Chapter 20
Audrey
The silence after a Greene family invasion is a specific kind of quiet—the shell-shocked calm of survivors assessing the damage.
Logan is still sitting at my kitchen table, stirring vanilla ice cream into his coffee like it’s a completely normal thing to do. All while I try to ignore the wreckage of my apartment.
I watch him stir lazy ripples in his coffee, and the question I’ve been swallowing for weeks finally surfaces.
We’re always here. My apartment, my bed, my shower with the wonky water pressure. In five weeks of dating—three of them involving very regular sleepovers—I’ve never once seen the inside of Logan Whitman’s home.
It’s not like I haven’t thought about it—or even hinted at it. Honestly, I’ve done everything except outright demand it. But we always end up back here.
Layla practically moved into Bennett’s penthouse by week two. Serena had a drawer at Caleb’s place before they’d even made things official. And here I am, a biomedical engineer dating a tech billionaire, and the fanciest thing in my apartment is a KitchenAid mixer I got on sale.
I know every relationship has its own pace. I know comparing is pointless. But still—three weeks of waking up tangled together, and he’s never once suggested we stay at his place. Never even mentioned it.
Is there something he doesn’t want me to see? Some part of his life he’s keeping separate?
Or am I reading too much into this, the way I read too much into everything?
“I told you we should have stayed at your place last night,” I say when the silence stretches a little too long for my comfort.
His mouth kicks up at the side as he takes a sip of coffee. “I don’t know. I think it worked out fine. Besides, I like your place. It’s cozy, and it smells like you.”
There it is again. The pivot. The redirect.
I wait, giving him space to say more. To offer. To explain why, in five weeks, he’s never once invited me into his world the way I’ve let him into mine.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he reaches for a napkin and starts wiping up a smear of strawberry syrup Tony left on the table, his focus suddenly very intent on the cleanup.
I could push. I want to push. But the easy warmth between us feels fragile right now, and I’m not ready to test its limits. Not today. Not on my birthday, with the ghost of my mother already hovering at the edges of the morning.
So I file the questions away. Add them to the growing list of things I don’t understand about Logan Whitman.
“My family likes you,” I say instead, letting him have the out.
“I like them, too,” he says. He looks up, and there’s something vulnerable in his expression. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday?”
I wrap my hands around my coffee mug, letting the warmth seep into my palms. “I don’t really celebrate anymore. Haven’t for a long time.”
“Why not?”
The question is gentle, curious. Not pushing, just... open. Waiting.
I take a breath. “My mom died when I was six. Brain aneurysm. One day she was there, making pancakes and braiding my hair, and the next...” I shrug, like the motion can shake off twenty-plus years of grief.
“She used to make birthdays magical. Homemade cakes, treasure hunts around the house, the whole nine yards. After she was gone, Dad and the boys tried to keep it going. They still do, obviously.” I gesture at the cake-smeared plates.
“But it never felt the same. So I just... stopped wanting to celebrate. It felt like rubbing salt in a wound, you know? Marking another year she wasn’t there for. ”
Logan is quiet, his coffee forgotten. When I glance up, his expression is soft, aching.
“Audrey...”
“It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, but it’s... old.” I trace the rim of my mug. “I’ve made peace with it. Or at least I’ve channeled it into something productive, which is basically the same thing, right?”
I hear myself and wince internally. That’s not peace. That’s sublimation with a PhD attached.
“The aneurysm is actually why I got into biomedical engineering. I was twelve when I learned what had killed her—really understood it, beyond ‘Mommy’s brain got sick.’ I became obsessed with understanding how the body could just..
. betray you like that. How something so small could take someone so quickly.
” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “I thought if I understood it well enough, I could fix it. Prevent it from happening to someone else’s mom.
” I smile, hearing myself. “Classic Audrey, right? Can’t accept that some things just happen.
Has to turn grief into a research project. ”
“Is that what drew you to neural implants?”
“Partly. The technology we’re working on—the real-time monitoring, the predictive algorithms—it could catch things like aneurysms before they rupture.
That’s years away, obviously, but...” I shrug.
“It’s the dream. The reason I get up in the morning.
And probably also my way of still trying to save her, twenty-four years too late. ”
Logan reaches across the table and takes my hand. His thumb traces slow circles on my knuckles, grounding and warm.
“Thank you for telling me,” he says quietly. “I know that wasn’t easy.”
“It’s easier than it used to be.” I squeeze his hand. “And you should know. You’re... you’re important to me, Logan. I want you to know the real stuff. Not just the surface.”
He nods, but something darkens his expression.
“What about your brothers?” he asks, and I recognize the deflection for what it is. But I let him have it for now. “How did they end up running an auto shop while you became a biomedical engineer?”
I snort. “Honestly? They never understood me. Still don’t, really.
To them, I was always the weird little sister who’d rather read textbooks than watch football.
But they supported me anyway. Dad saved for my college, but all three of them worked extra shifts when the fund ran out, just so I could finish my studies without taking out loans.
They didn’t understand why I needed to study brains instead of engines, but they made sure I could do it. ”
“That’s...” Logan shakes his head. “That’s incredible.”
“They’re good men. Loud, overbearing, completely incapable of boundaries—” I gesture at the chaos they left behind. “But good. They’d do anything for me.”
“I can tell.” There’s that shadow again, darkening his features. “Your dad, too. The way he looks at you... You’re everything to him.”
“He’s a softie under all the gruff. Mom’s death nearly broke him, but he held it together for us. Worked two jobs, coached little league, learned to braid hair.” I smile at the memory. “He’s not perfect, but he tried. He’s still trying.”
Logan is quiet for a long moment, staring at our joined hands. I wait, giving him space, sensing he’s working up to something.
“My family isn’t like that,” he finally says. His voice is flat, carefully controlled. “We don’t do birthday breakfasts or surprise visits. We don’t do... any of this.”
“What do you do?”
He pulls his hand back, and I feel the loss immediately.
“We do scheduled dinners with agendas. Obligatory appearances at the right events. Emails via assistants instead of phone calls.” He says it flatly, like he’s reciting facts about strangers.
“They’re not... they’re not like your family, Audrey.
They don’t show up with ice cream cake and gifts they thought I’d like. ”
“Logan, I—”
“It’s complicated.” The words come out clipped, a door closing. “I don’t really want to get into it right now.”
“Logan...” I try again.
“It’s fine.” He stands abruptly, gathering plates with more force than necessary. “It’s just different. Not everyone grows up with people who actually like each other.”
I want to push. I want to ask about his parents, about why he never talks about them, about why he goes quiet whenever family comes up. The old Audrey would push—would dig until she understood, because understanding is how I make sense of the world.
But there’s a wall in his expression now—one I haven’t seen since before we got together—and I recognize that some things can’t be solved by asking better questions. Some things just need time.
So instead, I stand and help him clear the table, our shoulders brushing as we work in silence. It takes everything I have not to analyze the silence, not to turn it into data I can interpret.
The easy intimacy of the morning feels fragile now, like something precious that could shatter if I’m not careful.
“Hey.” He catches my arm as I reach for the cake box. “Happy birthday.”
He says it like a benediction. Like a plea.
And before I can get out a thank you or a clever retort, he’s got me pressed up against the countertop, his hands suddenly, gloriously, on my waist. He kisses me like the first taste of water after a desert crossing, greedily, fiercely, as if there’s something in his mouth that could save us both.
He pulls me in hard—enough to bruise, enough to tell me, without words, that he wants to dissolve the memory of his discomfort from his own skin. I’m so startled I laugh against his mouth, which only makes him deepen the kiss, his tongue stealing the sound right out of me.
We’re all coffee and sugar and morning sweat, and I want him so urgently I could cry.
I forget the ice cream melting on the table, the mugs in the sink, my nails scoring down his back as he hoists me up onto the counter like I weigh nothing at all.
The GIRLS IN STEM shirt is ridiculous and perfect, stretched taut across his chest. I want to rip it off, but also never see him wear anything else.
He kisses me until I’m breathless, until my legs are wrapped around his hips and the ache between my thighs is so sharp it almost hurts. His hands slide up under the shirt I’m wearing—his shirt—palming my breasts, thumbs grazing nipples and making me shiver up against him.
He’s fully hard again, pressed against the thin cotton of my leggings, and the hunger in his eyes makes something in me break and put itself back together better than before.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of his jeans, yanking him against me. “Bedroom,” I tell him, my voice rough and shaking. “Now.”
He grins, wild and beautiful, then lifts me bodily from the counter in a move that’s hot as fuck. His mouth never breaks from mine as he navigates us down the hall, bumping into the doorframe and swearing under his breath, and I laugh again, the sound ugly and perfect, and clutch him tighter.
He deposits me on the bed and kisses my stomach, his head disappearing under the shirt. “You realize, Dr. Greene, that now I have to give you as many birthday orgasms as you want,” he murmurs between kisses.
I laugh, deep and delighted. “That’s ambitious, Dr. Whitman. You sure you’re up for the challenge?”
He pulls his head free from the shirt to look me in the eye, hand splaying over my ribcage like he wants to memorize the feel of every breath. “I’ve been preparing for this my whole life,” he deadpans, then surges forward, mouth open and hungry against my neck.
The birthday thing used to feel like a loaded gun—pointed right at the soft, childish part of me that still missed her.
But right now, with Logan pinning me to the mattress, that old grief feels almost quaint—like another childhood tradition, faded at the edges, re-contextualized by something messier and more real.
I don’t have to be the good sport at the party table or the engineer who fixes what can’t be fixed.
Logan is here, and he’s the only thing in the world calibrated precisely to me.
“Logan,” I gasp, arching into him. “The cake is still on the table.”
“It’ll keep,” he murmurs against my skin.
“It’s ice cream cake. It’s literally melting.”
He lifts his head just long enough to look me in the eye, completely serious. “Audrey. I am trying to give you birthday orgasms. The cake can wait.”
I laugh so hard I snort, which only makes him grin wider and kiss me harder, and I decide he’s right.
The cake can wait.