah wasn’t feeling well, and Garrett had stayed behind to take care of her.

The moment you step inside, both of them look up.

You know you aren’t exactly at your best right now. Your eyes are rimmed red and dried tear tracks over your face. It’s clear from one look that something is horribly wrong.

Garrett’s the first one to speak. “What happened?”

You open your mouth, but instead of words coming out, your bottom lip trembles and before you know it, the tears you’ve been trying very hard to keep at bay start falling again.

Hannah is on her feet in an instant.

“Oh, honey…”

She crosses the room and envelopes you in a warm hug. A quiet sob escapes you before you can stop it.

Behind Hannah, Garrett looks at Allie, who’s still standing at the door behind you. His expression becomes more concerned by the second.

“Logan.” Allie says like that explains everything.

You pull away from Hannah, and explain the entire thing for the umpteenth time.

For a moment, the room is silent. Then Garrett speaks.

“He wouldn’t do that…” He says, but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of that fact.

“Well, he did.” You say, voice stoic. “And I ended things with him. He’s been blowing up my phone ever since.”

As if on queue, you feel your phone buzz again repeatedly. It finally stops, before there’s a different buzz.

Allie pulls out her phone. “It’s Dean.” She says.

You groan as you slug your feet to the kitchen, desperate for a glass of water. Your throat feels painfully dry from all the crying. Behind you, you hear Allie answer the call.

“What, Dean?”

A pause.

“No, Dean!”

Another pause.

“Well, I don’t care if he wants to talk to her!”

You fill a glass with water and take a long drink, the cool liquid soothing your parched throat.

“Well, maybe Logan should’ve thought about that before he opened that big mouth of his!”

When you walk back into the living room, Hannah’s already waiting ready for you with a huge, fluffy blanket, and Garrett ordering your favourite ice cream.

You sit down and stare blankly at the wall as Allie continues yelling.

“No, I’m not putting her on the line! She clearly doesn’t want to talk to him right now!”

She suddenly scoffs

“What do you mean he doesn’t know what he did? He’s- is that him in the background?” Her voice rises by an octave. “Give him the phone, I wanna give him a piece of my mind!”

You hear muffled voices on the other side before Dean apparently gives in.

Meanwhile, Hannah is making sure you’re comfortable on the couch, before sending Garrett to the kitchen to get ‘supplies’.

“You’re devastated? Why?” Allie asks the phone. “The thing between you and her isn’t anything serious, is it?”

She waits for a reply from Logan, who is now speechless. He realised what this entire thing is about.

Another muffled sentence before she continues, exasperated.

“No, I’m not going to give her the phone!”

You grip your glass a little tighter.

“I’m not going to make her talk to you.” Allie continues. “She decides whether she wants to talk to you or not, and currently, her answer is…” she trails off with a questioning look to you.

“No.” You speak without hesitation.

She nods before lifting the phone back to her ear. “You heard her.”

It was a rough week going forward for you. Of course you had your entire support system around you, Hannah and Allie skipping class with you to watch chick flicks, eating buckets of ice cream and other junk food that they sent their boyfriends to get, and completely inhaling your favourite pasta that Tucker made for you.

“Logan’s an idiot. Hope you feel better soon.” the note on the box said.

You let out a wet chuckle at that and ate.

These weren’t the only packages you received at your door, though.

The night of the breakup, Logan wanted to come to your dorm until Dean helped him realize that not respecting your boundaries won’t win him any points. Day 1 post breakup, he sent your favourite coffee along with Dean. Day 2, texts Garrett to get an oil change for your car, simply because you’d complained about the warning light a while back. He also constantly badgered everyone asking if you’re okay, and also continued texting you.

Sometimes it was an apology, sometimes he was wishing her luck on the day she has an important submission. But he never stepped over the boundaries, he always respected them.

You got updates about him as well.

Garrett told you how he was playing like shit on the ice, how he’s always moping around their house like a sad dog. That his eyes are filled with anguish whenever he sees any of them leaving for your house.

You finally meet him in person on the Wednesday after your breakup. You’re walking towards your physics class when you spot him through the park you usually cut through. Your heart softens a bit. Of course he remembers this route, even though you mentioned it off-handedly only once.

You didn’t even expect him to remember. But of course he did, and that’s a problem. It’s a problem because you wanted to jump into his arms right now. You want to melt into his warm embrace and forget anything bad ever happened.

But you don’t. Instead, you stop six feet short of him.

“Well?” you ask him, raising an eyebrow. “I’m on my way to class, do you need anything?” you ask him coolly.

Logan swallows, his eyes flickering over your face before he speaks.

“Uh…” he looks down at his feet for a second before completing his question. “Can I carry your bag?”

The question catches you off guard. It’s not an apology you don’t want, or him trying to get you to listen to what he has to say.

His voice is as deliciously smooth as you remember, and that sincere look in his eyes makes you really want to forgive him. But, baby steps.

“Sure.” you slip your bag off your shoulder and hand it to him. His fingers brush yours for the briefest moment, and you hate how familiar and comfortable that feels.

Without a word, you march forward to your class, hearing his footfalls a second later as he falls into step behind you.

For a few minutes, neither of you says anything. The silence isn’t as uncomfortable as it is… unusual. Normally, your walks with him were filled with jokes, laughter, or just the comfort of each other’s presence.

Now every quiet moment feels like something fragile.

“I, uh…” Logan interrupts the silence. You turn your head to look at him, and he looks like he wants to say 10 different things at once.

“I bet you’re wondering why I haven’t apologized yet?” he asks with a small, nervous smile.

You just give a small nod in reply.

“Well, I figured, an apology just won’t cut it.” He explains. “If I did what I wanted right now, I'd just beg for you to hear me out and take me back. Which would probably not be the best for me..." he scratches the back of his head. "I'd beg you to let me make amends, and let me show you exactly how much you mean to me.”

He looks at you before talking again.

“I have a million different things to say, but I know that’s not what you want to hear right now.” he continues again. “I will say this though…”

He waits for you to stop him, and when you don’t, he resumes talking.

“I was an ass. When Dean asked what we were… I- I said we weren’t anything serious. It’s not because I believed that we were casual, but- but because I was afraid confirming it would make it real.”

You give him a look over your shoulder, and he realizes his mistake, because he quickly backtracks.

“No, it already was real-  It was real to me the second something good happened to me, and you were the first person I wanted to tell. It was real to me when I was sick, and you were the only person I wanted to talk to.”

You look behind again, but he looks straight ahead, not meeting your eyes, and continues speaking.

“It’s just- things were good between us. Really good. Honestly, it felt like a dream I’d wake up from soon.” He lets out a shaky breath. “But, if I admitted it out loud, actually said those words to another person… there was no pretending that I wasn’t all in anymore.”

He laughs bitterly. “And that scared the hell out of me. If something happened after that, if I screwed things up, or we fell apart…” he takes a deep breath before continuing. “I couldn’t tell myself that I didn’t care. It would hurt more. All my life, in all situations, I’ve always kept one foot out the door. Telling myself ‘its casual, its temporary, don’t get attached’.”

A humourless smile tugged at his lips. “And when I met you, you… you were like this light, and you were one of the happiest things in my life. Something I convinced myself I don’t deserve. I felt like I was soaring high, and that I was bound to fall at some point.”

As you reach the building of your physics class, he finished his little monologue.

“I realized that, if something went wrong between us, it would hurt more… because I wouldn’t just be losing something that makes me happy, but… someone I love.”

Your eyes widen a bit at that, and he lets out a small chuckle as he gives you back your bag, and points to your class.

“You should probably get going.”

Before you could process your shock to get any words out, he turned around and walked away, leaving you rooted to that spot outside the door, people rushing in for class as you stared at his retreating figure.

The next day was Thursday. When you got home from your last lecture, you saw Hannah, Allie, Dean, and Garrett sprawled in your living room. You smile. Over the past few days, you’ve gotten used to this. Coming home to your friends waiting for you, making sure you’re not alone.

As you dropped your keys on the side table, a cardboard box caught your eye. Your name was written on top. You peeled off the tape and opened up the box to see your polar bear plushie. Puck. (Guess who named it that)

Your chest tightened. You’d completely forgotten that you’d left him at the hockey house.

A small smile graced your lips as you walked fully into the living room with Puck in your hands.

Dean noticed first. “Now where’d you get that from?”

Everyone’s attention diverted to Puck.

Hannah blinked. “Didn’t Logan win that for you at the carnival last month?”

“Yes.” You admitted, trying to sound indifferent.

“Oh my god, I remember that!” Garrett lets out an incredulous laugh. “That basketball game was rigged, and everyone knew that. But Logan saw you staring at that stupid bear and… just kept playing.”

“He lost for what, an hour?” Dean snorted.

“At least.” Garrett agreed. “The stall attendant eventually got so fed up of Logan’s miserable playing that he gave him the bear just to get rid of him.”

Despite yourself, you laugh. “That was a good day.”

Dean suddenly sat up straighter.

“No, you know what’s worse? Remember when you thought you’d failed that math test, so he skipped practice just to sit and watch trash tv with you?”

“It wasn’t that bad.” you mutter under your breath.

“It was 5 hours straight of love island.” Dean deadpanned.

Allie laughed before speaking. “No, his most down bad moment was when she mentioned she’d never been stargazing.”

You think back to that moment. “Right! He drove me like, two hours out of the city at midnight just because the forecast said that the stars would be more visible there.”

Allie’s eyes widened. “Two hours??”

Everyone looked deep in thought before Hannah spoke.

“My favourite was when you convinced yourself you lost your grandma’s necklace. You were hysterical.”

“And then”, Garrett grins. “After dragging the poor guy to three different places, you found it in your nightstand drawer.”

“And he didn’t even get pissed that you wasted his time”, Allie chimes in. “He was just relieved that you found it.”

You looked down at Puck, absent mindedly tracing his stitched smile with your thumb. You’d spent the past week replaying his words in your head, but now that these memories were going through your brain… you couldn’t stop remembering his actions instead.

Friday. game day. You’d opted not to go, but somehow managed to convince your friends that they should still go and support their boyfriends.

So instead, you were draped across your bed, doomscrolling through tiktok when your phone suddenly rang. The caller ID read ‘HanHan’. You frowned, glancing at the time. The game had barely started 10 minutes ago.

You answered immediately. “Everything alright, Han?” you ask her.

The roar of the crowd nearly drowned her out, but you still heard her practically shriek your name. “You have got to come here!”

Your stomach dropped. “What happened?”

 Its nothing bad, just… come quickly!” she urged.

Confused, you slip on your shoes, grab your purse, and head to the rink. Walking in, you see a few people outside give you knowing looks. Your brows knitted together. ‘What the hell?’, you thought.

The moment you enter, your eyes instinctively look for number 22 on the ice. You find him immediately, then freeze. Something wasn’t right.

Your gaze drifted upwards. Realization makes you freeze at the top of the steps. Instead of the usual ‘Logan’ stamped across the jersey above his number… it was your last name.

Your breath caught.

The noise of the arena faded to the background.

Just last week, he was scared to call you his girlfriend in front of dean. He was scared to admit that the relationship was real. And now… he was skating in front of his teammates, coaches, the entire university, hell, even live tv, with your name on his back.

And just like that, the last bit of anger that was stuck in your chest slowly began to fade away.

You find Allie and Hannah, both of them grinning ear to ear as they move to create space for you to sit. Neither of them say a word. They don’t need to.

You don’t take your eyes off of Logan. A couple minutes later, he slams the puck into the net.

The stadium cheers like crazy.

Logan’s eyes flit across the stands with a lazy grin, doing a double take when he sees you.

He smirks, and, while raising his leg, he extends one arm forward while simultaneously drawing the other back, snapping his fingers like he’s releasing an arrow in your direction.

Your cheeks heat up, and you can’t help but laugh as he skates around before joining the game again. “Idiot”, you mutter to yourself with a grin.

After the game ends, you linger near the tunnel, waiting for Logan to come out. Dean exits first, whistling as he makes a beeline for Allie. Tucker followed, offering you a knowing look before he heads to Sabrina and Jamie. Then Garrett emerged. He caught your eyes, winked, and continued walking forward towards Hannah before you see Logan near the exit. You move to head towards him before some other guy in a suit strikes up a conversation.

You wait patiently by the side, surprised when Logan gestures towards you, saying “I hate to cut this conversation in half, but I have someone waiting for me.”

The guy in the suit looks at you, nodding. “And this is?”

You look at Logan, thinking this may become awkward. But he doesn't falter.

“She was my girlfriend.” His voice is steady. “I was lucky to have her. Then I fucked up, and now…” He looks at you.

“And now his girlfriend again.” you finish smoothly.

Logan’s eyes widened. The guy laughs, claps him on the back, and gives him a congratulations before excusing himself.

“Girlfriend again?” he asks, his voice breathy around the edges.

“Well, if you don’t want to, I suppose-” you start, but get cut off.

“No, of course I want to.” He answered so quickly you almost laughed. “It’s just… I thought I was going to have to spend the next few months begging for you back.”

Your eyes narrow and you raise a finger. “Don’t think this lets you off the hook. I am still very pissed at you, but… I miss you. So I’m going to give you another shot.”

“Another shot?” Logan smiles like Christmas came early.

“One.” you repeat. “Not because you put my name on your jersey. Not because you told me you love me…”

Your voice softens at the end.

“But because my problem was the fact that you were hiding. You couldn’t admit, even to your best friend, that you were in a committed relationship with me. But now…” you trace your fingers across the back of his jersey. “I don’t think that problem really exists anymore, do you?”

Logan lets out a sigh of relief. You shake your head, smiling again.

“Logan. If we’re doing this again…”

His face immediately sobers.

“Talk to me. No keeping one foot out of the door. I need to know what’s going on in your head, okay?”

He nods quickly. “Yes ma’am”

You study his face for a second before you reach for his hand. “Now, are you going to ask me properly?” you tease him.

His head snapped up. He took a slow breath, ran his hand through his hair, and asked.

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

You pretended to hesitate for a moment.

Logan groaned. “Don’t do this to me!”

“Well, I don’t know, I’m actually not looking for anything serious right now…” you bite your lower lip, acting all innocent and sincere.

With a pained expression on his face, he speaks quickly. “Honey, please. If you tell me to get on my knees right now, I will. I’m ready to prove that I’m 100% committed to you. I-”

“John…” you interrupt him softly. “Shut up and kiss me.” With a relieved grin, he leans down and his lips hover near yours, unsure, before you surge up and meet him halfway.

You hear Allie’s excited cheer from somewhere to your side, while Dean whistles again, really loudly this time.

Laughing, you pull away and look at your group of friends, feeling Logan’s gaze burning a hole through the side of your face.

You look back at him, fisting your hand in his jersey and pulling him down so you can whisper in his ear.

“Now, why don’t you take me back home… and maybe keep the jersey on for a bit longer?” you murmur. “I really like seeing my name on you.”

You let out a squeal as Logan picks you up, wrapping your legs around his waist as he carries you out of the stadium.

“You’re not taking this off tonight.”, you say with a suggestive tone, making Logan nearly stumble.

His voice drops an octave. “Well, that wasn’t the plan.”

“Too bad.” you tell him. “You have a new plan now.”

He laughs, his arms tightening around you as he heads towards his jeep.

It had been such a long day, with his morning practice and your early shift. Both hesitant to leave the bed but doing it anyway, because you had to, despite dreading every second spent away from each other. 

You’d think it’s the honeymoon phase of the relationship, where all the clichés and the novelties of being with Logan would still feel fresh and different than anything you’ve ever felt before. But it’s true, and no matter how that sounds for the cynical ear, you can’t escape from the giddy feeling of the first time you’ve felt really sure of it, by Logan’s own words.

“I never thought it’d happen to me,” you remember him muttering against your temple, fingertips tracing your face so gently it almost lured you to sleep, then every so often pressing a kiss on your face to keep you from falling asleep.

You hum, mind still hazy, “What?”

He takes a moment, measuring what to say. You think he was mostly speaking to himself, not expecting you to hear it, caught off guard to have you asking. After a beat, he answers, “You. Or like– Love, altogether.” He says, in a low voice, “Thought it was something that’d only happen to other people.”

You blink slowly, “Baby,” you say, getting a bashful smile in return.

“I know.” Logan rolls his eyes, “But it’s like– You know.”

You beam at him, “Do I?”

He adjusts himself in bed, your head previously laying on his chest now moved to his arm as he turns to face you, “It’s like, I’d see it happening to, Garrett, or Dean, and just think,” he sighs, “It all seemed so distant. Like I’d just forever stay on the sidelines. Dramatic as fuck,”

“You tend to be,” you cut him off, joking. Logan softly pinches your sides, pulling a squeal out of you, “Sorry, please continue.”

“You’re enjoying this way too much.”

You shrug, “I like hearing what you’d thought of me.”

Logan chuckled, then moving his hand to cradle your cheek, “I just thought that something had changed,” he says, simply. “That I had been wrong before and you were the one to make it right.”

You wouldn’t often hear Logan being so straightforward about his feelings. A show, don’t tell kind of guy, his devotion for you always seeping through his actions, it’s different to hear him say such things, all of those that you believed too, often choosing to keep them deep down, wondering if you were maybe getting ahead of yourself and any show of feelings would terrify him. You knew it then that there was no place for doubt within you two. 

Moving closer to Logan, hiding your face on the curve of his neck as you press a kiss there, you think he knows it too.

Things became much smoother after that night, with the two of you introducing one another into your lives. His friends become yours too, and a number of his clothes in your closet while half his bathroom cabinet fits your things too. A natural transition from infatuation to love, like making up for all the lost time from when you didn’t know each other.

You’ve learned that you love sleeping beside him, reaching to find him laying by your side. You love finding time in your busy schedules to grab lunch with him, having him pick you up after work so you can talk as you walk home. You love when he texts you in the middle of the day about something that made him think of you. 

You love everything about sharing a life with Logan. 

And right at this moment, you love watching his face look at you in wonder, “The lighting?” he repeats, and you hum.

“When the sun is setting,” you say, “And the light peeks through the curtains, see?”

Logan turns his head to the window, his hand stopping midway up your shin as he focuses, trying to see what you see, “No, actually.”

You giggle, taking your legs off of his lap and pushing him a little, “Come here,” you urge him, “You gotta see it from here.”

Logan stares at you for a second, his eyes studying your face to see if you’re messing with him. You pat the couch next to you, “C’mon, I mean it.”

He laughs before crawling up your side of the couch, laying impossibly close to you. He tries kissing you, still convinced this is all a ruse, but you grab his cheeks and move him to face the window.

“Oh, wow,” he murmurs, voice constricted by your hands still on his face, “The lighting does look pretty from down here.”

You chuckle, “I told you.”

He looks back at you, face contorted into a doting smile, “I think you’re the first person to ever mention that,” he says.

The golden light peeking through makes his eyes shine brighter than ever as they fall on your face, the adoration behind giving them an extra twinkle too. 

“What?” You ask, holding back a smile.

Logan shakes his head, “Nothing,” he says, “I just love that you could see that.”

Your mouth splits into a grin, “Yeah?”

He hums, “Hm-hm,” he presses his nose against your cheek, lips finding the very corner of your mouth, murmuring, “And you look really pretty right now.”

A 90’s song playing on the TV draws your giggles as Logan places a sticky sweet peck there, you humming contently as his mouth lingers on your face, with one more kiss being pressed, then another, then another.

You think you could stay forever like this, pressed between Logan and the couch, with his face bathed by this honey-like golden lighting, so eager to keep finding yours, again and again and again.

notes: i know some people tend to see honeybee with some sadness to it (given the context of the album), but it truly is my favourite love song from olivia. thank you for reading! likes/reblogs/thoughts are appreciated! <3

nothing good happens after 2 am

home is wherever you are

midnight baby duty

love me like you do

two heartbeats

so high school

hold on to me

♡tears

♡rough night

♡breeding kink w logan

♡gasoline, pretty please

♡cockwarming logan as a study break

♡mornings are always calm with logan

♡logan likes it very much when you settle down on his thigh to get yourself off

In the six months you'd known John Logan, you'd known him to be rational. His anger was taken out on the ice, his head stayed cool, and his fists stayed by his side. That's the type of man John Logan was. He didn't punch first and ask questions later.

So why then, did Tucker call you at ten at night to tell you that Logan had his fists in your ex's face?

You weren't sure. All you knew was that you needed to figure it out. Set it straight. Understand why Logan lost his cool so hard.

He'd never done that before, and something in you was worried.

So, you put shoes on and headed out the door, not even bothering to change out of your pjs as you got in the car and headed to the hockey house. The ride there was deafeningly silent. No music, no mumbling or humming or anything from you. Just the rumble of your car and the worry in your brain.

When you pulled up, you paused for a second, breath hitching. You weren't entirely sure what you were doing here. In reality, what could you do to help? But...you had to be there. You had to be.

If Logan was pissed off over your ex, you felt responsible.

So you got out of the car and headed up to the house in your slides and pjs, not bothering to knock as you opened the door. Tucker and Dean were in the living room, and Dean pointed upstairs wordlessly.

You didn't give him a second glance as you headed upstairs and to Logan's room. No knocking, no waiting, you just barged in, closing the door behind you. Logan was sitting on his bed, leg bouncing and knuckles busted open.

You swallowed. "What happened?" you asked, your voice suddenly quiet.

It was like he hadn't even realized you were there, not until now. His eyes shot up to you, a mix of confusion and anger still lingering, but there was something else too. Something...different. His jaw worked, his lips pressing together.

Then, he shook his head. "Nothing," he replied. Like it wasn't a big deal. Like this entire thing didn't happen.

You scoffed. "Nothing? Logan, look at your knuckles."

Logan looked down, his eyes glancing over his bloody knuckles, and he inhaled shakily, like he was seeing them for the first time. He brought a hand up, running it over his face. "It's fine. Don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it?" You sounded offended. You were offended. How could he tell you that? You huffed, turning around and leaving his room. You went to the bathroom and grabbed a washcloth, getting it wet with warm water and then adding some soap.

You walked back into Logan's room, and his eyes shot up again, surprise in them like he didn't expect you to come back. You walked over to me, dropping to your knees down in front of him and grabbing his hand gently.

"You don't have to—"

"Shut up," you mumbled, dabbing the rugged skin lightly. Logan hissed, hand tightening in yours, and you let him. Silence encompassed the room for a few seconds as you cleaned his knuckles, but curiosity got the best of you. "Why'd you do it?"

Your eyes met his. He swallowed. "He pissed me off."

You shook your head. "It's more than that. It has to be. You don't just beat up people because they piss you off, John."

The use of his first name seemed to get him. You only called him that when it was serious, and this was serious. You had to understand what was so special about your ex that he threw fists.

He sighed, throat bobbing as he swallowed once more. "He deserved it," he deflected again.

You weren't having it. "That's not what I asked."

He inhaled through his nose, squeezing your hand slightly tighter as you hit a sensitive spot with the washcloth. "He called you a slut," he grumbled out through gritted teeth.

You paused, eyes flickering up to his. You let out a shaky breath. You knew your ex had been saying shit about you, but it didn't make it affect you any less hearing it come from Logan. He scoffed softly, shaking your head. "So you beat his ass for that?"

"Of course I beat his ass for that, angel. Why the hell wouldn't I?"

Angel.

He only called you that on rare occasions. When he was really drunk or when it was really late and you were sleeping over. So to hear it now, in this moment? It struck your chest and made your stomach erupt with butterflies.

"It wasn't worth it," you mumbled, finishing up his knuckles. "It's just words."

You stood up, tossing the washcloth in his dirty hamper. "It's not just words, and it was worth it. It was worth it to me." He stood up then, hovering over you, his body inches from yours. "No one gets to talk about you like that."

You swallowed, shaking your head. "Why is it such a big deal to you?"

He tilted his head, eyes searching yours like the question was ridiculous to even ask. "Are you kidding me?" You shook your head, eyebrows furrowed. "Angel..." His hands came down to your hips, gripping gently and pulling you closer.

Your breath hitched. "Everything about you is a big deal to me," he whispered, a small smile on his face.

You smiled slightly, confusedly, trying to come to terms with what you knew he was saying. "I don't-" You paused. "I mean...you- you still shouldn't have hit him."

He chuckled, breathlessly and softly, like this was all funny. "Yeah, I should've." He leaned in, kissing you softly. Your breath was taken away, his lips soft and sure against yours. It took you a few seconds, but you caught up.

Your hands went to his hair and he pulled you even closer, the kiss deepening as he did so. The kiss lasted as long as it could before you both had to pull back, and you were smiling so hard it almost hurt. You'd never been kissed like that before.

You chuckled, shaking your head. "You are..." You sighed, leaning in and resting your forehead against his. "Something else, John Logan."

It was a messy jumble of words, ink stains obvious on the fading paper, the emotions spilling out before you could even register what you were writing. All you knew was that you needed the whole thing out of your system and onto the only thing you knew what to do and that was to write. 

Before you could stop, or be smart about it, everything was poured on the paper. Lengthy, descriptive, and full of the things you wanted to say, and things you know you can’t say, because even at that age, you knew that liking John Logan was a beautiful terrible idea. 

Because he was your best friend. And you aren’t supposed to like your best friend. At least, in your head. Who are you to ruin the friendship, you know?

You remember folding it in half. Then again, then for a third time, like you were trying to make it as small as possible. Like diminishing it physically would diminish what the words on the paper meant. 

You'd been looking for somewhere to put it. The trash felt too final, too much like admitting it had existed, and you were halfway on just stuffing it under your pillow  when you'd found the box. Your grandmother's, handed down at the end of summer with a kiss on your forehead and the words for letters you mean to send someday. Wooden, old-smelling, with a brass latch that stuck a little if you didn't press it just right.

You'd tucked the letter in and shut the latch.

That was the beginning of it.

-

It had been a random tuesday, back in junior year of high school.

John – he had always been John to you before he became Logan – had after school hockey practice. You'd been draped over the boards for the past ten minutes, watching from the bleachers the way you always did when you had nowhere better to be, which was most days— something you'd never quite admitted to yourself until recently. Because the walk home was shorter from this direction. You had a whole catalogue of reasons, and not one of them was true.

John had been the last one off the ice.

That in itself was not unusual. John Logan was always the last one off the ice. The coach was nice enough to lend him that extra time, considering that he had always been the kid that loved hockey more than anything else. 

And you would always wait in the bleachers. Sometimes on your phone, most times watching him as he skated. You count the amount of times he circled it, especially when you felt bored but didn’t have the strength to look away. Because something about him was magnetic to you. You wondered what it was, every time you stay that extra ten minutes in the rink.

Then after his usual rounds (at most, seven rounds), he looked up, and caught your gaze.

John grinned. The stupid, lopsided grin that suddenly made your heart skip. Then he skated all the way over to the boards, where you were, and leaned on them as he grinned. His helmet was tucked under his arm, hair damp at the temples, “You just got here?”

“Yep. Passed by after practice.” You tried to keep your tone as casual as possible, like the sight of him didn't make your heart skip. 

“You really didn’t have to come by, you know. It’s late.”

“I wanted to.” You smiled. You didn’t say anything else as follow up. Because adding something else after that would mean that you were admitting something that you weren’t ready to admit. And you would have to explain everything else that you didn’t name yet.

He looked at you for a second, searching for something in your face, and then he looked down and smiled again. It was softer this time, private, the one that felt like it wasn't for anyone else, the one he wore when something surprised him in a way he found pleasant, and tilted his head. 

"Sure. Thanks for that.”

You just shrugged.

John nods over at the locker rooms. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll get you hot chocolate at the cafe nearby.”

You huffed, lips curling in amusement. “There? Really? Last time we went there, you said you didn't like the hot chocolate they made.” 

John just grinned at you. “Yeah. But you like it.” 

He skated away after that. Like those words didn’t make you freeze, your eyes trailing after him, heart stuttering and your brain finally naming that warmth that spread on your cheeks. 

And that was it. That was the whole thing. That was the moment that broke you open.

You'd gone home that day and picked up the closest paper and pen, and the words just started coming, because they didn't have anywhere else to go. You wrote about how his smile was the most disarming thing he could have. You wrote about the way he'd leaned on the boards and looked at you like looking at you was just a natural extension of breathing. You wrote about how his curls fell perfectly on his face.

You wrote about how the hot chocolate from the machine in the convenience store nearby had been terrible, watery and too sweet for him, and even when you told him he didn't have to drink it, he'd laughed and drank it anyway and said that it was fine with all the cheerfulness of someone who genuinely didn't mind, and how that had somehow made everything worse.

You wrote, hesitantly, but filled with everything in your chest— I like him. 

You folded the paper into thirds, tucked it into your grandmother's box, and pressed the brass latch shut.

You didn't open the box for three weeks after that. Not because you were over it, but because you were hoping, very determinedly, that if you didn't look at it, the feeling would dissolve on its own.

It didn't.

-

The letters accumulated the way all things do when you are trying not to notice them: gradually, and then all at once. 

By the end of junior year, there were ten. By senior year of high school, fifteen.

They were not all long. Some were barely a paragraph, dashed out on notebook paper in the middle of class when something happened that you had no one to tell except him, which was the problem, because he was the person that you would usually go to about these things… so you tell the paper instead.

Junior year, you wrote about how naturally John seemed to do things for you. Carrying your bag, buying things in the cafeteria when you didn't want to get up from the bench. But at the same time, it was always the question if he liked you, or if he was being nice

You remembered I hate raisins in things. You picked them out of the muffin before you gave it to me. You've been doing that since seventh grade and I only just noticed today that it's something you do on purpose.

Jealousy would often seep into your letters, as well. Because you knew he was well liked. That John had a future of having girls that would throw themselves at him, and he would always entertain it with his smile and pretty curls and— 

— but you act like I’m special, and that they don't matter. But I don't have the right to even stop them from liking you, so all I could do is watch and wish that you would instead look at me.

You kept those folded five times. 

--

Senior year, anger would sometimes seep into them.

I should tell you. I should tell you that I lie in bed until 3 am wondering if anything would happen between us. I should— but you are so unfair. You act like you care, and then I'm left hanging again. I still have your jacket. That stupid, gray jacket that you gave me. The damn gray jacket that was your favorite and you don't let anyone wear but you handed it to me when I was cold. And at the same time, you turned and smiled at Kaia like she mattered and. I hate that I like you and I hate that it feels like you do too— but then you turn around and act like you don't.

Some were the soft, bewildered variety, written in the margins of homework you’d never turn in, about something small he'd done that shouldn't have meant as much as it did.

You know how everyone else talks over me when I'm telling a story and moves on before I'm done? You always wait. You just… wait. You wait until I'm finished, and then you respond to what I actually said, not what you were going to say next. I don't know if you know you do that. I don't know how to tell you that it matters.

When you both got into Briar University, John on a hockey scholarship, you on a Merit Scholarship— you celebrated together in the parking lot of the ice rink, his arms around you, lifting you a full two inches off the ground, and you laughed and said “John, put me down!” even if you knew that deep down, you didn’t mean any of it, wanting him to keep his arms around you longer. 

You'd gone home that night and written four pages.

I keep telling myself I'm not following you. And I'm not. I worked for this, I studied late into the night and doubled my efforts whenever I would fail because I wanted Briar before you got in.  But some part of me is terrified that the reason I want it so badly is mixed up with the reason you're going, and I can't separate them cleanly, and that scares me.  What if I didn't want Briar so much as I wanted to be wherever you were going to be? What does that mean? What am I supposed to do with that? I don't have an answer. I'm going to go to sleep. I'm going to not think about it. I'm going to go to Briar, even if I can't solidify why I am.

You went to Briar.

You don’t address it after the long four page letter, and somewhere between orientation week and prelims, the box had gone from a strange habit to a necessity, a pressure valve that kept everything from building to critical mass.

You'd gotten good at it. At the translation of feeling into ink, at the sealing away of things that had no business existing in the open air. The box lived under your bed, behind your extra blankets and a stack of Intro to Lit anthologies you kept meaning to donate. The latch, temperamental from the start, had gotten worse with age. 

You'd meant to fix it.

You kept meaning to do a lot of things.

The letters still ranged from two lines to four pages, even when you entered Freshman Year in Briar. They still kept the same amount of yearning and thoughts you would never find the courage to say, or even send to Logan– and soon after, you started signing them too.

John – or maybe Logan?  You started being called Logan after you teamed up with Tucker and the rest. So maybe I should change it up to. Adapt and change, you know. Though it would be weird to start calling you by your last name.  – With love, and judgement.

You tried to call him Logan. He looked at you then with such offense that you back tracked and went back to calling him John. He said it made him feel better. Special, because John was a name only you could use. 

You wrote another letter that night, trying to reason out the butterflies and the implications of what he meant. Because rationalizing it away makes it easier than admitting it out loud.

They kept piling up. Letter after letter.

This sucks. You remembered my coffee order even after I changed it three times in two months. I can’t blame you for how well you treat me. It’s just how you are.  I should just stop putting meaning into things, but the other part of me just wants to believe that maybe it did mean something. UGH. John Logan you fucking suck. I hope you trip on the ice during practice. Actually, no. That was a joke. Maybe. – With love.

You called the longest ones your pathetic, yearning lovergirl letters. Late-night things, written when the distance between what you felt and what you were allowed to say felt too wide to sleep across. Those ones you sometimes read back in the morning with a kind of horrified tenderness, like finding a diary from a younger self. 

They were overwrought. 

They were honest in ways you couldn't quite access in daylight.

John, I've been thinking about the thing you said last week, that you don't know what you'd do without me. You said it so easily. Like it was just true, just a fact of your life, the way you'd say it's cold out or practice got cancelled. I don't know what to do with that. I've been turning it over and over in my head trying to figure out what it means and I think the honest answer is that it means exactly what it sounds like and nothing more and I need to learn to be okay with that. I'm working on it. – With love. P.S. You should stop handing me your hoodies when I get cold and letting me keep them. It messes with me and my late night 3 am delusional thoughts.

John, You have this thing you do when you're listening to someone — you get very still. Most people, when they listen, they nod, they mm-hm, they start formulating their response and you can see the moment they stop actually hearing you. You don't do that. You just go still and you look at the person and you listen, like it costs you nothing, like you have all the time in the world. I don't think you realize you do it. I don't think you realize what it does to people. What it does to me. I'm going to stop writing now. Before I start turning into the 3 am yearner I was last night. Again. — With love.

By freshman year of college, there were thirty letters.

Sophomore year is when it all cracked.

Classes started to weigh on you in a way freshman year hadn't warned you about. Rehearsals that ran until midnight, choreography notes bleeding red ink across marked-up scores, tech week for the department showcase bleeding into finals week, the constant ache in your calves and the tape on your feet that never seemed to come off in time — a dance major was not a degree that let up, and you were running harder than you ever had, barely sleeping, more often than not with Logan being the one thing keeping you sane, showing up with food you hadn't asked for and quiet company at your desk — or in the studio doorway — at midnight, watching you run the same eight counts until your body finally understood what your brain already knew. 

And then there was the puck bunny thing.

You didn't have the right to say anything about it, not really. You understood why. John Logan was hot. He was charming, easy to talk to, easy to fall for — and there was always a rotating cast of girls finding excuses to linger near him after games. You watched it happen the way you'd always watched it happen, except now you were closer to it, in his dorm, at his games, in the middle of the aftermath. And you had no claim to any of it. He wasn't yours. He'd never been yours. You just got to watch, the way you always had.

So you stopped writing. You shoved the box into the dark crevice under your bed and didn't take it out again. You prayed it would stay there. You told yourself you were moving on.

Meeting Davis was almost spontaneous — a late night out at Malone's, small talk with a guy from your gen-ed class that turned into something steadier. He was easy. Uncomplicated. He didn't make your chest hurt the way John did, and for a while, that felt like a relief instead of a warning sign. The letters stayed buried. Things between you and Logan went back to what looked, on the surface, like normal. Friends. Best friends. 

Because that was all it was going to be.

-

"So how are things with Davis?" Logan asked, leaning against the kitchen counter while you hunched over a marked-up piece of choreography notation, notes scattered across the counter in purple and yellow highlighter, counts and spacing diagrams bleeding into the margins. Gen ed notes scatter on top of them, but you seemed more preoccupied with the scrawls of markings for your major.

"Things are fine." You tried to keep the annoyance out of your voice, but Logan had always been perceptive, and it showed in the way his brows drew together.

"Yeah? Then why do you sound like that?"

Your pen dug a little deeper into the page. "Sound like what?"

"Like things aren't fine."

Your head snapped up, an evident frown pulling at your mouth. "It's none of your business, John."

Your voice came out sharper than you meant it to, and you winced, immediately regretting it. "Sorry. That was — sorry."

He didn't push on the apology. Just crossed his arms and softened his voice instead. "What's wrong?"

You hesitated, pen hovering over your notes, and then you let out a long groan and dropped your forehead against your textbook. "I don't want to start venting."

"Vent anyway."

"He keeps asking when I'm free. Wants to hang out constantly, and I get it, I do, but callbacks are in two weeks and I have a showcase piece I'm not off-book for yet, and I told him that, and he just —" You sat up, dragging a hand down your face. "He said it's kind of pathetic that I care this much about a theater degree. That I don’t have a future in this and that I’m only wasting my time."

Logan's jaw went tight. He would also do that when something pissed him off, and you knew him enough to know that he was also pissed off at what you said. "He said that?"

"Basically."

"That's not — " He stopped himself, exhaled through his nose, clearly working to keep his voice level. "You've wanted this since we were sixteen. You used to run your combinations for me in your driveway at eleven at night in the middle of winter because you couldn't get the phrase to feel right, and I stood there freezing my hands off holding your phone so you could film it."

That got a small, watery laugh out of you. "You always came outside, though. Even when it was that cold."

"Because it mattered to you." He said it so plainly, like it wasn't even a decision he'd had to make. "Anyone who makes you feel stupid for caring about the thing you've wanted since we were in high school doesn't get to also get your time. That's not — that's not how it should work."

You didn't have an answer for that. You just nodded at your notes, throat tight, and went back to studying, and Logan stayed leaning against the counter a while longer before he finally pushed off it and went to make you tea you hadn't asked for, the same way he always did.

-

Things ended with Davis not long after that — quietly, without a scene (an irony you did clock, even mid-breakup), the kind of ending that comes less from a single fight and more from a slow accumulation of moments where you'd chosen your scripts, your late rehearsals, your friendship with Logan, over him, and he'd finally said out loud what he'd clearly been thinking for weeks. You didn't wallow in it. It hadn't felt like losing something so much as setting something down.

Allie, your dorm neighbor across the hall, caught you in the laundry room a few days later, sorting a basket of mismatched socks.

"Wait, so you and Davis are actually done?" Allie asked, propping her hip against the dryer.

"Yeah." You shrugged, feeding a quarter into the slot. "It didn't work out." She knew about what he said, and she made the same face as you the moment you told her. She was the friend you made in one of the early collaborations your major did with hers, and she was the one who knew well how taxing it would be on your body and to have someone just brush it off? She had also pushed for you re-evaluating your whole relationship before you even talked to John about it.

"Huh." Allie studied you for a second too long. "You don't seem that broken up about it."

"I'm fine," you said, and mostly meant it, which felt strange enough that you didn't examine it too closely.

Allie didn't push, but she gave you a look on her way out that said she'd clocked something you hadn't said out loud.

Your roommate and best friend in all things best friend, Jai, was less subtle about it. She came in that night to find you cross-legged on your bed, not doing anything in particular, just sort of staring at the wall.

"Okay, what's actually going on with you?" Jai said, dropping her bag and sitting across from you. "You broke up with Davis, which you knew most of us had been telling you to, but usually break ups have the whole grieving process. And right now,  you look like you're thinking about a math problem, not a breakup."

"I don't know. I think I just — I didn't care as much as I should have. The whole time. I feel bad about that." You fiddle with your fingers. “That maybe I feel this apathetic because I didn’t care as much in the beginning.”

Jai considered you for a moment, tilting her head the way she did when she was about to say something you weren't going to like. "You know what I think?” 

You looked up at Jai, who nodded over at the space under your bed. “You never wrote about him.”

You blinked. "What?"

"The letters." Jai said it like it was obvious, like she'd noticed the box's absence the same way she'd notice if you'd rearranged the furniture. "You've had that thing since I've known you — you disappear into it when something's actually gotten to you. You didn't write a single letter about Davis. Not one, in like four months."

You opened your mouth to argue and found you didn't have anything to argue with.

You hadn't written about Davis. Not once. Every single letter in that box, every one you'd ever written, had one name on it, and it wasn't his.

The realization hit you like cold water. 

You hadn't moved on. Not even a little.

That night you pulled the box out from under the bed — dusty, a stray cobweb clinging to one corner — wiped it down, and wrote the first letter in months. You didn't let yourself think too hard about what it meant that your hand knew exactly how to start again, like it had never really stopped.

I dated someone in hopes of getting over you– only to realize that every time I sit across from him, I imagine its you. It’s not fair on him. Or myself. But though he did deserve the break-up… he didn’t deserve someone who is still hung over a guy she liked since high school, It’s stupid. Terribly so, but I had four months of thinking that dealing with him was much easier than dealing with the constant ache in my chest every time I see you.  Maybe it’s more stupid of me to get back to writing to you and acknowledging the constant hurt i feel. — With love, reluctantly, again, and always.

By Junior year, the letters slowed but never stopped completely. The program was, if anything, worse than sophomore year — a full-length ensemble piece now, not just technique classes, and you were buried in rehearsal schedules and rep notes, and the only thing that made any of it bearable was Logan, constant as ever, still showing up with food, still sitting on the studio floor with you at 1 a.m. while you both pretended you weren't exhausted, still somehow always exactly where you needed him to be. 

Jai, who had appointed herself the unofficial keeper of your feelings since the Davis revelation, was relentless about it.

"You have to tell him," she said one night, apropos of nothing, while you were both supposed to be doing readings for your gen ed classes. "Junior year of high school, senior year, all of freshman and now half of junior year of college. That's — I did the math, that's four years, and you're going to keep writing it down instead of just saying it?"

"It's not that simple."

"It kind of is, though."

You'd relented eventually, worn down by her insistence and your own exhaustion at holding the same shape for four years straight. You told her you'd do it. You'd tell him. Maybe at the house party that weekend, when everything felt looser and easier and less like something you had to plan for.

You didn't get the chance.

You found him in the kitchen of the party, laughing with a girl whose name you didn't know, and before you could process anything, she'd leaned in and he hadn't leaned away.

You didn't wait to see more than that. You turned around and left before he ever noticed you'd been there, walked back to your dorm in the cold without your jacket, and didn't cry, exactly — just sat on your floor and wrote until your hand cramped.

I stopped hoping tonight. I think I needed to see it to actually believe it, because apparently telling myself wasn't enough. I'm not writing this one for you to ever read. I'm writing it so I stop lying to myself about what almost happened this weekend, and didn't, and isn't going to.

I keep thinking about how badly I wanted to walk over there and how I didn't, and how that's the whole story of us, isn't it. Me, standing a few feet away, wanting, and staying exactly where I am.

You told Jai it hadn't worked out. She didn't push for details, just sat with you until you didn't feel like crying anymore.

Things between you and Logan, in the weeks after, went quiet in a way that wasn't quite a fight and wasn't quite normal either — some instinctive retreat on your end that you dressed up as being busy. Eventually it faded, the way most things did when you were both incapable of staying upset at each other for long, and by the second half of the semester you'd settled back into something that looked, from the outside, exactly like it always had. You told yourself that was enough. You tried, in your quiet, determined way, to move on.

There was one more letter before the long silence, written the week after, when he'd shown up at your studio with soup because Jai had mentioned you were sick, and stayed on the floor doing his own reading while you slept on and off on the yoga mats, and woken you gently every hour to make sure you drank water.

You have no idea what you do to me by being like this. You have no idea, or you do, and you just don't care, because it's easier to be kind to me than to explain why you keep being kind to me. Either way, I am so tired of this constant wishing and wanting. I’ll move on. I have to. Or I’ll never get out of this stupid hole.  I love you. But it hurts to keep loving you.

By the second semester of junior year, there were forty-three letters. You left it at forty-three letters.

Ever since that night, where your anger and everything about you spilled into paper and ink– you didn't slip in another letter. It stayed at forty-three.

Forty-three letters, across four years, across the span of a friendship that had become the most important thing in your life and the most carefully guarded secret you kept. Forty-three letters that were supposed to go with you to the grave while you plan out your whole moving on shtick.

That was the plan. That had always been the plan.

The plan, it turned out, was not consulted before Thursday afternoon.

—

It was a fire drill that turned out not to be a drill.

You'd been on the floor beside your bed, hunting for your phone charger, having pulled the mattress out from the wall and tangled yourself in the extra blankets you kept stuffed behind it, when the alarm split the air — sudden, violent, the particular shriek of the Briar dorms that had never once not startled you no matter how many times you'd heard it.

Your elbow caught the edge of the blanket stack. The box, which you'd shoved back into place after re-reading that last letter just the other day, teetered on the edge of the mattress frame. You grabbed for it, fingers catching the corner.

The latch — that brass, temperamental, long-suffering latch you'd always meant to fix and never had — gave.

The box opened.

Forty-three letters, across the floor of your dorm room.

You were still on the ground, staring at them, trying to process the scope of the disaster, when you heard Logan's familiar voice, your name, followed by a quick, "It's me, don't freak out —"

You looked up. Panic set in immediately, your heart dropping to your feet.

John Logan stood in the doorway, your dorm key in his hand — the one you'd given him freshman year for emergencies and never asked back — the opening words dying in his throat as he watched the letters settle.

The alarm was still going. Someone in the hall was shouting about everyone needing to get out. The late-afternoon light came through the window, gold and slanted, landing on the scattered envelopes and the stunned expression on his face and every single letter that bore, in your own handwriting, his name.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

Then you hit the floor on both knees, grabbing at the letters with both hands, stacking them against your chest with no particular order, your mind repeating the same panicked loop — collect them, get them back in the box, get them away from his line of sight.

"These are nothing — they're old, they're just — don't look at those—" You scrambled, but the panic made the ones in your hand slip loose again, and you nearly wanted to just sprawl over the envelopes and pretend they'd never fallen at all.

But John was crouching too. He wasn't reading them. He was just looking at the envelopes scattered across your floor, and you could see the exact moment he registered what they all had in common.

All of them. Every single one.

John Logan.

Your handwriting. His name. Over and over, in blue ink and black ink, and once in green, junior year of high school, when you'd been out of everything else.

His name on the front of forty-three letters you never sent.

He picked one up. He did it with the careful hands he used for things he wasn't sure about — the same way he picked up injured birds on his way to practice, the same way he handled other people's textbooks, and, twice, your feelings, on the two occasions you'd broken down in front of him and he'd gently cradled your face and helped you through the tears. Those were among the ten thousand other things written in your letters. Things you loved him for.

"These are addressed to me," he said. His voice was quiet. Unsure, tentative, like if he spoke louder he'd scare you off entirely.

"They're not —" you stammered. "I didn't send them. That's the whole —" You pressed the stack still in your hand to your sternum. "Please. Just — pretend you didn't see them."

"How many are there?"

His voice was doing something you couldn't quite pinpoint. Low. Careful. Something heavy underneath it, if you read between the lines.

You looked at him over the letters clutched to your chest, not sure what expression was on your face that made him soften even further. Maybe it was the pure panic. Maybe it was something else.

"Twenty — wait, uhm." You paused, blinked. "Thirty-four."

He lifted a brow. "You hesitated."

"...Forty-three."

The silence after that had weight. The alarm had stopped — someone had pulled it, or the drill was over, or building staff had caught up to whatever triggered it — and the sudden absence of noise made everything feel louder. Your heartbeat. His breathing. The soft scratch of the envelope he was turning over in his hands, not opening, just turning.

"How long?" he asked.

You didn't want to answer that. The answer was the part that would make it real. The part that would say out loud what had only ever existed on paper.

"Since junior year of high school," you said quietly.

You watched him absorb it.

He sat back on his heels, and you could see him doing the math. Junior year of high school. The end of the letter stack. The date on whatever letter he was holding. The span of years between then and now.

"You've been writing me letters," he said slowly, like he was learning the sentence as he spoke it, "for four years. That you never sent."

"It's not — it's a journaling thing. It's not —"

"Your journals have my name on them."

You winced and closed your eyes. "Yes."

"Why didn't you send them?"

You opened your eyes. He was watching you with an expression that made it very hard to think clearly, and you needed to think clearly to get through this conversation without losing something you couldn't afford to lose. Carefully, you thought. Be careful. He is your best friend and he is looking at you and you are not allowed to ruin this.

"Because I didn't want things to change," you said, which was the truest and most incomplete answer you had.

"What things?"

"Us." The word landed between you, bare, nothing around it to soften it. "The way things are. The way things have always been. I didn't — I wasn't willing to risk it. So I wrote it down instead, and I kept it, and I was going to keep it forever, and this was a mistake, Logan —"

"John." He interrupted quietly. You ignored the correction.

"— you were not supposed to see these."

"What are they?" he asked. "Just — tell me what they are. In plain English."

You looked at him. Then at the forty-three letters — the ones against your chest, the ones still sprawled on the floor, the one in his hands, the stupid brass-latched box open between you. You thought about every 2 a.m., every bleacher, every game, every borrowed hoodie you'd never given back. You thought about how long you'd been careful not to say a single thing. How much energy you'd spent on the not-saying, and how completely, catastrophically exhausted you were from it.

"They're everything," you said, "that I didn't know how to say to your face."

—

He was quiet for a long time after that.

You spent most of it looking at the floor, cataloguing the letters you could see from where you sat — the corner of the very first one, faded and ink-stained, from that Tuesday in junior year. The familiar blue pen of the one from a few months ago, the night of the game where he'd scored the tying goal in the final minute and looked up into the bleachers and found you immediately, like he'd known exactly where to look, like he always knew where to look, and you'd gone home and written four pages you didn't remember most of the next morning.

Then right by your knees was the latest letter. The one that was lengthy and full of hurt and anger and everything else that you poured out after seeing him make out with another girl– You push down the memory. 

The afternoon light had shifted. It was later than you'd realized.

"I want to ask you something," Logan said, "and I need you to answer honestly."

"Okay."

"Is it —" He exhaled through his nose, tried again. You watched the struggle on his face — that particular Logan expression of someone who had something to say and was working out how to say it without saying too much or too little. You'd seen it a thousand times. You'd written about it. Letter fourteen, sophomore year of high school. The way he gets quiet before he says something he means.

"Is it the same thing I think it is?"

"Probably," you said, to the floor. "Unless you think it's a grocery list, in which case, no."

He made a sound that might have been a laugh — hoarse, surprised out of him.

"You've liked me," he said, still careful, "since junior year."

"Yes."

"And you didn't say anything because you didn't want to lose the friendship."

"Yes."

"And you wrote — forty-three letters. Instead."

"I was going to say forty-three seemed excessive, but honestly, given the timeline, I think it's fairly restrained."

"Hey." His voice changed. That made you look at him. He was watching you with something so open on his face it hit you square in the sternum. "Don't do that. Don't make it a joke right now."

You swallowed. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry either." He set the letter down between you, gently, the way he set down things he didn't want to damage, and ran a hand through his hair — the thing he did when he was thinking hard, when something had knocked him somewhere he hadn't planned to go. "I just need a second."

You gave him the second.

Outside, someone on the quad was playing music, drifting up through your open window without any particular hurry. Late afternoon light cut across the room at the angle it only ever hit in March — long and gold and slanted, the kind that made everything look like it was happening in the last good hour of something. The last hour before whatever came next.

He abruptly brings up Davis. "What about Davis?"

Your brows furrow. "What about him?"

"You dated him last year."

You hesitate. "It was a half-hearted attempt to try and get over you."

"Did it work?"

You deadpan. "Well, I broke up with him, didn't I?"

John laughs through his nose. "Yeah. Yeah that makes sense."

Another beat passes, quieter this time, before he asks if you know why he's shown up to every single one of your performances since freshman year. Not just the winter and spring showcases. The studio showings nobody came to, the ten-minute improvisation pieces you took for the sake of getting better, performed to an audience of six, the Tuesday afternoon rehearsal run-throughs that overlapped with his lift block, when he'd shown up, hair damp, sitting cross-legged in the back corner of the studio so he could leave before anyone noticed a hockey player watching a modern dance rehearsal like it was the only thing happening in the building.

"That's practice, though," you say. "You're always busy."

"Not always." He says it like it's nothing, like it was never a real sacrifice, just a matter of arranging things around each other the way you'd both always done. "I never missed a lift block or a mandatory practice for it, if that's what you're asking. Coach would've had my head, and there goes the scholarship. I'm not that much of an idiot."

"So how—"

"I just used the time I actually had. Free blocks. The hour after morning skate before class. You'd be in Studio B until midnight running the same eight counts over and over, and I'd come sit in the corner with a granola bar and my laundry, because doing laundry at the machines by the dance building was somehow always more urgent than doing it in my own dorm."

You protest anyway, because your brain is still catching up, still trying to file this under good friend the way you have filed every other thing he's ever done for four years running. "You're just — that's just you being supportive. You did that for Summer-"

"I went to Summer's event once, and that was because Dean wanted us to. I have sat through you running the same eight counts eleven times in a row at eleven p.m. on a Tuesday because you couldn't get the turn right, and I have watched you mark a whole solo with a busted ankle because you didn't want to fall behind, and I still came."

"That was one time."

"I know. I counted the limps."

That gets you. Something in your chest cracks open a little wider.

He tells you about the incidents, then — the small things you never clocked because you were always mid-combination or too deep in your own head to notice him in the doorway, or slumped against the wall outside the studio with his bag still packed from practice. The night your partner dropped you a beat early in a lift and you both recovered it so smoothly the audience never noticed, and how he'd told Tucker after, unprompted, that he'd never seen anyone save a mistake like that mid-air, like it mattered to him the way his own game footage mattered.

The way he'd show up straight from morning skate, hair still wet, to walk you back to your dorm after a late rehearsal because he didn't like the idea of you crossing the quad alone at midnight, ice pack pressed to your shin, making conversation about nothing in particular just so you wouldn't have to walk in silence. The stretch of a week during tech for the fall showcase, when you barely left the studio, and he started just bringing his own homework to do on the floor during your five-minute breaks, so you'd have someone there without either of you having to say why that mattered.

"You did that the whole week," you say slowly.

"I did that the whole week."

"You never told me you had a physics midterm that same week."

"Didn't want you to feel bad about it." He shrugs, like this is a reasonable thing to have kept from you for two years. "It wasn't your fault. I wanted to be there."

You're quiet for a second, turning that over, and something about the quiet must give you away, because he tilts his head at you. "What?"

"Nothing."

"You've got a face on. That's not nothing."

"It's just—" You stop. Start again. "If you wanted to be there that badly. If you were doing all of that. Then what was with the girls?"

He blinks. "What girls?"

"You know what girls, Logan." Your voice comes out sharper than you mean it to, two years of swallowed irritation finally finding a door. "The ones after games. Hanging off the boards. The ones who got to walk up to you, because they didn't have some — some rule in their head about not ruining anything."

"That's what this is about?"

"I'm asking."

He drags a hand down his face, and for the first time all night, he looks ashamed instead of careful. "Those weren't anything," he says. "You know that, right? They were never anything."

"They looked like something."

Logan lets out a hoarse laugh — short, not really about anything funny. It's the sound of a person getting cornered by their own bad decisions. "Yeah," he says. "I bet they did."

There's something almost shameful in the way his jaw works before he goes on.

"They were a distraction." He says it plainly, no dressing it up. "You didn't — I thought you didn't feel the same way. I thought I was the only one carrying this, and I didn't know what to do with that, so I did the dumbest possible thing, which was try to feel something for anyone else so I'd stop feeling this much for you. It never worked. Not once. I always ended up back at your door with food you didn't ask for, like an idiot."

"I did care," you say, and it comes out smaller than you mean it to, four years of carefulness still clinging to your voice even now. "I thought you didn't."

"I know that now."

You stare at each other for a second, and it lands on both of you at once — the sheer, staggering waste of it. Four years of two people orbiting the same unspoken thing, each one certain the other didn't want it, each one building elaborate, private monuments to a feeling neither of you would say out loud. You almost want to laugh. You almost want to be furious. Mostly you just want to sit in the wreckage of it with him and not move for a while.

That's when he tells you about the texts.

"There's something you should probably know, since, well– I just accidentally saw your very personal letters." he says, and something in his voice makes you go still before he even finishes the thought. "I've been deleting texts to you since October of junior year."

"What texts?" you said.

"The ones I wasn't going to send." A muscle in his jaw moved. "Different medium. Same problem."

You stared at him.

"You," you said carefully, "have also been —"

"Yeah."

"Since —"

"Junior year." He kept his eyes on you. "You did that solo — the contemporary piece, the one set to that stripped-down piano track, for the fall showcase. I only went because you asked me to come, and also promised to buy me free snacks right after. So I came. I sat in the back row not expecting to care, and then the lights came up on you and you just — you weren't you anymore, you were something else entirely, and I remember thinking, very clearly, that I had never seen anything move like that. Not the piece. You. I didn't say anything to anyone. I definitely didn't say anything to you. I just knew, sitting in that folding chair, that something in me had rearranged itself and it wasn't going back." He stopped. Shook his head. "I thought you knew, later, that something had shifted for me. I thought it was obvious. I thought you didn't feel the same way, and I figured I could live with that — be your friend, be fine. And I was mostly fine. I was fine until you and Davis started whatever that was, and I wasn't fine anymore, and that's when I knew I was a lost cause."

"There was nothing with Davis," you said. "It was just — a gen-ed class, and I thought it was something—" The words died on your tongue.

"I know that now."

"John." Something enormous was rising in your chest — too big for any letter, too loud for that box. "We've been — we've both been —"

"Catastrophically stupid," he said, with a short, helpless laugh. "Yeah. I'm aware."

"Four years."

"I know."

"I have forty-three letters —"

"I know, I can see them —"

You laughed, and it came out slightly broken, and he laughed too, and for a moment it was just that — the two of you on your dorm room floor, surrounded by four years of everything you hadn't said, laughing at the sheer, impossible absurdity of it. At how close you'd been the whole time. At how completely you'd managed to miss each other while never once being apart.

Then the laughter faded.

He was looking at you. The gold light had shifted, fallen across him, and he looked the way he always looked when he was done thinking and had arrived somewhere decided. You knew that look. You'd written about it. Letter twenty-one. The way he looks when he's made up his mind about something and nothing in the world is going to unmake it.

"What do we do now?" you asked.

John reached out slowly, giving you every chance to move away if you wanted to. He tucked a loose strand of hair back from your face, hand staying at your jaw, careful. His thumb traced, barely, along your cheekbone.

"I have a practice slot tomorrow morning," he said. "Early. Six a.m., the rink's usually empty." He paused. "You could come. Sit in the bleachers, like you always do. And after — I could buy you hot chocolate. And maybe this time I could actually say what I haven't been saying for four years."

You looked at him. His hand was warm at your jaw, and the room smelled like old paper and cedar and whatever that specific thing was that his jacket always smelled like, because of course he was wearing the jacket you knew best.

"And we're doing it at the rink," you said slowly, "because —"

"Because that's where it started," he said, shrugging. "It should start there too. Not the ratty ice rink back home, but it still counts."

The feeling in your chest crested, enormous and warm, nothing like the quiet ache you'd carried for four years. That ache had been private and careful, kept deliberately small so it wouldn't take up too much room, wouldn't crowd out anything else. This was not small. This was taking up every room you had. This was refusing, loudly and completely, to fit inside a box.

"Okay," you said.

He smiled — the full one, the private one, the one that had always felt like it was only for you. Maybe it had been. Maybe you'd just been too busy cataloguing reasons not to believe it.

"Okay," he echoed.

He let go of your jaw slowly, like he was in no hurry about it, then stood and started helping you gather the letters off the floor, stacking them with surprising care, not reading them, just collecting. You watched him do it and didn't say anything. There was something strange and sweet about watching his hands handle these things that had existed in secret for so long.

He asked a few questions. Simple ones. The things you could admit to. Small rants you'd written. How you didn't read back on some of them, out of fear of what you'd find. You mentioned the one where you'd hoped he tripped, and how the very next day, he actually had.

Logan laughed at that — bright, curls settling around his face. You had to stop yourself from staring too long.

"Which one's your favorite?" he asked, holding the stack against his chest the way you'd been holding it minutes ago.

"I'm not telling you that."

"Come on."

"Absolutely not."

"I'll find it eventually."

"That sounds like a threat."

"It's a promise." He looked entirely too pleased with himself. "I have forty-three letters and the rest of my life. I'll get there."

When all the letters were back in the box, he set it on your desk and looked at it for a moment.

"You're going to have to let me read them eventually," he said.

"I really am not."

"The 'I hope you trip' one. I want to find that one."

"Absolutely not."

"I'm going to find it."

"Get out of my room, Logan."

"I thought I said you could call me John?"

You rolled your eyes. "I'm adapting to Briar. You're either Logan or John. Now get out of my room."

He grinned, the lopsided, lethal one, and you felt it the same way you always had — right in the sternum, like a bell being struck — and went, unhurried, toward the door.

"Six a.m.," he said from the doorway.

"Six a.m.," you agreed.

He left.

You stood in your room surrounded by the afterimage of all of it, then sat on the edge of your bed and put your face in your hands, staying that way for a while — not crying exactly, just feeling the full, enormous weight of something shifting into a new configuration, four years of tectonic plates rearranging themselves into something that finally made sense.

After a while, you got up, took the box from the desk, and put it back under your bed.

You set your alarm for five-thirty.

Hockey rinks always smelled and looked the same, no matter where you would go. It would always smell like ice and rubber and something underneath, though it didn't have the same ratty smell from the old hockey rink at home.

You climbed to your usual spot in the bleachers. Third row, center. You'd been sitting here since the first time you ever came to watch him practice. Even when you moved closer to Briar, you always gravitated to the same spot, before you'd known it was your spot, before you'd known you'd keep coming back. You'd just sat where the sight line was clear and the draft from the ventilation didn't hit as hard. You'd sat there every time after that, out of habit, out of something you'd told yourself was just habit.

John stepped onto the ice.

He didn't look up at the bleachers right away. That wasn't unusual. He rarely did, at first. He had a routine — you knew the routine, had watched it enough times to know it by heart — where he'd take a lap or two before he settled into the actual work of it, like he was reacquainting himself with the ice, reminding himself of the particular quality of this rink on this morning. Then he'd pick up speed. Then he'd look like himself.

You watched him. You were done pretending you weren't.

He skated the way he always skated — like it required nothing, like it was breathing, like the rink was just another place he lived and the ice was simply the ground beneath him. He did a lap, and then another, and then he started working through something, crossovers into a long sweep across the length of the rink, and you watched the way he held his weight, the clean economy of every movement, and felt the thing you always felt watching him, which you'd spent four years filing under aesthetic appreciation, nothing more, and which you were now allowed to call by its actual name.

After a while he came to the boards and looked up at you.

"You're in your spot," he said.

"I'm always in my spot." 

"I know." He leaned on the boards, the same way he had the first time, junior year, helmet under his arm, and he looked up at you with that look you were done misreading. "I skate better when you're here. I don't know if you knew that."

"I didn't."

"I didn't either, for a while. I thought it was just that the bleachers were less empty, which helps. But then I figured out it was specifically you." He said it matter-of-factly, like it was just a thing that was true. Like it was weather. Like it was temperature. "Third row, center. Every time."

"You knew the seat."

"I always knew the seat."

You looked at him, and the rink was cold, and the light was just beginning to come in through the high windows, pale and early and new, and forty-three unsent letters sat in a box under your bed, and standing at the boards in front of you — in his skates, in his gear, on his ice — was the person they were all addressed to. 

With a smile, you got up and headed down from your seat. The second you stopped in front of Logan, the only thing separating you being the rink’s wall, you smiled wider. "Hi," you said.

"Hi," he said back.

He reached for you, and you reached back, and when his hand found yours over the boards it was easy, the easiest thing, like something that had been waiting a long time to finally happen and was not going to make a fuss about it now that it had. His hand was cold from the ice, and you held it anyway, and neither of you said anything for a moment, because there wasn't anything that needed saying.

You got the hot chocolate from the machine in the convenience store. Different store, same franchise. It was, as promised, terrible. Watery and too sweet, dispensed in a thin paper cup that was already going soggy at the base.

He handed it to you and watched you take a sip and pull a face.

"Still bad," you reported. “It’s surprising how consistent the store is.”

"Still bad," he agreed, leaning against the wall, holding his own cup, looking entirely unbothered. He'd never minded the terrible hot chocolate. You'd written about that once. Letter seven. The way you seem genuinely content with things that aren't good. Like the contentment is the point, not the quality of the thing.

"You said you were going to say what you hadn't said."

"I was getting to it."

"It's been twenty minutes."

"I was working up to it," he said, and there was something almost shy in the way he said it, which was not a quality you'd had many opportunities to observe in him, and which was doing things to you that you weren't prepared for. "I've been working up to it for four years, give me another thirty seconds."

You giggled, but you still waited.

He looked at his terrible hot chocolate. Then he looked at you.

"I love you," he said. "I've loved you since I saw you performing on stage and I thought — I thought, that's her. That's the person. And I didn't say anything because you didn't, and I figured I was misreading it, and I kept not saying anything for four years and I had a phone full of deleted texts and a very long mental list of things I was not going to tell you, and then yesterday I walked into your room and saw my name on forty-three envelopes on your floor and I thought—" He stopped. Something moved across his face, somewhere between wrecked and grateful. "I thought: we are both absolute idiots."

"We really are," you said.

"We really are." He pushed off the wall and set his cup down on the machine and took yours out of your hands and set it next to his, and then he looked at you the way he had yesterday, with that decided, arrived quality, and said, "I'm done not saying it. I love you. Okay? I just — I love you."

You looked at him. This person you'd known since before you knew what it meant to know someone. This person who remembered your coffee order and picked raisins out of muffins and drove forty minutes in the rain and kept nine of your hoodies and showed up to every meet in every kind of weather and had, apparently, been composing and deleting texts to you since junior year of high school.

"I love you," you said. "I have loved you for a very long time."

He exhaled, slow, like something he'd been holding finally let go, and then he smiled — the private one, the full one, the one that had always felt like it was only for you because, you understood now, it had always only been for you — and said, "Yeah. We're definitely idiots."

"Monumental idiots."

"Historically unprecedented idiots."

"There should be a word for it."

"There probably is, in some language we don't speak." He reached out, and you let him pull you in, and he held you the way he'd held you before, the same arms, the same warmth, but with something different in it now, something that had been allowed to be what it was instead of being carefully kept at a certain size. You pressed your face against his shoulder. His chin dropped to the top of your head.

"We wasted four years," you said into his shoulder.

"Nah." His voice rumbled against your ear. "We just took the long way."

You thought about that. About the letters, and the bleachers, and the hot chocolate, and the forty-minute drives in rain,  the deleted texts, and the space between what you feel and what you're brave enough to say. About all the things that had happened in the gap.

"The long way," you agreed.

Outside the rink, the morning was getting started. Inside, it smelled like ice and rubber and cedar and something new.

—

The forty-fourth letter was the last one. Written that night, because some habits deserve a proper ending.

John. Logan. Or whatever name you want to be called–  The hot chocolate was terrible. The one near our old school was better (I’m lying, but you know that), but it’s not like you would drive an hour just to get there. Still, you know hot chocolate is always terrible from that machine. You bought it anyway because I said I wanted it and you cannot help yourself. I've been writing these since high school. I don't think I'm going to write another one. Not because I have nothing left to say — I think I'm going to have a lot to say, for a very long time — but because I'm going to say it to you from now on. Out loud. In real time. Without a box to put it in afterward. You told me today that you skate better when I'm in the stands. I wanted you to know that I run better when you're at the end of the finish line. I have never told you that. I'm telling you now. I love you. I have loved you since a Tuesday in junior year in High school when you offered me bad hot chocolate on an empty rink and smiled at me like I was someone worth skating across the ice for.I loved you through every year after that, through every letter I wrote and sealed and tucked away, through every moment I talked myself out of saying something because I was afraid of what it would cost. It turns out it didn't cost anything. It turns out you were over there deleting texts. We were both such idiots. Though I guess it does make sense with our track record. I'm done keeping it in a box, and I'll say it to your face from now on, and I'm sorry it took me four years and a broken latch and forty-three embarrassing letters, some of which you are never going to read, to get here. But I'm here. And so are you. That's enough. That's more than enough. — With love.