Chapter June 27, 2020—Seattle, Washington—Three Months Later
The world had dimmed, as if someone had turned down the contrast, bleeding everything into dull shades of gray.
I moved through my days like a man watching his own life from behind a pane of glass—close enough to touch, but never quite able to.
I breathed, but it never reached my lungs.
I spoke, but the words felt borrowed. I existed, but I wasn’t there.
There was a house, warm and filled with things that should’ve felt like home.
A woman who loved me, whose laughter should have been enough.
But I never stayed long enough to feel it.
I was always somewhere else, lost in the spaces between memories and regrets, slipping further from myself with each passing night.
Maybe I had drowned that fateful July back in Hawaii. Maybe the ocean had taken me, pulled me under, swallowed me whole. Maybe the waves had claimed me, the currents wrapping around my limbs like silent hands, dragging me down, down, down—until there was nothing left of me but a ghost in the water.
Maybe I had never been saved.
Maybe Adrian had never dived in after me, never reached for me through the tide, never pulled me unbreathing back to the surface, never breathed life back into me.
Maybe that moment had never happened. Maybe it had only been a cruel trick of the mind, a dream spun from desperation, a false memory to make me believe I had ever truly been found.
Because wasn’t I still drowning?
Logan sat at the table, the clinking of silverware and the low hum of conversation drifting in and out of his awareness like the soft tide of a distant ocean.
His body was anchored to the chair, but his soul had drifted far, carried by currents he couldn’t see, couldn’t control.
The world moved on, its laughter like the rolling surf, but he was stranded, stuck in the sand of a life he never wanted.
His eyes stayed fixed on his plate, the food untouched, a reflection of the emptiness that had grown inside him.
His appetite had abandoned him long ago, along with everything else he used to care about.
The laughter around him—light, genuine, carefree—seemed to ripple over a surface he could no longer feel. It wasn’t real; none of it was real.
He used to be part of that world, once. He used to surf until his muscles burned with the ocean’s rhythm, smile without effort, laugh with ease.
He was a man, whole, the kind of person who didn’t have to think about the world to make it his.
Now he was like the food on his plate—left behind, discarded.
He pushed the meat around with his fork, wishing it were something more. Something he wanted.
The chatter about Jane’s baby was loud enough to feel the weight of it in his chest, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t cared since... well, since Adrian. His fingers clenched tighter around the fork, the wood of the chair creaking beneath him.
The laughter around him was like the sound of waves crashing, but it only made him feel smaller.
More alone. The air was thick with warmth, but all he could feel was the cold ache of something long lost, a tide that had pulled away and never returned.
Adrian, the name swam in his mind, a current too strong to resist, too powerful to escape.
He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the rhythm of those days, the way Adrian had been the sun in his sky, the one who lit up everything, who made him whole.
Before he had let him go, as if love were a thing that could be cast into the sea and disappear.
Logan blinked, pulled from his reverie by Jane’s voice—sharp like a sea breeze cutting through the haze. She stood behind him, hands warm on his arm, urging him to leave the table and follow her to the safety of his old room.
“Logan,” Jane said, her voice trembling. “What’s going on? You’ve—” She paused, searching for the words. “You’ve disappeared. You’re fading, Lo.”
Logan’s gaze fell to his hands, his fingers white-knuckled around the edge of a chair, only now realizing he had grabbed it—perhaps unconsciously, as a last resort to keep himself from slipping away entirely.
The truth was there, rising inside him like the swell of an unseen wave.
But he couldn’t let it break. Not now. Not here.
“I’m just tired,” he whispered. “Work, stress... It’s nothing.” He let go of the chair and sat on the made bed.
Jane wasn’t fooled. She never was.
“Lo, don’t lie to me,” she said, sitting beside him, her eyes searching his face, trying to decipher the language of his heartbreak, of his whining, trying to give meaning to his wavering frame and eye bags, to this thinning frame and lost mind.
“You’re not eating. You’re not sleeping.
And you’re not… you’re not you anymore.”
Logan flinched, as though the words had splashed against him, too cold to ignore. The wave of guilt crashed hard, pulling him under for a moment, but he fought it back. He couldn’t drown here. Not yet.
“I’m fine,” he said again, the lie tasting bitter in his mouth as he rubbed his hands together. “I’m just... I’m normal, Jane. I’m fine.”
But the lie shattered beneath the intensity of her gaze, and for a fleeting instant, Logan sensed the whirlpool of his own suffering, drawing him in, ready to drag him under.
He could no longer sit still; too restless to hold back, he rose abruptly, taking several steps away, seeking to create space between himself and her.
“Logan,” she whispered, standing too. “You look like you’ve been drowning for months. You’re not fine. This isn’t you. You’re just… empty.”
Her hands reached for him, cupping his face gently as though trying to steady him against the tide of whatever storm raged inside him. The warmth of her touch was a lifeline, but Logan knew it wouldn’t save him. Nothing could save him now.
“I’m happy,” he said, though the words were hollow, swallowed by the vastness of the ocean inside him. It had been five hundred and ninety-three days since Logan Vaughn was happy.
Jane’s tears fell then, like raindrops on the surface of a storm-tossed sea.
Logan felt them, each drop a sharp sting against the ache in his chest. Her pain wrapped around him, and for the briefest moment, he wanted to let himself be carried away.
To let himself drown in her care, in the promise that he could be whole again.
But he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure who he was anymore, or if he could ever return to the shore.
He grabbed her hands, pulling them away from his face, taking a step back.
“I’m really happy for you, Jane,” he said, his voice heavy, as if each word carried the weight of a thousand unspoken things.
“You’re living the time of your life. You have a beautiful baby girl, and a husband who loves you.
” His fingers pressed against his forehead, trying to rub away the ache that was building there.
He took a breath, quiet and shallow. “I’m happy in my own way,” the words slipping from his mouth like a drowning man gasping for air.
“Even if I’m not going all over the place showing it. ”
But Jane didn’t let him off the hook. She stepped forward, her tears still falling, each one a quiet plea for him to speak the truth, to admit what they both already knew.
“Logan,” her voice cracked as she cupped his face in her hands.
“That’s not you. This isn’t you.” She searched his eyes, as though trying to find the man he once was, the man she remembered.
“I don’t know what you’re going through, but you can’t keep lying to yourself.
It isn’t about Sandy, it’s about you. You hear me, Logan? You.”
He closed his eyes, squeezing the words back down, trying to drown the rising surge of everything he wanted to say but couldn’t. He wanted to reach for the truth, but it was too vast, too deep to pull from the ocean of silence he had surrounded himself with.
“Jane—”
“No!” Her voice rose, raw and desperate, her hands trembling as she wiped her tears away. “You listen to me, Logan! Hate me as much as you want, but I won’t let it go. You look like you’ve been sinking for months now. I’m not going to wake up when it’s too late.”
Logan’s chest tightened, his breath shallow, and for a moment, he thought the ocean inside him might finally consume him whole. “Please,” he whispered, his voice breaking in a way he had never let it before.
“I will help you, Logan. I swear to god, just talk to me!” Her voice was thick with urgency. “Please, I’ll do anything! Just tell me what’s wrong. Please…”
He could feel the tide rising inside him, the pull of everything he had buried crashing over him, but he couldn’t let it break through. He couldn’t.
“You’re overreacting, Jane,” he said, but the words felt like sand slipping between his fingers. “I’m fine.”
Her head shook in defeat, a slow motion that felt like the final breaking of a wave against the shore.
She knew him too well. She could see the cracks, the storm that he was trying to bury.
But even if he told her the truth, what good would it do?
Adrian was gone, and the life he had chosen was a cage made of steel, lacking sand.
What could he say? That he had traded his soul for a promise that was never his?
That he was a ghost of the man he once was?
Maybe his father was right. Maybe, if he just waited long enough, time would smooth away the jagged edges of this life, and he would learn to love Sandy the way he was supposed to.
But deep down, he knew the truth. He would never love her. Not the way she deserved. Not the way he had loved Adrian. He would remain here, drifting, a shadow of himself, waiting for something to change, knowing nothing ever would.