Chapter 14
ALEX
“This is so good,” Logan nearly moans as he takes another bite of his burrito.
I stare at the way he scarfs down his food.
He might not exercise as much as he used to as an athlete, but he certainly has the same voracious appetite.
“They’re pretty good, yeah,” I say.
“So—you really think my leads are good? You’re not just saying that?”
“Absolutely. I didn’t even have to tell you much. You just need to be a little more concise, and then you’ll be golden.”
“It’s funny. I’ve always been a man of few words. At least according to—”
Logan stops, rubbing a napkin across his mouth.
He takes a sip of water. “I don’t know. I think it’s weird that you think I’m saying too much.”
I snort. “You’re not. Leads are just supposed to be snappy. They’re supposed to catch your attention.”
“I know. You’ve already said that five times.”
I scoff, crumple one of my napkins, and throw it at him.
“Hey!” he yells, throwing his hands up to defend himself.
“I’m trying to help you,” I say.
Logan smirks at me. “You can say that in fewer words, I think.”
I shake my head and smile. “You’re evil.”
A silence falls between us.
I want to know who thinks he’s a man of few words. Who told him that, and why doesn’t he want to talk about it?
A replay of a football game appears on the screen to our left.
I glance at it and watch as the players tackle and pile on top of each other.
I notice Logan looking at it longingly.
“Do you ever wonder what you’d be doing if you were still playing?” I ask.
I almost want to cover my mouth immediately. I wish I hadn’t asked.
Logan focuses his gaze on me, his eyes turning murky.
I feel like he might just get up, throw away his food, and leave without a glance back at me, and I might deserve it.
He sighs, tossing a crumpled napkin onto the table. “I don’t know. I just know that I miss it.”
“I’m sure.”
He purses his lips, then picks up his fork again and takes a slow bite of rice.
“There’s… no way for you to play again?”
He shakes his head.
After swallowing a large bite, he says, “I was… hit by a drunk driver—if you didn’t know already. The guy managed to brake fast enough not to run me over completely, but the car hit my legs, and then I landed on the hood.”
He looks away from me.
“I tore my ACL, MCL, and meniscus. They said I could permanently damage my knee if I played again. I decided to listen to my doctor.”
“That must have been hard.”
“Almost impossible,” he says.
He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. “I almost didn’t listen to him. It was like… telling me not to breathe. Telling me not to blink. How could I stop doing something that was so natural to me?”
I lean forward in my chair. “I’m glad you chose yourself. A lot of people would have risked further injury.”
He nods. “Yeah. But—I don’t know if it’s worth it sometimes.”
“Why?”
Logan inhales slowly. “I don’t have anything else going for me. I’m mediocre in my classes, and I don’t have any other passions. My ex-girlfriend broke up with me because I wasn’t going to be an NFL player, and…”
He looks at me, realization washing over his face as he recognizes he’s probably said too much.
I realize his ex-girlfriend isn’t just shitty for dating one of his old teammates. She’s even worse for breaking up with him while he was grappling with his injury.
Who even does that?
“You’re trying to find yourself. Who isn’t?” I say softly, trying to reel him back in.
He bites his lip. “I know, but without football, I’m just... I don’t know.”
“You’re an interesting guy, Logan. Even if I don’t know you that well, I can tell you are.”
Logan gives me a weak grin, his cheeks turning slightly pink. “Thanks.”
We both silently take a few more bites of our food.
There’s so much I want to ask him, but dealing with him is like dealing with a scared animal. I have to bide my time.
“Do you still go to the games?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “It feels wrong to go. I want to support my team, but… going just feels like a reminder of what I missed out on. I wish I could still help them like I used to, but I can’t.”
“Yeah. It feels like you’re letting them down, even when you know you aren’t,” I say softly.
Logan looks at me like I just took the words out of his mouth, but he says nothing.
“But you still work out and all that? I mean, I saw you at the gym…”
“Yeah, I like to stay active.”
“Can you still do leg exercises?”
Logan tilts his head side to side. “Yeah. I try to stick to seated machine exercises so I can control what my knee does and keep it stabilized. It hurts when I do any squat variation or certain leg presses, so I stay away from those.”
“You’ll have to help me lift sometime.”
Logan raises an eyebrow.
“I’m newer to the gym, very much unlike you.”
Logan smirks. “How so?”
I roll my eyes. “Have you seen yourself? You’re built like a Greek god. I mean, you were—are an athlete. I just started lifting to get my mind off my ex…”
Logan takes another bite of his food. “Your ex?”
I blow out a breath, wishing I hadn’t mentioned it, but Logan has a way of making me forget about my filter.
“He’s a swimmer. He goes to Kent. It’s like thirty minutes away from here…
anyway, we met at a bar, and things started off quickly.
I knew he was an athlete and had to dedicate a lot of time to swimming.
He wants to be an Olympic swimmer. At one point, I was only seeing him once a month since he goes to a different school, and he was flaking on me. Eventually, he just broke it off.”
I take an embittered sip of my water.
“The next week, he was dating his teammate.”
Logan coughs on his water. “What?”
I nod. “Yep. That was so fun.”
Logan gets an angry look on his face. “He’s a dick.”
“His name is Scott.”
Logan nods. “Scott’s a dick.”
I snort. “Yeah, I know. That’s why I started working out. Just to get my mind off him and get a revenge body, I guess. I’m still working on it.”
Logan smirks. “I definitely think you’re on your way there.”
My cheeks heat up at the way Logan glances at my arms, but I try to brush it off.
“Funny thing is, Scott’s been trying to get back together with me.”
Logan furrows his eyebrows. “He has?”
I nod. “He keeps showing up wherever I am and begging me to talk to him.”
Logan licks his lips. “Do you want to?”
I shake my head. “God, no. He just won’t take the hint. I’m not one to eat out of the trash.”
Logan chuckles. “That’s a nice way to put it. I’m sure you can do much better, anyway.”
A flutter stirs in my chest at how earnest Logan sounds and the confidence he seems to have in me. His smile widens ever so slightly as we stare at each other.
I think about how Naomi and Logan have said the same thing about Scott—that I can do better.
I eye Logan, watching as he seems to drift somewhere else in his head.
“And what about you? Is your ex hovering around you, too?”
Logan gets an embarrassed look on his face. “Not really… She’s dating one of my old teammates, Joel.”
“Joel Whitlock, right? He gave my friend Mason a hard time.”
Logan raises his eyebrows. “Mason Fanning?”
I nod.
“He’s dating Callum, right?”
“I forget how intermingled the football team is sometimes.”
Logan snorts. “Yeah, well, Callum isn’t exactly modest about how much he loves Mason. It’s hard to ignore.”
“Most football players are hard to ignore. They’re all so… loud. And for what?”
Logan frowns playfully. “Hey. Those are my friends you’re talking about.”
I put my hands up defensively. “I’m just stating a fact.”
Logan rolls his eyes.
“But yeah, what about your ex…?”
“Mikayla,” Logan answers for me. “She, uh… we were on the rocks before my accident anyway, so it didn’t come completely out of nowhere.
But right after we broke up, she said she didn’t want to watch me ‘circle the drain’ and throw my life away.
She wanted someone who would take themselves higher.
” He lets out a humorless laugh. “Pretty much saying she wanted to date someone who would go pro.”
I ball my fists. “That’s terrible.”
Logan shrugs like it isn’t that big of a deal. “Yeah. It was tough to hear.”
I slam my hand on the table as if to shake him out of his blasé attitude.
“She was kicking you while you were down. That’s cruel.”
Logan tilts his head from side to side. “I understood her perspective. We were never the best match anyway, so it wasn’t the biggest loss, but still. Just knowing she wanted to break up because of my injury, and then seeing her date someone else on the team…”
I shake my head. “That must have been awful. I’m really sorry, Logan.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles.
“For what it’s worth, you can do a lot better than Mikayla, too. You deserve someone who will choose you over everything else.”
My heart stutters at how warm Logan’s smile is and how soft his voice becomes as he stares at me. It’s unfair that he has to be this nice and this good-looking.
My phone buzzes.
Logan clears his throat, and I glance down at the screen.
“Sorry, I just have to check this.”
I open my email and see a message from Fiona with “URGENT” in the subject line.
My heart starts racing as I open it.
Where is your article for tonight? If it’s not in my inbox before midnight, you’re off the paper!
- Love, Fiona
My hands begin to tremble.
“Shit. I forgot to write something for tonight.”
Logan wipes his mouth after taking another bite of his burrito. “Huh?”
I start stuffing all my garbage into the cardboard tray.
“I had an article for The Goldberg due tomorrow—tonight—and I haven’t even started.”
Logan frowns. “Tomorrow?”
I shake my head. “Yes. But no. Tonight.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Whatever, just—I have to have it in by tonight.”
“Oh. Okay. Can I drive you back to your place?” Logan offers as he starts cleaning up his own things haphazardly.
I put my hands out in front of me. “No, it’s okay. I can walk. Or run. Maybe I’ll run, actually.”
Logan places a hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?”
I tense at his touch, a pocket of warmth spreading across my shoulder. I try to ignore it.
“No, really, it’s okay. I live like five minutes from here. I’ll be fine.”
I sling my backpack over my shoulder. “I, uh—I’ll see you around, okay? Thanks for paying for dinner. I really appreciate it.”
Logan nods, his eyes boring into mine, almost like he’s pleading with me not to go.
“Of course. Good luck with the paper, Alex.”
I nod. “Thanks, Logan.”
I turn toward the door.
“Hey, uh—would you—would you actually want…”
I stop halfway to the door and turn back to face him. He’s rubbing the back of his neck.
“Want to…?” I ask, my heart beating way too fast.
Logan purses his lips. “Go to the next home game? I, uh—I’ve been wanting to, and I don’t know…”
“Of course. That’d be cool,” I say, my cheeks hurting from how hard I’m smiling.
I wonder how much it took for him to ask me that. It must have been incredibly hard for him. And to ask me, of all people, to go with him?
Logan shoves his hands into his sweater pockets. “Cool. Then, uh—I’ll see you soon.”
I grin. “Yeah. See you soon.”
I want to stay longer, but I refuse to let Fiona get the best of me, so I give Logan one last wave before dashing out the door and toward my house.
I know I have to focus on what I need to write, but I can’t stop thinking about Logan.
Why did he suddenly want to go to the game? And why with me?
Am I the person he wants to lean on while he figures out this new chapter of his life?