Chapter 8
Jasmine
The restaurant is called Luca's. It's a small Italian place on a quiet street in the West Village with white tablecloths and candles on every table. I've been here once before with Clara for her birthday, and the food is excellent.
I'm ten minutes early and seated at a corner table with a glass of water and my phone. The group chat is blowing up.
Avery: So who's the hot dinner with???
Harper:
Natalie: Spill.
I type back: It's not a hot date. Just dinner with Logan.
Three dots appear from every direction simultaneously.
Avery: JUST dinner???
Harper: Girl.
Natalie: The childhood friend?
Olivia: Wait what did I miss?
Avery: Jasmine is having dinner with her hot ex-boyfriend from high school who she claims is just a friend.
I type back: It’s not like that. We’re really just friends. Calm down.
I take a sip of water and check the time. He's fifteen minutes late, which is unusual for Logan.
Then a voice behind me. “Hey. Sorry, I'm late.”
I turn, and Logan is standing at the edge of the table in dark jeans and a cream sweater. His hair is still damp from the shower, and there's a faint bruise on his jaw that wasn't there last week.
He looks incredible, and I hate that he looks incredible because I told four women sixty seconds ago that this is not a date.
“Don't worry about it,” I say as he sits down across from me. “You had the press conference and everything. How was it?”
“Cole does most of the talking. I sit there and answer one or two questions and try not to look like I want to leave,” Logan says with a cute boyish smile. I stomp out the butterflies the sight makes me feel.
“And how's that going?” I ask to distract myself from how well he fills out his sweater.
“Getting better. Cole's been coaching me through it. He tells which reporter is going to ask what and how much I need to give them. He's good at reading a room.”
“He seems like a good captain.”
“Best I've ever played for.”
The waiter appears, and Logan orders a beer, and we both order food. The pappardelle for me, branzino for him, and then the waiter disappears.
Logan picks up his water glass, and takes a drink, his eyes locked on mine as he does. “You look beautiful,” he says as he sets the glass down, his eyes roaming over me.
My pulse kicks. “Thank you.”
His mouth curved with the faintest hint of a smile. “Last time I told you that, you ignored my text. Made me think there's someone in your life who wouldn't take kindly to another man complimenting his lady.”
My stomach flips, but I keep my face neutral. “There's no one. What about you?”
“No one.”
My brows raise a fraction. “Logan Shaw, alternate captain of the New York Renegades, single? I find that hard to believe,” I tease.
He leans back in his chair, no trace of humor in his expression. “I haven’t been in a serious relationship since we broke up.”
What? He hasn’t had a girlfriend for a decade? My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my ears. Has he been carrying me around with him the same way I've been carrying him? Has he been measuring every woman against what we had, the way I've measured every man?
The thought is so big and frightening that I have to put it down before it swallows me whole. It's probably not about me at all. He's a professional athlete with a demanding schedule and an overbearing family.
There are a hundred reasons a man stays single that have nothing to do with a girl he dated in high school, but that doesn’t stop the bitterness over how we broke up I’ve buried deep to slip out. “Not surprised there. I'm sure Cat chases them all away.”
Logan’s jaw tightens. I’ve pissed him off. “My mother doesn't dictate my love life.”
Has he forgotten that Cat practically chased me out of his life? “Oh yeah?”
“I was young, Jasmine. I made a stupid mistake. I was eighteen, and I listened to my parents when I should have listened to myself. But I'm not eighteen anymore. I'm a grown man, and I make my own decisions.”
My heart is hammering against my ribs. What is he saying? Is he saying what I think he's saying?
The waiter arrives with our food and sets the plates down.
Logan picks up his fork and looks at my plate. “The pappardelle here is good?”
I stare at him. He just told me he hasn't had a serious relationship in ten years, and now he's asking about pasta. He can't say something like that and then switch to the menu like we're discussing the weather.
I want to reach across the table and grab him by the collar of his sweater and say, “What do you mean you haven't been in a serious relationship, Logan? What does that mean? Is it because of me? Is it because of what we had? Tell me the truth right now.”
But I don't. I'm scared of the answer either way. If it's about me, then we're standing at the edge of something I'm not ready for. If it's not about me, then I've spent ten years thinking I mattered more than I did.
Stop overthinking.
We were best friends before we were anything else. He's probably just talking to me the way you talk to an old friend about things you've moved past.
I take a deep breath before speaking. “It's incredible. Clara and I came here for her birthday last year, and I almost ordered a second plate.”
“Clara?” Logan asks.
“Yeah, she’s my friend at work,” I say.
“It’s so weird that I don’t know your friends anymore like I used to,” Logan says, staring at me.
“You kind of do,” I say. “I hangout with Harper, Natalie, Avery, and Olivia a lot.”
“Glad to hear you've got a good crew around you,” Logan says with a smile that makes my heart beat too fast.
He asks about the Renegades account, and I tell him about the sportswear brand renewal and the framework I'm building for Wilder. Then we move to hockey.
I’m fascinated by Logan’s life now. When we were dating, he was an eighteen-year-old playing travel hockey and dreaming about the NHL the way kids dream about going to space.
It felt huge back then, but it was still small—local rinks, bus rides to tournaments, scouts in the stands scribbling notes.
Now he's playing at Madison Square Garden in front of twenty thousand people and doing postgame press conferences, and his name is on television, and his face is on billboards outside the arena.
The boy who used to drive me home in his dad's truck is a professional athlete with a Stanley Cup ring, and I missed the entire journey that got him here.
I hate that I did.
“We're heading to Chicago on Wednesday,” he says.
“Looking forward to it?” I ask.
“Not particularly. The arena is freezing. I don't know what they do with the thermostat in that building, but it's like playing in a meat locker.”
“Aren't you on ice? Isn't it supposed to be cold?”
“There's cold, and then there's Chicago cold. And the fans are insane. Last time we played there, someone threw a hot dog at Liam during warm-ups.”
I laugh. “So where are you living these days?”
“West 60s. One-bedroom, nothing fancy. It's close to the arena, and it's quiet. That's all I need.”
That sounds exactly like Logan. Even in high school, he was the least materialistic person I knew. While other guys on the team were obsessing over new gear and sneakers and whatever car their parents were going to buy them, Logan wore the same three t-shirts in rotation and didn't care.
His bedroom was spotless. Bed made, clothes folded, nothing on the floor. I used to tease him that he lived like a soldier.
“Are you still ridiculously regimented?” I ask. “Same breakfast every morning, same route to practice, everything on a schedule?”
He laughs. “It's worse now.”
I can’t help but smile. “Worse how?”
“Same pre-game meal every game day. Same warm-up routine. Same route to the arena. I eat at the same three restaurants. I go to bed at the same time. I wake up at the same time. Everything has an order.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
His face turns serious. “It's the only way to make it at this level.
The margins between winning and losing are so small that the guys who last are the ones who control everything they can.
Sleep, nutrition, recovery, and preparation.
You eliminate the variables, and you let your body do what you've trained it to do.”
“I get that,” I say. My life runs on the same principle, just in a courtroom instead of an arena. The preparation, the discipline, the refusal to leave anything to chance. We built our lives the same way, just in different buildings.
“Still, your apartment doesn't sound like much of a home,” I say, picturing an unfurnished apartment with just a bed.
“It's not. It's where I sleep during the season.” He takes a sip of his beer. “My home is in Maine. I bought a place three years ago on the coast. I go up every off-season and on non-game days.”
“You bought a house in Maine?”
“Yeah. I needed somewhere that was mine,” Logan says with a shrug. “It’s beautiful. The porch faces the water, and in the mornings, the fog rolls in off the ocean, and you can't see ten feet in front of you. It's the most peaceful place I've ever been.”
“It sounds amazing.”
“You should come up sometime. The beach is beautiful, especially in the fall when nobody's around. I think you'd love it.” Logan holds my gaze across the table.
“I'd like that,” I say.
We hold eye contact across the table for a long second, and I'm the one who looks away first because if I don’t, I'm going to say something I'm not ready to say.
The check comes, and Logan takes it before I can reach for it. I argue. He ignores me. He puts his card down, and that's the end of that discussion.
We walk out of the restaurant, and the cold air hits us, and I pull my coat tighter. The street is quiet, and the city feels far away even though it's right there, humming on every side.
“I had a good time tonight,” I say.
“Me too.”
“We should do this more often.”
“Yeah, I’d like that,” I say, even though I know that the more I see him, the more I’ll get drawn back in.
We stand there on the sidewalk, and the air between us is charged with everything we didn't say over dinner, and I need to leave before I do something reckless.
“Goodnight, Logan.”
“Goodnight, Jasmine.”
He steps toward me and kisses my cheek. His lips are warm against my skin, and he smells like cedar. He holds the kiss for a second longer than a friend would, and when he pulls back, his blue eyes are right there, inches from mine, and I stop breathing.
Then he steps back and puts his hands in his pockets. “Text me when you get home,” he says, voice soft like it was all those years ago.
I nod and shove my hands in my pockets so I don’t reach for him. “I will.”
I turn and walk to my car, parked halfway down the block, and I don't look back because if I look back I'm going to walk right back to him.
I get in the car and sit behind the wheel and press my fingers to the spot on my cheek where his mouth was.
My phone is already lighting up with the group chat. I ignore it. Clara has texted too. Well???
I type back: Scary
She responds immediately: Knew it. Tell me everything tomorrow.