Chapter Eleven #2
I can’t imagine I will. Even thinking about it has me missing him. I doubt I could ever be done with him. We wouldn’t watch movies older than our combined ages anymore. There would be no more couch conversations.
I make a pathetically sad noise, involuntary and quiet enough that I hope Cade doesn’t hear it.
“It’s Logan, huh?”
The paranoia is instant.
“You like him, right? Say no, man—I fucking hate when Nic is right about shit.” When I can’t bring myself to say anything—to lie or worse, actually admit it—he keeps going.
“Plus, it’s embarrassing. I’ll be honest–to–god embarrassed for you, dude.
I’ve been in that situation and still cringe thinking about it. Probably will ’til I die.”
Right. He has been there. Sort of. “Your straight boy realized he wasn’t actually straight,” I remind him.
“Yeah,” he lets the word out on a laugh. “It only took some other guy to help him do it.”
That’s true. Liam is all boo’d up with the first and only man he’s ever been interested in—not Cade.
It all worked out in the end—he has Nic now—but I think about Logan in Liam’s place and feel a wash of anguish at the imagery.
Logan falling for a guy is unlikely, but that’s what Cade assumed about Liam, and look how that ended up.
“So, it is him.”
I study the side of his face as I consider the harm in confirming it. Outing people… but I guess it wouldn’t be outing, not really. It’s not like Logan actually is gay.
“He kissed me.”
“What?” The shock is exactly what I expected. “Logan kissed you?”
I don’t have to speak for him to get his answer.
He surprises me by laughing. “I’m just fucking with you, Baby. You told me that last night.” He chuckles just as we swerve into the parking lot to his and Nic’s workplace, and my stomach rolls.
“No.” But I know that I did. I remember it now. I ugly cried all over his pillow and told them both.
“Yes. At least I think you did. You were a little hard to understand, but Nic translated what he could. I was hoping he was wrong.”
“Is there any way you can not tell Nic he was right?” I know they’re married and all, but I don’t want this to be a topic of discussion at all.
“I’m definitely not going to tell him he’s right.”
“I—do you think…” I don’t know what I want to ask. I don’t know what to say or what to think.
“So, you do like him?”
I blow out a laugh through my nose. “I guess,” I mumble.
“Man, I really thought you hated him.”
Truthfully, I like Logan so much that I kind of do hate him.
“Then isn’t it a good thing that it happened?”
“No. It’s—” Awful. In the moment, it was great. It was everything to me, but there’s no telling what comes next. There are so many different possibilities, and going over a fraction of them has me wanting to crawl into a hole and stay there. “I don’t think he likes guys.”
“Who cares? There are billions of people on this planet, and I promise you, there isn’t one single sexual experience that hasn’t been experienced. As a species, we like to fuck, and sometimes that’s all it comes down to.”
That sounds even worse. “That doesn’t help, Cade. You’re awful at the whole comforting thing.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel better, Baby. Shit is shit, and sometimes it is that simple—so go ahead and feel sorry for yourself.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, thank you so much for your permission.”
“You know what isn’t simple?” he asks, like I didn’t say anything at all.
“Sexuality. It’s this whole big spectrum, and sometimes we don’t know we like something until we try it.
Maybe he liked kissing you. If Liam had ever kissed me, I would have…
I don’t know.” He shakes his head, losing some of the fervor he was speaking with.
“We’re not that kind of right for each other, so I guess I’m glad he didn’t.
” There’s more to say, but he leaves it at that.
I know he has regrets about Liam. “But I am glad Nic did.”
I ignore that last bit. I have regrets myself, the way I acted last night being at the forefront, but letting Logan kiss me isn’t one of them. It’s only when he stopped kissing me that things felt wrong.
I want to press, ask Cade what he would have done if Liam had gone for it, but I keep quiet. Instead, I simply wonder what I’m going to do now.
I could cry at the realization that I’ve also been here before. I was looking at it as an entirely new experience, but this has a lot of similarities to the thing I went through with Zeke.
I don’t want to relive that.
There are differences, that’s for sure. With Zeke, I was the one to break things off.
I can’t be the one to end it with Logan.
I was scared last night, told him I was done without really thinking it through.
I gave Zeke so many chances—none of which he deserved—and it feels weird to think of not granting that courtesy to someone so much better than that loser.
I don’t know. If I were Logan, trying new things out, I’d probably take what’s been given to me for the failure it was and leave it at that. But I’m not him, and that’s not what I want. I want more. I want whatever he’s willing to give me, even if in the end he decides he hates it.
I know I’m about to make so many mistakes—the kinds I swore to never make again—but it’s settled. I can feel the heartbreak now, the seed already planted securely right in my heart.
It already hurts, but Logan seems worth the pain of letting it grow.