Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
The rest of the weekend blurred into two parallel universes. The official one that everyone involved with the Marcus Foundation saw, and the secret one that Logan and I lived inside our hotel room.
Norman paraded us through small breakout sessions. One with the MacIntyre Foundation, one with a couple of MLAs, another with a gaggle of private-school women who controlled half the city’s fundraising committees.
I sat in on discussions about youth pathways in the arts and long-term community engagement, listening to smart things about infrastructure and mentorship. I soaked it all up like a sponge.
Logan sat through media-coaching refreshers and sponsor conversations. He answered questions about the Blizzard mess and why he was interested in the new gallery.
On paper, we were composed and professional. In practice, we could barely keep our hands off each other.
It started small. His knee brushing mine under the dinner table. My hand resting on the back of his chair and lingering longer than necessary. His palm on my back as we squeezed through a crowded foyer, or his thumb tracing a distracting little circle just under my shoulder blade.
I was drunk on all of it. Drunk on him. On the fact that this man who could bulldoze an NHL defenseman with his shoulder would go dead still if I touched the inside of his wrist. That he would excuse himself from a conversation mid-sentence to follow me upstairs if I sent him one well-timed look.
We did our jobs. We showed up. We were brilliant, behaved, and impeccably professional in every meeting scheduled for us. But the second there was a break in the calendar?
Being with Logan was the most fun I’d ever had.
We ordered room service and ate dessert in bed, laughing so hard over some story about training camp that my stomach cramped. We argued over movies and books. We watched half of some terrible late-night sitcom with the volume low, his hand resting over my bare hip like it had always belonged there.
I did my exploring, and he did his. He spent hours that weekend doing exactly what he’d promised and then some.
I never once pretended.
On Sunday, late morning, we packed up the room in a daze.
The drive back down the mountain was quiet. Comfortable. I kept waiting for the regret to hit. The shame. But it didn’t.
I was positive it would happen once I got home. Once I saw Maddie and Shar face-to-face. They’d been supportive of this whole thing before, but there was no way in hell I’d be able to explain this.
When we hit the outskirts of Calgary, my stomach started to hollow out. Not because of what had happened, but because of what was about to. Logan would take my exit. He’d drop me at the fourplex, he’d drive home, and we’d both drop back into our regular lives.
The life where we didn’t sleep next to each other. Where we couldn’t just disappear upstairs for an hour before dinner.
Logan pulled to the right and flicked on his signal. The click-click-click echoed in my brain.
“Logan—” I started as he said, “Come to my place?” already pulling out of the turn-only lane.
It was a terrible idea since I had homework to do and didn’t have a stitch of clean laundry left in my bag.
Obviously, I said yes.
_____
I did eventually go home, and the following week was chaos. School. Work. By day, I had lectures, studio time, and meetings at the gallery. I finalized wall texts and refined the proposed student-programming schedule for submission to Douglas and the provincial grant committee.
By night, more often than not, I was at Logan’s. I told Jenna and Lindsey I had a group project. A late shift at the gallery. Over the weekend, I was staying at my parents’ to help with holiday baking.
But Jenna and Lindsey weren’t idiots. I was happier than I’d ever been, and they knew it wasn’t a paycheck or sugar cookie that made the difference.
I should have felt worse about the secret life I was leading, especially when I didn’t come clean with Maddie. I did feel guilt in flashes. But then Logan would open his door, hair damp from a shower, wearing sweats and a T-shirt, and everything else would go out the window.
On Sunday night, I lay in his arms, curled against his chest. He’d been quieter than usual, more intense.
“You played so well last night,” I murmured, dropping a kiss on his chest.
He blew out a breath. “My positioning was off.”
I traced a slow circle around his belly button. I didn’t argue. I’d learned not to try and make him feel better about something that frustrated him. Especially when it came to hockey.
Logan threaded his fingers in my hair. “My mom called this morning.”
I tilted my head to look at him. “Oh yeah?”
“She asked if we’d stayed in the same room in Banff.”
I snorted. “What did you say?”
“I said that was what Norman booked for us. She said . . . she was disappointed in my choices.”
I barked a laugh. “She’s disappointed? She’s disappointed?”
Logan wasn’t laughing.
I pushed up on one elbow, the sheet slipping down my shoulder. “Logan, you have to call her out on this.”
Logan stared at the ceiling. “I grew up thinking they were the ideal. Perfect couple. Dad made the money, Mom stayed home and took me to the zoo, and art museums. She drove me to practices. They both came to all my games.”
I didn’t interrupt, not wanting to say anything that would spook him from continuing on. For all the vulnerable physical conversations we’d had, there were still a few topics Logan avoided like the plague. This was one of them.
“And now,” he said slowly, “I’m looking at them and realizing that for all I know they were faking it the whole time.”
I watched him, my heart aching. I didn’t have a single thing I could say to make this better.
He’d used the word “fake,” and that immediately made me think of us.
The past few days, I’d tried a couple of times to bring up the gallery opening and what we would look like after.
In response, he joked around, teased that at least I wouldn’t be so desperate for sex like I thought.
All of it made me feel like my insides had been scooped out. He didn’t want to talk about his parents, and he didn’t want to talk about us. Which hadn’t been a problem until I started being honest with myself. About what I was feeling. What I wanted.
After a few moments, Logan rolled out of bed, grabbing his sweatpants from the floor. “I’m going to the gym.”
Now it was my turn to frown. “Is it open this late?”
“Yeah. For another two hours at least.”
“You have practice in the morning.”
“I know.”
“Logan—”
He shoved his legs into the sweats, pulling them up with a rough yank. He’d gone to the gym for an extra workout yesterday, too.
“Don’t you think you’re pushing yourself a little too hard?”
He shrugged, walking back to the bed to kiss me on the cheek. “I’ve got to get more explosive on my sprints.” He grabbed his keys and was gone a second later, the door clicking shut behind him.
The silence that swooped in was a vacuum. I lay back down on his pillow, breathing in the faint mix of his cologne and detergent.
Logan was nothing if not a hard worker. If something wasn’t right, he carved into it with relentless precision until it bent into submission. He fixed everything by doing.
I closed my eyes, forcing my lungs to fill. Less than two weeks, and we’d be walking through the finished gallery together. Less than two weeks, and Logan and I would hit the agreed-upon end point for whatever this was.
Our expiration date was approaching.
My stomach twisted so sharply I had to roll onto my side. Was I really just another drill he was running? Another weak point to strengthen? Another item on a list he could put a checkmark beside once he’d improved enough to move on? That was what we’d agreed upon, wasn’t it?
The idea slammed my chest with a two-by-four.
Of course that’s what I was—what we were. Logan criticized his parents, but what was the difference between them and us? How could he be angry with his mom and have a real conversation with her when he didn’t want anything more than fake?
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and forced my feet onto the floor. I grabbed my clothes, tugging them on with shaking hands, then shoved my toiletries into my bag, slung my coat over my arm, and ran to the phone.
Tears pricked my eyes as I dialled. There was only one person who knew exactly what I was feeling. Only one person who could snap me out of this, and I couldn’t wait another second to talk to her.