Chapter 45
LOGAN
If I know anything about my best friend, it’s that him being silent is way more terrifying than when he’s loud.
He stops in the hallway, glances toward her door, and his jaw works—one hard grind that tells me he’s swallowing something sharp. Then he exhales through his nose.
“You know what,” he mutters. “Let’s just go out front. She seems…calm. I don’t want to get her worked up. Hopefully, she’ll fall asleep.”
I nod once. “Yeah.”
We move like we’re in a house made of glass, quiet steps, careful turns. Cameron grabs a jacket off the hook, even though it’s California and it’s not cold-cold. Not really. But grief does something to your skin. It makes everything feel too exposed.
When we step outside, the porch light clicks on, flooding the small space in a warm, yellow wash.
The street is empty. The kind of night where the world feels like it’s holding its breath.
Cameron doesn’t look at me right away. He walks down the steps and onto the sidewalk, stopping at the edge of the driveway like he’s trying to put distance between himself and the front door.
Like the house is listening.
I follow and stop a few feet away, hands shoved into my pockets. My heart’s beating too hard for how quiet the night is.
Cameron drags a hand down his face before finally turning to look at me.
His eyes are red-rimmed, not crying, but…exhausted in that way men get when they’ve been clenching their grief so long their body forgets how to unclench.
“How’d the draft go?” he asks.
It throws me, and my brows shoot up.
For a second, I just stare at him, caught off guard by the normal question, which is the complete opposite of where I thought this conversation was going to go.
Like we’re two guys on a curb after a game, talking about football and life and nothing that can kill you.
“Uh,” I say, blinking. “Yeah. It was…good. Beck—”
Cameron’s mouth tightens at the name, and I can tell he’s trying to hold onto something familiar.
“Beck got picked?” he asks.
“Yeah.” My throat feels thick. “Jaxon’s team got him, actually.”
Cameron nods once, slow. “Good for him.”
“It was,” I agree. “He, he was stoked.”
Cameron’s gaze shifts down the street like he’s watching a memory drive past.
Then his eyes come back to me, sharper now.
“And what about you?” he asks.
There it is.
The real question, at least the one leading in that direction. My stomach drops.
Cameron’s voice stays level, but his hands are clenched at his sides like he’s holding himself together through sheer will. “Any calls?”
I hesitate.
It’s not dramatic. It’s not a long pause. It’s just…one beat too late.
And Cameron catches it immediately.
His eyebrows lift.
My mouth goes dry.
“Logan,” he says, quiet and warning. “Any calls?”
I swallow.
“Yeah,” I admit.
Cameron’s shoulders tense.
“What team?”
I exhale slowly through my nose, like I can soften the blow by saying it calmly.
“Chicago.”
The word lands between us like a dropped weight.
Cameron stares at me for a full second—like he doesn’t recognize me, like I just turned into someone else. Someone capable of leaving.
His jaw flexes. Hard.
“Chicago,” he repeats, like he’s tasting it for poison. “So what—what does that mean?”
“It means they want me at camp,” I say carefully, thinking of the voicemail still saved. “It’s not a contract, it’s not—”
“Stop, man,” Cameron snaps.
The sharpness in his voice cuts clean through me.
He steps closer, and for the first time tonight I see it in him—anger and grief tangled together so tightly you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
“Don’t do that thing where you talk like you’re explaining a playbook,” he says, eyes flaring. “Just tell me what it means.”
I hold his gaze. “It means…it could be real.”
Cameron’s breath shudders.
Then he laughs, short and harsh with no humor in it.
“Of course,” he mutters. “Of course it could.”
I open my mouth—
He cuts me off.
“And you’re just gonna…” Cameron gestures back toward the house with a jerky movement, like pointing at it hurts. “You’re just gonna let her get attached and then leave?”
“Cameron—”
He keeps going, words speeding up like his anger finally found air.
“Is that the plan?” he demands. “You gonna play boyfriend for a few weeks and then take off when it’s convenient? You gonna fuck her and leave her?”
My blood goes cold.
It’s not the word. It’s the picture he’s painting—Sloane broken in a new way, alone in a house that already took too much from her.
“Hey,” I say, voice low, trying to ground him. “It’s not like that, man.”
Cameron’s eyes blaze.
“Then what is it like?” he barks. “Because I’ve watched her not eat. I’ve watched her stare at walls like she forgot how to be alive. I watched her bury our dad and then come home and act like the world didn’t end because everyone else wouldn’t stop talking.”
His voice cracks on the last part, and he turns his head slightly like he hates that it did.
Like he hates that he’s human.
Then he looks back at me, and the anger is wet now. Shaking.
“She finally looks calmer tonight,” he says, and his voice drops into something raw. “And I come home, and you’re in the hallway outside her room like you live there. She’s told me, you know. Not the details, but enough to know you two have had some…thing going the last couple months.”
I swallow hard.
“I wasn’t—”
“I know you, Logan. I know you both. I’m not stupid or blind.
You’ve had a thing for her for years, maybe even since high school, but you never acted on it, so why now?
” Cameron steps closer again, and I can feel the heat of him now.
The control slipping. The brother coming out.
“Why are you here tonight if you’re going to leave anyway? ”
“I was taking care of her,” I say, firmer. “Because she needed it.”
“And what happens when she needs you, and you’re in Chicago?” he spits back.
I flinch at that—not because he’s wrong, but because the fear has been living in me too. Sitting in the passenger seat ever since my phone lit up.
“I don’t know what I’m doing yet,” I admit, too honest, too fast.
Cameron’s nostrils flare.
“You don’t know,” he repeats, voice rising. “You don’t know.”
I try again—slow, calm, palms open. “Cam. I’m not making promises I can’t keep. I’m trying to—”
He doesn’t let me finish.
Maybe he can’t. Maybe his grief is too big, and he needs somewhere to put it, and I’m standing right here with my face and my history and my timing that couldn’t be worse if I tried.
Cameron’s fist comes fast.
I see it, but I don’t move.
It’s not because I’m brave. It’s because I deserve it.
The punch lands on my cheekbone—solid, sharp impact that snaps my head to the side and lights my face up with heat.
My vision spots for half a second.
I taste copper.
I blink once, steadying on the driveway, breath coming out hard.
Cameron stands there with his fist clenched, chest heaving like he ran a mile in two seconds.
His eyes are wild.
And then, for the briefest moment, he looks horrified. Like he can’t believe he actually did it.
But he doesn’t apologize.
He just stares at me like he’s daring me to make him.
I roll my jaw slowly, wincing. My cheek is already throbbing. Great.
I touch my face once, then drop my hand.
“Feel better?” I ask, voice rough but steady.
Cameron’s breath shakes. He swallows hard.
“A little bit, actually,” he says, and the admission sounds like it costs him something. “Yeah.”
I nod once. “Okay.”
The porch light hums above us. Somewhere down the street, a dog barks once and then stops, like even it knows to shut up.
Cameron rubs his hand over the back of his neck, jaw still working. His eyes flick toward the front window, toward Sloane’s room, then back to me.
His voice is lower now. Less explosive.
More dangerous.
“Talk,” he says. “Now. Before I do it again.”
I inhale slowly, forcing the words to come out clean.
“I didn’t ask for that call,” I say quietly.
Cameron’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I’m confused as shit,” I admit. “Because football is…it’s what I’ve been chasing my whole life. It’s what I clawed my way into when I didn’t have much else to hold onto.”
My throat tightens, and I hate it.
Because Cameron knows why. He knows the childhood I don’t talk about often.
He knows I learned early that being useful was the only way to stay.
“But Sloane,” I say, voice dropping. “Sloane is not some…pit stop on the way to the NFL. She’s not a distraction. She’s not something I’m using to feel good.”
Cameron’s eyes narrow like he’s listening for the lie.
“I’m here,” I continue, “because she needs me. Because I want to be here. Because she’s…she’s my person, whether we’ve said that out loud or not.”
Cameron flinches at the word person, like it hits too close to Pops.
I push through it anyway.
“And I don’t want to leave her,” I say. “I don’t want her waking up in this house alone with all of this. Not when she’s barely breathing through the day.”
Cameron’s face hardens again, but there’s something else there now too—pain, maybe. A cracked kind of understanding.
“So what,” he says, voice sharp. “You’re just…staying? You’re giving up the NFL?”
“I didn’t say that,” I answer honestly. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what the hell the right choice is. I don’t know how to want or have both without destroying something.”
Cameron stares at me.
For a long beat, neither of us speaks.
Then he exhales hard and looks away, blinking like he’s fighting the sting behind his eyes.
“When Pops was…when it was getting bad,” he says quietly, “I kept thinking—at least we have her.”
My chest tightens.
“At least we have Slo,” Cameron continues. “Because she was his person, and he was hers, and if she had someone…if she wasn’t alone…”
He cuts himself off and shakes his head like he’s disgusted with how emotional he sounds.
Then he turns back to me, eyes sharp again.
“You better not hurt her,” he says, voice low and lethal. “You hear me?”
“I hear you,” I say immediately.
“I’m serious,” he growls. “If you leave her when she’s already broken—if you make this worse—”
“I’m not leaving her,” I say, firm. “Not like that.”
Cameron’s eyes search mine like he’s trying to decide if he can believe me.
Finally, he nods once, slow and tense.
“Good,” he says. “Because I’d hate to have to mess up your pretty face some more.”
I huff a weak laugh that makes my cheek throb. “Yeah. God forbid.”
Cameron’s mouth twitches—not quite a smile, but close—then he glances back toward the house again. He starts toward the steps, then pauses and looks back at me.
His voice drops, rough around the edges.
“And Logan?”
“Yeah?”
He hesitates like he hates that he’s about to say something that sounds like trust.
“Figure it out,” he mutters. “Because if she keeps choosing you…you don’t get to be careless with that.”
My throat tightens.
“I won’t,” I say quietly.
Cameron nods once and goes inside.
I stand in the driveway for a second longer, the night air cool against my throbbing cheek, my heart beating too hard for how still everything is.
Then I turn and follow him back into the house—back to her—already knowing my life just split into two paths.
And sooner or later, I’m going to have to choose which one I’m brave enough to walk.