Chapter 7
I’ve only had a few moments in my entire life where the world felt like it was crashing down around me.
The first time was when my parents told me they were getting a divorce.
It’d been in the fourth grade, while we’d been out to dinner, and I’d choked on my spaghetti.
The other time I could vividly remember had been freshman year, when Maisie ran crying out of the gymnasium.
And now… this.
Much like how it’d felt in the Brentwood High hallway on the first day we met, the room around Logan and me faded into mere background noise. My brain tuned everything out, because it absolutely could not compute the image in front of me.
Logan, in a Jefferson High varsity jacket.
Logan, responding to being called the team’s quarterback.
Logan, who stood alive and well in Expresso’s despite dropping off the face of the earth.
Ashton made a pleased sound, sitting back into his seat. “Ah, yes—you are a pretty boy. Better suited in tights than shoulder pads.”
Logan didn’t look at me. Not once. His jaw flexed, his gaze locked on some invisible point over Ashton’s shoulder, like if he so much as glanced my way, he’d give himself away. My chest tightened.
What is happening? The words were an echo in my mind, running over and over until they stopped making sense. What is happening?
“I’m flattered,” Logan said evenly, his voice steady despite the storm brewing just beneath it. “I don’t swing that way, though.”
The next person in the coffee line rubbed a hand over his mouth, not quite hiding his twitching lips.
“Good at jokes, huh?” Ashton scoffed. “Kind of like your performance on the field?”
Logan casually raised an eyebrow. “You should worry about your own performance. Not like any of you were picked quarterback for your team, right?”
“Pretty boy’s got a mouth on him,” Kyle muttered none too quietly, and his hand suddenly landed on my hip. His fingers curled in, as if staking his claim in front of his enemies.
I should’ve pushed him off. Normally, I would’ve, but I was too stunned to move, too busy watching the way Logan’s eyes—finally shifting from their pointed avoidance—fixed on that hand.
Just the hand. His breath hitched, his shoulders squaring, every inch of him braced like he was swallowing down something fierce.
And then, finally, Logan’s perfect blue eyes slid to mine.
Everything in me jolted with the brief connection, because no matter how fiercely my head wanted to deny it, there was no missing those eyes. It was him. Even if he looked nothing like the boy I thought I knew.
Noah knocked his knuckles on the counter, tearing Logan’s gaze away from mine only a millisecond after it connected. He gave his head a small shake. Don’t, the gesture screamed. At the same time, Connor said, “Knock it off,” to our table. “I mean it.”
Unlike Ashton, who looked ready to launch up from the table and spar it out, Logan backed down immediately. “We’ll see who’s the better team on game day in a few weeks,” Logan said, letting out a breath. “We face you for your homecoming, don’t we? May the best team win.”
“Listen to him, being all goody-goody just because there’s people around,” Ashton muttered, only seeming to grow more agitated when Logan turned back to the counter.
“That’s the kid from last year, too, isn’t it?” Kyle asked. Against my pleated skirt, my fingers curled into a fist. “The one behind the counter.”
“Yeah, that’s him.” Ashton shot Connor a dirty look, which the latter boy ignored. “What a lucky day for us to sit here and do… nothing.”
Again, Connor paid him zero attention.
Logan straightened and cut toward the doors, weaving through the line like he couldn’t get out fast enough. For a split second, I braced for him to glance back—because no way could he just not look at me.
But he didn’t. He slipped through the exit with the rush of chilled air, leaving me behind like I was nothing more than a Brentwood Bobcat he couldn’t bother to give the time of day. Like the boy who’d been holding my hand on Monday hadn’t just walked off the field mid-play.
“He’s running with his tail between his legs because he knows we’re better,” Ashton went on. “But, c’mon. What a dweeb.”
“Total dweeb,” Kyle agreed.
All at once, I found myself shrugging off Kyle’s grimy hand and shoving to my feet. My chest burned, as if at some point along the way, I’d stopped breathing.
“What are you doing?” Jade asked, her head swiveling up.
She knew. Jade and Riley were the only two at this table who knew the truth of who Logan really was, and they’d sat there, silent through it all.
Jade didn’t seem as shocked as she should’ve been, but I could barely think straight.
“It’s cold in here,” I said, but the words were choppy. “I’m going to get my jacket.”
You know I have to go after him, I thought to her. I—I have to.
Riley sat forward, Jade’s phone still in her hands and angled up at me. “Are you sure you’re not—”
Jade tilted her head sideways, and all at once, Riley fell silent. Her dark eyes traced mine, flat and probing. Don’t tell me to sit down, I willed to her. Let me go after him. Then, like a switch flipped, her lips curved. “Hurry back,” she said. “You still have to vote for the list.”
She truly was the world’s best best friend.
I nodded, dazed. “Right.”
And then I did the one thing I would’ve sworn to never do—I chased after a Bulldog.
I knew Logan hadn’t turned right when he stepped onto the sidewalk, because we would’ve seen him pass by the window at our booth, so I went left. I nearly stumbled over my own feet, pulse misfiring in my chest.
The sun was in my eyes as I raced down the sidewalk, my cheer sneakers digging into the pavement, tight and uncomfortable.
People swirled around me, a blur of legs and bags and chatter, and I couldn’t find him—couldn’t see his jacket anywhere.
For a second, I could almost convince myself the past few minutes hadn’t happened, that Logan hadn’t actually been in Expresso’s at all.
I barreled toward the crosswalk without thinking, not even checking the light, heart hammering so hard I could barely breathe.
Then two strong hands gripped my upper arms and yanked me back.
My feet skidded on the concrete, my back slamming into something solid, just as a car roared past, horn blaring and wind whipping my hair.
I slumped a little in the grip, and I realized it wasn’t only my pulse that’d skyrocketed.
The frantic, pulsing rhythm I felt in my back belonged to the chest I was pressed against.
When I turned, I came face to face with a Bulldog patch breast pocket.
Red and black. Teeth bared.
And when I lifted my eyes, I met two blue ones.
Logan gasped in a short, sharp breath, like he’d been the one almost flattened by the car. His hands still held my arms, but his grip had a tremor now, betraying the shock beneath his controlled exterior. “Are you okay?”
The heat of him, the proximity, the suddenness of it all, left my legs trembling. I knew he was asking about the fact that I was nearly flattened by a car. “Am I okay?” I echoed, and hearing my voice sort of snapped me back to focus. “Am I okay? You’re seriously asking me that?”
Logan looked down the direction toward Expresso’s, and without a word, he grabbed my wrist and tugged me.
I was too stupefied to dig my heels in. He drew me into the nearest empty alleyway, and it was like we were transported to another place entirely—where the sun was obscured and everything was shadowy.
He dropped my wrist and his eyes, focusing on the gritty ground. “You shouldn’t have followed me,” he said in a quiet voice. “You—you should go back.”
The numbness of shock I’d felt in Expresso’s was fully wearing off now, waking up two warring emotions—anger and hurt. They shook within me like a multi-colored pom-pom, reaching every inch of my chest. “What,” I began in a low voice, “is going on?”
He looked away quickly, jaw tight, shoulders hunched, as if he wanted to shrink out of sight. That softness I’d always seen—the easy grin, the steady warmth—was gone, replaced by a tight, defensive edge. “You should go,” he repeated. “Before they start talking.”
“They?”
“Your friends.”
“Oh, sure.” My voice was tight. “You put me in this situation, but now you’re thinking about how my friends will react.”
Logan actually flinched.
My gaze dropped to the Bulldog patch. “Jade will cover for me, so unfortunately for you, I’m here until you explain.” Explain what universe we’d just stepped into.
Some of the tension in his face cleared, but almost as if I’d given him bad news instead of good news. As if he couldn’t stand the thought of standing in the alleyway with me for another moment. “Jade won’t—”
“Are you Jefferson’s quarterback?”
“Yes.”
Just that. One word. One syllable. No panic. No apology. Logan’s jaw flexed like he wanted to say more, like he had a hundred things to tell me. But in the end, all he did was stand there. Anger dulled for a moment, Hurt taking the upper hand. “Why were you even at Brentwood’s open house, then?”
“I was—dared to.”
And just like that, Anger put Hurt in a chokehold. “You toured Brentwood on a dare?” How was it possible that it just kept getting worse? “Was flirting with a Brentwood cheerleader part of it?”
My words were laced with sarcasm, because while I said it, I didn’t actually think Logan would do that. This guy, golden retriever to the max, flirting and taking a rival out on a date, on a dare? No way.
But his silence stretched out longer and longer, and I realized that he wasn’t going to answer.
He wasn’t going to deny it.
“You’re joking. You’ve got to be kidding me. It was?”
And again, Logan said nothing.
“You—we—I—” I actually had to close my eyes to orient myself. “We called each other almost every night before bed, you—”
“I muted the call.” There was a tremor in Logan’s voice as he spoke, as if his tone dropped too low. “After ten minutes, I muted the call so you’d hang up.”