Chapter 34
Dani
I’ve been at this since seven this morning, but the case file I was reviewing in front of me was still only half-marked in red ink.
My calendar pinged with reminders for motions due next week.
This was unlike me; I was always ahead. Always on top of everything.
I’d built my life around that, being dependable, achieving, and having my next steps planned.
But today, I didn’t feel like myself. I felt anxious, like I was teetering on the edge.
There was a restlessness vibrating just beneath my skin, making it hard to focus.
I was disoriented, and a little lost, as if all the structure I relied on had slipped out from under me.
And underneath it all, there was a thread of fear I couldn’t quite name.
My pen dug into the page until my knuckles ached, each line underlined with more pressure than needed. But I couldn’t help but believe that if I keep my hand moving, maybe I won’t feel the tight coil of thoughts pressing at the edge of my mind.
Cami: I’m outside. Don’t pretend
you’re busy. I have burgers.
I stared at my screen for a full ten seconds before glancing at the clock.
2:17 p.m.
Which meant I’d officially worked through lunch.
Again.
It wasn’t unusual; I often felt guilty taking breaks or stopping my day when someone’s livelihood was in my hands—a weight that made days like this harder.
Today, though, I suddenly realized how much I needed someone to reassure me it’s okay to feel like this.
But underneath, a sharper thought pressed in: I couldn’t let one kiss topple the careful life I’d built.
And although I wasn’t opposed to skipping lunch for myself, I never missed my scheduled lunches with Cami. It was the few times a month that we got to get together away from our responsibilities and just have girl talk.
Cami breezed into my office, one elbow sharp as she nudged a tall, teetering stack of files. At the top, a folder labeled “State v. Hayes Plea” slid off and scattered open on the floor, pages fluttering out for anyone to read.
My stomach dropped as I scrambled to catch them, but Cami didn’t miss a beat, already unpacking two burgers, fries, and iced teas, the scent pushing out the stale air. She set the food down with a bit too much purpose, almost daring me to keep ignoring her.
At that exact moment, my phone buzzed insistently—a client calling, screen flashing, deadline looming—but Cami shot me a look that said, Don’t even think about it.
“You canceled lunch with me twice this week,” she says mildly.
I swallow, searching for the right words. The fluorescent lights glare, the air stings my lungs, and it feels like the room is collapsing around me.
“You look tired,” she observed.
“I am tired.”
“From work?” She asked, although she already knew the answer. So I stayed, silent as she paused mid-unwrapping and looked at me fully.
“Ah,” she said slowly. “Not from work.”
I collapsed into my chair and covered my face with both hands.
She sat opposite me and slid one of the burgers forward. “Start talking.”
I lowered my hands. “It was the pool party. Logan. Everything,” I said carefully, my voice trailing off.
The words caught in my throat, not quite the whole truth.
Even now, I hesitate to say what almost slipped out that night.
I caught Cami watching me, and I wondered if she would push for details or if I could bring myself to answer.
Her brows lifted. “I assumed as much.”
I inhaled deeply, still feeling the phantom warmth of that night.
“He’d had a few drinks,” I started.
“Okay.”
I twist the cap off my tea, but I didn’t drink it; my hands are steadier than I feel.
“He kissed me.”
She went still for a moment before her face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Define kissed.”
I close my eyes for half a second, the memory still sharp in my mind.
The smell of chlorine clung to us, sharp and inescapable.
Logan’s knuckles grazed my arm like he couldn’t help but anchor himself there.
The whole world hushed as I focused on the faint hitch of his breath, each rise and fall heavy with everything unsaid.
In that charged silence, the nearness of his body was almost too much, every moment balancing on a single thin line between fear and longing.
“Like he’d been tired of holding back,” I say softly.
“And?” Cami’s lips press together to hide a smile.
“And he said…” I hesitate, heat creeping up my neck. “He said, ‘I’m tired of pretending I don’t want you.’”
The words replay, heat rising up my neck, relentless as ever.
“FINALLY,” Cami said as her hand slapped against the desk as she jumped up, startling me.
“He’d been drinking,” I add quickly.
Her eyes narrow. “So?”
“So maybe it was just… that.” But the way he looked at me, clear-eyed, steady, almost fierce, cut through any haze of alcohol. I remembered how his gaze lingered, searching, like he wanted me to believe him.
She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms.
“Dani.”
“What?”
“You really think that man needs alcohol to admit he wants you?”
I stare at the grain of my desk. My thumb brushes over the edge of a sticky note, peeling it back and letting it snap flat again.
The truth was, Logan wasn’t impulsive. He was measured, controlled, and deep down, I knew everything about that kiss was deliberate.
His hands hadn’t been frantic. His mouth hadn’t been rushed.
It had been careful. Intentional. Like he’d crossed a line he’d been pacing for months.
“What happened after?”
“Harper came outside.”
Her eyes widened. “Of course she did…kids.”
I nodded.
“We broke apart like teenagers. He walked her back inside. And then I fell asleep… He was gone before I woke up. Probably remembered his walls had slipped.”
Part of me wondered if he left out of regret, if remembering his world shattered what we had, or if it simply frightened him to stay. Did I want him to miss me, or to never look back? I clung to the ache of not knowing, letting it pulse in my head.
Cami nodded because she understood exactly which walls I meant.
“He’s complicated,” I said, defeated.
“So are you.”
I exhaled, slower this time. “He’s still grieving, Cam.”
“And?”
“And he has a kid.”
“And you adore that kid.”
That hits hard. I do adore Harper. She leans into me, trusts me, lets me into her world without hesitation. That trust scares me more than anything else.
My chest softens instantly.
And that’s what raises the stakes, because loving Logan means risking not just my heart, but Harper’s too. It’s about Sunday mornings and cereal bowls and country music in the living room. It’s about stepping into something that already exists.
“I can’t be reckless,” I say quietly.
“You’re not reckless,” Cami replies. “You’re careful, to a fault.”
Instead of arguing, I stuff fries in my mouth, grateful for the distraction, desperate to bury the gnawing unease in something tangible.
“You do this thing,” she continues, gentler now. “Where you convince yourself that wanting something is irresponsible.”
I reach to dismiss a calendar notification on my phone, thumb hovering for a beat. My finger finds the snooze button, and I watch the invite vanish from the screen, replaced by my endless task list. I try to pretend Cami doesn’t notice, but the look in her eyes tells me she does.
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s true, Daniela.”
I look at the calendar notification I ignored this morning. The canceled lunch reminders. The color-coded deadlines, she wasn’t wrong. And she was the one person who truly saw me and cared enough to call me out when I needed it.
“I just don’t want to get it wrong,” I admit.
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re not trying to fix him.”
I look up at her sharply. “I’m not.”
“I know,” she said. “But you think your only options are to fix him or stay away.”
The thought sinks inside my stomach like weighted stones.
“He doesn’t need fixing,” I say.
“No,” Cami agrees. “He needs space to choose.”
I swallow.
“And he chose that night.”
“Yes.”
“And then he pulled back.”
She shrugged lightly. “He’s a Marine. That’s what men like him do.”
I think about the stories he’s let slip— confessions of nights spent wide awake, or old photographs tucked away in his wallet.
Whatever he saw or lost out there is something he carries.
And I knew it was only amplified when he lost Elena.
Sometimes I catch a flicker behind his eyes, a shadow that never quite leaves, and I wonder how many of his walls were built long before I ever met him.
“I don’t want to push,” I say.
“Then don’t.”
I frown, turning that over in my mind.
As she finishes, Cami slides the burger wrapper toward me, the crumpled paper catching the light between us.
She nudges it in front of me, insistently, like it’s some kind of offering or dare.
My fingers brush over the slick paper, and for a moment, all my nervous energy settles into the simple act of holding it.
The weight of her words feels more real when I can feel something in my hands.
But as soon as she says it, my mind kicks up that stubborn resistance.
Her words clang around in my brain, and my reflex is to fall back into my comfort zone, into spaces I know I’m good at.
My instinct is to push back, to argue that wanting is reckless, that patience alone cannot keep hearts from breaking.
Still, I pause. I try to let her advice in, even as old patterns try to tug me back.
“You still think he said that because he was drunk?” Cami asked, her voice low and calm.
“I don’t know.”
“You do know,” she said, dropping the statement and allowing the truth to hover just under the surface.
And I did know, I’d felt it in the way he’d held me. In the way his mouth moved, it had memorized the possibility.
It all sounded so simple, yet it felt so impossible.
Because letting it exist means admitting I want it. And I do. That’s the part I couldn’t keep pretending isn’t true.
“That wasn’t alcohol,” Cami said softly. “That was a man who’s tired of fighting himself.”
“I’m scared,” I say, more so to myself than to her.
Cami’s expression softens immediately.
“Of what?”
“Of fitting into his world…” My voice dropped. “And then not being able to leave it.” The words slip out before I can stop them—raw, unfiltered, impossible to call back.
But they were true.
I think about the way Harper wraps her arms around my waist when she sees me. The way Logan looks at her as if she were the very thing that grounded him like gravity.
I could fit there.
That’s what terrifies me.
Because if I fit
If I let myself settle—
Then I risk messing it up, doing something wrong, or falling short in a way that causes collateral damage.
My parents’ pressure always played in the back of my mind.
The idea that one day I could mess something up and everything that they sacrificed would be for nothing.
And I’d have to carry that weight. Or the guilt if I let a client down by falling short.
That fear sits inside me, reminding me that when I step into anything new, it’s not just my own heart I could damage.
It could be someone else’s world I upend without meaning to.
“I’ve built a life that makes sense,” I continue. “ I know what I’m walking into every day.”
“And you like that.”
“I do,” I admitted. “I’m good at it. It makes sense.”
“And Logan doesn’t make sense.”
I shook my head slightly. “No,” I whisper. “He doesn’t.”
He makes my pulse race, makes me feel seen in a way that strips me bare. With Logan, I wanted things that didn’t come with guarantees.
“You’re just as guarded as he is,” Cami says gently.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
I shook my head again, but there wasn’t much conviction behind it.
“He hides in silence,” she said. “You hide in competence. Different armor. Same instinct.”
She was right. I build barricades of case files and deadlines, so I don’t have to sit still with my feelings. I over-prepare so I don’t have to risk being caught off guard.
I tell myself I’m being responsible when maybe I’m just afraid.
“He’s a good man,” Cami says quietly.
“I know.”
“He’s not reckless. He’s careful. He loves his daughter…And he wants you,” she continues.
My throat tightens, unable to fully process the feelings and thoughts storming my mind.
“And you want him,” she adds, a slight bit of playfulness seeping through.
I don’t deny it.
Because I can’t anymore.
“I like him…” I admitted softly.
“More than like,” she said, a hint of a smile breaking through.
I look down at my hands, trying to push out the words. “I don’t want to be the woman who gets in over her head.”
“You’re not.”
“I don’t know how to do this without overthinking it,” I admit.
“You don’t.”
I blink at her.
“You just show up,” she says matter-of-factly. “And you let him show up, too.”
I sat there for a moment, letting that settle.
No strategy.
No over-analysis.
No perfect plan.
Just… present.
???
I sat at my desk long after she was gone, my eyes skimming across files I should be reviewing.
Instead, the memory of the pool party pulsed through me—the way Logan watched me, the way his lips pressed against mine, his voice low with confession: I’m tired of pretending I don’t want you.
It replayed in my mind, but this time I let myself see it fully, without the old filter of doubt.
He wasn’t just influenced by alcohol; something in the way he looked at me was clear, deliberate.
I couldn’t keep pretending that moment hadn’t changed something.
I was just as tired of pretending. Staying away had become its own kind of ache, and I realized that pretending it was only chemistry no longer served me. The fear was still there, but tucked under it was something lighter, a sense of hope, nudging me toward a choice.
In that moment, I chose to fight my own instincts. I didn’t reach for more work, and instead, I let myself feel it.
The fear.
The butterflies.
The silent hope threading through both.
He’s complicated, but Cami was right, so am I.
As much as I hated to admit it, I was not perfect; I was so far out of my depth. I didn’t have all the answers, but I did know what this was.
It was a chance.
And it was terrifying.
And maybe—
Worth stepping into anyway.