Chapter 13
Thirteen
Camden
I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom like I’m waiting for my turn on the gallows, a sense of impending doom lingering in the air around me. Because this is it. Doomsday. D-day for short, because if that’s the letter that shows up on my philosophy final?
Well, then I can kiss my entire future goodbye.
I’m not generally an anxious person, but apprehension has kept me on edge all day, despite knowing it’s out of my hands now. Then again, every time my damn phone has gone off today, I’ve been sent into a panic spiral until I realize it’s not my test score.
But having gone through that cycle at least a dozen times since waking up, I think it’s a little understandable why I’m in this current mental state. Distractions like a gym session or going for a run haven’t done much to help either, so here I am.
Staring and waiting.
For what feels like fucking hours.
I truly don’t know how much time has passed when there’s a soft knock at the door, only for Logan’s muffled voice to come from the other side.
“Are you in there?”
Unfortunately.
“Yeah,” I mumble, my attention still fixed at the same spot overhead.
A couple seconds pass before the sound of the handle turning hits my ears, then the soft squeak of the hinge opening and closing again. Quiet footfalls grow louder as he slowly approaches, only for him to wordlessly drop onto the mattress beside me, mirroring my position.
Neither of us speaks for a few moments; we just lie here staring at the outdated popcorn ceiling.
We’ve long since reached the point of silence being comfortable between us, but my anxiety is still at an all-time high.
Pairing it with last week’s adventure at the banquet—and the fucking kiss that didn’t feel very fake—I’m damn near vibrating with nerves now.
I do my best to repress it, calming my breathing like I do on the ice, and focus some more on the textures above me. Trying to find shapes within the bumps, like some people do with clouds in the sky.
“Does that look like a bunny riding a unicycle to you?” I ask him, pointing up to the section I’m talking about.
There’s a beat as he leans toward me, following the line my finger creates, before he murmurs, “A little bit, yeah.”
Chances are high that he’s just placating me, but whatever, I’ll take his pity agreement. Especially if it means we don’t talk about—
“Did it come through?”
My jaw tenses, and I clip out, “Not yet.”
His weight shifts beside me, and I glance over to find him propped up on an elbow now. Two eyes, appearing more hot-chocolate than hazelnut in this light, stare down at me in confusion.
“Wait, then why are you all…” He trails off and vaguely gestures at me with his hand.
“Because if I don’t pass this final, I’m cooked.”
“You’re gonna be fine,” he says in a gentle attempt at reassurance.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the intended effect.
“You don’t know that,” I argue weakly. Lifting a hand, I run my fingers through my hair before letting my hand drop back to the bed between us, stuck helplessly in a downward spiral.
“God, I should have just dropped the class at the beginning of the term when I realized it wasn’t gonna be as easy of an A as Theo and Holden said.
It would’ve saved us this whole mess to begin with.
But I didn’t, and now my entire future is riding on some stupid test about Kant and Hume and all that other shit no one in life even uses. ”
I let out a long, deep breath and close my eyes, trying my damnedest to release some of the tension coiled in my body. An impossible task thanks to the three words screaming at me inside my head—the ones I’ve been struggling to drown out all goddamn day.
I’m so stupid.
And every time I think them, the spiral starts all over again.
“You’re not,” Logan whispers a few minutes later.
“Not what?”
“Dumb. Stupid. An idiot,” he supplies, listing the options. “Whatever version of that you were just calling yourself in your head.”
My lids lift, and I roll my head to find his gaze is still on me. There’s a softness to it, one I haven’t really seen before, and it’s a bit unsettling.
Or maybe that’s just the panic talking.
“So, what? Are you a mind reader now?”
He lets out a little hum. “More like your expression gave you away.”
I let out a grunt in place of answering, letting my gaze fall away from him to the mattress between us.
He’s still propped up on his elbow, and I watch as he begins trailing two fingers over the comforter’s stitching there. Tracing the lines, back and forth, always stopping and heading in the other direction before his hand touches mine.
I wish he wouldn’t.
I wish he’d let me feel the warmth of his skin, the gentleness in his touch. I know it would be enough to ground me, to pull me from this spiral and allow me to just breathe—even for a moment.
I don’t have it in me to ask for it, though.
“No matter what happens, I need you to remember something,” he says, thankfully oblivious to my internal musings.
“Okay.”
His hand stops moving, and he raises it to tilt my chin up, forcing my attention back to his face. My skin burns where he touches me, but it’s the sincerity and warmth in his eyes that sears me to the bone.
“You’re not less than anyone else. Your learning disability doesn’t make you inferior. If anything, working twice as hard—having to persevere despite wanting to give up—makes you stronger than the rest of us.”
A knot forms in my throat, and I find myself struggling to accept what he says as the truth. After all, having always been the friend looked at as the clown, the dumbass, the comedic relief…how am I supposed to believe him? Even if it is so clearly written in his expression.
But the thing is, ever since telling Logan, he hasn’t done or said anything that’s made me feel stupid or inferior.
Sure, he’s had small slips, like the genius comment when I took a drunken tumble over the goddamn sofa last month, but that was probably merited.
At every other turn, though, he’s done the exact opposite; teaching me to have grace and acceptance for something I have no control over. Framing it in another light.
I don’t think there’s any way I can thank or repay him properly for that—or anything else he’s done for me.
Swallowing down the knot in my throat, I nod rather than answering. Mostly because I don’t trust my voice right now, knowing it’ll sound like it was just put through a meat grinder if I tried.
My phone dings with a notification, effectively breaking the moment by making me jerk away from him. My heart plummets straight into my asshole as I look back at the ceiling, freezing me in place as the panic ensues all over again.
“Are you gonna check that?” Logan asks when I don’t make any attempt to move.
“Nope.”
“It’s probably your scores, though.”
“Probably,” I agree.
“So then why…” He trails off, letting the question linger in the air.
With a groan, I scrub my palm over my face. “Can I have five more minutes to still be a hockey player before I open it?”
“You’re only delaying the inevitable, regardless of what it says.”
Leave it to Logan to operate on logic in times like this.
“Then you open it,” I mutter, motioning to where my phone rests on my dresser. “God knows you’ll be able to read it faster than I will.”
Logan lets out a little noise, a combination of a scoff and a laugh, before he rolls off the bed to grab my cell.
Standing over me, he holds it to my face so it unlocks, then taps the screen a few times to pull up my email.
I watch him the entire time, his eyes moving quickly over the words written there, and every nanosecond he spends reading causes my blood pressure to skyrocket another ten points.
At this rate, I’ll have a heart attack before I find out if I—
“Looks like you’re gonna have to pump the brakes on your pity party,” he tells me, lifting his gaze to meet mine.
I swallow roughly. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you passed.”
I jolt off the bed, grabbing for the phone he’s already holding out toward me, allowing me to see for myself. Because there’s no way that can be right. And yet, there it is, in black and white.
B minus.
I shake my head a couple times, not trusting that the dyslexia isn’t messing with me. But I know it isn’t, because Logan saw the exact same thing.
“I fucking passed,” I whisper, still slightly in shock.
“With a B.”
A disbelieving laugh slips out, and I shake my head some more. “So much for Cs getting degrees.”
Logan’s soft chuckle drags my attention away from the screen, only to find a grin pulling up his lips. But it’s the way he’s looking at me—with amusement, yeah, but also with pride—that has my heart stumbling a little in my chest.
“Do I get to say I told you so, or—”
Without thinking, I toss my phone on the bed, wrap my arms around his shoulders, and haul him in for a hug.
I squeeze him tight against me, feeling every rise and fall of his breaths and beat of his heart against my chest. Is it a stupid move?
Probably, since I told him I wouldn’t initiate any kind of physical contact during this deal of ours.
I just hope it’s a rule he understands me breaking, at least this once.
But at least this hug is a helluva lot smarter than kissing him, which is what I really want to do. And not the kind of bullshit kissing we’ve been doing. I want the kind from the balcony last week.
The kind where, for just a second, it feels real.
I shove the thought aside almost as quickly as it enters my mind—knowing there’s no corner of the universe that I could ever act on it—and attempt to focus on how grateful I am instead.
“Thank you, Logan,” I whisper against his hair. The words feel and sound completely inadequate, knowing without him, this would have never been possible.
They must be enough, though, because Logan relaxes a little against me, melting into my embrace.
His arms slide around my waist, hugging me back with his cheek pressed to my chest and giving a little squeeze.
It’s funny how the press of his body against mine grounds me, but at the same time, I feel like I could float away from unfiltered happiness.
It must be what everyone means by floating on cloud nine.
I just hope he can’t hear the way my heartbeat stumbles behind my ribs.
“Don’t mention it,” he says, the words slightly muffled by my hoodie. “You did most of the work; I just made it easier to understand.”
I’d beg to differ, but right now, I’m too overjoyed to fight him on it. Too relieved to know I’m in the clear—at least until all the cramming for midterms rolls around next semester. But that’s a problem for future Camden.
Present Camden would rather worry about memorizing the way Logan feels in my arms.
“Well, still. Thank you.”
Every fiber of my being hates the idea of releasing him, but I know I’ve already pushed my luck by hugging him without his permission. So I fight the urge to hold on longer and, instead, let go, allowing him to take a step back.
“Uh, and I’m sorry about the—”
He waves me off before I can even finish the thought. “It’s fine, seriously. You could’ve tackled me to the bed and I wouldn’t have cared. I’m just glad you passed.”
There’s not a doubt in my mind he means it. About the class, the hug, all of it. And while it’s stupid as hell, it gives me some hope that we’ve truly become friends after all.
Even if friends isn’t exactly what I want to be.
As if I’d spoken the thought aloud, the moment shifts, comfort turning into an awkward sort of tension.
It fills the room in an instant, billowing all around us as we stand here, staring at each other with still such minimal space between our bodies.
And in that space, the air crackles with electricity, like a charge has been set and ready to detonate—one I’m a half-second from setting off, consequences be damned.
Especially when his gaze drops to my mouth.
You feel it too, don’t you?
I’m about to ask him just that—bring life to the question I’ve had since the banquet—but then Logan takes another step back and claps his hands together, effectively defusing the situation.
“I think you should celebrate a job well done!” he declares, though the words come out a little loud and unnaturally.
My brows collide at the center. “Uh, yeah. I guess so.”
“Well, I’m sure some of the guys from the team will be going out, right? Or has everyone left for the break already?”
I have no idea. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind to ask any of them; I was too busy mentally prepping for this to be the end of days. Not that it really matters because they’re not the ones I’d want to celebrate with anyway. Logan is. He’s the one who got me through this, after all.
And, yeah, maybe I’m just not ready to say goodbye to him for an entire month either.
“If I celebrate with anyone, it should be you. Let me take you to dinner tonight. To thank you,” I say, laying my offer on the table.
I just hope it came out sounding more like an invitation and less like a plea of desperation.
“Yeah, we can have dinner to celebrate,” he concedes with a slow nod. “But how about to thank me, you come to New York instead?”
My stomach does little cartwheels, not expecting this turn of events. Mostly because there’d been zero mention of it since my initial offer, but also because of how poorly our rendezvous with his family went last week.
But it’s still not even a moment’s hesitation before I’m saying yes.
“Yeah. Okay,” I reply, unable to hide my smile. “Can I ask what changed your mind?”
“I thought about what you said, and…” His shoulders lift in a reluctant shrug. “I dunno, maybe you have a point. About us suffering together.”
My smile morphs into a full-blown grin, and I’m filled with more joy than I know is sensible. But I’m not thinking about how bad of an idea this might be, or that we’re going to be surrounded by his family for the entire week, or that Oakley will likely be watching us like a hawk the whole time.
None of that matters if he wants me there—and knowing he does is more than enough to deal with all the rest as it comes.
“That just about killed you to admit, didn’t it?” I tease, still grinning like an idiot.
He rolls his eyes and heads for the door, unamused—or at least he pretends to be as he bites back a smile.
“Just shut up and pack before I change my mind.”