wildflowerxwords

Emily looked over at you.

“How’d it go?”

You stared at her.

“Oh no,” she said.

“It was a disaster.”

“Tell me everything.”

You spent the next ten minutes recounting the entire encounter in increasingly dramatic detail. Emily laughed so hard she nearly fell out of her seat.

“He said my questions were boring. I only got to the first three.”

“That’s kind of funny.”

You pointed at her, “It is not funny.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like reporters.”

“Then why agree to the interview?”

Emily shrugged.

“Maybe he didn’t have a choice.”

You paused. This could be possible. Athletes were constantly being pulled into media appearances and promotional events. Maybe he’d only agreed because his coach told him to.

Somehow, this just made you more frustrated. You still didn’t have a story, and your deadline wasn’t going anywhere.

--

That night, you opened a blank document and stared at the blinking cursor. Normally, the hardest part of writing was deciding where to begin. This time, the problem was that you had nothing to begin with.

You typed, “John Logan is one of Briar University’s most recognizable athletes.” Then, you deleted it. You tried again.

“John Logan began playing hockey at four years old.” Nope. Delete.

After fifteen minutes, your document remained blank. You groaned and pushed your laptop away. You leaned back and thought for a moment.

Every article you’d read about him focused on hockey. They focused on his statistics and his draft projections. None of them talked about who he was as a person or his life outside of the rink.

Maybe that was because nobody had asked, or maybe it was because he’d never let them. Either way, it was worth investigating. You reached for your laptop again. This time, instead of searching for recent hockey coverage, you started digging through older interviews in local newspapers.

Most of it was exactly what you’d expect: hockey, more hockey, and then even more hockey. You clicked on another article, and it was a profile from his first season at Briar.

Halfway through it, one paragraph stood out. Not because it was particularly detailed, but because it wasn’t. The writer briefly mentioned family challenges during Logan’s teenage years, but there was no explanation or details. There was just a vague reference before the article immediately pivoted back to hockey.

You opened a few more articles and saw a pattern emerging. Every time family came up, the subject changed almost immediately. Maybe Professor Madison was right, maybe there was a story here. Not a hockey story, but a human one. The kind you liked writing best.

You glanced at the clock, noticing it was past nine, but your fingers were already moving across the keyboard with a new list of questions. Questions that might matter. When you finally shut your laptop, you felt something that you hadn’t felt since leaving the arena: hope. Maybe the article wasn’t dead at all.

Your phone buzzed, and you glanced down to see it was from an unknown number.

Unknown Number: You really looked like you wanted to throw your notebook at me today.

Unknown Number: This is Logan.

You sat upright. How had he gotten your number? Ah, that’s right. The contact information was included when requesting the interview.

You looked at the message for a few seconds before responding.

You: You would have deserved it.

Three dots appeared immediately.

Logan: fair

You hated how quickly that response made you smile. Another message followed it.

Logan: You coming to practice tomorrow?

It sounded like he expected you to, like he’d already assumed you would come back.

You: Do I need to?

This time, his response took longer, but it came in.

Logan: Depends if you want the good answers.

You looked at the message for a while, and you found yourself genuinely looking forward to seeing John Logan again.

--

The next afternoon, you arrived at the arena fifteen minutes early, meeting him before practice was to start.

The arena was quieter than it had been previously. Practice wasn’t supposed to start for another forty-five minutes, but a few players drifted across the ice. The stands were mostly empty, and the arena felt less like a sports venue and more like a workplace.

You settled into the front row, with your notebook balanced on your knee. Today, your pages weren’t filled with standard interview questions about championships or the draft. This time, they were filled with questions about him, the person. At least, that was the plan. Whether Logan would actually answer them remained to be seen.

“Wow.”

You looked up. Dean Di Laurentis stood in front of you, dressed in his blue practice gear and grinning. You sighed.

“Hi, Dean.”

“You’re back.”

“Unfortunately.”

He placed a hand over his heart, “That hurts.”

“I think you’ll survive.”

Dean dropped into the seat beside you without invitation. You immediately regretted arriving early.

“Are you stalking Logan?” he asked, turning toward you.

“No.”

“Interesting.”

“What?”

“That’s exactly what a stalker would say.”

Before you could respond, another voice cut in.

“Leave her alone.”

You turned. Logan stood a few feet away, also dressed in his hockey gear, with his gloves tucked beneath one arm. Dean looked delighted.

“Ooh.”

“Dean.”

Dean stood.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” he said, his eyebrows wiggling.

Logan threw a glove at him, and Dean caught it, still grinning, before heading toward the locker room.

“He’s exhausting,” you said.

Logan sat down two seats away.

“That’s actually him on a good day.”

You believed that.

“I’m surprised you reached out to me,” you said to him.

He ran his fingers through his hair.

“Garrett said I should give this a chance.”

You nodded. Logan nodded toward your notebook.

“Did you bring better questions?”

You narrowed your eyes.

“Did you bring better answers?”

His grin appeared instantly.

“Maybe. Let’s hear them.”

You glanced down at your notes and then back at him.

“What do people get wrong about you?” you asked.

Logan didn’t answer immediately, but the pause only lasted for a second. A slow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“That’s definitely a better question.”

You tried not to look too pleased with yourself.

Logan shrugged, “Most people think hockey is my entire personality.”

That wasn’t the answer you expected.

“You disagree?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

That was fair.

“What is your personality, then?” you asked.

Logan laughed, “I think that’s supposed to be your job to figure out.”

You rolled your eyes.

“See? That’s the annoying stuff.”

“Annoying stuff is part of my personality.”

“Unfortunately.”

“See?” he said, “Now we’re making progress.”

You hated how much you enjoyed talking to him. It wasn’t an attraction; at least you didn’t think so. It was something much simpler: conversation. It almost made you forget that you were supposed to be working.

You asked another question, and then another. The interview began to move. For the first time, John Logan stopped sounding like a hockey player giving media answers and much more like an actual person.

A funny one, unfortunately. One that made you laugh far more than you intended, and one who looked far too pleased every time he managed to make you smile.

By the time practice was about to start, you had five pages of notes. It was more than you’d gotten from every previous interaction.

Surprisingly, the thing that stuck with you the most wasn’t a quote from him. It was the moment that Logan nodded toward your notebook and asked, “So, what’s your story?”

“My story?” you said.

“Yeah.”

The question caught you off guard; athletes usually didn’t ask journalists questions, especially about themselves. Logan seemed to notice your surprise. He shrugged.

“Seems fair.”

For a reason you couldn’t quite explain, your pulse skipped slightly. You stared at him for a second. It should have been easy to answer; you’d spent years interviewing people, and asking questions came naturally to you. Being the one answering felt strangely unfamiliar.

“What do you want to know?” you asked him.

He thought for a second. “Why journalism?”

“I like stories.”

He waited, and you laughed.

“That’s not enough, is it?”

“Nope.”

A few players started skating on the ice, and the sounds of practice starting building around you. Still, Logan’s attention remained entirely on you.

“I grew up reading newspapers with my dad,” you admitted.

His expression softened slightly, “Really?”

You nodded, “Every morning.”

The memory made you smile.

“My dad would spread the paper across the kitchen table and act like every headline was the most important thing in the world. We’d read stories together, and he’d explain the stories to me.”

Logan grinned, “That’s adorable.”

You laughed.

“So now what?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“After graduation.”

You hesitated. The future felt less exciting lately. There were applications, internships, and rejection emails. The reality that college was ending.

“I don’t know,” you answered honestly.

Logan looked surprised.

“What?” you asked.

“I thought journalists always had a five-year plan.”

You barked out a laugh, “Where did you get that idea?”

“Movies?”

You laughed, “Most of us are just making it up as we go.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Because I am too,” he said. That surprised you.

“You are?”

“Absolutely.”

“But hockey—”

“What about hockey?”

“You know..”

“No.”

You gestured vaguely, “The NHL.”

Understanding dawned on him, and he looked away toward the ice.

“You make it sound guaranteed.”

“Isn’t it?” you asked. Logan was one of Briar’s best athletes; there were always talks of teams scouting him and the draft.

“No,” he answered. He wasn’t joking, he was being honest. The word hung between both of you, and you studied him carefully. This version of Logan felt different; he was less performative.

“I thought scouts were looking at you.”

“They are.”

“You’ll get drafted,” you said.

He shrugged, “Probably.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’ve seen guys who were supposed to make it.”

The way he said it told you there was more behind those words.

“The odds aren’t exactly great,” he added.

You found yourself watching him instead of writing. His eyes remained fixed on the ice.

“You worried about it?” you asked, the question slipping out before you could stop it.

He was quiet for a second and then laughed softly to himself.

“Every day.”

His honesty hit you harder than you expected; maybe because it was the first completely unguarded answer he’d given you. There was no joke or deflection; just the truth.

You looked down and wrote it in your notebook. Not because it would make the article, but because you didn’t want to forget it.

When you glanced back up, Logan was watching you. His gaze dropped to the notebook.

“What did you write?”

You immediately closed the notebook.

“Nope.”

His grin returned, “Why not?”

“Trade secret.”

“You’ve spent the last half hour asking me personal questions.”

“And?”

“And I think that’s unfair.”

You stood, gathering your things. Practice was officially beginning now, and players were being called onto the ice. The interview was over, whether either of you wanted it to be or not.

“You’ll survive.”

Logan groaned, “That’s my line.”

“Not anymore.”

You slung your bag over your shoulder. Logan was still sitting, looking up at you. The strange flutter that had started appearing in your chest whenever he focused all of his attention on you. You decided not to examine that too closely.

Finally, Logan stood.

“Same time next week?”

“Maybe.”

He laughed.

“Text me,” you added, the words slipping out. You immediately wished you could grab them out of the air and stuff them back in your mouth.

Logan’s eyebrows lifted, as if he was surprised. Then, his expression softened slightly.

“Okay.”

That word followed you all the way back to campus, and later that night, when your phone lit up with a new message from John Logan, you found yourself smiling before you’d even read it.

Logan: Have you decided what my personality is?

You read the message again. There was something seemingly sincere hiding beneath the teasing.

You: still investigating.

The response came quickly.

Logan: Convenient answer.

You: Professional answer.

Logan: I think you’re just making this up as you go.

You laughed.

You: You have approximately two personality traits.

Logan: Name them.

You: Annoying.

Logan: That’s not a personality trait.

You: I disagree.

You could practically see the eye roll.

Logan: What’s the second one?

You stared at the screen, and then typed (and subsequently deleted) three different answers. Confident. Competitive. Funny. All true, and all too easy.

You: You ask better questions than you answer.

The conversation continued from there, and he didn’t ask for the second answer again. One topic led to another, questions became stories, and stories working its way into completely different conversations.

You learned that Logan hated group projects. He learned that you once accidentally submitted the wrong article draft (you didn’t tell him it was fanfiction) and spent three hours trying not to throw up from embarrassment. You learned of his friends’ many party stories, like Tucker’s turkey on Thanksgiving catching fire. He learned that you had changed majors three times before going for your dream and choosing journalism. At some point, you stopped noticing who had sent the last text. You stopped looking for opportunities to end the conversation.

That realization was unsettling enough that you finally glanced at the clock. 12:44 a.m. Your eyes widened.

You: Why are you still awake?

Several seconds passed.

Logan: Why are YOU still awake?

You: I’m working.

Logan: At one in the morning?

You: It’s not one yet.

Logan: That’s your defense?

Logan: How much work are journalism students actually doing if you’re texting hockey players this much?

Your stomach did something strange. There was a strange feeling there. You blamed exhaustion; it was easier.

You: Goodnight, Logan.

His response appeared almost instantly.

Logan: Avoiding the question.

You: Goodnight.

A pause, and then another text appeared.

Logan: Goodnight, Reporter.

You stared at the message, and then set your phone face down. A smile remained on your face.

--

A few days later, you found yourself sitting in the stands at the Briar University hockey game. The excuse was simple: research and observation. It was additional material for the article. It was a completely professional use of your Friday evening. At least, that’s what you told yourself when you bought the ticket, and again while walking into the arena.

The arena was packed. Students filled the seats, covered in red, blue, and yellow clothing to match the school’s colors. Music thundered through the speakers. The energy felt much different from what you had seen at practice. It was louder, faster, and more alive.

You took your seat, which was in the lower bowl near the glass. You opened your notebook and forced yourself to write observations about the crowd and the atmosphere. You forced yourself to write down anything to distract yourself from how quickly you found number 22 the moment he stepped onto the ice.

The game started soon after the national anthem, and despite not knowing much about hockey, it didn’t take long for you to understand why everyone talked about Logan the way they did.

Every time he touched the puck, something changed. He and Garrett were seamless, passing the puck easily back and forth, setting each other up perfectly to shoot at the net. The crowd paid attention, and their teammates seemed to gravitate towards both of them. Even opposing players seemed to react differently when they were on the ice.

Logan wasn’t just talented; he was important. The game remained tied through most of the second period, and by the middle of the third, the arena was practically vibrating with tension. Dean stole the puck, passing it up to Garrett. Logan was skating fast on his right side, and Garrett passed to Logan, who took a quick shot, landing the puck in the upper right corner. The arena exploded as the puck hit the back of the net. Students jumped to their feet, and you did too, without thinking.

The sound swallowed everything; there was the horn from the goal, cheering, and the celebration. Teammates swarmed Logan against the boards. Your heart was still racing when you finally sat back down, a little embarrassed (and confused) by your own reaction.

Somewhere along the way, you stopped watching the game for the article and started watching because you cared about what happened. The realization followed you all the way home, and it got significantly worse when your phone buzzed an hour later.

Logan: I thought reporters were supposed to remain unbiased.

At the front of the room, Professor Madison shuffled through a stack of papers and waited for the chatter to die down.

“All right,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose, “Let’s talk about your final project.”

A collective groan rolled through the room.

“The best feature writing isn’t about events, it’s about people. For your final project, each of you will profile someone connected to Briar University.”

Several students immediately perked up. Now, that was interesting.

“You’ll spend weeks with your subject,” Madison continued, “Interview them. Observe them. Learn who they are.”

Your fingers moved across the keyboard automatically as you took notes. The project sounded exactly like the kind of thing that could help when you started applying for jobs after graduation.

“Pick someone interesting,” Madison said, “Not just someone accessible.”

A hand shot up near the front.

“What about an athlete? Football team?” Sarah asked.

Madison nodded, “Not a bad idea.”

Another student called out, “I call Beau!”

A few people laughed. You shook your head and typed another note. Then, Professor Madison looked directly at you.

“Y/N.”

You froze.

“Yes?”

“Since you’re the editor of the paper, perhaps you should challenge yourself.”

You already hated where this was going.

“Maybe profile someone who receives attention from everyone.”

Several students exchanged knowing looks.

“Oh,” you muttered.

Madison pointed toward the window overlooking Briar’s athletic complex.

“Maybe someone from the hockey team. John Logan, perhaps?”

The room immediately erupted. You closed your eyes. John Logan was one of the most recognizable athletes on campus, and he had quite the reputation on and off the ice. His face, alongside some of his teammates, appeared all over campus on promotional posters, social media graphics, and all over the gossip account, Fifth Line.

“No.”

Madison blinked.

“No?”

“No.”

The class laughed.

You sat back in your chair, “I’d rather interview literally anyone else.”

The laughter grew louder. Madison looked delighted, which was unfortunate. Delighted professors were dangerous.

“And why is that?” he asked.

You hesitated. The truthful answer would sound ridiculous. Every time you saw John Logan on campus, he was surrounded by people. Girls practically threw themselves at him at every chance. Every interview he’d ever given sounded exactly the same. You were convinced there couldn’t possibly be anything interesting left to uncover.

Instead, you settled on something different.

“He’s overexposed.”

The room immediately began laughing again.

Madison folded his arms, “Overexposed?”

“Every article says the same thing,” you said.

“And you know this because?”

“I’ve read them.”

“Excellent. Perhaps you’ll write a better one.”

You groaned. Madison pointed at you.

“Logan it is.”

The class applauded, those traitors. Just like that, John Logan became your assignment, and unfortunately, your entire semester.

By the time class ended, you had convinced yourself there was still a chance to get out of it. Not a good chance, but a chance nonetheless.

You packed your laptop into your bag and headed straight for the front of the room while everyone else filtered toward the exits. Professor Madison was gathering his notes when you stopped beside his desk.

“No.”

He didn’t even look up. You stared.

“You didn’t even let me make my argument,” you said.

“I know your argument.”

“You don’t.”

“Let me guess, you’re going to tell me that Logan is an easy story?”

You opened your mouth and then closed it. Madison finally glanced up.

“See?” he said.

You hated it when professors did that.

You sighed.

“You’ve already decided who Logan is.”

“I’ve seen him,” you said.

“You’ve seen the public version,” Madison argued.

“And you think there’s some hidden depth that nobody’s discovered?” you asked.

“I think you’re a good enough journalist to find out.”

You hated that answer. Madison stopped for a second.

“Go spend time with him,” he said.

You made a face. He ignored it.

“Maybe you’ll prove yourself right,” he shrugged.

“And if I do?”

“Then write that story.”

You stared at him for a long moment.

“Fine.”

“Wonderful,” he said, smirking.

“If this turns into a disaster, I’m blaming you,” you told him.

“I look forward to reading it.”

--

An hour later, you were sitting in the newsroom of the Briar Herald, staring at your laptop with absolutely no intention of working.

The newsroom occupied a corner of the communications building, its walls plastered with old front pages and framed photographs from decades of student journalism.

Normally, you loved being there. Today, though, you were considering throwing yourself out of a window.

Across from you, your friend Emily glanced up from editing a story.

“You look miserable.”

You dropped your forehead onto your desk as a muffled groan escaped you.

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“What happened?” Emily asked, her attention focused on me.

Without lifting your head, you said, “Professor Madison assigned me John Logan for my final profile project.”

“Oh my God.”

You lifted your head. Emily was grinning.

“You don’t understand.”

“You got assigned one of the hottest hockey players at Briar.”

You pointed at her, “That’s exactly the problem.”

Emily laughed, “You poor thing.”

“I am suffering.”

“You’ll survive.”

You narrowed your eyes.

“I have to spend weeks following him around,” you said.

“Again,” she said, “I fail to see the problem.”

“You’re useless.”

She laughed.

“You know what I think,” she said.

“No.”

“I think you’re annoyed because you know he’s attractive.”

You threw a pen at her. Unfortunately, she caught it.

--

Two days later, you found yourself standing inside Briar’s ice arena with a notebook in one hand and growing regret in the other. The air was cold enough to sting your cheeks. Players flew across the ice in blue while a coach barked instructions from the boards.

The sound was overwhelming. Skates were cutting into ice, pucks slamming into glass, and a whistle echoing through the arena.

You hadn’t attended a hockey practice or game since freshman year. Nothing about the experience made you eager to change that.

You checked your phone, and it was 3:37. Logan had agreed to meet you at 3:30.

A few players skated toward the bench, and you recognized Garrett Graham immediately. Everyone could recognize Garrett Graham. The captain pulled off his helmet and glanced in your direction.

He nudged the player beside him, and he looked over. As he took his helmet off, he was unmistakable. Dark hair, that was damp and curling at the ends, broad shoulders.

He said something to Garrett, who laughed. Logan rolled his eyes and then pushed away from the bench and toward the locker room. A few minutes later, you heard footsteps behind you.

You turned, and there he was. You hated how annoyingly good-looking he was; it felt deeply unfair.

A gray Briar Hockey hoodie stretched across his shoulders now, and despite the cold arena, he looked completely comfortable.

His gaze landed on you, and then his eyes flicked to the notebook in your hand.

“Reporter?”

His voice carried the faintest trace of amusement. You already disliked that.

“Journalist.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Right.”

There was a pause.

“I’m John Logan,” he said, sticking his hand out.

“I’m aware.”

His eyebrows lifted. Maybe no one has ever answered him like that. You shook is hand anyway, his grip warm and firm. You pulled your hand back first.

“I'm Y/N. Thank you for meeting me,” you said.

“No problem.”

“Let’s get started.”

“Sure.”

The two of you sat in the empty seats in the arena. You clicked your pen as you opened your notebook.

“When did you first start playing hockey?”

John Logan looked completely unimpressed, and somehow, you found that funny. He looked exactly like someone who’d been asked that question a thousand times before. Unfortunately, you still needed the answer. Judging by the look he was giving you, this interview was about to become very, very difficult.

Logan leaned back in his seat, folding his arms over his chest as if preparing himself for a particularly boring punishment.

“When I was four,” he said.

You waited for him to elaborate. He looked at you.

“That’s it?”

“You asked when.”

“I assumed you’d elaborate.”

“You assumed wrong.”

You pressed the tip of your pen harder against the paper than necessary. Across the ice, a puck hit the boards with a sharp crack. You resisted the urge to look toward it, but he did not. His eyes flicked away for half a second, tracking the movement with the kind of instinct that looked less like attention and more like breathing.

Fine. If he wanted difficult, you could do difficult.

“Why hockey?” you asked.

He looked back at you.

“Because I liked it.”

You stared at him, and he stared back.

“That’s still not elaborating.”

Logan’s mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile but close enough to be irritating.

“You didn’t ask me to elaborate.”

You lowered your notebook, “Do you want to do this interview?”

“Not especially.”

At least he was honest. You almost respected that.

“Great,” you said, “That makes two of us.”

His eyebrows lifted again, and this time the almost-smile became real. It changed his whole face, which was unfortunate information for you to now possess. He went from handsome in the predictable, campus-athlete way, to something warmer and harder to look away from. You hated that too.

“Then why are you here?” he asked.

“Because I was assigned to you.”

“Ouch.”

“You’ll recover.”

You flipped to a clean page, mostly because the first page already looked aggressive with your half-written notes and the dark indentation of your pen.

“Look,” you said, forcing your voice into a professional tone, “I’m not trying to waste your time.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

You inhaled through your nose, taking a deep breath, before you hit one of Briar’s beloved hockey stars with a spiral notebook.

“I’m trying to write a good profile,” you said, “Not a puff piece, or a stats recap, or another article about how many goals you’ve scored and which NHL teams are scouting you.”

That caught his attention. His gaze sharpened, amusement thinning into something more guarded.

“And what exactly are you trying to write?”

“The truth.”

He laughed once, but there wasn’t much humor in it.

“About me?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know me.”

“That is traditionally why interviews happen.”

This time, you could hear laughter nearby. Logan turned his head and saw Garrett standing within earshot.

“Don’t you have something to do?” Logan asked him.

Garrett lifted both hands innocently.

“Just hydrating.”

“You’re eavesdropping.”

“Also that.”

Logan muttered something under his breath before turning back to you.

“So,” you said, “Do you want to keep giving me one-word answers, or do you want to help me make this not terrible?”

He studied you for a second too long. Then, he stood up.

“I have class in twenty,” he said.

Of course he did. You checked the time on your phone.

“You agreed to thirty minutes,” you said.

“I agreed to meet you.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“I’ve heard.”

You snapped your notebook shut and stood. “Fine.”

Something flickered across his face.

“You’re leaving?” he asked.

“You have class.”

“I said in twenty.”

“And in the seven minutes you’ve given me, you’ve answered only a couple of questions with a combined total of maybe twelve words. I’m not sure twenty more minutes will change anything.”

His grin returned, sharper now.

“You always this dramatic?”

“Only when provoked.”

“Good to know.”

You shoved your notebook into your bag and slung it over your shoulder. The interview was a failure. A complete, humiliating, unusable failure. You had maybe two sentences of material, and one of them was that he’d started playing hockey at four, which was about as interesting as writing that water was wet.

You brushed past him and toward the exit.

“Hey, Reporter.”

You stopped, and slowly turned back around. “Journalist.”

Logan’s smile widened like he’d been waiting for that. “Right,” he said, “Journalist.”

You should have kept walking.

“What?” you asked.

He nodded toward your notebook, “You didn’t ask your best questions.”

You narrowed your eyes, “What’s the point when you barely answered my first ones.”

“Those were terrible.”

Your mouth fell open a little. His grin turned smug. You took one step back toward him.

“My questions were fine.”

“Your questions were boring.”

“You hardly answered them. Your answers were boring.”

He smirked at you.

“Okay,” you said slowly, “What should I have asked?”

Logan didn’t answer immediately, and you noticed a small tightening around his eyes. Then, he shrugged.

“Guess that’s your job to figure out.”

Then, he walked away. Just like that.

You stood there in the arena, cold and irritated and aware that he had somehow managed to make the failed interview feel like a challenge. This was probably exactly what he wanted.

Garrett Graham had come off the ice now, walking past you.

“For what it’s worth, I think he likes you.”

You turned your glare on him.

Garrett only smiled.

“Professionally,” he added, as he went toward the locker room.

You stared at the message for so long that the screen dimmed. The words remained there when you tapped it again.

It was simple and uncomplicated. A request for coffee. It made you nervous. If Logan had sent a paragraph, you would’ve known what to do. If he’d apologized again, you would have known what to do.

Those things were familiar.

You set your phone down on your bed and stood, and then immediately sat back down. Your thoughts felt chaotic. The truth was, part of you wanted to say yes immediately, like the answer had appeared in your mind almost the second you’d read the message.

Of course, you wanted to see him; you missed him. The idea of sitting across from him at a coffee shop sounded infinitely better than another week of pretending you didn’t look for him everywhere.

The problem was wanting something and being ready for it weren’t necessarily the same thing. You walked over to your window, deep in thought, and looked out across campus. You saw a few groups of students wandering between buildings.

Somewhere across campus, Logan was probably staring at his own phone. Waiting. The realization made your stomach twist. For weeks, you’d been the one always waiting. Now, he was waiting for you. You weren’t petty enough to enjoy that. If anything, it made you feel worse. Eventually, you picked up your phone again, thumbs hovering over the keyboard, and typed.

You: Coffee sounds okay.

A few minutes later, your phone buzzed.

Logan: Okay. Just coffee.

The corner of your mouth lifted. You could practically hear him say it. A moment later, another text appeared.

Logan: Whenever you’re comfortable

That one hit harder. He wasn’t pushing, or rushing, or trying to convince you. He was leaving the decision in your hands.

--

Coffee was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, five days away. You immediately regretted agreeing to it, but then spent the next five days looking forward to it. The contradiction drove you insane. You were just nervous about it.

On Wednesday, the bell above the door chimed softly as you entered the small café just off campus. Warm air wrapped around you immediately, carrying the scent of coffee beans and pastries.

The café was busy enough to feel comfortable, but not crowded enough to feel overwhelming. Students occupied most of the tables, and a professor you vaguely recognized sat in the corner reading a newspaper.

For a brief moment, you thought you might have been early, but then you spotted him. Logan was already there waiting. He was sitting near the window, two cups already waiting on the table in front of him.

The sight threw you off guard a bit. It was the fact that he’d beaten you there by at least ten minutes, and the effort and intention that it took. He’d made sure to show up early.

Logan looked up before you could compose herself, and the second he saw you, he stood. For a moment, neither of you moved. Then, a smile appeared. It was small, tentative, and a little nervous; it was a smile you’d never seen on him before. You realized he looked terrified. The realization was so unexpected that it completely disarmed you.

This wasn’t the confident hockey player who could charm an entire room without trying. This wasn’t the guy who knew exactly what to say. This was a boy standing beside a coffee shop table, hoping you hadn’t changed your mind.

You felt something other than hurt for the first time in a while. You felt hope. It was small and fragile, but it was undeniably there. As you walked toward the table, you realized your heart was beating much faster than it should have been.

“Hi.”

The word felt strangely inadequate after everything that had happened between them. Logan seemed to think so, too. For a second, he looked as though he had prepared an entire speech and then forgotten every single line the moment you walked through the door.

“Hey.”

You set your bag down across the back of your chair before you sat. The table suddenly felt small. There was no crowd of teammates around you, no game happening in the background. No phones buzzing every thirty seconds. It was just the two of you.

Logan sat across from you, and his coffee remained untouched.

“You remembered,” you said, nodding to the coffee.

“Vanilla latte,” he said.

You smiled slightly. For a brief moment, neither of you spoke. It was like you were both trying to figure out how to occupy the same space again.

Eventually, Logan leaned back slightly in his chair. His hands wrapped around his coffee cup.

“How’s your week been?”

You laughed softly. The question felt absurdly normal.

“Kind of terrible,” you said.

To your surprise, Logan laughed too.

“Yeah.”

The sound of his laughter settled some of the tension between you. For the first time since you’d arrived, you felt yourself relax slightly.

The conversation moved slowly after that. Neither of you seemed eager to rush toward the difficult parts, so instead, they talked about classes, about the boys, and about one of your professors assigning a ridiculous amount of reading. It was little things; safe things.

Halfway through a story about Mel accidentally locking you out of your dorm, you realized something. Logan hadn’t looked at his phone once. The phone sat face down on the table beside him, silent and ignored.

You found yourself staring at it, and Logan followed your gaze. A flicker of understanding crossed his face, and without a word, he picked it up and slipped it into his jacket pocket. It didn’t go unnoticed by you, and something warm and painful settled into your chest because he knew exactly why you’d been looking at it. Instead of making a joke or pretending not to notice, he’d simply removed it from the table.

The conversation continued, and you told another story. Then another. And somewhere in the middle of explaining a disaster involving an exam, you stopped. The realization hit you so suddenly that it stole the rest of the sentence right out of your mouth.

Logan frowned, “What?”

“You stopped talking.”

The words landed gently, just an observation. You remembered the fight at the garage. How you told him that you stopped finishing stories because you didn’t think he was listening.

The memory flashed through your mind, and apparently through Logan’s as well. His expression shifted almost immediately. For a moment, neither of you spoke. The noise of the café filled the space between you.

When Logan finally spoke, his voice was lower.

“I keep thinking about that.”

You knew immediately what he meant. The stories, the listening, the garage. All of it. Logan rubbed his thumb along the side of his coffee cup.

“I didn’t realize you were doing it,” he said. His eyes lifted to yours.

“I know.”

Logan nodded slowly. The answer didn’t seem to surprise him. You wondered how many times he replayed that night in his head. A hundred? A thousand? You’d done the exact same thing. Every single sentence, every confession, every painful truth, you replayed over and over.

Logan let out a quiet breath, then leaned forward slightly. It was enough for you to know that the conversation was shifting away from the safe subjects and toward the real reason why they were here.

“I talked to Garrett.”

You smiled faintly.

“He told me something I didn’t want to hear,” Logan continued.

You waited, and Logan looked down at his coffee before looking back at you.

“He said I kept acting as if this happened overnight.”

The words settled between them, replaying the fight in your head.

Logan shook his head slightly, “I think I wanted it to be one mistake.”

His voice was quiet, thoughtful.

“I wanted it to be Malone’s, or movie night. But it wasn’t. It was all of it.”

You found yourself unable to look away from him. This was different. It wasn’t an apology or an excuse. It was understanding. Real understanding.

It took a moment before either spoke. You looked down at the table, realizing that you weren’t really talking about the fight anymore. You were talking about all of the things underneath it that had led you there.

Across the table, Logan seemed content to let the silence sit. That alone felt different. A month ago, he would’ve rushed to fill it or make a joke. Now, he simply waited.

Eventually, you looked back up, “What did Garrett say?”

A faint smile touched Logan’s mouth, “He said a lot of things.”

“I believe it.”

The smile grew slightly, and for the first time since you’d arrived, it reached his eyes. Logan leaned back in his chair.

“Most of it was profanity.”

You laughed because that part, you could easily imagine. Garrett wasn’t exactly known for his gentle delivery sometimes.

“Then he told me I was looking for an overnight solution.”

You frowned slightly.

“I think I wanted to show up to the garage, say the right thing, and somehow make everything better.”

The honesty of it caught you off guard, because it was exactly what you would’ve expected from him. Logan was a fixer; when something went wrong, he worked harder. He practiced more or pushed more. It was how he’d approached every challenge in his life. The problem was that relationships weren’t hockey. There wasn’t a drill for this. There were no extra hours of practice that could undo weeks of hurt.

Logan let out a quiet breath, “Garrett told me I wasn’t listening.”

You raised an eyebrow, “That couldn’t have been fun for you.”

A reluctant smile appeared, “No.”

The smile disappeared.

“He said every time someone tried to tell me something was wrong, I immediately started looking for a solution instead of actually hearing what they were saying.”

You, at the time, always thought that it was sweet he wanted to fix things; maybe it still was. But you understood what Garrett meant. Sometimes fixing wasn’t the same thing as listening.

Logan looked out of the window briefly. The afternoon sunlight spilled across the sidewalk outside.

When he spoke again, his voice sounded thoughtful.

“I think that’s why I kept apologizing.”

“What?” you asked.

Logan rubbed a hand across his jaw, as if he was still trying to untangle the thought.

“After movie night, after everything. I kept apologizing because I thought if I said sorry enough, we’d be okay.”

The sadness in his voice surprised you, because it wasn’t self-pity; it sounded more like regret. The kind that arrives after you’ve finally understood something you wish you’d realized sooner.

“I thought I was keeping everything together.”

His confession was almost a whisper, and somehow, it hit harder than anything else he’d said. You’d remembered that version of him, the one who kept saying he was fine and that everything would calm down. But then there was always the next thing.

“The stupid part is, I really believed it,” he added.

You’d believed it too. That was the tragedy of the whole situation. Nobody had lied. Nobody had stopped caring; that was never the issue. Life had simply gotten louder, and faster, and heavier, and somewhere in the middle of it all, you’d lost sight of each other.

It sat heavily between you.

“Why now?” you asked.

Logan frowned slightly, “What do you mean?”

“You could’ve told me all of this at the garage.”

Logan thought about the question, and silence stretched a bit between you. There was no defensiveness in his expression.

“Because I didn’t understand it then.”

Logan held your gaze.

“I understood that you were hurt, and that I’d messed up,” he said, “But I was still looking at everything from my side.”

Logan leaned forward slightly again.

“At the garage, I kept thinking about why I was late, and about practice. I wasn’t thinking about what it felt like to be the person sitting there waiting.”

More than anything else, this was what you had been trying to explain all along. You didn’t realize you stopped breathing until you let out a slow exhale.

You’d felt as though you were standing on opposite sides of a river for so long, but now, for the first time, it felt like he had crossed the distance to understand you.

Eventually, you leaned back in your chair.

“What happens if things get busy again?” you asked. The question came out before you could stop it.

The question wasn’t really about schedules, or hockey, or scouts. It was about trust. What happened when life got loud again? Inevitably, it would.

When Logan finally spoke, his voice was soft, “I think that’s the wrong question.”

You furrowed her eyebrows.

“Not because it’s a bad question,” he said, “Because things are going to get busy again.”

The honesty of the answer surprised you. Logan folded his hands together.

“Hockey isn’t going to get less demanding. The NHL definitely won’t be less demanding, and I’m probably going to have weeks where I’m stressed.”

You listened quietly. There was something strangely reassuring about the lack of false promises. If he’d sat there and claimed that he’d never make another mistake, you wouldn’t have believed him.

“The difference is that now I know what happens if I stop paying attention. I know what it costs,” he said.

Something tightened in your chest. You believed him. Not completely, not enough to erase every fear that you’d carried into this conversation, but enough that the walls you’d spent since the fight felt slightly less solid.

“When we were at the garage, you asked why you were always the thing that got dropped.”

The memory made your stomach twist.

“I kept thinking about that. I think about it every day, honestly,” he said.

You swallowed.

“I made a list,” he said.

“A list?”

A small, self-deprecating smile appeared.

“Dean laughed at me.”

A surprised laugh escaped you. Logan laughed too.

“I deserved it.”

“What kind of list?” you asked.

“Things I was doing that I didn’t even realize I was doing,” he said.

You found herself leaning forward slightly. Logan counted them on his fingers.

“Checking my phone every thirty seconds, saying yes to everything, assuming I’d have time later.”

The last one seemed to linger, because you both knew it wasn’t really about scheduling. It was about priorities and taking people for granted because you believed they’d still be there tomorrow.

You looked at him for a long moment. The boy sitting across from you wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t magically transformed and offering impossible promises. He was simply showing you the work. The uncomfortable, unglamorous work of looking at yourself honestly. Somehow, that affected you more than any grand speech could ever have.

For the first time since the fight, you felt the distance between them shift. It was like a bridge was slowly being rebuilt one board at a time.

For a little while, silence consumed you again. You had finally reached the part that mattered: what was underneath the arguments and misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

The part where two people sat across from each other and tried to decide whether they still trusted what they had. You weren’t sure you had an answer yet.

Logan wasn’t asking you for certainty or to forgive him. He was simply sitting there, telling you the truth and showing you the work he’s done.

A few people ducked into the café, bringing a rush of cool air with them every time the door opened. You looked back at Logan, who was already looking at you. You couldn’t remember the last time you had simply sat together without something looming or waiting.

“What?” Logan asked, his head tilted slightly.

“Nothing.”

A familiar smile appeared on Logan’s face.

“You’ve never been good at lying.”

You laughed softly, “Neither have you.”

“That’s not true.”

“It absolutely is.”

The tension that had existed between you seemed to disappear, just long enough to remind you what being around him used to feel like. How it was easy.

You’d spent so much time missing him that you’d forgotten something important. You liked him. Not just loved him, but liked him. Liked talking to him. Liked laughing with him. Liked the way conversations seemed to wander into completely ridiculous territory whenever you were together long enough.

Somewhere along the way, all of that had gotten buried between stress and disappointment. Now, sitting across from him, you caught a glimpse of it again.

The conversation seemed to settle between you, no longer demanding to be dissected or explained. You were just sitting together.  

Logan looked like he wanted to say something.

You raised an eyebrow, “What?”

A laugh escaped him, “Nothing.”

He looked toward the window, and then back at you.

“Do you have anywhere you need to be?”

The question caught you off guard.

“Not particularly.”

A small smile appeared.

“Would you maybe want to take a walk?”

It wasn’t dinner, or a grand gesture. It was just a walk. The simplicity of it made something ache pleasantly inside you.

For a second, you considered saying no. Saying yes felt significant. But then you looked at him. You saw the nervousness he was trying, and failing, to hide. The way he’d spent the entire afternoon listening instead of defending himself. You saw the boy you’d fallen in love with. The answer came easily.

“Yes.”

The smile that spread across Logan’s face was immediate.

--

The weather this time of day was beautiful, and students wandered across the quad in small groups before the next round of classes. For a few minutes, you walked without any particular destination.

You shoved your hands into the pockets of your jeans and glanced up at the sky. Patches of blue sky were visible through the clouds. Logan kicked absentmindedly at a pebble in the middle of the sidewalk. The sight made you smile.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because you keep asking.”

Logan’s mouth twitched, “I’ve missed that.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them, and you felt the air leave your lungs. You could tell he’d intended to keep that particular thought to himself, but it was too late.

You reached the edge of the quad and turned toward the path that ran alongside the athletic fields. The area was quieter here. You talked about a few things. You told him about a movie you’d watched that you thought he’d love.

You reached the far end of the path and slowed near a set of empty bleachers overlooking one of the practice fields. A few athletes were scattered across the grass in the distance.

Neither one of you seemed particularly eager to turn around. You rested your forearms on the railing, and Logan stood beside you.

Eventually, Logan let out a slow breath. You turned toward him, and he was staring out across the field.

The breeze lifted a few loose strands of hair across your face, and you tucked them behind your ear.

Logan rubbed the back of his neck.

“I don’t want things to go back to how they were. Not because I don’t want you, that’s not what I mean. I don’t want us to start over. I want us to build something better.”

You felt as though the ground had shifted beneath you. Logan looked at you, waiting for you to respond. You realized you already knew your answer.

The question wasn’t whether you still loved him; that had never been the question. The question was whether you were brave enough to try again. Standing there beside him, hearing him talk this afternoon, you weren’t nearly as afraid of the answer as you had been a week ago.

For a while, you had been carrying around a fear that you hadn’t fully acknowledged. A fear that if you found your way back to each other, nothing would change. That you would have one emotional conversation, make up, and slowly slide into the exact same habits.

You looked at him.

“Are you scared?” you asked. The words surprised both of them.

He laughed softly at your honesty.

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ve been scared since that night in the garage.”

You folded your arms loosely.

“Of what?”

A small, self-deprecating smile appeared on his face.

“You really want the list?”

You laughed softly. He smiled at you before it faded.

“That you’d decide this wasn’t worth it,” he answered finally.

You looked at him as he looked back out at the field.

“I kept thinking about everything you said. The worst part was realizing you would’ve been completely justified.”

“Logan—”

“No,” he shook his head, “I’m serious. You would have been justified.”

You nodded softly.

“I had a much smoother version of this conversation planned,” he said.

A surprised smile tugged at your mouth, “Really?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

You laughed again.

The air between you seemed charged with something you were not quite ready to name. You became suddenly aware of how close he was standing. Close enough to remember the memory of his hand finding yours, the way he always smiled into a kiss.

You looked at him, your heartbeat quickening. Logan’s gaze dropped briefly to your mouth, and then immediately returned to your eyes. The movement was tiny, but you noticed it.

He glanced back down toward the path, realizing it was getting late.

“Can I walk you back to your car?” he asked.

The question was simple, and you recognized that it was the natural conclusion to the afternoon. The realization surprised you with a small rush of disappointment. You missed spending time with him.

You smiled, “Yeah.”

Together, you stepped away from the railing and started back toward campus. Your shoulders occasionally brushed as you walked, but neither of you commented on it or moved away.

The conversation drifted to easier subjects again; Logan filled you in on the garage and Jeff, and you talked about a book you were reading. By the time you reached the parking lot of the café, the sky had turned fully gold.

You slowed beside your car. The moment you did, the conversation naturally faded as both of you recognized where you were.

“I had a really good time today,” Logan said.

You looked up at him.

“Me too,” you said, smiling.

The answering smile that appeared on Logan’s face was immediate.

You rested one hand on your car door. Logan was close, but not close enough. Logan’s hands remained buried in his pockets, which you thought was probably for the best. You knew those hands, and all you could think about at this moment was what they felt like wrapped around yours or your waist.

You looked away, toward the row of parked cars and literally anything else. It wasn’t that you wanted the old relationship back; it was that you’d spent the last few hours remembering why you’d fallen in love with the boy in front of you in the first place.

You looked back at him and noticed he was nervous again.

“Y/N?” he asked, and the way he said your name caused your stomach to flip.

“Yeah?”

Logan let out a small breath, as though he was reconsidering what he was going to ask.

“Would it be okay if I kissed you?”

The world stopped. You took a second before stepping closer to him. His gaze settled on yours.

“Yes,” you finally said, softly.

There was no point in pretending. You loved him. Maybe always will.

When Logan leaned in, it felt less like a dramatic reunion and more like coming home after being away for too long. His lips softly met yours, and you threaded your hands through his hair, the kiss deepening.

When you pulled away, his hand found yours first, fingers threading together.

You squeezed his hand. Both of you laughed softly at how nervous you were. You realized that this wasn’t erasing what had happened before. This was something better; a new beginning. That felt like enough.

“What?” you said, laughing softly as he stared at you.

“I missed you,” he said honestly.

You laughed, squeezing his hand again.

“Can I take you to dinner this weekend?” It surprised you because there were no assumptions or pressure, just an invitation.

“John Logan, are you asking me on a date?”

He pretended to consider it before laughing, “Yes.”

“Okay.”

You reached up toward him again, kissing him as his hands found your waist. You stepped back before finally opening your car door.

Logan stepped back as you slid into the driver’s seat. You gave a small wave as you closed the door. Logan was still standing there, hands shoved into his pockets and watching you.

The drive back to campus passed in a blur.

You couldn’t say what songs played on the radio or how many traffic lights you stopped at. Your thoughts remained stubbornly fixed on the garage and on Logan’s face when you’d told him you felt like you were already losing him.

You hated that image. It followed you all the way back to your dorm.

By the time you got to your room, kicked off your shoes, and dropped your bag onto the floor, exhaustion had finally caught up to you. For a while, you tried to distract yourself by changing into sweatpants, washing off your makeup, and straightening up things in your room that didn’t need straightening.

Anything to avoid thinking or looking at your phone. Eventually, you failed. The screen lit up the second you picked it up.

There was a text from Logan, sent twelve minutes ago.

Logan: made it home?

You stared at the message; it was such a normal thing to ask. You sat down on the edge of your bed and typed back.

You: yeah

The response came a few minutes later.

Logan: okay

That was it. You stared at the screen long after the message arrived, just waiting. Not that you expected another text, but that you realized you wanted one. Something stupid, or meaningless. A meme, or a joke, or a complaint about Garrett or Dean or Tucker. Anything that felt normal. Nothing came.

You set the phone on your nightstand and climbed into bed. The room was dark aside from the soft glow of the lamp beside you. You found yourself staring at the ceiling, wondering what he was doing. Was he asleep? Was he replaying the fight too? Was he sitting in his room at his house feeling just as miserable as you did?

Despite everything you’d said that afternoon, despite all of the hurt and frustration and tears, you first instinct was to worry about him.

Eventually, sleep came. Not easily, but… eventually.

The next morning, you woke up before your alarm. For a few seconds you remained half asleep, staring at the pale sunlight that was filtering through the curtains.

Then you reached for your phone, the movement automatic. Your fingers found the screen, and that’s when you realized that nothing was there. No text, no good morning, no heart emoji.

The empty screen shouldn’t have surprised you. Not after the garage and everything you’d said. Now, there was only silence.

You placed the phone face down on the mattress beside you, before immediately picking it back up again, as if another message might have appeared in the last five seconds.

As you got ready for class, you found yourself checking your phone far more often than you wanted to admit. Again, not because you were expecting a message, but that you couldn’t quite stop hoping for one.

By lunchtime, you had convinced yourself that you were being ridiculous. Not because you suddenly felt better about what happened at the garage, but because you were perfectly capable of surviving a few hours without hearing from your boyfriend.

Or former boyfriend. Or whatever you were now. The problem was that you weren’t entirely sure which category applied.

You hadn’t broken up, neither of you had said the words. There hadn’t been some dramatic declaration in the middle of Logan & Sons.

But, you also hadn’t left with a plan. There was no ‘let’s work on this’ or ‘let’s take a few days and talk again’. Not even a ‘we’ll figure it out.’

You hated ambiguity. By the time you’d reached the student center between classes, you’d checked your phone often enough that you shoved it into the bottom of your bag out of sheer stubbornness.

That lasted twenty-three minutes. Not that you were counting.

You were sitting at a table near the windows, attempting to read an article for class, when Mel dropped into the chair across from you.

One look at your face and her expression immediately softened.

“Oh.”

You groaned.

“It’s not that bad.”

Mel leaned back in her chair.

“The fact that you’re arguing before I even ask a question tells me it’s bad,” she said.

You rolled your eyes.

Mel watched her for a moment before speaking again.

“Have you heard from him?” she asked.

You looked down at your half-finished assignment in front of you.

“No.”

Mel nodded slowly.

“Have you texted him?”

“No.”

The time, Mel’s eyebrows lifted. You immediately knew what you were thinking.

Normally, you would’ve. Normally, if there was tension, you wre the first person to reach across the divide. The first to call and smooth things over. This time, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You were just tired.

Mel seemed to understand that without you saying it. She reached across the table and squeezed your hand briefly.

“What do you want to happen?”

The question caught you off guard. Everyone kept asking what had happened, but nobody had asked that. You looked away for a moment.

“I just want him to understand.”

The words came out before you could think about them. Mel nodded.

“I don’t need him to agree with me, or think I’m right about everything. I just need him to understand why it hurt.”

You looked down at your hands. What you needed was for Logan to understand that it wasn’t one individual moment; it was that those moments had stacked on top of each other, week after week, until you’d felt more alone in the relationship than you ever thought possible.

Mel was quiet for a few seconds, then she said softly, “I think he does.”

You looked up, “What?”

“I think he does understand. Maybe not all of it.”

She paused before adding, “From what you’ve told me, he looked pretty devastated.”

You laughed weakly.

“Yeah.”

That was one word for it. The way he’d looked when you’d told him you felt like you wre losing him. The way his face had changed when he’d admitted he didn’t know how to fix it. Hearing him admit he was lost had made the situation feel frighteningly real.

Mel tilted her head, “What are you thinking?”

You hesitated and then answered honestly, “I miss him.”

“Of course you do,” Mel said, almost expecting that answer.

You shrugged, feeling stupid.

“You don’t stop loving somebody because you had one terrible conversation,” Mel said.

You nodded. You just wanted to believe that the boy you loved was still somewhere underneath all of the pressure and expectations. You just wasn’t sure if either of you knew how to find him anymore.

--

The first few days were the hardest. You hadn’t realized how much of your daily routine had quietly wrapped itself around Logan until suddenly he wasn’t woven through it anymore.

His absence showed up in strange places. A walk across campus where you instinctively glanced toward the hockey facilities because that was usually where you’d find him. A funny story during class that had you reaching for your phone before remembering that there was nobody else you wanted to text it to. A late-night trip to the dining hall where you automatically checked your messages, expecting some complaint about one of the guys eating someone else’s leftovers.

Every time it happened, the realization stung all over again. There was no clear ending to mourn, because again, you hadn’t broke up. There was just a conversation at the garage and a silence that neither of you seemed willing to break.

By Friday, you had become embarrassingly aware of how often you looked for him. A campus that once seemed enormous, now seemed determined to throw you into each other’s orbit.

The first time was outside the student center. You were leaving a class meeting when you spotted a group of hockey players coming down the front steps. Your stomach dropped before your brain fully processed why.

Logan.

One glimpse of him and every carefully constructed emotional wall that you’d spent days building developed cracks. He was laughing at something Dean said, his head tilted back slightly. His shoulders were relaxed, and for a brief moment, he looked exactly like himself.

The sight hit you harder than you expected. You hadn’t realized how much you’d missed seeing him smile.

As if sensing something, Logan looked up. Your eyes met across the crowded walkway.

Dean kept talking, Garrett said something, but Logan stopped walking.

The smile faded from his face; not because he was unhappy to see you, but because now he looked uncertain. For a second, you thought he might walk over and part of you desperately wanted him to. However, you simply looked at each other.

Then, you forced yourself to keep walking. By the time you glanced back, the hockey players were moving again and Logan disappeared into the crowd.

The encounter lasted less than ten seconds, but it ruined the rest of your afternoon.

--

That night, you were halfway through answering emails when your phone buzzed. The sound immediately drew your attention.

The screen lit up on your desk, and you saw the contact name. Logan. For a moment, you simply stared at the name. Finally, you tapped the screen, opening the message.

Logan: Hope your presentation went okay today

You read it twice. No apology, no request to talk or emotional speech. It was just a simple message, but it was significant. You hadn’t told him you had a presentation today, at least, not recently. Then, you remembered. Three weeks earlier, lying in bed together at his house, you told him you had the presentation and you were nervous about it.

Logan had apparently remembered, and that realization caught you off guard.

You: it went well

You stared at the message before finally hitting send. The bubbles appeared to show he was typing.

Logan: good, I know you were stressed about it

The words made your chest tighten. They sounded like Logan. Just your Logan.

You looked at the screen for a moment, and then set your phone aside without answering. You didn’t know how to continue the conversation. For the first time since the garage, something other than sadness settled in your chest. Not happiness, not yet, but the faint, cautious realization that maybe silence wasn’t the only thing waiting on the other side of that conversation.

The conversation didn’t continue that night. For some reason, that made you respect it more.

--

The next afternoon, you found yourself at Malone’s, grabbing a quick lunch. What you didn’t realize, was that Allie would be your waitress that day.

You hadn’t spoken to Hannah or Allie more than a few texts here and there, and you figured that they’d gotten the story from Logan or their boyfriends.

Allie appeared next to you at your table, putting your drink down. She looked like she was deciding whether to say something or not.

“Dean’s losing his mind,” she finally said.

You looked up.

“What else is new?”

“No, seriously.”

“What happened?” you asked curiously.

“Logan left here after twenty minutes yesterday.”

You blinked, “What?”

“Twenty minutes. Dean thought he was dying.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

“Why?” you asked.

Allie shrugged, “Said he was tired.”

You looked down at the menu in front of you. The answer shouldn’t have mattered, and yet you couldn’t stop yourself from thinking about it. Logan loved this place, not because he loved the place itself, but because that’s where everyone was: his team, his friends, and the noise and energy he’d always seemed to thrive on.

You nodded.

Allie watched you carefully, “He’s been weird lately.”

The comment was casual, and you immediately knew there was more coming. You sighed.

“Allie.”

“What?”

“Don’t.”

A grin tugged at her mouth, “I’m not doing anything.”

“You absolutely are.”

She laughed, and then surprisingly, let the subject drop as she took your order.

That relief lasted approximately twenty minutes, long enough for you to convince yourself that Allie would drop it. Then, Allie appeared to drop off your food.

“You know what’s even weirder?” Allie asked.

You groaned.

“Allie—”

“He turned his phone off.”

Your head snapped up before you could stop yourself.

“See?”

“Allie.”

“He turned it off.”

“People turn their phones off.”

“No they don’t.”

You opened your mouth, and closed it again.

Logan practically lived with his phone attached to him lately. The image of him constantly checking messages at Malone’s flashed through your mind, the memory still stinging.

“You’re just as bad at meddling as Dean,” you said, trying to change the subject.

Allie laughed and walked off. You couldn’t stop wondering why Logan would shut his phone off. Not because you thought it had anything to do with you, that would’ve felt dangerously close to hope. Still, the thought stayed with you for the rest of the afternoon.

That evening, you attended the Briar U Hockey game. You spent most of the drive to the arena debating whether you should go at all. That argument was ridiculous; of course you wre going. You’d been going to games long before the garage argument happened, long before you’d start wondering if you and Logan were slowly slipping through each other’s fingers.

One conversation didn’t get to take away hockey and supporting him from you, even if part of you worried that seeing him might hurt.

The arena buzzed with its usual energy. Students packed the stands in blue, white, and red. You were wearing one of Logan’s old practice jerseys, the 22 and LOGAN in bright white letters on your back.

Music blasted through the speakers, and the ice gleamed beneath the bright arena lights. Everything looked exactly the same. You weren’t sure if that was comforting or upsetting. You found your usual seat and settled in just as warmups began, and the boys skated out onto the ice. You felt your heart jump as you looked for number 22 but didn’t see him yet.

A few minutes later, Dean spotted you. Even from halfway across the ice, he waved enthusiastically. You laughed and lifted a hand in return to wave. Some things never changed.

A few of the remaining boys who weren’t there for warmups came out later, Logan and Garrett included. Their backs were to you as they all stood for the national anthem to play.

Then, the game started. For a while, you managed to lose yourself in it. The speed and noise were distracting you. Then, Logan stepped onto the ice, and suddenly nothing felt simple anymore.

You watched as he effortless glided across the ice, commanding attention. The same person you’d spent days trying not to think about, but also missing. You watched him adjust his gloves after the whistle was blown, and he glanced towards the stands.

Then, he froze. Only for a second, it was a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. But, you saw it, because he was looking directly at you. Even from across the rink, you could see the surprise in his expression. The realization that you’d come. Neither of you looked away from each other. Then, the referee skated into position, and the moment ended as Logan got ready for the game to resume.

For the rest of the first period, you couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted. It was like the ground beneath you was finally beginning to move after standing perfectly still for the last few days.

The game was one of Logan’s best in weeks. You had realized it sometime during the second period, as he scored, and the announcers kept saying his name. You heard the crowd around you start whispering about him. He looked different during the game; lighter.

The tension you’d grown accustomed to seeing in him seemed less pronounced somehow. He was still playing hard, still carrying the pressure that came with being one of Briar’s biggest NHL prospects, but there was a confidence to him tonight that had been missing lately.

Twice, you caught Dean looking toward the stands and grinning. You caught Garrett doing the same thing. The second time, Garrett pointedly looked from Logan to you and then shook his head as if he had just solved a mystery.

You immediately pretended not to notice. Unfortunately, Garrett saw you notice. His grin widened.

You spent the rest of the period avoiding eye contact with any of them entirely. By the time Briar secured the win, the arena was loud enough to shake the bleachers. Logan had scored twice.

Student surged toward the exits, excitedly talking about the game and beating one of the team’s biggest rivals. The team gathered near center ice with their coach. You remained seated for a few extra moments, letting the crowd thin.

A month ago, you would’ve lingered outside the locker room, assuming you’d see him afterward. Maybe you’d grab food, or end up at his house. The possibilities had once felt endless, but now they felt impossibly far away.

You stood, standing there for a moment before you headed toward the exit. It wasn’t because you wanted to leave, but you’d spent too much time waiting already and didn’t know what to say to him. You felt strangely proud of yourself, because leaving hurt, but you did it anyway.

The text arrived ten minutes later. You were stopped at a red light when your phone buzzed in the cupholder beside you.

You saw the name flash across the screen. Logan.

The light turned green, and you forced yourself to keep driving. Only when you reached your dorm parking lot did you finally check it. The message was short.

Logan: thanks for coming tonight

You stared at it and read it again. There was just gratitude.

You: you played really well

The response came a minute later.

Logan: I wasn’t sure if you would come

The honesty of it caught you off guard. It felt like Logan. For the first time in days, you allowed herself to imagine what he was doing. The post-game interviews were probably over by now. Was he headed to Malone’s?

You looked back at your phone.

You: I’ve never missed one of your home games

The response took longer this time, long enough that you wondered if he’d gotten pulled into something. When the message finally appeared, it was only one sentence.

Logan: I know.

Two words. Somehow, they carried more weight than entire conversations. It was something deeper, like he was saying ‘I know you’ve always been there.’

Your phone buzzed again.

Logan: Can I ask you something?

Your heartbeat immediately quickened. The question felt different. You stared at the screen for several seconds before replying.

You: okay

This time, the pause stretched longer. Long enough that you wondered if he’d changed his mind. Finally, the bubble popped up showing he was typing.

Logan: would it be ok if I took you to get coffee sometime next week?

You read the message a few times. Not dinner, not a date, just coffee. Something simple, and low pressure. The type of request that acknowledged exactly where they were, and didn’t assume anything.

The following Wednesday arrived carrying one of those strange early spring afternoons where it was just starting to warm up.

The morning had been cold enough to justify a jacket, but by lunchtime, students were scattered across the quad in short sleeves, convinced that winter was finally over.

As you crossed campus toward the coffee shop, the weather now was accompanied by a small breeze that lifted strands of hair across your face every few steps.

A few months ago, Wednesdays had been ordinary. They were just another forgettable day that was buried beneath classes, assignments, and the exhausting process of trying to put yourself back together after someone had broken your trust.

Now, somehow, Wednesdays belonged to Logan. Or, at least, they felt that way.

You found yourself looking forward to them long before they arrived. They had become important.

As the coffee shop came into view, you automatically glanced toward the windows, searching for a familiar dark head of hair. You didn’t see him.

The disappointment arrived so quickly that it almost annoyed you. He was probably running late, or practice ran over.

Your thoughts stopped. A few feet away from the entrance on the opposite side, Logan stood near the outdoor tables. He wasn’t alone.

At first, you didn’t think much of it. People talked to him constantly. He was one of the most recognizable people on campus, thanks to being a star hockey player. It wasn’t unusual to see someone stop him between classes.

Then the girl turned slightly. It was the same girl from the coffee shop, the one who had stopped by your table a couple of weeks ago. The one who had greeted Logan with the kind of easy familiarity that had bothered you far more than you’d been willing to admit.

For a moment, you remained exactly where you were. You were far enough away that neither of them noticed you, but close enough to see the conversation unfolding. The girl laughed at something Logan said, like she’d heard him make a hundred jokes before.

Logan smiled back at her. The sight shouldn’t have affected you, he smiled at everyone. You told yourself to keep walking, that you were being ridiculous. Then, the girl stepped forward and Logan wrapped his arms around her. It was the kind of high exchanged between people who knew each other well. It was nothing that should have shattered the fragile confidence you’d spent months rebuilding.

Yet somehow, standing there on the sidewalk watching something that was probably completely innocent, you felt the ground shift beneath your feet. Suddenly every fear you’d been keeping at bay surged forward all at once.

It was the fear about yourself and that you’d done it again; you’d mistaken kindness for affection. That you’d taken a collection of small moments and transformed them into something bigger than they were. The coffee order he’d remember. The texts after games. The way his face seemed to brighten when he saw you.

You’d let yourself believe that those things meant something. Not because Logan had promised they did, but because you’d wanted them to. Maybe that had been the mistake. Maybe you had spent so much time enjoying the way he made you feel that you’d forgotten to ask whether he felt anything at all.

The hug ended, and the girl said something that made Logan laugh again. A second later, he reached for the coffee shop door. Panic swept through you so quickly that thinking became impossible. If he looked up now, he’d see you. He’d smile, maybe wave and ask why you were standing there.

You suddenly didn’t trust yourself to act normal. You didn’t trust yourself not to reveal every stupid feeling you’d spent weeks to hide.

Before he could turn in your direction, you pivoted and started walking. Fast. Not running, but just walking quickly enough that the coffee shop disappeared behind the next building before you could change your mind.

The entire trip back to your dorm had felt unreal. It was like your body was on autopilot while your thoughts spiraled several steps behind.

The first text arrived twenty minutes later.

Logan: where are you?

You were sitting on the edge of your bed when your phone lit up, still wearing your coat. Your bag was abandoned somewhere near your desk where you’d dropped it the second you walked through the door.

For a moment, you only stared at the message. It made your chest ache, because you could picture him too clearly. You could imagine him sitting at your usual table, coffee cooling beside his laptop, glancing at the door every few minutes with that slight furrow between his eyebrows he got whenever he was trying to figure something out. He’d probably waited at first, and then checked the time.

You hated that you knew him well enough to imagine all of that. You hated that the thought of disappointing him mattered.

What were you supposed to say?

Sorry, I saw you hug a girl and realized that I’m in love with you so I panicked and fled?

Nope. Absolutely not. A second message arrived quickly.

Logan: Did something happen?

It wasn’t annoyed, or casual. He was concerned. You pressed your palms against your eyes and took a breath that didn’t do much to steady you. The mature thing would be to answer. The reasonable thing would be to tell him that you were fine, that something had come up, and that you’d see him soon. Anything would have been better than silence.

But all reason had gone out of the window the moment you saw his arms around someone else. So, you did nothing.

By the next morning, he texted twice again. Nothing dramatic, or that made him seem angry.

Logan: Hey, just checking in

Logan: are you okay?

You read both, standing in the middle of your dorm with your toothbrush still in your hand, and the guilt that washed over you was heavy.

Logan didn’t deserve this, that was the worst part. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t promised you he was interested, he didn’t ask for you to wait for him. He hadn’t even known you were outside of the coffee shop, watching one ordinary moment crack open every single insecurity you’d been trying so hard to bury.

This wasn’t his fault; it was yours. Your feelings. Your assumptions. Your stupid, fragile hope.

Still, you couldn’t make yourself respond. For the rest of the week, you became an expert in avoidance.

You stopped going to the coffee shop, because the idea of walking past your table and finding it empty made your chest feel tight. You took longer routes between classes, keeping your head down whenever you passed by the athletic center. You stopped checking the hockey scores. You turned your phone over whenever it buzzed because part of you wanted it to be Logan, and the other part of you was terrified it would be.

By Saturday afternoon, the routine you’d built with him had been replaced by a routine of avoiding him. You were in the library when your phone vibrated against the table.

Logan: okay, now I’m officially worried

Logan: if I did something, please just tell me what it is

You stared at the words for so long that they started to blur together. That was finally what made the shame settle in. He was somewhere thinking he’d done something to upset you, and you were letting him believe it because admitting the truth felt far too humiliating.

You had just unlocked your phone, though you had no idea what you had planned to type, when a shadow fell across the table. Every muscle in your body went still. You didn’t need to look up, somehow, you knew exactly who it was.

Logan stood on the other side of the table, his hockey bag slung over one shoulder and his hair slightly damp, like he’d come straight from practice. He looked tired, but more than that, he looked relieved in a way that made your chest ache before he even said a word.

“There you are,” he said quietly.

Your fingers tightened around your phone.

“Hi.”

It was a terrible thing to say.

Logan stared at you for a moment, as if he were waiting for you to offer literally anything else. When you didn’t, he pulled out the chair across from you and sat down.

He had the quiet determination of someone who had decided he wasn’t leaving until he understood what had gone wrong.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

For a moment, all you could do was stare at him. Your entire body felt locked in place. This conversation had existed in your imagination for days, but every version you’d imagined ended with you escaping it.

His gaze never left your face. The concern on it made everything worse. He looked worried.

“You haven’t answered a single text,” he said. His voice remained calm, but there was frustration underneath now.

“You stopped showing up. Then I saw you leave one of your classes yesterday the second you spotted me,” he said. He leaned back slightly in his chair, studying you.

Heat flooded your face.

“You’ve been avoiding me.” His words weren’t really a question.

You looked down at the table.

“Maybe.”

A disbelieving laugh escaped him, “Maybe?”

You winced. Okay, that hadn’t sounded great. When you looked up at him again, he was still watching you with that same stubborn patience that had somehow become one of your favorite things about him.

“I don’t understand,” he said quietly.

He genuinely didn’t know, which meant if you told him the truth, you’d have to admit just how deeply you’d misread everything.

“Nothing happened.”

The second the words left your mouth, you knew they were useless. Logan knew it too. His eyebrows lifted.

“Seriously?”

You looked away, “Okay, something happened.”

“That’s progress.”

Despite everything, the corner of your mouth almost twitched. Almost. Logan noticed anyway.

“Just tell me.”

You wished it were that easy. If this conversation were only about the girl, maybe it would have been. But, it wasn’t. The girl had simply exposed a problem that had already existed; the problem was sitting across from him. It was somewhere between coffee shop Wednesdays and late-night texts about his roommates, that you’d fallen in love with him.

Every word felt dangerous. You took a slow breath, and finally spoke.

“I saw you,” you said.

Confusion flickered across his face. “You saw me?” “Last Wednesday. Outside of the coffee shop.”

The confusion across his face remained for exactly two seconds. Then, understanding began to dawn. Not complete understanding, but just enough that he was following the timeline.

“I was talking to someone.”

You nodded. A humorless smile tugged briefly at your mouth.

“Yeah.”

Silence settled between you. Then, somehow, Logan looked even more confused.

“You mean Emily?”

Logan sat forward slightly, “Wait.”

His eyes narrowed, and a second later, something clicked. You saw the exact moment his brain connected all of the pieces.

“You thought Emily was my girlfriend?”

The horror that immediately flooded your body was so intense you considered climbing under the table.

“Please don’t say it like that,” you said.

“Oh my God.”

You covered your face with both hands. He stared at you, and then let out a short, stunned laugh.

“This is exactly why I didn’t want to have this conversation.”

The laugh disappeared instantly, and suddenly Logan wasn’t looking amused anymore. He was looking at you carefully, like he was realizing there was more than a misunderstanding.

And unfortunately, there was. A lot more.

“Hey,” his voice softened.

You lowered your hands slightly from your face.

“She isn’t my girlfriend.”

You nodded, “I figured that out.”

“No, I don’t think you did.”

The gentleness in his voice made your throat tighten. He wasn’t correcting a misunderstanding anymore, he was trying to understand why it had hurt. That was dangerous.

He leaned forward, forearms resting against the table.

“Emily’s my cousin.”

You closed your eyes. Of course she was. For several seconds, neither of you spoke. Logan sighed.

When he finally spoke again, his voice was quieter than before.

“That isn’t the whole reason, though,” he said.

Your heart immediately dropped, because somehow, you knew that he already knew.

“People don’t disappear for a week because of a misunderstanding.”

The words landed gently.

“You were hurt,” he stated.

“Logan—”

“You were.”

His gaze held yours.

All of a sudden, the exhaustion of the last few months came rushing back. All of the heartbreak, and fear, and the constant feeling that trusting someone again was like standing on the edge of a cliff.

You looked down at your hands.

When you finally spoke, your voice came out much smaller than you intended.

“I felt stupid,” you said.

The confession hung between you as Logan listened.

“I saw you with her and,” you laughed softly, though there was no humor in it, “I don’t know. I just realized how much I’d let myself believe.”

Silence.

“Believe what?” he asked.

You closed your eyes briefly. This is was thing you’d avoided saying, but there was no way out except for telling the truth.

“I thought maybe all of this meant something,” you whispered.

Judging by the look on Logan’s face, the words landed exactly where you were afraid they would.

Logan didn’t say anything, he just looked at you for a moment. The silence stretched long enough that embarrassment began creeping up your neck again. You immediately regretted saying it.

You dropped your gaze to the table.

“Forget it,” you said.

His response came immediately, “No.”

Your eyes lifted. He was still watching you with an intensity that made your stomach twist.

“No, we’re definitely not doing that.”

“Doing what?” you asked.

“That thing where you say something important and then immediately try to take it back. You’re not getting out of this one,” he said.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” you said.

“The truth would be a good start.”

You stared out of the library window before looking back at him.

“The truth is that I liked spending time with you.”

“Okay,” he said.

“The truth is that Wednesdays became my favorite day of the week.”

Something unreadable flickered across his face. You pressed on before you could lose your nerve.

“The truth is that every time you text me, it makes my day better. I started going to hockey games. I started saving stories to tell you. I started…” you swallowed, “I started caring.”

The last two words barely made it out. Logan slowly leaned back in his chair, looking completely stunned. This wasn’t the reaction you’d expected.

“Wow.”

You immediately reached for your bag.

“Okay, this was a mistake,” you said, tears stinging the corner of your eyes.

“What?”

You stood so quickly that your chair nearly tipped backwards.

“This was a terrible idea,” you reiterated.

Before you could gather your things, Logan reached across the table and caught your wrist. Not hard, but just enough to make you pause.

“Would you stop trying to run away for five seconds?” he asked, the frustration in his voice startling you.

You slowly sank back into your chair. Logan dragged a hand through his hair and looked toward the ceiling.

For a moment, he actually laughed.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he said.

Your stomach twisted.

“That’s not usually the response people hope for.”

His eyes snapped to yours, “No, that’s not—”

He stopped, exhaled, and started again.

“What exactly did you think was happening here?” he asked.

You blinked, “What?”

“Seriously. What did you think all of this was?”

He leaned forward again. You stared at him.

“Friendship?” you said.

Logan just looked at you, and then laughed again, “Friendship.”

The way he repeated the word made heat immediately rush to your face.

“You thought I spent months finding excuses to see you every week because I wanted friendship?”

Your pulse began hammering.

“Logan…”

“I’m genuinely asking, " His eyes never left yours, “I want to know.”

You opened your mouth and closed it again.

Logan let out another breath. Then, quieter this time, he said, “You think I memorized your coffee order because I wanted to be friendly?”

You could literally hear your own heartbeat.

“You think I texted you after every away game because I wanted to be friendly?”

Your chest tightened.

“You think I spent half of the season looking for you in the stands at my games because I wanted to be friendly?”

The words hit one after another, each one landing directly in the center of your chest. Logan’s expression had softened completely now, and in its place was something infinitely more dangerous: affection.

“You really, really, thought I was doing all of this because I wanted to be friends?”

“I didn’t know what to think.”

Logan held your gaze for a few seconds, and then a smile appeared.

“I was trying to take you on a date.”

“What?” you asked.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to take you on a date for two months.”

You stared at him. There’s no way you heard him correctly.

“You… you like me?”

His expression turned almost incredulous.

“Of course I like you.”

His words were immediate and so certain. For months, you’d prepared yourself for rejection and disappointment. You had never once prepared yourself for this. For Logan to look at you like the answer should have been obvious all along.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice kept insisting that you’d misunderstood. That in another moment, he would laugh and explain himself. This outcome had never been one of the possibilities that you’d allowed yourself to consider.

Logan’s expression softened.

“You don’t believe me,” he said.

You immediately shook your head, “No, that’s not—”

But you stopped, because lying felt pointless. You looked down at your hands.

“I want to. So badly,” you said.

When Logan finally spoke, his voice was softer than you’ve ever heard it.

“Then what’s stopping you?”

You knew the answer immediately, and you knew you had to tell him.

“I trusted someone before. I trusted him completely.”

You hated how vulnerable the words felt.

“You know what the worst part was? It wasn’t even finding out. It was realizing I’d missed it. I kept thinking back to every conversation, every excuse, every weird feeling I had ignored.”

Your chest felt tight.

You continued, “Afterward, it felt so obvious. Then, I started wondering what else I was wrong about.”

The silence that followed felt heavy. It wasn’t the cheating or the breakup that was the real wound. It was the doubt, the constant uncertainty, and the feeling that your own judgement couldn’t be trusted anymore.

When you looked back at Logan, his expression had changed. There was no pity in his eyes, or discomfort. Just understanding.

“You want to know what I thought when I saw you with her?” you asked.

His eyebrows furrowed slightly.

“I didn’t think you were lying to me or doing anything wrong. I just thought I’d done it again. I thought I’d convinced myself something was there when it wasn’t.”

The admission finally settled into the open. Logan reached his hand across the table, gently enough to rest his hand over yours. The contact was warm.

“You know what I think?” he asked.

You shook your head.

“I think you’ve spent months waiting for something bad to happen. I think you’ve been trying really hard to not get hurt again.”

You blinked rapidly as his thumb brushed lightly against your knuckles. You looked away, because if you looked directly at him right now, you’d probably cry.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was gentle.

You looked at him.

“I’m not asking you to trust me immediately. I’m not asking you to forget what happened, and I’m definitely not asking you to pretend it didn’t hurt.”

Logan’s fingers tightened around yours.

“But I’d like a chance.”

The words settled over you. For the first time since your breakup, the idea of trusting someone felt scary, but it didn’t feel impossible.

“So,” he said.

“So?”

“Can I finally take you on a date?”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it. The sound echoed softly between the library shelves.

Saying yes didn’t feel so frightening. It felt right.

The walk out of the library felt strangely unreal. The afternoon sun hung low over campus as the two of you stepped outside, casting everything in shades of gold and amber.

You were too aware of the person walking beside you, and the fact that Logan’s shoulder occasionally brushed yours.

He liked you.

The realization still felt impossible.

By the time you reached the edge of the quad, neither of you seemed particularly interested in heading anywhere specific. You slowed down near a cluster of trees. The conversation between you had faded naturally, leaving something quieter behind.

Logan turned towards you, staring. Then, the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.

“There was something else I wanted to do today.”

“Oh?”

His smile widened, “Yeah.”

Your breath caught, and the look in his eyes made it impossible to misunderstand where this was heading.

Standing in the fading afternoon sunlight, all you felt was a nervous excitement that seemed to stretch from your chest all the way to your fingertips.

Logan took a small step closer to you. His gaze flicked briefly to your mouth before returning to your eyes.

When he reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair behind your ear, you didn’t pull away, you leaned into it.

The smile that appeared on his face was almost impossibly tender.

Then, he kissed you. It wasn’t rushed. It felt like relief, like coming home after a very long time. His hand remained lightly against your cheek as your eyes drifted closed.

The kiss was soft, careful, and patient. As though he was giving you every opportunity to change your mind. You didn’t.

A grin slowly spread across his face, and you kissed him again.

--

Three weeks later, Wednesday still belonged to the two of you.

Some things hadn’t changed. The coffee shop was still crowded, your table was still tucked beside the window. Logan still showed up carrying far too much caffeine.

The difference was that now, when you looked up from your laptop, he leaned down and kissed the top of your head before taking his seat.

Across the table, he reached for your hand without even thinking about it. Like, it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was.

For the first time in a very long time, you weren’t thinking about what had happened before. You weren’t replaying old hurts. You weren’t waiting for something to go wrong.

You were simply here, with him, happy.

Maybe starting over wasn’t about forgetting the past.

Maybe it was finding someone who made you believe the future could be better. As Logan smiled at you from across the table that afternoon, it was impossible not to think that maybe, just maybe, that was exactly what had happened.

The drive back to your dorm felt longer than it should have. You kept the radio off, which probably wasn’t helping, since you had nothing to distract you from what had just happened.

Normally, after a night at Malone’s, you’d leave with a smile on your face. Sometimes you’d replay a conversation you’d had with Logan. Sometimes you’d laugh, remembering something stupid Dean said. More often than not, you’d leave with Logan and spend the night with him.

Tonight, all you could think about was the look on Logan’s face when you’d stood up from the booth. It wasn’t the irritation or even the surprise; it was the hurt. You hated that part.

You hadn’t left to punish him or because you wanted him to feel bad. You’d left because staying suddenly felt impossible. For weeks, you’d been swallowing little disappointments and brushing them away before they could become real.

Each one had seemed too small to fight about, and too small to make a big deal out of. But sitting in that booth tonight, hearing that sharp edge in his voice, something inside you had finally cracked.

Your phone buzzed when you stopped at a red light. You didn’t need to look to know it was him. Still, you waited until you were parked outside your dorm before checking. There were three texts.

Logan: Did you get back okay?

Logan: Y/N?

Logan: Can we talk?

The knot in your chest tightened. Of course, he wanted to talk. The problem was that you didn’t know what you would even say.

You typed the only honest thing you could think of.

You: yeah. I’m back.

A response came almost immediately.

Logan: Can I call?

You took a breath.

You: I’m tired.

The bubble popped up showing he was typing, and disappeared, before reappearing again.

Logan: okay

Logan: I love you.

The words hit you right in the chest. You believed them. You never doubted that Logan loved you.

You: I love you too

You set your phone on her nightstand and climbed into bed. For a long time, you stared at the ceiling. Sleep didn’t come quickly. Every time you closed your eyes, you found yourself replaying the same thought.

‘What if he doesn’t have anything left to give?’

That thought followed you into sleep.

--

The next morning felt strangely normal.

You woke up to a text from Logan.

Logan: Morning

Logan: Hope you slept okay

You stared at them while sitting up in bed. A month ago, you would’ve smiled immediately at those texts. Now, you felt something closer to sadness. You felt farther away from him than you had a month ago.

You answered anyway, and you texted throughout the morning. Nothing important, just surface-level things; as well as Dean apparently setting off a smoke alarm while trying to make breakfast.

By noon, he called. You answered on the second ring.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

His voice sounded rough.  You talked briefly about what was happening that week and about an upcoming game.

Neither of you mentioned Malone’s, not once. The omission sat between you the entire time. When the call ended twelve minutes later, you stared down at your phone.

You used to regularly spend an hour on the phone without realizing it. Twelve minutes. Now, it felt like you were both rushing toward the finish line.

--

Mel noticed something was wrong on Monday. You should’ve known better than to think you’d get away with pretending.

You were sitting in a coffee shop near campus, both working on your laptops and accomplishing very little.

Mel had been watching you for nearly twenty minutes. Every time you looked up, Mel was looking at you.

Finally, Mel snapped her laptop shut.

“Okay,” Mel said.

You blinked, “What?”

“What’s going on?”

You immediately looked back at your screen.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?” you asked.

“The thing where you stare at your phone every five minutes and pretend that you’re not doing that.”

You sighed and eventually closed your own laptop. The fight drained out of your shoulders.

“I don’t know,” you said.

Mel’s expression softened.

“What happened?” Mel asked.

For a moment, you considered giving the easy answer. Instead, you surprised yourself by telling her the truth.

“I just miss him all of the time.”

Mel frowned, “He’s your boyfriend.”

You let out a laugh, “I know. It’s just… I can be sitting right next to him, and he always feels like he’s somewhere else.”

The confession hung between you. Once it was out, you couldn’t take it back. Mel reached across the table and squeezed your hand. And for the first time in weeks, you admitted how exhausted you were, too.

--

By Tuesday, you had convinced yourself that you were being dramatic. Not completely, just enough to make yourself feel guilty. Every time you thought about Malone’s, you thought about everything Logan had on his plate: practice, games, scouts, classes, family, and the garage.

The endless stream of people who seemed to want something from him every hour of the day. Then, you’d think about the look on his face when you’d walked out of Malone’s, and you’d feel terrible all over again.

The problem was that feeling terrible didn’t make you feel better or make you less lonely. It didn’t make you miss him less.

Your phone buzzed while you were sitting in the library trying to finish an assignment.

Logan: Can you come to the garage after class?

You stared at the message. Not because you didn’t know what it meant, because you did. You had spent days carefully stepping around the thing neither of you wanted to discuss, and eventually, one of you had to force the issue. Apparently, that day had arrived.

You: okay

Logan: Around 5?

You: sure

The conversation ended there. There were no hearts, no jokes. Just a plan. The simplicity of it made knots in your stomach.

--

Logan & Sons looked exactly the same as it always did. The glowing, neon sign, the same cracked pavement in the parking lot, the same smell of oil and metal drifting from the open bay door.

You parked and checked the time; it was 4:52. You were early.

You headed inside, seeing Jeff working on a truck. He looked up when he saw you.

“Hey, Y/N,” he said.

You gave a small wave, “Hi, Jeff.”

He took one good look at your face and sighed. That wasn’t encouraging.

“That obvious?”

“Painfully.”

You gave a small laugh. Jeff set his tools down.

“He’s coming, right? I know he’s supposed to work on a car tonight,” he asked.

“Supposedly,” you said, the word slipping out before you could stop it.

Jeff’s eyebrows rose slightly, and you immediately regretted saying it. But Jeff was Logan’s brother, and probably could tell something was off.

“He’ll be here,” he said.

The certainty in his voice should have reassured you, but it just made you tired. That wasn’t really the issue anymore.

You sat on the edge of a workbench near the office while Jeff went back to work. For a while, the only sounds were music drifting through the garage speakers and the occasional clank of tools against metal as Jeff worked.

You checked the time. 5:01.

Then, 5:07. 5:12.

By 5:15, you’d stopped pretending you weren’t watching the parking lot.

At 5:18, your phone buzzed.

Logan: running late, coach kept us

You just stared at the screen. Always something, always another reason, another obligation.

You: okay

The clock ticked toward 5:30. As ridiculous as it was, you found yourself thinking about every other time that you’d waited. Standing outside the locker room after the game, showing up to movie night, checking your phone at night, waiting for him to call you, waiting for plans, and waiting for conversations that never seemed to happen anymore.

The realization made your stomach hurt, because you hadn’t even noticed you’d started keeping score.

At 5:38, you heard the familiar sound of Logan’s truck pulling into the parking lot. Your heart reacted before your brain did, and you felt the stupid, automatic flutter you’d gotten since the day they’d met.

Logan climbed out of his truck, moving fast into the building. He had spotted you immediately, his expression softening and the tension in his face easing. For a second, you remembered exactly why you fell in love with him. Then, he looked at his watch, and the moment vanished.

“Hey,” he said, reaching you and leaning down, pressing a quick kiss to your lips.

You kissed him back, out of habit. Out of love. Out of confusion.

When he pulled away, he let out a breath, “Sorry, coach kept us late.”

His hair was damp from practice, and his shoulders looked tight. He looked exhausted. Somehow, that made you angrier, because you knew exactly what came next. The explanation. The reason for what prevented him from being here. Something inside of you finally gave way.

“You’re late.”

Logan blinked; the words clearly caught him off guard.

“What?”

“You’re late.”

His expression tightened immediately. Not with anger, but confusion.

“I texted you.”

You laughed, and the sound came out sharper than you’d intended.

“Yeah.”

Now Logan frowned. The familiar defensive look appeared almost instantly.

“I don’t understand what you’re upset about.”

The sentence landed very badly. You crossed your arms.

“Really?” you asked.

“Yeah, really.”

The frustration in his voice was impossible to miss now. For the first time in weeks, neither of you backed down. You knew exactly where this conversation was headed.

For a few seconds, neither of you said anything. The tension settled heavily in the garage. Somewhere behind you, a song changed on the speakers. Jeff looked up from the truck, took one glance at your faces, and immediately disappeared into another part of the garage.

“Y/N, I texted you the second I got out of practice.”

You laughed again, the same humorless sound you’d started hating. Every time it came out of your mouth, you felt like someone you didn’t recognize.

“Do you honestly think this is about 30 minutes?”

Logan stared at you, “No. I think this is about something else, and I have no idea what it is because you won’t actually tell me.”

The words hit harder than they should have, mostly because there was some truth buried inside of them. You hadn’t told him, not really. You’d swallowed things down, ignored them. You’d made excuses for him, for yourself, and every time that something hurt, you’d convinced yourself it wasn’t important enough to bring up. Now all of it was sitting in your chest at once.

Logan scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked exhausted. The sight softened you for half of a second, but then you remembered. You remembered standing in the doorway of his house when Dean realized he had forgotten about movie night. You remembered watching Dean’s Instagram story from Malone’s.

“You forgot me.”

The words came out quietly, so quietly that Logan didn’t react at first. Then, his brow furrowed.

“What?”

“You forgot me.”

“Y/N, what are you talking about?”

You stared at him. Part of you couldn’t believe you were actually saying any of this out loud. The other part wondered why you waited so long.

“Malone’s. Movie night. The lack of calls. Texts. Conversations.”

Logan opened his mouth and closed it again. For the first time since you'd known him, he genuinely looked at a loss.

“You think I forgot about you?”

The hurt in his voice made something twist painfully in your chest. You knew how that sounded; cruel, unfair.

“Yes. No. Kind of.”

“Then what are you saying?”

You let out a shaky breath, “I’m just saying I feel like I keep ending up at the bottom of the list.”

Logan stared at you, and then actually looked angry. He wasn’t furious, he wasn’t yelling, but he looked angry. The kind of anger that came from feeling misunderstood.

“That’s not fair.”

There it was, the first real spark.

“Isn’t it?”

“No.”

Logan took a step back and ran both hands through his hair.

“I’ve been trying to balance a hundred different things.”

“I know you have.”

“Do you?” he asked.

The question landed hard. Suddenly, Logan wasn’t just frustrated; he was hurt, too.

“I don’t think you do,” he added.

“What?”

“I don’t think you understand what the last few weeks have been like.”

The words were sharp enough to sting. He gestured vaguely toward the garage, and just everything.

“Every day it’s something. Practice, scouts, coaches, classes, interviews, meetings, the garage… everyone wants something from me all of the time.”

You folded your arms tighter across your chest.

“And you think I don’t know that?”

“No, I think you know it. I just don’t think you get what it feels like.”

The sentence hit you like a slap. You stared at him. Then anger arrived. Real anger.

“You’re right.”

Logan frowned.

“Y/N—”

“No, you’re absolutely right.”

You laughed once, and it was bitter.

“Because clearly the last few weeks have only been hard for you.”

His expression changed immediately, but you couldn’t stop now.

“You know what the worst part is?” you asked.

“Y/N.”

“The worst part is that I know you’re trying,” you said. Your voice cracked, “I know you are.”

You swallowed hard and then forced yourself to continue.

“Every single time something happens, I tell myself it’s not your fault. I tell myself you’re tired.”

Logan’s jaw tightened.

“Or stressed, or busy. Maybe that’s true,” you said, the anger draining, leaving something sadder behind.

“Maybe every single reason you’ve given me is completely valid.”

Logan didn’t interrupt; he just stood there listening.

“You didn’t see the look on Dean’s face when I showed up to movie night. I stood there like an idiot.”

“Y/N—”

“No. I don’t think you understand how humiliating that feels.”

The words echoed through the garage, and Logan looked stunned this time. But, you weren’t finished.

“Or seeing everyone at Malone’s because Dean posted a video. Or you snapping at me that night.”

You looked directly at him.

“I feel stupid waiting for you all the time,” you said.

The sentence landed between you. Logan didn’t look angry anymore; he looked devastated.

For a long moment, Logan didn’t say anything. The garage felt impossibly still. All of the anger that you had been carrying for days had finally come out, and now you felt exhausted.

“I didn’t know all of this,” he said quietly.

“That’s kind of the point.”

Logan looked away briefly, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

“I didn’t realize it was this bad.”

You stared at him. Part of you wanted to laugh, and another part of you wanted to cry. Instead, you just shook your head.

“How could you?” you asked.

Logan’s eyes snapped back to yours. The question clearly caught him off guard.

“You’ve been so busy trying to survive every day that I don’t think you’ve noticed anything else.”

The words weren’t meant to be cruel. Logan wanted to argue; you could see it, his instinctive defensiveness. However, he stopped. Maybe he was finally hearing you.

“I spend half of my time missing you. I miss you all the time,” you whispered. The words hit him exactly where you’d expected them to.

Once you started talking, you couldn’t stop.

“I miss talking to you. I miss hanging out with you. I miss being excited to tell you things. I miss sitting next to you without wondering if you’re actually listening.”

You saw him flinch and the guilt arrive. Logan took a slow breath.

“I’m right here.”

The words hung between them, and you closed your eyes. It was the thing you’d been terrified he would say, because you knew he believed it. You knew he meant it.

You felt tears prick behind your eyes.

“I’m saying you’re not.”

You didn’t want to hurt him. You loved him. You loved him so much. If you didn’t love him with your entire heart, none of this would matter.

“You think this is about being late today?” you wiped quickly at her eyes, “I don’t care that you’re late.”

That lie lasted half a second.

“Okay, I care a little,” you said, a small laugh escaping you, “That’s not why we’re here.”

Logan looked exhausted emotionally, like the weight of the conversation was finally settling onto his shoulders.

You took a shaky breath and then said the thing you’d been carrying for weeks. The thing you’d been terrified to admit.

“Why am I always the thing that gets forgotten?”

Just like that, everything went silent. Logan didn’t have an answer, at least not a real one. Not one that would make any of this hurt less. You watched John Logan stand there completely speechless.

The question had been sitting somewhere deep in your chest for weeks, gathering weight every time you waited for a text that never came, or every time you watched Logan get pulled away by something else. Now it was out in the open.

Eventually, Logan looked away first. He dragged a hand through his hair and turned toward the workbench behind you, bracing both palms against the metal surface.

“I don’t forget you.”

His voice was quieter now.

“You make it sound like I don’t care about you, Y/N.”

You hated that you were hurting him. You still wanted to walk across the garage and wrap your arms around him.

“I’m not saying you don’t care. I’m just tired of being understanding all the time. I’m tired of always making excuses.”

“But it’s true.”

“I know it’s true, John. I know every reason. I’ve memorized them.”

“So what? What do you want from me?” he asked quietly.

You didn’t want flowers, or more texts, or grand gestures. You just wanted him back. Not the version everyone else got, just Logan. You wanted the guy who would sit up with you until two in the morning, talking about absolutely nothing. You wanted their dinner nights back at the diner.

“I know I’ve screwed things up. I know I’ve been distracted,” he said, his voice rising slightly, “You think I wanted to forget movie night?”

You looked at him, tears welling up in your eyes again.

“I feel like I’m standing here getting ripped apart over things I already know I fucked up.”

“John—”

“I don’t know how to fix this.”

“You’re going to keep being busy. The scouts aren’t going to go away. I just feel you disappearing. I don’t know what happens now,” you whispered.

The truth was you loved each other, and you were both hurting. Neither of you knew how to bridge the distance that had grown between you.

Logan pushed away from the workbench and made his way a little closer to you.

“I kept telling myself it was temporary, and that I’d get back to normal. Then the next week came, and it was still busy.” He said.

He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated.

“Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling like your girlfriend,” you said honestly, “I started feeling like somebody trying to squeeze into whatever space was left.”

“I never wanted you to feel that way,” he said honestly, more sad than anything. That was the tragedy of it. Not once had you thought that he was purposely trying to push you away.

The painful part was that intentions weren’t enough anymore. Some people could love each other completely and still end up here. What scared you most was standing here in the garage, neither of you knew how to make it better.

You wiped the tears from your eyes. Later, when you thought back on the conversation, the details blurred together. The argument itself remained painfully sharp in your memory, every word etched into your mind with clarity, but the ending felt softer somehow.

Maybe because neither of you had wanted it; maybe because there wasn’t a villain. Maybe because you were both standing there, realizing that love wasn’t fixing the problem anymore.

The sun had disappeared by the time you looked at your phone. The sight of the time startled you; you’d been talking for nearly two hours. Both of you just felt exhausted.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. Then, you picked up your bag from the workbench. The movement felt small, but it changed everything. Logan’s eyes dropped to the bag in your hand, and something shifted in his expression. Sadness. As though he knew what the gesture meant.

“I should go.”

Logan nodded once; the motion was barely visible. You thought he might tell you to stay. Instead, he looked down at the floor and shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants. It was a familiar gesture, one you’d seen a hundred times. Only this time, he looked completely defeated.

“Okay.”

That was all he said. No promises. No speech. No desperate attempt to fix everything before you reached the door. A lot of things were said tonight, and you both needed time to process them.

You took a few steps toward the open bay door and then stopped. Despite everything, you couldn’t just leave, not like this. Not after all of this.

When you turned back, Logan was exactly where you’d left him. He was standing beside the workbench, watching you. The distance between you wasn’t very far; it was maybe twenty feet.

“I love you.”

The words slipped out of your mouth before you could stop them. Logan’s eyes closed briefly. When he opened them again, you could see exactly how much those words had cost him, because he looked devastated all over again.

“I love you, too.”

His voice sounded rough, but his answer came immediately and without hesitation. You nodded lightly before forcing yourself to turn around.

The evening air felt cooler than you expected when you stepped outside. You reached your car and opened the door. You looked back one last time, and Logan was still standing in the garage, exactly where you’d left him. The sight lodged itself painfully in your chest, because he looked alone. The same way you’d felt for weeks.

The first Wednesday it happened, you didn’t think much of it.

You were sitting in the corner of Briar University’s local coffee shop, The Bean, with a lukewarm vanilla latte and a marketing paper that you’d been pretending to write for almost forty minutes. Outside, snow drifted lazily past the windows, coating the campus in the kind of postcard-esque winter scene that everyone seemed to love.

You’d always hated winter. It always made everything feel slower and gave you too much time to think.

Three months had passed since your breakup, but your thoughts still found ways to circle back to it when you were least expecting it. Whether it was a song in a grocery store, a familiar article of clothing, or a couple holding hands while crossing the quad.

The worst part wasn’t that you missed him. No, you broke up for a reason. You missed the version of yourself who had trusted him.

You were re-reading the same sentence for the fourth time on your laptop screen when a shadow fell across your table.

“That paper must be fascinating.”

A deep voice pulled you from your thoughts. You glanced up and immediately wished you hadn’t.

John Logan stood beside your table, one hand wrapped around a coffee cup and the other tucked into the pocket of his tan Carhartt jacket. His dark brown hair was damp from the snow outside, making it curl more. There was a grin on his face that looked entirely too good for a Wednesday afternoon.

You’d seen him around campus before, obviously. You’d maybe passed by him a few times or walked past him in the hallways. Everyone had. It was hard not to notice one of Briar’s star hockey players. What you hadn’t expected was for him to know who you were or to be looking directly at you.

You blinked, “Excuse me?”

His grin widened, “I said that paper must be fascinating.”

He pointed at your laptop, “You’ve been staring at the same paragraph for at least five minutes.”

You stared at him, then at your laptop, and then back at him.

“You’ve been watching me?”

He let out a soft laugh, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, “Yeah, that sounded creepier than it did in my head.”

Despite the last few months, and the exhaustion that had settled permanently beneath your skin these last few months, a laugh escaped before you could stop it.

For a moment, Logan looked pleased with himself, as though making you laugh had been the entire point of interrupting whatever miserable battle you were losing with your paper.

Then he glanced around the crowded coffee shop.

“Mind if I sit?” he asked.

You followed his gaze. Every table was occupied. Students crowded the counters waiting for dinks, while others perched along the window ledges with laptops balanced on their knees.

You looked back at him, “I guess.”

“Wow. Enthusiastic.”

“You caught me on a good day.”

His mouth twitched, “Glad to hear it.”

Before you could change your mind, he slid into the chair across from you. For a few seconds, neither of you spoke. You tried to return your attention to your paper, but you failed. John Logan was sitting across from you.

He was close enough that you could see the faint stubble along his jaw, the mole that sat on the side of his nose, the small scar near his chin, and the way his brown eyes had flecks of amber.

You were close enough to realize he was somehow even more attractive up close, which was deeply inconvenient.

“So,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee, “are you actually writing that paper, or are you just fighting with it?”

“What?”

“For the last few minutes, you’ve stared at the screen, typed a few words, angrily slammed on the delete button, and then stared at the screen more.”

You narrowed your eyes, “You really were watching me.”

“I had a prime people-watching location.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

His answer came far too easily and far too confidently. Annoyingly, he was right. You didn’t know him well enough to hate him. You knew almost nothing about him beyond what everyone else at Briar knew.

He was a star hockey player. He was a junior. He was one of the infamous Briar Hockey House residents, alongside Garrett Graham, Dean Di Laurentis, and John Tucker. He was good-looking enough that entire groups of girls seemed to lose basic brain function whenever he walked into a room.

He was the kind of guy you normally would avoid. Not because he seemed arrogant, actually, that was the problem. Every interaction you ever heard about Logan suggested he was genuinely a nice guy. After the year you’d had, nice was somehow more dangerous. Nice made you lower your guard; it made you trust people. You’d already seen how that ended.

“So, what’s the class?” he asked.

You blinked, realizing you had drifted off entirely.

“Marketing.”

“Oof,” he said.

You laughed, “It’s not as bad as it seems.”

“I’ll take your word for that.”

You laughed again, not forced. It was real. The sound felt strange after so many months spent feeling like every smile required effort. Logan seemed to notice, and something softened in his expression.

It wasn’t pity, thank God. You’d gotten enough of that. Most people at Briar knew what had happened. They knew your boyfriend had cheated, and they knew you’d found out in the worst possible way – Fifth Line made sure of that. Everyone knew you’d spent the rest of the semester trying to pretend it hadn’t shattered your confidence.

Some people had offered sympathy, while others offered unsolicited advice. Logan hadn’t done any of those.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “I think this is the first time we’ve actually talked.”

“If you don’t count you holding a door open for me once,” you joked.

Logan laughed, “Does that count?”

“It was technically a conversation.”

“Was it?” he asked.

“You said, ‘after you.’”

His grin widened, “Okay, fair.”

Your conversation drifted from classes to professors, from hockey to the snow that was falling outside. At some point, you completely forgot about your paper. You had stopped watching the clock.

When you finally glanced toward the windows again, the sky was starting to get darker. You finally looked at your watch, and your eyes widened.

“I should go,” you said.

Logan looked equally surprised as he looked at his phone.

“Damn,” he said, “I didn’t realize we’d been here that long.”

The casual honesty in his voice caught you off guard. Spending an hour talking to you had been as effortless for him as it had somehow become for you, apparently.

You had started to get up and gather your things. Logan stood at the same time.

“Are you here every Wednesday?” he asked.

The question was casual, almost too casual. It’s like something was hidden underneath it.

You slung your bag over your shoulder.

“Maybe,” you said.

He groaned, “That’s not an answer.”

“I know.”

“You gonna make me wait a whole week to find out?”

You smiled, “Maybe.”

His eyes narrowed playfully, and then he pointed at you.

“I don’t like how much you enjoy annoying me.”

The smile that spread across your face felt easier than it had in a very long time. As you walked out into the snowy evening, leaving Logan standing in the coffee shop shaking his head at you, you realized that for the first time in months, you’d spent an entire hour without thinking about your ex. Somehow, that felt like the biggest thing of all.

--

The following Wednesday, you told yourself you weren’t going back because of Logan. You repeated it three separate times while getting ready for class that morning. You said it a fourth time while walking across campus. A fifth time, when you pushed open the door to the coffee shop and felt your gaze immediately drift toward the corner table.

You weren’t there because of Logan. You were there because the coffee was decent, the chairs were comfortable, and it was a better atmosphere for getting work done than the library, which sometimes felt like a prison.

The fact that Logan was already sitting at the table with two drinks in front of him was completely irrelevant. His face brightened the second he spotted you. Embarrassingly, you felt yours do the same.

“You’re late.”

You glanced at the clock mounted behind the counter. It was 4:03.

“You’ve been tracking my arrival time?” you asked him.

“I’ve been abandoned before.”

You laughed as you slid into the chair across from him, “Three minutes isn’t abandonment.”

“It starts with three minutes.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I've been told that.”

He pushed one of the drinks towards you: a vanilla latte, your usual order.

“You got this for me?” you asked.

Logan shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. There was something slightly uncertain in his expression now, though, like he wasn’t entirely sure how you’d react.

“It’s what you ordered last time.”

“You remembered?”

The second the words left your mouth, you wanted them back. Logan’s grin returned.

“Don’t sound so shocked.”

You wrapped both hands around the warm cup, “Thank you. Most people don’t remember things like that.”

His gaze lingered on you for a second longer than necessary.

“Maybe they should,” he said.

Something shifted in you. Small, barely noticeable, but there. It stayed with you for the rest of the afternoon.

--

After that, Wednesdays became a routine. Before either of you acknowledged it, they became something you both looked forward to.

It wasn’t just the coffee shop anymore. Sometimes you’d leave together afterward and walk across campus. Sometimes you’d sit outside if the weather cooperated. Sometimes the conversation lasted for forty-five minutes, and sometimes it lasted hours.

The strange part was how easy all of it felt. With Logan, there was never any pressure to be entertaining or clever. There was never a moment when you felt like you had to earn his attention. He simply seemed happy to be there and happy to talk to you.

The realization of that should have made you suspicious. Instead, it made you feel comfortable, which was worse. Comfort had become dangerous; comfort led to attachment. Then, attachment led to heartbreak. You knew that better than anyone.

Still, you found yourself looking for him. You noticed when he got a haircut. You learned the difference between his genuinely happy smile and the fake one he used when professors annoyed him. You learned he drank an absurd amount of coffee during the hockey season. You learned that whenever he laughed really hard, he leaned back in his chair like he physically couldn’t contain it.

Somewhere, along the way and without your permission, John Logan became your favorite part of the week.

--

You didn’t realize you were in trouble until the third period of the Briar Hawks hockey game. Up until that point, the night had felt completely normal.

You came to the hockey game with a group of friends from your communications class. Since you hadn’t had plans anyway, you’d agreed to go with them if you could bring your roommate. At least, that was what you’d told everyone.

The truth was a little more embarrassing. The truth was, you’d started checking Briar’s hockey schedule lately, wondering when the next game was so you could go. Wondering if he’d text you afterward about something ridiculous one of his teammates had done in the locker room. Normal things. At least, that’s what you’d been telling yourself.

The arena was loud enough that the concrete beneath your feet seemed to vibrate. Briar had been tied with Eastwood for most of the game, and every big hit sent another wave of noise crashing through the crowd.

You’d been paying attention. At some point during the game, you’d realized something concerning. Every time Logan was on the ice, your attention followed him. Not the puck, or the rest of the game, but him. Your gaze tracked him across the ice without you meaning for it to.

You noticed when he was resting on the bench, laughing at something one of his teammates said, or when he shoved Garrett after a missed opportunity. You noticed the way he skated effortlessly and confidently in a way that made everything look easy.

It wasn’t until your roommate, Alyssa, elbowed you that you realized you’d missed nearly an entire shift.

“You know,” she shouted over the crowd, “there are other players on the team.”

You immediately looked away from the ice, “What?”

Her grin was knowing. Heat rushed to your face.

“Shut up,” you said to her.

Alyssa laughed and turned her attention back toward the game. Ultimately, the damage was done because now you were aware of it. Aware of how often your eyes drifted toward number twenty-two. Aware of how quickly you spotted him in a crowd, and how much your mood seemed to improve whenever he appeared.

The realization sat heavily in your stomach for the rest of the game. You tried to ignore it, but you failed spectacularly.

 Then, Briar scored. The arena erupted, and people surged to their feet around you. The sound was deafening. You stood too, cheering with everyone else as the team swarmed together near the boards.

Your eyes found Logan immediately, of course they did. For one brief, impossible second, his found yours. Thousands of people filled the arena, yet somehow, his gaze landed directly on you. A grin spread across his face immediately. Your heart fluttered.

This wasn’t a crush developing; it had already developed. Somewhere between Wednesday coffees and late afternoon conversations, somewhere between his terrible jokes and the way he always remembered your drink order, you’d crossed a line without noticing.

You liked him. Really liked him. Not in the casual, ‘he’s attractive and fun to talk to’ way. You liked him in the dangerous way. The kind that made your chest ache when he smiled, or the way you looked for him in crowded rooms. It was the kind that left you wondering whether he thought about you when you weren’t around.

Fear settled in immediately after this realization. The last time you’d liked someone this much, you’d trusted him completely. Look how that ended.

--

The problem was that once you noticed it, you couldn’t un-notice it. For the rest of that weekend, he seemed to be everywhere. Not just physically, but in your head.

You’d be halfway through reading an article for class before realizing that you’d spent the last five minutes wondering whether the team had won their away game on Saturday night.

You’d walk past the athletic center on the way back to your dorm from the library and automatically glance toward the doors, as if there were any logical reason he’d happen to be walking out at that exact moment.

By Sunday evening, you were thoroughly annoyed with yourself.

“You’ve got that look again.”

You glanced up from your laptop to find Alyssa sprawled across her bed, textbook open but clearly ignored.

“What look?”

“The one where you’re pretending to study while actually thinking about something else.”

You looked back down at your screen, “I’m studying.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I am.”

“Then why have you been staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes?”

Because the paragraph was about media ethics, and somehow your brain decided that media reminded you of hockey, which reminded you of Logan, which started an entirely different train of thought.

“You like Logan, don’t you?” she said loudly.

“Can you lower your voice?”

“No.”

You buried your face in your hands. The second it was said out loud, it became real. Real was dangerous. Having feelings for someone was one thing, but believing those feelings might actually lead somewhere was another. The latter required hope, and hope required vulnerability. Vulnerability had not worked out for you well the last time.

“Have you considered that maybe he likes you too?”

You laughed. It felt impossible. Logan liked everyone, and everyone liked him. That was part of what made him Logan. He remembered details about people, he asked questions, and he listened when people spoke. Those weren’t necessarily signs of romantic interest. They were signs of being a decent human being.

--

By the time Wednesday arrived, you had successfully worked yourself into a state of nervous anticipation that felt ridiculous.

Nothing had changed; Logan didn’t know about your internal crisis. As far as he was concerned, this was just another Wednesday. It was just the same old coffee shop, the same old table.

Only now, every time you imagined seeing him, your stomach insisted on performing gymnastics. You arrived a few minutes later than usual.

The coffee shop was busy again, and the familiar scent of espresso and baked goods hung in the air as students crowded around the tables. Your gaze drifted toward your corner table, and Logan was already there.

The sight of him should not have caused the reaction that it did, and yet, there it was. He looked up from his phone just as you walked in.

The grin that spread across his face was immediate, like he’d been waiting for you.

“There she is,” he said.

The simple greeting shouldn’t have affected you, but your brain had apparently become determined to assign meaning to everything he said.

You slid into the chair across from him. “Hi.”

He studied you for a second, and then his eyebrows lifted.

“Why do you look nervous?”

Shit.

“What?”

“You look nervous,” he said.

You nearly knocked over the coffee he had gotten you, “I do not.”

“You do, too.”

His grin widened, “Are you about to tell me you’ve been secretly committing crimes?”

You laughed, the tension in your shoulders easing slightly, “That’s oddly specific.”

“So that’s a no on the crimes?”

“John.”

“I’m just trying to narrow down the possibilities.”

The conversation flowed after that, slipping into its usual rhythm so naturally that it almost made you forget the panic that had followed you into the coffee shop. Almost. Every once in a while, you’d catch him looking at you.

Not in a strange way, but in a way that seemed like he genuinely enjoyed talking to you, and he was paying attention. Every time it happened, your heart fluttered in your chest. It felt good. Too good.

By the time an hour had passed, you’d almost convinced yourself you were imagining things. Then, a girl approached the table.

She was tall, pretty, and confident. The type of girl who never seemed awkward about anything. She stopped by Logan and touched his shoulder casually.

“Hey.”

Logan looked up, his expression brightening in recognition.

“Oh, hey.”

Something unpleasant immediately settled into your stomach. The girl laughed at something he said. She stayed for several minutes, chatting comfortably while you sat there pretending to work on your laptop. The entire interaction was perfectly normal. It seemed friendly; harmless. No reason whatsoever for the strange feeling that had suddenly appeared beneath your ribs.

Yet, when she finally walked away, you realized you were gripping your coffee cup far harder than necessary. You hated the immediate jealousy. The insecurity. You hated how quickly your mind had started comparing.

After your breakup, you’d spent months rebuilding pieces of your confidence that someone else had carelessly broken. The last thing you wanted to start measuring was your worth against other women again. Unfortunately, logic had very little influence over emotions.

“You okay?”

Logan’s voice pulled you from your thoughts. You looked up at him and noticed his expression had changed.

The easy smile was gone, replaced by something a little more concerned and attentive. Suddenly, you realized he was watching you closely, like he’d noticed the shift.

You forced a smile, “Yeah, why?”

His gaze lingered on you for another second. Long enough that you worried he might call your bluff. Eventually, he leaned back in his chair.

“No reason.”

The look in his eyes said he didn’t believe you, not even a little.

The conversation recovered after that, at least on the surface.

Logan launched into a story about Tucker setting a turkey on fire because he didn’t dry it before deep frying it, and you laughed in all of the right places. You teased him when he admitted that the entire team stood around watching instead of helping. He defended it, claiming that hockey players weren’t known for their emergency response skills.

From the outside, everything probably looked exactly the same. The problem was that now there was something sitting between you. Not something Logan had done, or even something he’d said. Just the knowledge that you’d been trying to ignore, which was that you cared. Far more than you should.

When the two of you finally left the coffee shop, the late afternoon sun was already sinking behind the buildings on campus, casting long shadows across the walkways.

You adjusted the strap of your bag as you stepped outside.

“Walk you back?” Logan asked.

The offer was casual, like it always was. If he was treating this like friendship, then you needed to start doing the same before you got yourself hurt again.

“I actually have somewhere to be,” you said. The lie slipped out before you could stop it, and guilt immediately followed.

Logan looked surprised for a second, then he nodded.

“Oh. Okay.”

You hated how quickly disappointment flashed across his face, and you hated it even more because you almost changed your mind. If you walked back to your dorm with him, you’d spend the entire time wondering whether his hand would brush yours, or whether he’d smile. You’d wonder whether he’d look at you the way he’d looked at that girl, and you couldn’t do that to yourself.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.”

His smile returned, but it wasn’t quite as easy as before.

The entire walk back to your dorm felt awful. By the time you made it back, you were annoyed with yourself. Avoiding Logan wasn’t solving anything; it wasn’t going to make your feelings disappear.

Your roommate took one look at you and immediately frowned, “What happened?”

You tossed your bag onto your desk.

“Nothing,” you said.

She looked at you, “You have your sad face on.”

You collapsed onto your bed. For several seconds, you stared at the ceiling.

“What if I like him more than he likes me?” You asked.

Alyssa set her book down, “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The word came out smaller than you intended. That was the real fear, wasn’t it? Not that you liked Logan. It was the fear that you’d misread everything and you could get hurt again. That all of those conversations had meant more to you than they had to him.

Alyssa was quiet for a moment.

“Do you think he likes spending time with you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you think he goes out of his way to see you?”

You thought about the coffee every week, the texts, the way he’d somehow remember every tiny detail you ever mentioned.

“Maybe.”

She gave you a look.

“That’s not a maybe.”

You stared at the ceiling again. The truth was, you didn’t know, and not knowing felt unbearable.

--

The next week was worse.

Not because anything happened, because nothing did.

Logan had another series of away games that week, and suddenly the routine you’d become accustomed to had disappeared.

There were no random texts, no Wednesday coffee, no easy conversations. You quietly realized just how much space he’d taken up in your life.

You hated that realization, mostly because it made you sound pathetic. You’d survived a breakup and being cheated on. Surely, you could survive one week without talking to a hockey player.

Apparently not.

By Thursday afternoon, you’d checked your phone so many times that you were beginning to annoy yourself. Which is why you almost dropped it when a text finally appeared.

Logan: tell me why Dean just tried to convince the bus driver to stop at a petting zoo

A laugh escaped before you could stop it.

You: please tell me this isn’t a joke

Logan: I genuinely wish it was

You: did it work?

Logan: shockingly, no

You laughed again, and suddenly the entire miserable week felt a little less miserable. The conversation continued for nearly an hour; nothing important, nothing serious. Just messages back and forth that somehow made the distance disappear.

At one point, you found yourself curled up on your bed, smiling at your phone like an idiot. The realization hit halfway through typing a response.

You were in love with him.

In love with him enough that hearing from him changed your entire mood. That a text from him could make your day better. That the idea of losing even his friendship scared you. Shit.

By the time you finally fell asleep that night, there was one question you couldn’t stop asking yourself.

You woke up tangled in Logan’s arms in his room, with the sunlight filtering through the blinds, and for a little while, the fear from the night before felt stupid.

Logan’s alarm went off, and he turned over and buried his head into your neck after hitting snooze.

“Five more minutes.”

You laughed softly, “You have to get up, babe.”

A groan vibrated against your skin. For a few precious minutes, things felt normal again. Maybe he really was just tired, and this wasn’t becoming something bigger.

By the time you both finally got dressed, Logan looked more awake than the night before. He still had limited sleep, but he looked functional.

He packed his hockey bag up, complete with a change of clothes for the media breakfast he had that morning.

“What are you going to do this morning?” he asked you.

“I have to go back to my dorm and do some studying.”

He nodded before leaning down to kiss you.

“See you tonight? Maybe we can go to Malone’s?”

The question settled warmly into your chest.

“Yeah. Text me.”

“I will,” he said, stealing one more kiss before he was out the door.

--

The first few hours passed normally. You went home and started studying before grabbing lunch with a friend at a small café near campus. You answered emails, stopped by the library, and then threw in a load of laundry.

Now and then, you checked your phone. Every time your screen lit up with a new notification, you glanced down automatically.

At around three, you sent him a picture of a terrible motivational poster hanging near the library.

You: This feels threatening

There was no response. It wasn’t out of the ordinary; he was busy, you knew that.

At five, you texted him again.

You: Survived studying statistics

Still nothing. Again, not too weird. Maybe he’s sleeping.

You refused to become one of those girlfriends who spiraled because your boyfriend took a few hours to text back. You had a life, you were fine.

At seven thirty, you started checking your phone more often. Not obsessively, just… more. By eight, you’d finished dinner. By eight thirty, you finally got a text. Relief hit you so fast that it embarrassed you. Then, you opened it.

Logan: Sorry. Crazy day. Hope studying was okay.

You smiled at the screen. See? Everything was fine. You were just being ridiculous.

You: It was, still alive. You?

The three dots bubble appeared, disappeared, and then appeared again.

Logan: exhausted lol talk later?

You hesitated. Something about the message felt rushed.

You typed back.

You: of course. Love you

A minute passed, and then he wrote back.

Logan: love you too

That should’ve been enough.

--

At ten thirty, you were lying in your bed, looking at Instagram on your phone, having just brushed your teeth and changed into some pajamas.

You noticed that Dean had a new Instagram story.  

You almost swiped past it, but then you looked at it. It was from Malone’s; there was music, crowded tables, and the hockey team packed into their usual booth. Dean filmed himself singing terribly as he turned the camera toward Garrett, who flipped him off. Tucker was laughing, and there, for maybe two seconds, was a shot of Logan.

He was sitting in the corner booth, smiling at something one of the other hockey players said as he sat next to him. A beer was in his hand, and he looked completely unaware he was being filmed.

You stared at the screen. Once, and then again, and then again for a third time.

“Maybe we can go to Malone’s?” you remembered.

Those were his words from this morning. You had thought that he had just skipped everything tonight and gone home to sleep, but it was just you who had the absence of any invitation.

You sat on the edge of your bed, your phone still in your hand. You weren’t angry, you were… confused. He hadn’t chosen the team over you; you knew that. If you’d texted him and asked to come, he would’ve said yes immediately. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he hadn’t thought about it. At least, not enough to invite you, or enough to text and ask you.

You stared at Dean’s story again as the video looped. Logan laughing, Dean yelling, the team celebrating. A knot tightened slowly in your chest.

Your phone buzzed suddenly, and you jumped. It was him.

Logan: just got home, gonna crash. Love you

You stared at the message and then at Dean’s story. You looked at the timestamp on Dean’s story, which said twelve minutes ago.

You didn’t think he was lying, but, with everything going on, you just didn’t think he remembered. You didn’t think he realized you would’ve gone, or that anything was wrong, because he forgot.

You swallowed hard before typing back.

You: love you too. Hope you sleep well

The three dots appeared instantly and then vanished. He sent you back a heart emoji. You set your phone down, the room feeling strangely quiet.

You were trying to decide why this hurt so much. Of course, you didn’t have to go everywhere and do everything with him. It wasn’t Malone’s. It wasn’t the hockey team; it wasn’t being left out. It was the fact that he had asked to see you earlier in the day, even mentioning Malone’s, and then didn’t even ask you to go later. It was the promise of plans without the follow-through. It was that he made you feel like he’d forgotten you. Not intentionally, not cruelly, just… forgotten. Somehow, that felt worse to you than if he’d done it on purpose. Because if it were intentional, you could fight about it. If it was intentional, you could feel angry without feeling guilty. This? This was Logan getting pulled in a million directions that eventually something slipped his mind, and that one thing had unfortunately been you this time.

What scared you the most was how quickly you’d forgiven it. A small voice in the back of your head kept whispering, ‘If this is the first thing he forgot, what happens when there are more?’

--

You told yourself not to make it weird. That became the goal. Not a ‘don’t be hurt’, but a ‘don’t make it weird’ message to yourself. Logan forgetting to invite you to Malone’s wasn’t a crime; it wasn’t betrayal. It was just a mistake, one exhausted decision he probably didn’t even remember making.

So when you saw him Monday afternoon outside the student center, you smiled. For a second, everything felt normal. Logan spotted you from halfway across the quad, his face lighting up. He crossed the grass without hesitation, and wrapped an arm around your waist, and kissed you.

“Hey,” he said to you.

“Hey.”

His hoodie sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, exposing tan forearms. His hair was slightly messy, and there were traces of dark circles under his eyes. He still looked happy to see you, which made things more confusing.

“You eating lunch?” he asked you.

You nearly laughed. Same Logan, there he was.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Good.”

His phone went off, and he checked the screen, typing something before looking back at you.

“Sorry,” he apologized, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

“How’s your day?” he asked you, as he linked their hands.

“Good.”

“Yeah?” he said, raising one eyebrow.

You nodded.

Then, before you could stop yourself, you asked, “How was Malone’s?”

The question slipped out casually enough, at least you hoped it did. Logan froze, like, actually froze.

“Oh.”

Your stomach dropped, because immediately he knew.

“Y/N.”

There it was, the guilt. It was fast. He ran a hand through his hair.

“Shit.”

“It’s fine.”

“It isn’t.”

People walked around them across the quad. Students were laughing, and music was playing somewhere near the center of the quad.

“I completely forgot.”

You forced a smile, “I figured.”

His face somehow got worse because, apparently, hearing that hurt too.

“Coach pulled us into something after practice, and then everyone ended up at Malone’s and—”

He stopped because the explanation didn’t matter. The problem wasn’t Malone’s. The problem was exactly what he’d already admitted: he forgot.

“I’m sorry.”

You shrugged lightly, “It’s okay.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed, “You’re upset.”

“No,” you lied.

Logan immediately recognized it, “Y/N.”

“It’s really okay.”

And mostly it was, that was the frustrating part. You understood, you did. Which somehow made it harder to explain why it still bothered you. Logan stepped closer to you, his hand settling on your waist.

“I’m really sorry.”

You nodded once and then leaned up and kissed him briefly. Not because everything felt fixed, but because you didn’t want to do this here.

--

The next few days passed strangely. They weren’t bad, they were just… off. Like every interaction had a tiny crack running through it now.

On Wednesday afternoon, you sat with Logan outside the business building while he worked through scouting reports on his laptop.

You were halfway through telling him about one of your professors' arguments with another student.

“It was so weird, it was like he had this grudge against the student—”

Logan’s phone buzzed. He looked down automatically, and you stopped talking. You waited while he typed a quick response. He looked back up at you, and there was a beat of silence.

“Sorry, what happened?”

The words hit harder than they should have. Not because he meant anything by them, but because you realized you’d started expecting them.

“Nothing.”

“Y/N.”

“It’s fine.”

Logan frowned. You hated that look, the confused one. He genuinely didn’t understand why these moments felt bigger than they were. To him, it was one interruption. To you, it was becoming a pattern.

--

Friday night was worse. Not because of anything Logan did, but more because of what he didn’t do. On that Wednesday night, he’d invited you over for a movie night on Friday at the boys’ house.

It was nothing special, just pizza, the boys, Hannah, and Allie. They all wanted to watch this terrible action movie.

You showed up at the house that night, carrying snacks. You had Logan’s favorite candy and a few other things you thought everyone would like.

You knocked on the door, and Dean answered. He blinked, a confused look on his face as he looked at you.

“What are you doing here?” he asked you. It wasn’t mean, he was just puzzled.

You laughed, “What?”

Dean frowned, “No, seriously.”

Your smile slipped slightly. “Movie night?”

Confusion crossed his face. Then realization took over, and then horror.

“Oh.”

Your stomach dropped, because it was in that moment that Dean immediately looked like he wanted to throw himself off a bridge.

“Oh no.”

“Dean.”

“Oh no.”

“Dean,” you said louder.

He physically winced.

“Logan didn’t text you?”

The answer sat between them before you even spoke. No. He hadn’t.

“Coach asked him to stay after practice for a meeting.”

“But why him and not the rest of you?”

“I think it was something about a scout that’s interested in him.”

Silence. Dean rubbed a hand down his face.

“I can’t believe he forgot.”

You took a deep breath and nodded. That was exactly what hurt; You could believe he did. A few months ago, he would’ve remembered. Six weeks ago, he would’ve texted. A month ago, he would’ve called. Now? Now, he forgot. Again.

Dean looked genuinely upset on Logan’s behalf.

“He’s been a disaster lately.”

You managed a small smile, “It’s okay.”

Dean stared at you, then quietly said, “No, it’s not.”

For the first time, someone else saw it too.

Dean ended up making you stay anyway. Mostly because he looked like he would personally fight Logan if you left.

“You’re already here,” he said.

“Dean—”

“We have pizza.”

“That’s not a compelling argument.”

“We have good pizza.”

You laughed softly, and that seemed to relax him slightly.

“See? Fixed.”

“Nothing was broken.”

Dean gave you a look that clearly said, ‘I’m not stupid.’ Unfortunately, Dean was far more observant than most people gave him credit for.

The house was unusually quiet without Logan there, or maybe you are just so used to Logan’s presence being so big in your life.

Garrett sat on the couch, working on something for class and waiting for Hannah, while Tucker was in the kitchen making sure there was enough ice for all of the drinks. This was normal for all of the boys; it was comfortable.

Somehow, it made you miss Logan even more, because you could picture exactly where he’d be. He’d be curled into the corner of the couch, an arm around your shoulders, stealing your candy even though he had his own, and making fun of the movie that Dean chose.

About an hour later, your phone buzzed.

Logan: where are you?

You stared at the message, and then at Dean. Then, you looked back at the screen. He didn’t even know you were at his house.

You: your house.

The typing bubble appeared and disappeared quickly.

Logan: shit.

You closed your eyes briefly. Across the room, Dean visibly winced. Apparently, Logan had texted him, too. A second later, another message appeared.

Logan: Y/N I’m so sorry

Logan: I completely forgot

The words should have made you feel better, but they didn’t. This wasn’t crossed wires. This wasn’t miscommunication. He forgot, plain and simple. Again.

You: It’s okay

His response came immediately.

Logan: no it’s not

Logan: I’ll leave as soon as we’re done

You could picture it perfectly; Logan already exhausted, already stretched too thin… and now add guilt on top of it. The thought made you feel awful.

You: finish your meeting

Logan: love you

The message sat on your screen as you looked at it for a second.

You: love you too

The response felt honest. You still loved him exactly the same, maybe even more. Somehow, this made it hurt worse.

Logan showed up nearly two hours later. You heard the front door open before you saw him, and Dean looked at him from the couch.

“Nice of you to remember where you live,” Dean said, half joking, half pissed about what he’d done.

Logan ignored him, or tried to. His eyes found you immediately, and the second they did, guilt washed visibly across his face.

You suddenly wanted to take all of it back because he looked devastated.

“Hey,” he said, directed at only you. He dropped his hockey bag beside the door and crossed the room immediately. He stopped in front of you, like he wasn’t sure whether he deserved a hug.

You stood from the couch. The relief that crossed Logan’s face when you wrapped your arms around him nearly broke your heart. His arms tightened around you instantly.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured into your hair.

You closed your eyes; there it was again. It was the cycle you’d learn to expect: Forget, Apologize, Forgive. You were starting to hate it. It wasn’t because he wasn’t sincere; he was, every single time.

He pulled back slightly, running a hand over your jaw.

“I swear I remembered this morning,” he said to you.

You nodded, “I know.”

Logan studied your face carefully, like he was looking for signs that you were angrier than you claimed. Then, his phone buzzed, and the entire room went silent. Logan looked down automatically, and then seemed to realize what he’d done because he froze and then slowly lowered the phone.

Logan looked embarrassed. Garrett and Hannah looked away awkwardly, and Dean and Allie suddenly became very interested in what movie they were going to pick for everyone. Nobody said anything, and that made it worse.

Later, after the movie ended and everyone started drifting upstairs, Logan walked you to your car. The night air felt colder than it should have. Neither of them spoke immediately.

When they reached your car, he stopped. He stepped forward and kissed you. It was soft, careful, and almost cautious, like he was trying to fix something with affection. When he pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You nodded, “Okay.”

Normally, that would have been enough. You would have driven back to your dorm smiling. Instead, you watched as Logan walked back toward the house alone, and one thought kept repeating itself in your head: he keeps saying sorry, but nothing is actually changing.

You found yourself wondering whether love was enough to outrun whatever was happening to them.

--

On Saturday night, Malone’s was crowded, loud, and familiar in the way that it had become over the last few months. The hockey team occupied their usual booth. Dean was losing a game of darts that he insisted he was winning. Garrett was arguing with Tucker about a video game, and music blasted overhead from the speakers.

People drifted in and out of conversations, and everything looked normal. You sat beside Logan in the booth, your shoulder brushing his. His arm rested across the back of the seat behind you, his fingers occasionally grazing your back. From the outside, you probably looked exactly the same as you always did: happy, comfortable, and in love.

Logan checked his phone three times in the last ten minutes. Dean made his way back to the table, telling everyone some ridiculous story, and half of the table laughed. You laughed, too. A second later, you realized Logan hadn’t.

“Everything okay?” Garrett asked, who was sitting across from us.

Logan looked up, “Huh?”

Garrett nodded at him, “The phone.”

“Oh.”

Logan glanced down at it. “Yeah.”

A waitress dropped off their food, and everyone immediately started digging in. Everyone except for Logan, who left his burger untouched.

Without thinking, you nudged his arm lightly, “You’re not eating.”

Logan didn’t look up from his phone, “Mhmm.”

You waited.

“You should eat,” you said.

It was simple, something you’d said a hundred times before. Something he’d always bugged you about, too. The same thing he’d usually roll his eyes at. He’d maybe steal one of your fries, or maybe joke about how bossy you were.

Instead, he exhaled sharply.

“Y/N.”

His tone stopped you immediately. It wasn’t loud or cruel, just frustrated.

“Can we not do this right now?” he said sharply.

Silence. The words landed on the table like broken glass.

Dean stopped talking, looking between both of you. Garrett looked down. Tucker suddenly became very interested in his drink.

You just stared at him. Logan froze immediately afterward. You couldn’t stop staring at him. You’d never heard that tone directed at you before, not once. Not ever.

Suddenly, every forgotten text, every interrupted moment, every canceled plan, came rushing back at once.

The table remained painfully quiet. Dean and Garrett looked like they wanted to disappear. Logan finally looked at you.

You felt embarrassed; you felt dumb sitting there. You slid out of the booth quickly, the movement surprising you.

Logan looked up immediately.

“Where are you going?” Logan asked.

“I uh, I think I’m going to head home.”

His forehead creased.

“What?”

You grabbed your purse, feeling tears stinging the corner of your eyes.

“It’s getting late.”

The excuse sounded weak. You knew it, he knew it, and everyone at the table knew it.

“Y/N.”

You couldn’t look at him, too embarrassed. You’d been embarrassed that no one at the table could look at you. You’d been embarrassed by how hurt you were. You’d been embarrassed by how much you’d been carrying around without saying anything.

“I should go,” you reiterated.

Logan pushed himself upright; the confusion on his face looked genuine.

“I thought you were staying with me tonight?”

The words hit hard, because you had been. That had been the plan. Spend the night at his house, in his room. Spend Sunday morning together.

You said quietly, “Maybe it’s better if I don’t.”

The silence afterward felt enormous. Logan was stunned. Nobody said anything; not Dean, Garrett, or Tucker. The music kept playing, and people laughed at other tables. Glasses clinked, and the entire bar kept moving around them.

The first time Logan said it casually, you almost dropped your coffee.

“Love you, let’s go down for breakfast.”

It was simple, like it was thrown over his shoulder while pulling his hoodie on Friday morning. It was like the words hadn’t completely altered your brain chemistry.

You blinked once. A slow grin spread across his face.

“I have to get used to hearing that,” you said.

Logan laughed quietly and crossed the room toward you. The second he reached you, he leaned down and kissed you slowly.

“You’re cute when you panic,” he murmured against your mouth.

You rolled your eyes, and a laugh escaped him.

Logan kissed you one more time before grabbing his hockey bag from beside the dresser to bring downstairs.

“Make sure you eat lunch today,” he added.

You groaned immediately.

“You always ruin romantic moments by becoming aggressively maternal.”

“You forgot lunch twice this week,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Let’s go,” he said, as you grabbed your bag and went downstairs with him.

The kitchen at the boys’ house looked like a disaster.

You and Logan entered the kitchen and immediately got hit with the smell of coffee and burnt toast.

“How long before you all have to leave?”

“Five minutes.”

Garrett walked into the kitchen, also ready to go to practice.

“Coach texted, schedule changed,” Garrett said, grabbing a drink out of the refrigerator.

“How bad?” Logan asked.

“Scout meeting after practice.”

Dean groaned as he entered the kitchen, “Do NHL teams know boundaries?”

“No,” Logan answered honestly.

It was eight-thirty in the morning, and Logan already looked drained.

“I think the media thing got moved, too,” Logan told them.

“Today?” Garrett asked.

“Yeah,” Logan answered.

The boys finished grabbing what they needed as Logan slid his phone back into his pocket and looked at you.

“You got class at ten?”

You nodded and smiled while Logan leaned down to kiss your temple softly.

Then, Logan’s phone buzzed again. You saw his jaw tighten before he even checked the screen. He shoved the phone into his pocket harder than necessary.

“You okay?” you asked quietly.

Logan looked at you for a second before softening again.

“Yeah,” he said finally.

That was a lie.

It didn’t seem malicious or intentional, but just automatic now. You hated that you could tell the difference.

--

Campus was crowded after lunchtime. Students were sprawled across Briar’s quad in clusters while music drifted from somewhere near the Student Union and the sunlight warmed the brick walkways.

After practice, meetings, and classes, Logan met up with you in the quad. You walked together towards your afternoon class while Logan’s hand rested low against your back.

Every few feet, someone stopped him. The conversations ranged from “Big game tomorrow,” to “You think Boston’s scouting again?”

Logan handled every interaction perfectly with an easy smile and relaxed confidence. A group of girls near the student center openly stared while Logan talked to another hockey player. One whispered something to the others while glancing back at him.

You tried not to react, but you understood something you hadn’t fully before. Logan belonged a little bit to everyone here: the hockey team, the school, scouts, and fans. Everyone wanted something from him constantly, and somehow, he still kept trying to give you pieces of himself, too.

“You okay?” Logan asked as they continued to walk toward your class.

You forced a smile, “I’m fine.”

Logan didn’t look convinced. Then, without warning, he stopped walking completely, pulling you gently back toward him by the hand, and kissed you in the middle of the crowded sidewalk.

Warmth spread instantly through your chest. The girls who were once whispering about him looked visibly annoyed after. Logan’s mouth twitched slightly like he knew exactly what he’d done.

“You’re smug,” you informed him.

“A little.”

Before you could respond, his phone went off again. This time, you felt the tension return to his body. Logan checked the screen briefly and then sighed.

“What now?” you asked softly.

“Coach,” Logan answered.

“You need a nap,” you joked.

A quiet laugh escaped Logan.

“That sounds incredible, actually,” he said.

“Then why don’t you sleep?”

Logan looked down at you and shrugged, “Don’t really have the time lately.”

The answer stayed with you long after he kissed you goodbye outside of your lecture hall. Because, for the first time since falling in love with him, you started wondering what happened when someone stopped having room to breathe inside of their own life.

--

Saturday night, the Briar University Arena felt electric.

Students were packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the stands while music blasted through the speakers loud enough to shake the glass.

You sat wedged between Hannah and Allie, Garrett and Dean’s girlfriends, wearing a shirt with Logan’s number on it.

The lights dimmed briefly overhead, darkening the stands as the ice was illuminated. Then, the team skated onto the ice, and the crowd erupted instantly.

There he was, Logan.

You felt your chest tighten when you saw him. He looked different on the ice, sharper somehow, and untouchable. He was built for this environment in a way that almost intimidated you sometimes.

The crowd reacted to him and his teammates, cheering louder. Hannah pointed out a few men in suits near the glass, talking while watching the boys. They were scouts.

Pressure sat everywhere tonight; the game itself moved fast. Logan played like he was trying to outrun something. He was aggressive, focused, and relentless. You found yourself gripping the arms of your chair every shift he took.

Allie was screaming aggressively about defensive strategies next to you.

“That was literally interference!” she shouted at the referee.

“You say that every thirty seconds,” Hannah replied.

“Because the refs are corrupt.”

You and Hannah both laughed.

Halfway through the second period, Logan scored the first goal of the night. The arena exploded. Allie nearly tackled you and Hannah while students screamed around them loud enough to hurt their ears.

After being surrounded by his teammates, Logan looked up toward the stands. Toward you. Even from across the arena, you knew that he was looking for you first.

Hannah noticed, too, and a slow smile spread across her face.

“He always does that now,” she said casually.

“What?” you asked.

“Looks for you.”

Warmth flooded your chest instantly. You also felt a little bit of something else, too. Fear.

You realized that you mattered to him enough that he searched for you automatically in big moments like this now. That kind of love felt enormous. It felt terrifying.

The hallway outside the locker room buzzed with noise after the game. There were media, students, and scouts all lining the hallway.

Briar ended winning the game 3-1, advancing their season further. They were now the number one team in their division.

You leaned against the wall beside Hannah while Allie loudly explained hockey to someone who absolutely did not ask.

The locker room doors finally opened, and players filtered out gradually, laughing and shoving each other while reporters crowded nearby.

Then, he appeared.

His hair was damp, freshly showered. The second he saw you, his entire face changed. There was relief on his face, and it wasn’t subtle.

He crossed the hallway and headed straight toward you. His hands slid firmly around your waist and picked you up, kissing you hard enough to steal the air from your lungs. You laughed softly as the hallway blurred around you.

When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours.

“You were so good, baby,” you said to him.

He grinned, “I’m glad you were here.”

Before you could respond, someone called his name. The shift was immediate, as you watched frustration flash visibly across his face before he looked back at you apologetically.

You nodded at him to go, and he looked angry about being needed, but gave you another hug before heading back to the media area.

Logan disappeared into interviews for almost forty minutes after that. You tried pretending it didn’t bother you. You understood his role in the sport, how it was one of his main reasons for being at Briar. You wanted scouts to pay attention to him. Logan had scored tonight in an important game. He’s a big part of the team.

But, standing against the wall outside of the locker room while strangers kept stealing pieces of him started wearing on you anyway. You would steal looks at him, a charming smile on his face as he answered questions.

A few minutes later, he finally escaped the interviews and came down the hallway toward you again. The second he reached you, one hand settled at your waist automatically. Hannah, Garrett, Dean, and Allie also appeared next to you, the rest of the boys done with their commitments as well.

“Everyone’s going to Malone’s,” Logan said to you.

“Now?”

He nodded, “Apparently, alumni are there.”

Garrett groaned, “I hate the boosters.”

“Same,” Dean said.

“Tucker said he’d meet us there,” Garrett added, looking down at his phone.

You touched lightly at Logan’s wrist.

“You don’t have to go for long,” he said to you.

“I know. Let’s go,” you said as they all headed outside.

--

Malone’s was packed by the time the team arrived.

Music blasted through crowded speakers while Briar students packed across the bar, cheering every time another hockey player walked in. The second you all walked in, people started calling the boys’ names.

Logan kept one hand low against your back while navigating through the crowd toward the team’s usual tables. It’s like he was using you to ground himself.

Dean immediately sat down in a booth dramatically.

“Tonight, we celebrate athletic superiority!” Dean cheered, raising his hand in the air.

“You had one assist,” Garrett informed him, laughing.

“I was also the emotional leader.”

“That’s not a thing,” Tucker chimed in.

“Well, it should be!”

You laughed while Logan slid in beside you in the booth.

You touched his knee beneath the table, “You okay?”

He looked over at you, softening again.

“Yeah,” he murmured.

Lie.

A waitress dropped drinks onto the table while Tucker recounted Logan’s goal badly. You leaned against Logan’s side while the boys all argued loudly around them.

For a little while, things actually felt normal again. Logan relaxed gradually next to you, too. His arm stretched along the back of the booth behind your shoulders while you stole food off of his plate.

At one point, Dean and Allie disappeared, almost knocking down two random freshmen as they went to see another of their teammates. You laughed so hard at them that you snorted accidentally.

Logan looked over instantly, and for the first time all day, he smiled fully.

“You snorted,” he teased.

You covered your face immediately, “Oh my God.”

“That was adorable.”

“I’m leaving.”

Logan laughed and grabbed your wrist before you could move.

“You’re staying,” he said.

Warmth spread through your chest.

A group of alumni approached the table a few minutes later, and the easy, caregiving Logan disappeared again as his posture straightened.

One older man shook their hands.

“Hell of a game tonight,” he said, looking at Logan, Garrett, and Tucker.

“Thanks.”

“NHL’s gonna love you, kid,” he said, pointing at Logan.

Logan smiled politely, and finished answering the man’s questions. You noticed his fingers tightened slightly around the beer bottle in his hand. One of the alumni started asking him and Garrett about contracts and draft projections.

You watched Logan mentally disappear inch by inch during the conversation. Not enough for random strangers to know, but enough for you to notice. He was still charming, of course, but his eyes looked a little duller suddenly, his smile tighter.

As they left, Logan let out a deep breath.

“You okay?” you asked him again.

“You ask me that a lot now,” he stated.

“That’s because you look exhausted a lot now.”

The honesty landed softly between them.

“Sorry,” he said.

Your heart broke a little. He sounded genuine, like he felt guilty for being tired around you.

“You don’t have to apologize for being human, but I care about you and just want to make sure you’re okay,” you said.

Logan looked at you after that, really looked at you. Suddenly, you saw something vulnerable flicker across his face before he leaned forward and kissed you.

“I love you,” he said, pulling back and looking at you.

Heat rose to your face, “I love you, too.”

Dean dropped aggressively back into the booth, Allie laughing behind him, as they recounted a story about almost spilling beer on another customer across the bar.

Logan’s phone buzzed, and you knew that with it being late, it probably wasn’t good.

“Yeah?” Logan answered.

The noise of Malone’s swallowed most of the conversation, but you still caught pieces.

“Tomorrow morning?”

A pause.

“No, I understand.”

Another pause.

“Okay, Thanks.”

Logan hung up slowly.

“What’s up?” Dean asked immediately, pointing at him with a mozzarella stick.

“Film review moved earlier, we have some media breakfast after.”

Garrett, Dean, and Tucker looked horrified.

“What time?” Garrett asked.

“Seven.”

“It’s literally midnight,” Tucker said.

“Yeah.”

“We should probably leave,” Logan said, turning to you.

You nodded.

They slipped out of Malone’s just past midnight, the rest of the boys saying their goodbyes as well.

Cold air hit your face immediately as you got outside, and Logan grabbed your hand, intertwining your fingers as you headed toward his truck.

Logan opened the passenger side door for you before closing it behind you and getting in on his side. You sat there for a moment, Logan’s gaze out of the front window, distracted.

You studied him quietly in the truck. You could see the tension still tight around his mouth, the exhaustion beneath his eyes, and how hard he seemed to be holding himself together lately.

Suddenly, you missed him. Even sitting right beside him. The realization scared you badly enough that you looked away out of the passenger window.

“What’s wrong?” Logan asked.

You shook your head too quickly, “Nothing.”

“Y/N.”

The tone he said it with was soft, patient, and impossible to ignore. You swallowed hard.

“I’m just worried about you. You seem far away lately.”

The words slipped out before you could stop them, and silence filled the truck.

Logan looked over at you slowly, and for the first time all night, he didn’t know what to say.

You regretted the words immediately. Not because they weren’t true, but because of the look on Logan’s face.

He was so tired that even trying to explain himself seemed difficult lately. Logan looked down briefly at your joined hands.

“I know.”

You’d expected him to argue, or to reassure you, maybe. To maybe even tell you that you were imagining it.

Your throat tightened.

“John—”

“I’m trying really hard,” he admitted softly.

You felt tears threaten unexpectedly behind your eyes. You knew he was trying. God, you knew. Logan rubbed one hand tiredly over his face before leaning back against the seat again.

“I don’t even realize I’m doing it half the time,” he murmured.

“Doing what?”

“Checking out.”

The words landed heavily in the truck as you stared at him. Hearing him say it out loud made this real in a way it hadn’t before, and something inside of you cracked a little.

“I’ll be sitting there with you, and then suddenly I’m thinking about game film or scouts or Coach yelling about defensive coverage,” his jaw tightened slightly, “And by the time I realize it, I missed half of what you said.”

Your chest physically hurt now, because that’s exactly what it felt like lately. It was like pieces of him kept disappearing mid-conversation.

Logan squeezed your hand gently, “I’m sorry.”

The quiet guilt in his voice almost destroyed you. You shook your head immediately.

“Don’t apologize.”

“But I should.”

“No,” your voice cracked slightly, “you’re under a lot of pressure, and you’re exhausted.”

“Feels like that’s all I’ve been.”

That shattered something in you because he sounded so defeated saying it. It wasn’t dramatic; he was just worn down.

You turned more fully toward him.

“You’re more than hockey,” you said.

“You told me that before,” he said.

“You still don’t believe it.”

Silence settled heavily between them again.

“You know what scares me?” he asked quietly.

“What?”

Logan stayed silent for a second again.

“That I used to actually enjoy all of this.”

You frowned slightly, “You don’t enjoy hockey anymore?”

“Of course I do,” Logan said quickly, “I love hockey. I just don’t know if I love everything around it anymore.”

The honesty here in the truck felt suffocating. You could hear the burnout, the exhaustion, and the pressure that was slowly hollowing him out from the inside.

The worst part was that he still kept trying to give you whatever was left afterward.

You moved across the console before you could think yourself out of it and climbed into his lap.

Logan’s arms wrapped around you immediately.

You buried your face against his shoulder while his hands settled firmly against your back.

Finally, Logan kissed your hair softly.

“I’m okay,” he said.

You closed your eyes. The thing was, you didn’t think he was fully there anymore. Maybe Logan knew it, too.

You pulled back enough to look at him. Logan kissed you softly, and you slid your hands into his hair.

When you finally pulled apart, Logan rested his head briefly against your shoulder. You stayed like that for a few minutes, and you noticed his breathing slowed.

“Logan?”

No response. Your chest tightened again. He had fallen asleep, still sitting in the driver’s seat, holding you.

He wasn’t just tired anymore; he was running on empty.

You stayed still for a long moment afterward. His arms remained loosely wrapped around your waist while he slept against your shoulder.

Outside, the Malone’s parking lot had mostly emptied. All you could think was that this was bad.

Not a “medical emergency,” bad, but just “not sustainable for anyone” bad.

Your chest ached painfully as you looked at him. You brushed gently through his hair.

“Baby,” you whispered softly.

He shifted slightly against your shoulder, and his eyes blinked open slowly. This was burnout.

He was a little disoriented at first, and then immediately realized where he was.

“Sorry,” he murmured hoarsely.

“You fell asleep sitting up.”

A weak laugh escaped him.

Logan looked up at you slowly, and you realized he looked embarrassed. It was like he hated that you were seeing him like this.

You slid one hand gently against his jaw, “You don’t have to pretend with me.”

“I’m trying not to fall apart in front of you,” he admitted quietly.

You leaned forward and kissed him softly before you could cry. Logan kissed you back immediately.

“Why don’t you move to the passenger side? I’ll drive us back to your place.”

He didn’t fight it, and they switched seats. You started the truck and drove back to the house.

When you got back to the house, you slowly made your way upstairs to his room. You locked the door after you entered.

“You should sleep, you have an early morning.”

He nodded, kicking his shirt and pants off, as he threw on some sweatpants.

“Come here,” he said sleepily, lying in the bed.

You grabbed one of his old t-shirts and changed into it before joining him. As you lay next to him, his hands immediately bunched the shirt up and held your waist, his thumb brushing your hip.

You brushed the hair out of his eyes.

“I just love you,” you whispered to him.

He kissed you. “Love you.”

As he drifted off to sleep, you lay awake, just watching him. You stayed still against him for a moment, just listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing. He looked younger while he was sleeping, softer. Less like the version of Logan that the rest of the world constantly demanded things from.

You loved him so much. Enough that watching him burn himself alive was hurting you consistently. Logan shifted in his sleep, his arm tightening around your waist. Even while unconscious, he wanted to keep you close.

The first crack was so small that you had almost missed it.

That was the dangerous thing about happiness: you never noticed the exact moment it started to change shape.

At first, everything still looked beautiful. Logan kissed you the second he saw you, still reached for you automatically, and still looked at you like you were the best part of his day.

But now, there was something else underneath it, too. Pressure. As the hockey season progressed and the Hawks kept winning, the pressure also started to mount for the team, and on Logan, specifically.

Grace started noticing it everywhere: there were the constant phone calls, scouts at games, exhaustion around Logan’s eyes, and how his shoulders tightened every time his phone buzzed.

The first time it really hit you was a Thursday morning. You woke in Logan’s bed, warm beneath tangled blankets while sunlight spilled softly through the curtains.

For one sleepy second, everything felt perfect. You cuddled up to Logan, who was stroking your bare back softly. It was quiet. Then, Logan’s phone buzzed. His whole body tensed before he even checked it. He moved to take it off his nightstand, reading the message.

“Is it Coach?” You asked quietly.

Logan rubbed tiredly at his face, “Yeah.”

You felt that awful ache again beneath your ribs, like you were missing him before he’d even left the bed.

--

The kitchen at the Hawks Hockey House was chaos later that morning. Dean argued with Garrett over breakfast while Tucker cooked. You sat on the counter wearing Logan’s hoodie while Logan stood between your knees, watching all of it.

It was normal.

“Scouts coming Saturday too?” Garrett said to Logan, handing him and you some coffee.

Logan nodded once, “Yeah, three teams.”

Garrett nodded, “Good to know. Which teams?”

Logan thought for a second, “Bruins, Rangers, Sharks.”

Garrett nodded, “Big ones.”

You felt Logan’s hand tighten against your knee. A tiny movement, but you could tell he was stressed.

--

On Friday night, you waited at Rosie’s for almost forty minutes before Logan finally arrived. You were about to leave and tell him he could just meet you later, but he strolled through the door, the bell signaling his arrival.

The second he spotted you, relief crossed his face so visibly it made your chest ache.

“Sorry,” he murmured, sliding into the booth beside you instead of across from you. You leaned automatically into his side while Logan kissed your temple softly.

Rosie arrived at their booth and set a coffee down with a pointed look.

“You’re running this poor girl emotionally ragged,” Rosie said.

Logan looked immediately guilty, and you hated that. You weren’t angry that he was busy, but you were scared of what being busy was doing to him. You watched as more and more things started filling his time, between hockey, classes, and the garage, and you hadn’t seen much of him lately.

His phone buzzed a few times during dinner, and he checked each time.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you a lot this week,” Logan admitted quietly later. The honesty in his voice hit you directly in the chest. He missed you, too.

By the time you went to Logan & Sons later, because he had to fill out some paperwork at the garage, it had started to rain outside. The garage sat mostly quiet except for the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. Jeff had already left for the night.

You sat on the office couch while Logan stared blankly at the paperwork on the desk, trying to sort through invoices.

“You’re exhausted,” you noted.

A weak laugh escaped him, “little bit.”

“John.”

“Okay,” he admitted quietly, looking up at you, noting that you didn’t use his first name frequently, “A lot.”

You crossed the office without thinking and slid gently into his lap. Logan held you immediately, his forehead dropping against your shoulder like he’d been waiting for you to do exactly that.

The intimacy of it all nearly wrecked you. This. This was the version of him that no one else got.

“You’re carrying too much,” you whispered softly.

Logan stayed quiet for a second too long, “Yeah.”

You kissed his forehead gently while his hands tightened at your waist. This terrified you because you could see how much pressure this was starting to become for him.

Logan kissed you slowly before you could spiral further. You kissed him back immediately, his hands sliding into your hair while rain fell softly outside the garage.

Somewhere in the middle of kissing him, his lips softly tangling with yours, you had a true realization. You were no longer falling in love with him; you loved him. Completely.

--

The problem with loving someone before you said it out loud was that eventually the words started leaking into everything anyway.

It leaked into the way you looked for Logan first in every room, how Logan reached for you automatically whenever he got stressed, and the ache in your chest every time exhaustion consumed him lately.

Neither of you had technically said you loved each other yet, but it was there.

After the night at Logan & Sons, you felt like the words were sitting constantly at the back of your throat, which is why you’d been acting weird all weekend.

You weren’t cold, no, just… careful. You didn’t want to ruin anything.

Logan noticed something was off immediately, too. Of course he did.

You were lying in bed late at night one night when Logan’s phone buzzed. He hadn’t been home long, having a late practice earlier that night.

His shoulders tightened instantly. He silenced the call without answering it and rubbed one hand over his face.

“You can take the call,” you said quietly.

‘Don’t want to.”

The answer came too fast. Logan looked exhausted even while trying to protect your time together.

“You’re burning yourself out,” you said, moving some of the hair from his face as you turned to look at him.

He laughed weakly, “Probably.”

The casualness scared you. Logan moved his hand slowly along your back, and you got goosebumps as he traced your spine.

“You’ve been quiet and scared of something all week,” he murmured.

You looked down immediately, because yes, you had.

“I just…” You swallowed hard, “I’m scared hockey’s gonna demand more from you than you can give everything else.”

There was silence, and Logan stared at you for a second.

“You think I’m gonna leave.”

“No,” you said quickly, “Not because you want to.”

The sadness that crossed Logan’s face nearly broke you. You forced yourself to keep going anyway, to be honest.

“You’re exhausted all of the time. Everybody wants something from you constantly, and I don’t wanna become another thing pulling at you.”

The room went quiet, and Logan looked hurt. He was hurt that you could think he saw you that way.

“Y/N,” he said softly, touching your face carefully, “You’re the only thing lately that makes me feel like myself.”

You laughed weakly through the emotion climbing your throat.

“You keep saying things like that.”

“Because they’re true.”

You stared at him, then whispered, “When did you become everything to me?”

Logan inhaled sharply. His hands stilled on your waist.

“I think we knew that first night,” he admitted quietly.

A helpless laugh escaped you immediately, “The first night?”

“You arrived, soaked from the rain, your check engine light a bright orange, and it was like I just knew you’d be important.”

Emotion swelled painfully in your chest. You thought back to that first night at the garage, and then going to Rosie’s.

Logan’s thumb brushed softly beneath your cheekbone.

Suddenly, you couldn’t hold the words back anymore, not after this.

“I love you,” you said.

Logan froze instantly, and your heartbeat thundered in your chest. Then, Logan looked at you with this soft, overwhelmed expression that nearly made you cry.

“You said it first,” he whispered.

You laughed shakily, “Seriously?”

A real laugh escaped him then, warm and disbelieving.

“I love you, too. I think I’ve been in love with you for weeks.”

You kissed him immediately after that, and Logan kissed you back eagerly. For a little while, the pressure disappeared completely. No hockey, no scouts, no people pulling at him constantly.

Three weeks after the hockey game, you realized you had accidentally developed routines around John Logan.

Routines like stopping at the garage after class “for ten minutes” and leaving three hours later. Like expecting a good morning text before you were fully awake. Like automatically reaching for his hand whenever you walked anywhere together. And, knowing which nights he stayed late at the garage.

It had happened quietly.

“Hi, Y/N,” Jeff said, as you looked up from your textbook, where you sat at the counter at Logan & Sons.

“Leave her alone,” Logan called from beneath the hood.

You smiled. The garage had become your favorite place without you noticing when it happened. Not because of the cars, of course, but because of Logan.

The second he would spot you arrive at the garage with a coffee in hand, his whole face softened automatically now. It was like seeing you reset something in him after a long day.

Logan slid out from beneath the car, grease smudged across one forearm, and an old Briar t-shirt stretched across his shoulders.

Your stomach flipped every time you saw him.

“You done pretending to study?” he asked, walking toward you.

“…maybe.”

“Thought so.”

He stepped between your knees where you sat on the counter, one hand resting automatically against your thigh.

“You smell like motor oil,” you informed him softly.

“And you keep stealing my hoodies.”

“That’s unrelated.”

A grin tugged at his mouth before he leaned down and kissed you. Jeff gagged dramatically somewhere behind you.

“Workplace misconduct,” he yelled. Without breaking the kiss, Logan lifted his middle finger in Jeff’s direction.

You laughed against Logan’s mouth, and he smiled into the kiss in a way that you’re your chest ache.

Logan casually brushed his thumb against your knee. Three weeks ago, touches like that made you spiral internally. Now? Now they happened constantly. Not in a settled, years-long relationship way, but in a we physically cannot stop touching each other way.

Later that night, you ended up at Logan’s place again after the garage closed. At this point, you’d been there enough that Garrett greeted you with, “Thank God, somebody responsible is here.”

You blinked. “What happened?”

Dean pointed toward the kitchen.

“Tucker tried making a turkey and almost set the house on fire.”

“I said I was sorry!” Tucker yelled from deeper inside the house.

Logan dropped onto the couch beside you while Garrett handed you a drink. Just like that, you had settled naturally into the chaos of the house.

Just a few weeks ago, these people had just been hockey players; strangers. Now, Dean stole fries off your plate like an annoying older brother. Life was weird.

You curled one leg beneath yourself on the couch while Logan’s fingers found yours beside your leg on the couch. You looked down briefly at your intertwined hands and felt your chest tighten softly.

Later, after the boys disappeared upstairs one by one, you and Logan stayed downstairs alone. The house was quiet, rain was tapping lightly against the windows again.

His hand moved gently against your jaw, and then he kissed you again. You kissed him harder immediately because you suddenly felt too full of feeling to do anything else.

All you could do was focus on Logan’s hands, his mouth, and the overwhelming feeling that you were falling for him much faster than you knew how to stop.

He kissed just below your ear absentmindedly, sending heat immediately spiraling down your spine. Logan noticed, of course, he did. His mouth brushed your skin again, slower this time.

“Logan.”

“Hmm?”

“That was intentional.”

A quiet laugh vibrated against your shoulder. “Yeah.”

Thunder cracked loudly outside, but you barely heard it now because Logan’s hands had tightened slightly against your waist, and suddenly all you could focus on was his mouth against your neck, the warmth of him against you, and the fact that you were alone.

The kiss became heated almost embarrassingly fast. Logan lifted you onto his lap without breaking the kiss, and you laughed breathlessly against his mouth.

“You’re very determined right now.”

“You noticed?”

His hands slid beneath the hem of your shirt, carefully, like he was still giving you every chance to stop this. You kissed him harder in response. Logan made a low sound against your mouth that nearly destroyed your emotional stability entirely.

At one point, Logan rested his forehead lightly against yours.

“Come upstairs with me,” he whispered.

You kissed him once softly before whispering back, “Okay.”

The two of you made your way upstairs, Logan’s fingers tangled through yours. By the time Logan closed his bedroom door behind you, your pulse was racing hard enough that you were pretty sure he could hear it.

You reached for him this time, pulling him into another kiss. When Logan kissed you back, one hand gentle against your waist while the other brushed softly through your hair, you realized she’d never felt safer with another person.

The rest unfolded naturally after that: hungry kisses, soft laughter, whispered reassurances, and hands learning each other carefully. Nothing rushed, nothing careless, just want and trust and the overwhelming feeling of finally letting yourself have something you’d already fallen into emotionally.

Later, you lay curled against Logan beneath the blankets while rain tapped softly against the windows.

His fingers traced slow patterns against your bare shoulder absentmindedly. You tilted your head slightly to look up to him in the dim room. Logan was already watching you.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

You laughed softly against his chest. You looked at him for one suspended second, then answered honestly.

“Yes.”

For the first time in a long time, you meant it completely.

--

You woke up slowly the next morning. Sunlight was streaming through the window, and you could hear Dean yelling.

Honestly, at this point, it was becoming a pattern. You felt Logan stir underneath you.

You smiled faintly and tilted your head up. That was a big mistake.

Morning Logan was unfairly attractive. His dark brown curls were messy, his eyes were still heavy with sleep, and he had a soft expression on his face as he looked at you.

You narrowed your eyes suspiciously.

“You’re staring.”

“Yeah.”

You shifted slightly closer beneath the blankets, one hand sliding lazily across his chest while he brushed his thumb slowly against your naked hip.

“You know what’s concerning?” you murmured sleepily.

“What?”

“I think I sleep better here.”

Something in his expression softened even further.

“You definitely sleep better here,” he said quietly.

Before you could spiral properly, the bedroom door burst open. Dean stopped mid-step and then looked between you dramatically.

“Oh, this is revolting.”

You buried your face immediately into Logan’s shoulder as you clutched the blanket higher up, and Logan groaned.

“Have you ever heard of knocking?”

“Nope.”

“Get out,” Logan said.

Dean grinned.

“Breakfast in ten, Loverboy’s on breakfast duty.”

Then, he disappeared. Logan looked exhausted already.

“You live with actual chaos,” you laughed.

“Yep.”

“I love it here, though.”

“You fit here,” Logan said, and leaned down to kiss you.

“Let’s get up, we have breakfast to make!” you said, breaking the kiss as Logan laughed.

Breakfast downstairs was chaotic. Logan cooked, as Tucker supervised. Dean criticized as he leaned on the counter, and Garrett ate some of the ingredients before they made it into the pan.

You sat on a barstool near the kitchen, watching everything unfold. The domesticity of it all felt deeply dangerous.

After breakfast, Logan drove you back to campus so you could change before your afternoon class.

“We saw each other literally all night and this morning, and I’m annoyed I have class,” you blurted as you pulled up outside your dorm.

A grin spread slowly across his face.

“You’re way too pleased by that,” you said.

“I’m choosing to think it’s romantic.”

You laughed softly and unbuckled your seatbelt.

He leaned over and kissed you again.

“Alright, I should probably go,” you said, kissing him one last time.

He laughed as you forced yourself out of the truck before you ruined your GPA permanently. The second you shut the door and were a few steps away, Logan rolled down the window.

“Y/N.”

You turned back immediately. He was leaning across the console.

“You forgot something.”

You frowned slightly. “What?”

Logan crooked one finger toward himself. You laughed helplessly but stepped closer again anyway. The second you leaned near the window, he kissed you quickly.

You stared at him in betrayal.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“You like me.”

You laughed, stepping back, as a grin took over his entire face.

You knew, just from the way Logan looked at you or touched you, that if he’d asked, you’d skip your entire day and forget the outside world existed entirely.

The realization sent warmth flooding through you immediately.