November 29, 2020—Seattle, Washington—The Next Day #6
“And now you expect me to just hand over half a million dollars to some guy I don’t even know?
Just because you say he matters?” He tilted his head, eyes narrowing, scanning Adrian like he was parsing a résumé.
“Who are you?” Robert asked, voice like a scalpel.
“What do you do for a living that you can’t take care of yourself?
Where are you from? Where have you been for the last two years? ”
“Dad—” Logan started, anger simmering in his voice.
“Robert!” Samantha snapped, shooting him a glare.
But he didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes trained on Adrian, face unreadable but full of judgment.
“I think I have the right to ask these questions, considering you’re asking me to give this man half a million dollars.
” His voice hardened. “You tell me, out of nowhere, that you’re gay.
That you have a boyfriend. That he has cancer. And now you need my money to save him?”
“Enough!” Samantha’s voice cracked through the room like a thunderclap, sharp and final as a gunshot.
The tension cracked like a dam bursting.
Robert blinked, startled, as his wife rose to her feet with a grace that didn’t ask permission. Her voice, always soft, always measured, now burned with something unyielding.
“He is the one who jumped into the ocean and rescued your son!” she defended, every word like fire across stone.
“Logan could have died, Robert. He was dying. And this young man—this brave, selfless man—risked his life to pull him back from the edge. And after everything, after all that, they fell in love.”
She jabbed a finger toward him, not in accusation, but in defense.
“Do not dare diminish what that means. Do not belittle the magnitude of our son’s life, or his happiness.”
Silence rang loud and heavy.
Robert’s jaw tensed, his hands curling into fists. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Samantha shook her head. “You’re in denial.”
Robert froze, his eyes widening in surprise as he looked at his wife.
Samantha turned toward Logan now, her expression softening with something painful, something motherly, something raw.
“Do you know how many times Jane came over to voice her concerns about Logan?” She looked between her husband and son, searching for recognition in their faces.
“Jane told me she feared he was depressed. That she thought he was hurting, truly hurting. That he was self-destructing. She spoke to Ada Mae, who confirmed Logan was drinking and barely eating.” She paused, breath catching in her throat.
“And no one knew why.” Her voice cracked on the last word, but she pushed through it.
And then, without hesitation, she turned to the grand wall of family photos.
Every inch of the house was adorned with them; framed memories capturing milestones, holidays, birthdays, and celebrations.
The grand moments of her three children were proudly displayed throughout the space.
Adrian’s gaze fell on a few photos of Logan’s graduation, where he wore a colorful cape and a traditional graduation hat, proudly clutching his diploma.
In another photo, Logan appeared youthful, no older than 16, his face lighting up with a radiant smile as he held a large camera, looking directly at the shot’s taker.
In the left corner, another large photo of Logan standing on a bridge, with a stunning landscape in the background, suggested a beautiful place that resembled Spain.
Despite a fleeting look of concern on his face, he exuded a captivating beauty that was forever captured in that moment.
She reached for one in particular.
Logan’s wedding day.
A picture of Logan and Sandy.
Robert watched as she held it up, turning it slightly to let them get a good look. She held it like a weapon, but instead of a threat, she was carrying proof; a proof that had just as much lethality as a firearm.
Logan’s stomach tightened as an unsettling emptiness washed over him.
He appeared hollow, a fragile shell of himself, a ghost wandering through the world.
His suit was a sharp toast to elegance, his tie a perfect knot, his hair a carefully crafted crown.
Yet beneath this polished veneer, an emptiness seeped through, a silent scream behind the pixels, the echo of neglect.
His eyes were vacant pools, reflections of a love lost, the rare gem of his soul now gone.
His smile, a fragile masquerade, veiled some pain, and his stance was stiff with the weight of unseen burdens, whispering stories of longing and regret.
It was as if he were merely acting in a play, trapped in a character he could not embody fully.
Standing next to a woman he had already lost, even before the first note of their duet had sounded, not yet begun, yet irrevocably ended.
And then Samantha picked up Logan’s phone from the table, where the screen still glowed with images of him and Adrian. She held the two pictures side by side.
Logan and Sandy—lifeless, scripted, barely touching.
And then Logan and Adrian—entwined on an Australian beach, basking in sunlight and carefree joy, gazing at one another with a brilliance that rivaled the sunniest of days.
The difference was staggering.
She turned to Robert, daring him.
“Look at that,” she demanded. “And tell me that this is nonsense. Tell me that you haven’t seen your son fading away with each moment. Tell me they were happily married.”
Robert’s gaze dropped to the pictures.
He didn’t speak.
But he didn’t look away either.
Something in his stoic expression wavered.
Samantha softened. “Don’t be like your father, Rob. Don’t pass down another generation of silence and control.” She put the framed photo and the phone on the table and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “There are things far more important than the business.”
Robert inhaled sharply, closing his eyes for just a moment.
When he opened them, the anger had softened, replaced by something else, something that would irrevocably change the course of this conversation.
He was a father realizing, far too late, that he had missed the whispers of his son’s silent struggles, that the boy had been drowning long before that day in Hawaii.
“I love him,” Logan repeated. He wondered if his father even heard him—truly heard him—or if the words simply crashed against his ears, simply striking that fortified exterior and sliding off, unnoticed, like water against stone, dissolving before they could leave a mark.
“Adrian refused treatment. He is dying. And if he dies…” Logan exhaled, his breath trembling like the wind before a hurricane. “If he dies, I die too.”
His father’s expression barely wavered. A fortress, weathered and immovable. Logan had spent his whole life throwing himself against those walls, trying to carve his name into the steel of a man who never let anything in.
“You don’t understand,” Logan pressed on, the words burning his throat.
“I have already been through hell, Dad. I have drowned in it. And you didn’t notice.
Or maybe you did, and you didn’t care. Either way, I can’t—I won’t—go through that hell again.
” His voice faltered, but his stance remained unshaken.
“Adrian wouldn’t fight for himself, so I told him I’d do it for him.
I told him that if he let this thing kill him, I’d follow.
That’s how much he means to me. That’s how much I’ve already lost.”
“Logan, please.” Samantha’s voice was a threadbare whisper, barely holding together. Her fingers clung to the arm of the chair as if it were the only thing anchoring her. Her glassy eye searched his face for a place to land.
He turned to her, and for a moment, something inside him softened. She had always been the one watching from the shore, never stepping in, but always hoping he’d make it back to land. He wanted to tell her that he had—just barely—but he wasn’t sure if he believed it himself.
“It’s true, Mom,” he murmured. “I mean it.”
His father exhaled slowly and measuredly.
“You’ve always been like this,” he said, and there was something in his tone—exhaustion, perhaps, or disbelief, or the reluctant awe of someone facing down a mirror they had spent decades avoiding.
“All or nothing.” He looked briefly at his wife before his gaze returned to Logan, sharp as a broken shell beneath the sand.
“It’s a pattern with you. When you close a deal, it’s on your terms or not at all.
When you left, you vanished without a word.
When you came back, you chased everything you abandoned, full speed ahead.
You threw yourself into that marriage, clawed your way up in the company, and now this.
” He gestured toward Adrian, toward the photos still glowing on the phone.
“Big or nothing. This is the next all-or-nothing.” His voice was cold but resigned.
“You’re gay, and in the span of a day, you have a boyfriend, that you’re in love with, he’s dying, and you’re willing to die for him?
” He shook his head slowly. “Just like that?
The air pulsed between them, dense with unspoken words. Logan could feel the rage begin to swell in his chest again.
“You taught me how,” he spat through gritted teeth, his voice thick with emotion.
Was the anger flickering within him, born from his father’s dismissive words?
Or was it the way his father spoke of his love for Adrian as though his absence had not inked his heart atramentous, nor planted abulia in the soil of his soul.
Perhaps, it was something more profound, his father reaching into the depths of Logan’s innermost instinct, stirring a storm beneath his skin.
“No, I didn’t,” Robert said simply. “That, son, is something you learned all by yourself.”
Logan’s breath hitched, a flicker of disbelief curling in his chest like seafoam swirling around a half-buried shell.