November 19, 2020—Tel-Aviv, Israel—Two Days Later #14
Not the kind he’d imagined as a boy, filled with clouds and angels and light. But this: the sound of Logan’s voice murmuring through a locked door, the faint warmth of Logan’s body blanketing him in the middle of the night, the knowledge that Logan had come back, that he had chosen to come back.
Adrian’s breath hitched, his hands curling into fists. Hope burned in him, it was fragile, flickering, yet impossibly alive, refusing to go out, no matter how hard he tried to smother it.
Logan was here.
And for the first time in years, Adrian didn’t know whether to feed that fragile flame or drown it in the rising tide of his doubts.
Eventually, Adrian left his bed and moved to the bathroom, his body heavy but his steps unflinching.
He took a quick, scalding shower, letting the rush of water crash over him, jolting him from the fog that had clung to him ever since he had heard Logan’s voice saying “Ad” in that wonderful American accent of his.
He brushed his teeth, then toweled his long hair dry, tying it into a loose half bun that dripped faint droplets down his back.
Dressing was methodical: jeans worn soft with age, a sweater layered over shirts to stave off the growing chill that seemed to settle deeper into his bones each day.
When he stepped out of the room, Dean was waiting in the hallway. He stood with his arms crossed, leaning casually against the wall, but his eyes gave him away. They were watchful, thoughtful, filled with a concern he never said aloud.
“Hey,” Dean greeted softly, his voice careful, like he didn’t want to startle Adrian from whatever fragile resolve he’d summoned.
“I’m going to him,” Adrian replied simply in Hebrew.
Dean nodded, his jaw tightening as he studied Adrian for a moment.
“I figured.” His voice held a quiet resignation.
He paused, his gaze searching Adrian’s face as though looking for the answer to a question he couldn’t ask.
“I’m not his biggest fan, Adrian, and you know that.
But I think…” He hesitated, then pushed forward.
“I think you need this. I think you need to hear his side of the story. Because if you don’t, it’ll be something you carry with you forever.
A question you can never answer. A regret you can’t undo. ”
Adrian looked away, his hand brushing the wall as if he needed to feel something solid beneath his fingertips.
Dean’s words cut deeper than they should have, because he knew they were true.
If he didn’t face Logan now, the uncertainty would fester, leaving scars even deeper than the ones he already bore.
“Be careful,” Dean added, his voice softening. “You’ve been through hell because of him before. I just… I don’t want to see you hurt like that again.”
Adrian nodded, unable to meet Dean’s gaze.
A silence settled between them, weighed down by two years of countless words, fights, and pleas.
For a moment, Adrian could almost feel the ghost of two years ago—the cabin in Australia where Dean had found him hollowed out and drowning in heartbreak, and the frantic flight to the United States when Adrian had tried, futilely, to stop Logan’s wedding.
Every time, Dean had been there to pick up the pieces.
Every time, Adrian had returned to Israel, with his heart bearing another crack and a strip of himself carried away by the wind.
Adrian wondered… did the future hold another heartbreak, another unraveling of the life he barely managed to stitch back together?
Would some new fracture wait on the horizon, unseen, because he was too na?ve to sense it coming?
And if it did, would Dean be the one, once again, forced to gather his scattered pieces?
Dean didn’t need to say what they both knew: that something inside Adrian had never fully mended after Logan left.
It was as if a switch had been flipped, a light extinguished.
It wasn’t just a wound—it was an unraveling, a slow, merciless attrition of the man he used to be.
It was in the way he no longer woke before dawn to chase the waves like he used to, his board gathering dust in the corner of his room only coming out on occasions, and every time Adrian spent chasing the waves in the depth of the ocean, he returned hunted.
It was in the way that his drifting mind found working out too much to handle.
It was in the way his laughter had faded, no longer the careless, sun-drenched sound it once was, but something hollow, something forced, as if it had forgotten how to be real.
His smile was a fragile echo of what it once was, never quite drowning out the loneliness woven into his eyes, into his very foundation.
Adrian used to move like the world belonged to him—wild and reckless, full of fire—but after Logan left, he moved carefully, deliberately, as though he had learned that one wrong step could break him, as if he knew his pieces were stacked together without any true tether, one fragile hold away from collapsing into the earth, breaking into a million shards that might never fit back together again.
He spoke less, as if words were an unnecessary burden, as if silence was the only thing that didn’t betray him.
He stopped taking pictures, stepping out whenever someone held out a camera or a phone to take a meaningless selfie with friends, because after being the sole focus of Logan’s lens, even that was meaningless.
And the nights, Dean knew they were the worst, he knew Adrian didn’t sleep much, he knew he was scrolling through photos and videos of him and Logan together, he knew that sometimes Adrian dreamed of Logan, of their time, and that would shatter him for the next day.
Dean never spoke about it, never asked, even when he saw the remnants of it in Adrian’s quietness, in the way he would turn his head too quickly at the sound of a familiar voice as if hoping—just for a moment—that it was Logan.
He never mentioned the way Adrian had become a little less himself—a little less golden, a little less alive.
Because some things didn’t need to be said.
Some things were written in the way a person exists, or in Adrian’s case, the way he barely did.
But now, standing before him, Dean saw something shift.
A flicker of that old light, faint but undeniable.
Logan’s return had stirred the ashes, breathed life into something long buried, something Adrian had convinced himself was lost. And though Dean resented Logan for what he had done, though the wounds ran deep, he knew—he knew—that Adrian would forgive him.
That he had already begun to. The proof was there, shimmering in his eyes, in the way his soul seemed to drift toward the past, toward the man who had shattered him and yet, somehow, had also stitched him back together, mended him, and guided him back to safety.
“Just… don’t let him crush you again,” Dean murmured finally, though he knew the warning was futile.
Adrian had never been able to guard his heart when it came to Logan.
He gave too freely, loved too deeply. Even now, he was already gathering the crumbs Logan had offered and holding them as if they were treasures.
Adrian took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders.
He didn’t respond, but his silence spoke volumes.
There was no logic to what he was about to do, no reasoning that could explain it.
This wasn’t about logic. It was about love—the kind that defied sense, the kind that hurt as much as it healed. And Adrian had made his choice.
Without another word, he stepped past Dean and headed for the door, the sound of the ocean outside echoing faintly in his ears.
Logan was waiting, and Adrian was no longer sure if he was walking toward redemption or ruin.
Logan was an unstoppable force that Adrian had always been too weak to resist, and now was no different.