Chapter 40 Logan
LOGAN
Once the last person leaves, the house is quiet in a way that makes it feel almost haunted.
It’s not peaceful. It’s not calm. It’s just…stripped.
Stripped of the laughter. The banter. The sarcasm. Stripped of the man that held his family together like glue. Who raised the most amazing woman and a great-ass man.
As if all of the noise and love that used to be here got scraped off the walls and carried out with the last casserole dish.
I’m standing in the hallway outside the bathroom, staring at the thin sliver of light under the door like it’s a heartbeat I can measure. To make sure she’s still breathing, even if she doesn’t feel like she can.
Water runs, and steam curls around the frame, faint and sweet with her shampoo, but it doesn’t do anything to soften the knot in my chest. If anything, it tightens it, knowing she uses the shower as a space to give herself permission to completely fall apart, just so no one else can see it.
Just a few minutes after the shower had started, the sound of her sobs escaped the safety net she thought she had in place.
I heard her do this many times before, but not to this level.
Hearing her now, I’m not sure how she’s still standing, and maybe she’s not.
I know I wouldn’t be if I were making those sounds. Even through the walls, the raw, agonizing sobs shred right through my heart, knowing I can’t protect her from this pain or magically make it all go away. I can’t say it’s going to be okay, because who knows if or when it might be.
I’ve been through pain. I’ve built a whole personality out of tolerating it. I know what it feels like to have your life ripped out from under you and be expected to keep breathing like it’s just another day.
But hearing someone you love break like that does something different.
It makes you want to kick the door down.
It makes you want to fight the universe with your bare hands.
It makes you want to fix what can’t be fixed.
I don’t move.
Because the thing about being there for someone isn’t always doing the biggest, most heroic thing. Sometimes it’s just staying. Holding the perimeter. Letting them have their grief without an audience.
So I stay.
Outside the door, back against the wall, hands shoved into my pockets like I’m keeping myself from reaching for something I can’t put back together.
Down the hall, Cameron is in the living room, sitting in Pops’s chair like it’s the only place he can exist without coming undone. The TV is off. The lamp is on. He’s staring at the floor like he could drill a hole through it if he concentrates hard enough.
We haven’t said much since everyone left.
We don’t need to.
Grief turns men into statues. It makes you speak in smaller words.
Every now and then the shower sound shifts, and my spine goes rigid. Another choked inhale. Another broken sound. Then silence and water again.
I look up at the ceiling and swallow.
Please.
I don’t even know who I’m praying to.
But I’m praying anyway.
The bathroom door finally unlocks with a soft click.
My head snaps forward so fast my neck pops.
For a second, nothing happens.
Then the door opens.
Sloane steps out with damp hair and skin flushed from the heat, wrapped in a towel like the fabric could hold her together. Her eyes are swollen. Red around the rims, like she tried to fight it and lost.
She sees me and freezes.
It’s the smallest pause, the tiniest flare of embarrassment, like she didn’t want anyone to witness the aftermath.
Like she didn’t want me to know how bad it is.
My throat tightens.
I don’t make a joke. I don’t ask if she’s okay because that question is useless. It’s a landmine. It’s an invitation to lie.
I just soften my voice and say, “Hey.”
Her throat works. She nods once.
“Hi,” she whispers, like the word costs her.
I shift off the wall slowly, careful not to crowd her, and hold out what I grabbed from her bedroom while she was in the shower—Pops’s old sweatshirt, the gray one that’s been washed a thousand times and still smells faintly like him. It’s too big on her. It always has been.
I don’t point that out.
I don’t say anything about it at all.
I just hold it out.
Sloane’s eyes flick down.
Her face crumples for half a second, so fast I almost miss it.
Then she reaches for it with shaking hands and clutches it to her chest like it’s oxygen.
Her voice breaks. “You—”
“I didn’t go in his room,” I say quietly, because I know. I know that boundary. “It was on your bed.”
She nods again like she can’t speak.
I step back a fraction, giving her room to breathe.
Sloane swallows hard and tries to stand taller. Tries to put her armor back on.
But she’s exhausted. Hollowed out.
I hate that she thinks she has to be strong in front of me.
“Cameron’s still here,” I tell her, gently. “He’s…in the living room.”
Her eyes flick down the hall, like even the idea of seeing him like this hurts.
“Okay,” she whispers.
“Do you want water?” I add, quieter.
She hesitates. Pride flares. Then it dies.
“Yeah,” she says. “Please.”
I nod and turn toward the kitchen.
Sloane follows in my wake like she’s tethered to me by an invisible thread, her bare feet silent on the hardwood. She’s holding the sweatshirt to her chest like she’s afraid someone will take it away.
When we reach the kitchen, I keep it simple.
I grab a glass. Fill it with cold water. Set it on the counter within reach.
Then I pull open the drawer and take out a pack of those electrolyte powder packets that Pops used to make her drink when she was sick as a kid.
Sloane sees it and lets out a sound that’s half laugh, half sob.
“Of course,” she whispers.
I glance at her. “What?”
She shakes her head, eyes glossy. “He used to—” Her voice catches. She clears her throat and tries again. “He used to put that in my water and tell me it was magic. Said it could fix anything.”
My chest compresses. I keep my face steady with sheer will.
I nod once and tear open the packet.
“Magic water,” I say softly, pouring it in.
Sloane’s mouth trembles.
She presses her lips together like she’s trying not to fall apart again.
I stir it with a spoon, set it down, then slide it toward her without making a big deal out of it.
Sloane wraps her fingers around the glass and takes a sip.
Her throat works as she swallows.
For a second, she looks almost like herself—just a girl in her kitchen, drinking something sweet, wearing grief like a heavy coat.
Then she lowers the glass and stares at the counter.
The silence stretches.
I can hear Cameron shift in the living room. The soft scrape of fabric against leather. A breath.
Sloane’s shoulders rise and fall.
And then she says, barely audible, “I can’t do this.”
The words punch a hole straight through me.
I keep my voice calm. “You don’t have to do all of it at once.”
She shakes her head harder. “No, I mean…I can’t—” Her eyes squeeze shut. “He’s not supposed to be gone.”
I step closer, slow and careful, like approaching a skittish animal.
“Sloane,” I say quietly.
She opens her eyes and looks at me like she’s drowning.
“I held it together,” she whispers. “All day. I did everything right. I smiled. I hugged people. I thanked them. I listened to stories. I didn’t fall apart once.”
Her voice turns sharp with self-hatred. “And I didn’t even want to. I just—did it. Like a robot.”
My throat burns.
I don’t tell her it’s okay. I don’t tell her she’s strong. Those are the words people say when they’re uncomfortable with pain.
Instead, I do the only honest thing.
I reach out and gently tuck a strand of damp hair behind her ear.
Her breath catches like she didn’t expect touch.
“I saw you,” I say. “All day, I saw you.”
Her lips part. “And?”
“And you don’t have to perform anything for me,” I tell her. “You don’t have to be okay. You don’t have to be…pretty about it.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
She wipes it fast, angry at it.
I catch her wrist lightly—not stopping her, just grounding her.
“Sloane,” I say, and she stills.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I add, voice low. “Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not…any of it. I’m here.”
Her eyes search mine, like she’s looking for the lie.
She doesn’t find it.
Her shoulders cave.
The sound that comes out of her is small and wrecked, like her whole body is finally tired of holding up the roof.
I step in and pull her against my chest.
Not tight. Not crushing.
Just enough.
She clutches the sweatshirt between us with one hand and grips my shirt with the other, fingers twisting in the fabric like I’m a rope and she’s afraid the water will take her.
I rest my cheek against the top of her head and breathe her in—soap and heat and grief.
I don’t say anything.
Because she doesn’t need words.
She needs proof.
So I give it to her.
I hold her while she shakes.
I hold her while she sobs quietly into my chest, muffling the sound like she’s ashamed of it.
I hold her like she’s allowed to break.
After a minute, her breathing stutters and steadies.
She pulls back just enough to look at me, eyes glossy and raw.
“You shouldn’t still want me,” she whispers suddenly, like the thought just hit her. “I’m a mess. I’m—”
I lift my hand and brush my thumb under her eye, catching a tear before it can fall.
“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” I tell her, voice firm but gentle. “Not to me.”
Her throat works. “Logan—”
“You don’t need to pretend with me. I’ve got you. Let me carry anything I can for you, okay?” I lean in and press a kiss to her forehead.
Not a kiss that asks.
Not a kiss that takes.
A kiss that promises.
When I pull back, her eyes are wide.
I lower my voice, just for her. “You get to be a mess. You get to be angry. You get to be numb. You get to be all of it.”
Her lips tremble.
“And I still get to want you?” she whispers, like it’s a confession she’s afraid will ruin something.
My heart lurches.
I keep my face steady, because if I look as wrecked as I feel, she’ll retreat.
So I give her a small, soft half-smile.
“Yeah,” I say. “You already have me, Rhodes.”