November 19, 2020—Tel-Aviv, Israel—Two Days Later #4
When it finally creaked open, Logan’s body jolted as if struck. For an instant, he saw him—Adrian, haloed by ocean wind, hair unruly, whiskey eyes widening in recognition. But the vision dissolved as the door swung wider.
Logan went still. His throat closed, his pulse stumbled. It wasn’t Adrian.
The man at the door stared at him, eyes wide, his mouth hanging open in stunned silence. Logan recognized him immediately.
“Logan?” the man asked, his voice marked by his accent’s rhythm. “Logan? Ma ata—” he began in Hebrew, but quickly switched to English as his mind caught up. “What are you doing here?”
“Dean,” Logan acknowledged, bracing himself. He half-expected a punch, a shove, or, at the very least, a scathing insult. Dean was Adrian’s best friend, his protector, and after everything Logan had done, it only made sense that Dean would hate him. Deserve it, even.
But instead of anger, Dean’s face lit up with something Logan couldn’t quite place. Relief? Joy? “You came!” Dean exclaimed, his voice filled with a mix of surprise and something close to elation. “How did you hear?”
“What…?” Logan stammered, completely thrown off by Dean’s reaction. Before he could even process what was happening, Dean stepped forward and pulled him into a tight hug.
What the fuck?
Logan stood stiff in Dean’s arms, his mind racing.
Dean had never liked him. The last time they’d spoken, there had been barely veiled hostility between them.
After what Logan had done to Adrian—walking out of his life without a word—Dean should be shoving him off the porch, not hugging him like some long-lost savior.
“Thank you so much for coming! Really!” Dean said, relief in his eyes.
And then another thought struck Logan, sharp and painful. Why was Dean even here, in Adrian’s house? Were they together? Was that why Dean had hated him? Because Logan had been a threat to his relationship with Adrian? The possibility made Logan’s stomach churn with a mix of jealousy and guilt.
When Dean finally let him go, Logan took a shaky step back, his confusion plain on his face.
“Is… is Adrian here?” he asked, his voice rough and uneven, his heart lodged somewhere in his throat.
Nothing about this made sense, and Adrian was the only one who could explain what the hell was happening.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Dean said, stepping aside to let Logan in. “Come on in, he’s at the beach.”
Logan hesitated for a moment, but then stepped inside, his eyes scanning the space.
The house was larger than it appeared from the outside, and though it looked weathered and worn on the exterior, the inside was warm and inviting.
It felt lived-in, homey, like the kind of place where someone like Adrian could build a life.
“Where is he?” Logan asked again, his eyes darting to a hallway that seemed to lead to the bedrooms. But what caught his attention most was the large backyard visible through the sliding glass doors. Beyond it, the beach stretched out, the waves rolling gently against the shore.
The view was breathtaking, and Logan envisioned Adrian nestled within those walls, gazing at the horizon from the comfort of his home. Unlike Logan, Adrian could not escape the alluring call of the waves.
“The beach,” Dean repeated, his tone patient but tinged with something Logan couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“I’ll wait for him there,” Logan said, his voice soft as his gaze lingered on the shoreline. He assumed Adrian was surfing, his mind conjuring an image of Adrian cutting through the waves with that effortless grace Logan remembered so vividly.
“Sure, sure,” Dean said, nodding as he moved toward the glass doors. “I’ll take you to him.”
Logan followed, still grappling with the strangeness of the encounter. Dean’s happiness at seeing him felt out of place, incongruous with everything he knew. But he pushed the thoughts aside. Right now, all that mattered was Adrian.
The wind carried the scent of salt and freedom as Logan followed Dean, his steps hesitant, his mind racing. The sea roared in the distance, its eternal rhythm a backdrop to the storm raging within him. His heart pounded like the surf breaking on the shore, relentless and unforgiving.
Logan cleared his throat, his voice cracking as he asked the question that had been clawing at his mind. “Are you two together?”
Dean turned, a look of incredulity flashing across his face. “What? No. I’m straight,” he said simply, shaking his head as they crossed a narrow road. “And Adrian’s basically my brother.”
Logan’s chest tightened at that. “Is he… is he seeing someone?”
Dean glanced at him, his voice calm but firm. “Of course not.”
The words settled like stones in Logan’s stomach, heavy and confusing.
Dean had said it as if the very idea was absurd, but Logan couldn’t understand why.
Adrian was Adrian—beautiful, warm, the kind of person who could captivate anyone.
Why wouldn’t he be with someone? The question swirled in his mind as they made their way to the beach, the sand shifting under their feet.
“There he is,” Dean said, his voice softer now, almost reverent. Logan’s breath caught as he followed Dean’s gaze.
And then—there he was.
Adrian sat at the water’s edge, back to him, still as stone. His gaze was locked on the horizon as though the ocean alone could answer him. The surf licked at the shore in hushed devotion, the wind tossing strands of golden hair into a restless halo, a flag raised in quiet defiance.
Logan stopped breathing. The world broke into silence, everything folding into this single sight: Adrian, alive, within reach.
His chest constricted, ribs groaning around a heart that seemed intent on tearing free.
The air thickened, charged, as if the universe itself had been holding this moment in reserve, waiting to detonate it inside him.
The long, decaying melody of his heart—once only threnody—suddenly surged into song, clear and commanding, as if the missing half of him had returned to the world.
Adrian. A few steps away. A lifetime away.
Dean’s voice broke through the haze, warm and almost jubilant. “I’m so glad you came, Logan. I’ll give you two some time.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and left, his footsteps disappearing beneath the soft hum of the ocean.
Logan barely registered it. His feet moved without thought, the sand soft beneath his expensive shoes, the grains clinging to him as if urging him forward.
The wind grew stronger as he approached, carrying with it the cool bite of November.
It bit at his skin, but Logan barely felt it. All he could see was Adrian.
He stopped just a couple of feet behind him, his throat tightening as he took in the sight.
Adrian hadn’t noticed him yet. He sat there, his hands resting loosely on his knees, his face turned toward the endless expanse of blue.
The sun glinted off the water, painting golden streaks that matched the strands of his hair, as if the ocean herself had claimed him.
Logan’s breath hitched, his chest constricting as tears burned his eyes. He took a shuddering breath, his voice catching as he finally spoke, his words as soft as the breeze, fragile as the moment.
“Ad.”
The name escaped him, barely audible, but it carried everything he was, everything he had ever felt.
It was a wave crashing against the shore, desperate and inevitable, eroding everything in its path.
His name left Logan’s mouth like breath breaking the surface after too long underwater.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t rehearsed. It came out raw, like something pulled from the deepest part of him—half prayer, half apology, all ache.
A name he hadn’t uttered in years, merely forming its contours with his lips, and on rare occasions summoning the courage to speak it aloud in hushed silence, now hung in the air between them, trembling and heavy with everything he could never say.
Adrian stilled.
The subtle lift of his shoulders, the pause in his breath—Logan saw it all.
But he didn’t turn around. He stayed facing the ocean, legs pulled close to his chest, arms wrapped loosely around them.
He looked like he had been carved into the setting—sculpted out of stillness and sun, out of memory.
That stillness was the loudest answer Logan had ever received.
Logan felt his heart shatter a little more, the silence slicing deeper than he had ever imagined.
He had envisioned this moment a myriad of times, rehearsing every possible scenario in the theater of his mind: a furious slap, a bitter laugh, a tearful embrace.
But not this—this unbearable quiet, this aching distance dressed in sunlight and salt air.
He wanted to speak again, to explain, to fall to his knees if he had to.
Yet now that he found himself here, gazing at the love of his life, his voice was silenced by an overwhelming tide of fear, guilt, and the heavy burden of unexpressed words, as everything he needed to say dissolved before reaching his mouth.
Tears welled in his eyes, blurring the image of Adrian—his figure elegantly framed against the vast, azure embrace of the ocean.
Here you are, my love.
And yet, despite everything, they were here. Breathing the same sea-salted air. Standing on the same sand. Watching the same sky change colors above them. The same sky they used to chase from country to country, from wave to wave, as if they could outrun gravity itself.
Logan took a single step forward. The sand gave beneath his foot, soft and damp, and something in his chest crumpled under the weight of it.
He was close enough now that if he reached out, his fingers could brush Adrian’s shoulder, could thread through that familiar sun-kissed hair.
But he didn’t. Because touching Adrian now felt like waking a sleeping star. Like interrupting something sacred.