Chase

27. Logan

LOGAN

I know it’s bad when Chase doesn’t send me any of his usual little messages throughout the day.

I know it’s worse when I get back to the hotel suite and he’s not there, and my note to him from this morning is still left on the coffee table.

I go downstairs to try to talk to him in the restaurant, and the girl at the hostess stand frowns at me.

“Oh,” she says, her face falling. “Chase doesn’t work here anymore. I’m going to miss him.”

I furrow my brow at her. “That can’t be right. Are there two different people named Chase who work here?”

She shakes her head. “No. Chase Cameron.”

“What the hell happened?”

She just shrugs. “Um…”

“Please, tell me what happened.”

“We’re not allowed—”

I pull out my wallet, retrieving a hundred dollars, and then two hundred, and then three, putting them all onto the hostess stand in front of her.

“Please.”

She looks a little bit guilty. She gathers the money and hands it back to me. “It’s okay, Mr. Stone. You don’t have to do that.”

“I need to find him. I promise it’s important, and I promise I will not get you fired for divulging to me.”

She gives me a sympathetic look. “He… and I’m not supposed to say this, but… he was let go earlier. Nobody’s told me why, though.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry. Thank you so much,” I tell her before turning quick and heading back out into the lobby, rushing toward the hall that leads to the back alley.

I call my driver quickly, telling him to come back around as quickly as he can.

Luckily it’s not too far of a drive to Chase’s apartment. But I stand there, ringing the buzzer and trying to call him for ten minutes straight, and nothing happens. And when I hear nothing from him, that’s when I start to panic.

I frown as I finally head back to the car, and I spot a man across the street with a telephoto lens taking pictures of me.

“Lovely,” I tell my driver as I get in the back seat. “There will be pictures of me online looking very upset on the street in probably, oh, a few hours.”

“Where do you need to go next?”

I give him the address for Chase’s art studio. I’m probably now being followed by at least one paparazzi car, but it falls away from my mind entirely, because I’m too focused on Chase right now.

When we get to his studio, I hop out and walk to the unmarked door. I navigate to my texts where Chase had told me the door code before, and I punch it in.

An error occurs.

I try it again, and again, and I realize the studio must have either changed the code or the one I had was a temporary guest one that expired.

“Fuck,” I exhale, turning to my left and seeing a couple of cameras pointed at me down the street.

A nice young couple walks up and asks me for a selfie, and all I want to do is run away.

Instead, I try to paint a smile on my face, nodding and posing for the picture as my heart races in my chest.

As I look over and see another group heading toward me, the door to the studio suddenly shoves open behind me.

A man with pink hair and long, dangly earrings steps out of the studio carrying drawings under his arm. He gives me a kind smile as I grab the door, sliding inside before it shuts.

Thank you, whoever the hell you are, random artist.

You are a godsend.

I take the stairs up two at a time, my heart feeling like it’s too big for my chest. I walk down the second-floor hall to the door of Chase’s studio, and I push it open to step inside.

My throat tightens the moment I see him.

He’s in the corner, sitting on the ground, curled in on himself.

When he hears the door open he looks up quickly, startled, and I see that his eyes are completely bloodshot, and his cheeks are streaked with tears.

He doesn’t say a word.

The man who always has something to say, not saying a thing.

I step over and kneel to the floor, getting on his level, and he looks at me with a type of shame I didn’t know he was capable of.

It feels like someone is ripping out my whole heart to see him like this. His eyes look so bleak, the green contrasted against the redness of his eyes.

I reach out and bring my arms around his shoulders, gathering him toward me.

He doesn’t move.

And that’s the most certain I’ve ever felt that I never needed to worry about Chase.

He doesn’t move.

When I come to him, he doesn’t run from me.

When he’s reeling, hurting, feeling the worst he’s probably ever felt, he doesn’t shove me away, or scream at me to go, or any of the other shit that I went through with Daniel, when the media tore him apart.

Chase is nothing like that.

He hurts, and he feels emotions deeply, and he wears his heart on his sleeve, but after all of that, he doesn’t fucking give up.

Even here, now, he isn’t giving up on me.

And it makes me choke up as I keep my arms wrapped around him, knowing that Chase’s ugliest, broken moments are still precious to me.

He doesn’t push me away. And even though I’m certain he saw the flood of different comments on social media, I know that he can process that pain and come out on the other side of it to make something beautiful.

I believe in him.

And that makes all the difference in the world.

I hold him for a minute, then five minutes, saying nothing as a tear breaks off from my eye, too. The sounds of the city come in through the windows of the studio, with occasional car horns, people talking, or music from cars driving by.

I can feel him breathing steadily, and when I finally move, I just rest my forehead against the side of his, holding a whole ocean inside me.

He swallows, taking in a breath, before he finally speaks.

“I’m a mess, but I haven’t been drinking or taking anything,” he says, his voice quiet and broken.

I squeeze my arm around his shoulder tighter. “I know.”

He shifts just a little in my arms. “You didn’t automatically assume that?”

“What? No. That didn’t even occur to me.”

“That can’t be true.”

“I trust you, Chase,” I tell him. Nothing has ever felt so true. “I trust you.”

He doesn’t move or speak for a while again. I move a few times, gently pressing a kiss to his hair, then stroking the back of his neck for a while, then going back to wrapping my arms around him.

“I don’t think I am good enough for you, Logan,” he finally tells me.

His voice doesn’t sound broken anymore.

He says it firmly, matter-of-fact, like he’s certain he’s informing me of the truth.

“Do me a favor and don’t ever say that again.”

“Don’t you see it, too?” he asks. “That I fuck things up like I have a special talent for it?”

“Your father was wrong, Chase—”

“And I always manage to drag down the people around me, somehow, too?”

“Anyone who doesn’t see your worth is fucking blind,” I tell him, my voice resolute. I squeeze his shoulder hard, leaning forward to look at his eyes. “Stop doing this.”

“I can’t.”

“This isn’t you,” I tell him.

He finally looks up to meet my eyes. “It’s always been me.”

I hold his face in my hands.

I lean in to kiss his forehead, then each of his cheeks. I tilt his chin backward so I can kiss his lips, and I do it softly, slowly, taking my time.

“You aren’t going to scare me away,” I tell him. “Keep trying, if you’d like to. It won’t work. Tell me the worst of you, and I’ll still be right here.”

He puffs out an exhale that sounds like a laugh, but then I see a stray tear break off from his eye.

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” he whispers, looking up as he pulls in a shaky breath.

“Why didn’t you call me?” I demand. “Why didn’t you call me when you were let go from the restaurant?”

“You know about that?”

“I know about that. And you could have called me, or come back to my suite, or told me anything you were going through.”

He swallows. “I couldn’t think. I didn’t know…”

I nod, running my hand down his back. “I understand.”

For the first time since I’ve gotten here, he changes his position. He lets his knees straighten out and he leans his body against mine, letting me hold him at a better angle as he melts against my body.

He tucks his head against the crook of my neck, and I let my hand stroke over his hair in a steady rhythm.

Finally, he clutches at me in the way I’m used to.

He brings his arms around my waist, tugging at me, squeezing me like he’s holding onto me for life.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s okay.”

He kisses me on my neck, then on my collarbone. He nuzzles against me like he’s trying to burrow.

“I’ll be able to talk about it soon. I just… can’t, right now.”

“Take your time. You know, Chase, I have to take a weekend trip home to LA this weekend. Didn’t find out until a few hours ago, but I’m flying out late tonight for Yard Line promo.”

He breathes for a few beats, going still against me.

“Is this where you tell me you think it would be good to spend some time apart?”

“No. It’s where I tell you I want you to come on the trip with me.”

“Oh.”

“And I want to talk about something else that’s been on my mind. I know you said you don’t want to be my friend, but I do want to be yours, Chase.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I swallow, and when I finally speak, I start rambling far more than I ever intended to.

“I want to be your friend, but I also want more than that. You probably hate labels, but I’m going to be honest, I don’t.

I like labels. I want them. If I could call you my boyfriend, it would mean something to me, even though I know it’s just a word.

I’m probably never going to get used to seeing your name in headlines, but I can’t keep hiding every shred of my life forever.

I have to accept it. And I know I don’t need to shelter you from it anymore. ”

I hold my breath for a moment.

I’m shocked by how anxious I get as I’m waiting for Chase to reply.

I know he dated before he met me, but I got an impression that it was usually casual, and far more focused on short-term flings.

“Are you only asking because you have some secret fetish and now you know I’m pretty when I cry?”

His joke hits me out of nowhere.

I smile despite myself, and I clutch him closer.

“You are impossible.”

“Well, I really didn’t want you to see me like this, so if you do have a fetish, at least I have that in my favor.”

I hum. “No fetish. I wanted to ask you this before this shitshow of a day, by the way, so don’t think for a second it’s about pity. I want you so badly.”

He clicks his tongue. “So you want me to come to LA as your boyfriend.”

“You’ll have to meet my parents, though. They already confirmed they’re driving down from Santa Barbara to visit my house for dinner, on Saturday night.”

“I see.”

“I should warn you, though, that my parents are pretty… formal. A little bit traditional, compared to what I heard from your mom when she called you.”

“I can keep quiet about anything gay, if that’s what you’re saying,” he murmurs.

“What? No. They’re old-school, but they’re not homophobes.”

“Oh.”

“What I mean is that if I’m introducing them to you, I’d want to introduce you as my boyfriend, as well. I want them to know we’re not just… hooking up.”

“So you just don’t want to introduce me as your fuckboy boytoy from New York, huh?”

I feel a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth. “And you should also know that I don’t allow my boyfriend to talk shit about himself or say he isn’t good enough for me. Because I have very good taste, and I wouldn’t let anyone talk like that to the man I chose like that—”

“Yes,” he says, suddenly moving to straddle me, pressing his lips hard to mine. “I can’t think straight, or sort out my feelings, or talk very coherently right now, but yes, yes, a million fucking times yes.”

He falls against me again, and his presence crashes over me like a wave.

And I realize that on a day like this, when everything is coming apart at the edges, there is truly no one in the world I would rather be with than him.