Chapter 6 #7
“It’s okay,” Adrian murmured, his voice low, brushing over Logan. His thumb traced a small, reassuring arc over Logan’s knuckles, and Logan felt his own heart answer, settling into an easy rhythm that felt like home.
They shifted together, trying to get comfortable in the cramped seats, laughing softly as they did, the sound filling the small space between them, echoing with something both unspoken and understood.
“You are too damn tall!” Adrian said lovingly, his hand holding Logan’s tight.
“Just saying that I got room back here,” Jack interfered from behind them. “I will kick Leo away in a heartbeat for you, Logan.”
“Thanks, man,” Leo said dryly. “Can’t believe you’re my best friend.”
“So, Logan, what would it be?” Jack pressed.
“Shut up,” Logan called.
Logan smiled at Adrian fondly, feeling as if he were high as his hand was laced with Adrian’s, like a tangled shoreline where land and sea can’t quite let go of each other. The feeling rushed over him, electric and endless, like the thrill of riding a wave he thought might break too soon.
When the bus finally stopped, Logan stepped out, his legs shaky with the sudden release of everything he’d been holding inside.
The beach sprawled out before him, waves cresting and breaking against the shore with a power that felt almost alive.
The salt air filled his lungs, sharp and cleansing, and he stood there, awestruck, not caring about the crowd around him.
It was as if the sea itself had welcomed him, as if he’d come home.
Adrian appeared beside him, handing him his bag and board, a small, ordinary gesture, but one that left Logan speechless. It was the little things that Adrian did, the quiet attentions, that spoke loudest to Logan, and he felt his heart beat just a little faster.
The sea called to them both, and as Logan looked at Adrian, he could see his own yearning mirrored back at him.
Here, with the ocean stretching vast before them and the warmth of Adrian’s hand still imprinted on his own, Logan felt like he’d found something he didn’t even know he’d been searching for.
“You brought your camera, right?” Adrian’s voice was easy, playful, and Logan grinned widely in answer, the excitement rising sharp and bright beneath his skin as he pulled his shirt off.
The thrill of capturing these moments—the waves, the way sunlight glanced off the water, the way Adrian looked at him sometimes like he was trying to solve a mystery—was all part of the day’s promise.
Before he could say more, they heard Dean call from down the beach. Adrian answered with a casual “Coming!” as he peeled off his shirt, revealing sun-kissed skin, his muscles shifting beneath. Logan didn’t miss how Itay lingered close to them, how his eyes were glued to Adrian’s half-naked body.
Logan tried to keep his expression still, tried to mask the slow, gnawing thing inside him, but jealousy was an unruly beast, and it stirred deep in his chest, restless, hungry.
Itay’s gaze was a weight, heavy with knowing, with something possessive, something Logan couldn’t compete with.
He wasn’t even subtle about it—his eyes tracing Adrian like a map he already knew by heart, like a song he had memorized long before Logan had even heard the first note.
There was history there, woven into glances, stitched into the space between them, and Logan hated it.
It was the knowing in Itay’s eyes that ruined him. The certainty. The ease.
Itay moved toward them, cutting through the salt-laced air with the kind of confidence that made Logan’s pulse tighten.
“Adrian, can we talk for a moment?” His voice was smooth, deliberate—and in English.
Logan clenched his jaw. It wasn’t lost on him.
Itay could’ve spoken in Hebrew, could’ve made it a moment just between them, but he didn’t.
He wanted Logan to understand. He wanted Logan to hear.
Adrian hesitated, a flicker of apology in his gaze as he looked at Logan, something uncertain settling in the space between them.
But then he nodded and followed Itay, and Logan had to watch as Itay stepped closer, as their bodies fell into an old rhythm—muscle memory, familiarity.
Logan could see it in the way Adrian’s shoulders tensed, in the way his hands fisted momentarily at his sides before relaxing.
A battle fought and lost in the space of a breath.
Logan didn’t move, didn’t speak, but his eyes tracked every motion, every shift, the way Itay ignored his presence entirely, like he was nothing more than an afterthought, a shadow at the edge of their story.
Itay moved with a slow, deliberate grace, a storm rolling in without hurry, knowing the damage it would leave behind.
And then—
Itay reached for Adrian’s hand.
The touch was soft, almost absentminded, but Logan saw the intent behind it.
He saw it in the way Itay’s fingers traced along Adrian’s wrist, in the way his lips dipped close, brushing against the shell of Adrian’s ear, words murmured too low for Logan to hear but loud enough to shake something loose inside him.
Adrian’s expression faltered—just a flicker, a shadow of something Logan couldn’t name.
Regret? Longing? The remnants of something that refused to die?
The ocean was a roar in Logan’s ears, but his heart was quiet.
He watched, unmoving, as Itay’s hand drifted lower, skimming over Adrian’s waist, fingers just barely catching on the waistband of his board shorts—a touch so casual it might have been meaningless to anyone else. But Logan wasn’t anyone else. He saw it for what it was. A quiet claim. A reminder.
And then—it was there. A nudge of the head, a subtle gesture toward the trees behind them.
Logan felt it like a punch to the ribs.
Logan was aware of everything—the way Itay’s fingers lingered, tracing an intimate path over Adrian’s side, moving slowly, whispery toward the front of Adrian’s shorts, as though trying to remind him of something, trying to repeat history, trying to evoke the emotion, awake the memories that lingered in the past. The way their eyes met, a silent conversation that left Logan feeling like an outsider, on the shore, watching the tide come in but never able to be part of it.
Logan’s hand tightened into a fist, his body thrumming with the urge to step forward, to rip Itay’s hand away, to break that gaze with the force of his own.
He knew the weight of that look, the dangerous undertow of it, and the silent invitation Itay was making.
But he was powerless, caught between his rage and the helplessness of being an outsider to their history.
Logan was standing there, his heart a roiling sea of fear and desire, the pulse of it crashing against his ribs.
He could feel the weight of the moment pressing down on him—each breath like a tide pulling him further from the shore of his sanity, dragging him toward something he wasn’t sure he could face.
His gaze was fixed on Adrian, on the way his body moved with effortless beauty, how the sunlight caught in his hair, how he exuded something elemental, something that Logan both longed for and feared.
He begged the ocean. Please, he thought, the word a prayer lost in the wind.
He begged the sky, a silent cry, fingers gripping the salty air like a lifeline.
He begged the wind, that ancient force, to tear the current of the moment apart, to push Adrian away, to keep him from following.
Because if Adrian stepped forward, if those familiar eyes caught his, if those hands reached out to him, Logan would crumble.
He would break like a wave that crashes on the rocks, splintering into nothing but foam, retreating into the depths, unseen, unheard, swallowed whole by the ocean.
He would fade. He would vanish like the spray of water that dissipates before it can touch the shore, like the last whisper of the wind before it is gone, leaving nothing but an aching emptiness in its wake.
Please, he begged again. Please, don’t go with him.
The words exchanged between them were fast, fluid, a dance of whispers in Hebrew that Logan couldn’t grasp but felt like the crash of waves he could never ride.
And the tone—God, the tone—shifting from arrogant to something else, something far more painful.
Regret? Longing? Logan couldn’t tell, but he felt the shift in the pit of his stomach.
He wanted to understand, to break the silence, but he knew it wasn’t his place.
Then Itay’s other hand cupped Adrian’s face, tilting it toward him with the possessiveness of someone who had once owned every part of him.
His lips were close now, Logan could see them, feel the tension hanging in the air.
Itay was close, close enough to kiss him, to pull him back into that history that Logan had no place in.
Logan felt himself starting to dissolve like the foam on the shore, fading into nothingness, retreating into the vast, cold ocean, where no one could touch him.
He would cease to exist. He would vanish.
He would become the water, a ghost of the wave, always ebbing and never quite reaching the shore.
But Adrian pulled away.
The air seemed to catch its breath, the world holding still for a moment as Adrian brushed Itay off, the movement practiced, almost rehearsed.
It was gentle, but firm—final. Logan could see it in Adrian’s eyes before the words even came.
He could see the resolve, the unshakable certainty that this was the end of something.