Hypothetical Heart (Farewell Fairwood #2)

Chapter 15

15

“ L et’s get you inside,” I tell Logan as I open the passenger-side door. I grab his bicep and attempt to pull him out of the car, but he doesn’t budge. “Logan, come on.”

I’ve never seen him this drunk, and as much as it is entertaining, I’m more worried about getting him safely inside and to bed.

“I can’t walk into my house, Winnie. I’m drunk,” he whispers like it’s a secret.

“Your parents aren’t going to care. Come on.” I try to reach for his arm again, but he doesn’t let me.

He shakes his head. “I’ll still wake them up, and they’ll be worried.”

I take a step back, reviewing my options. There is no way I will be able to force Logan into his house, not when he’s double my weight. I could call Jameson and make him come outside, but it’s almost three in the morning, and he’s at Genevieve’s house.

“Okay,” I sigh. “My dad’s not home. You can sleep at my house.”

It’s rare that my dad goes on business trips, but there was an important medical conference this weekend that he needed to attend, leaving our house empty for the evening.

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea either,” Logan sighs, more to himself than me. “I don’t know if I have that type of self-control.”

My mouth drops at his insinuation. “Logan!” I gasp. “You’re drunk. Nothing is going to happen between us.”

“How about when I’m sober?” he asks.

“We’ll talk about that when you’re sober,” I counter. “And I can’t carry you, so get out of the car.”

“Can I sleep in your bed?” Logan gets out of the car and begins stumbling towards my house.

I laugh, following him. “Sure, Logan.”

Once I get Logan into my house and upstairs to my room, he falls face down, smack in the middle of my bed. Suzie peers her head up at him, sniffing his legs as I grab them and pull his shoes off before I walk into my bathroom and grab him a toothbrush.

“You always told me you never fall asleep without brushing your teeth, remember?” I wave it at him, and he begrudgingly gets up from my bed and holds his hand out for the toothbrush.

We brush our teeth together, standing side by side in front of the sink. At one point, we make eye contact in the mirror, and Logan smiles.

Bile rises in my throat, and I have to play it off as if I accidentally gagged myself with my toothbrush.

Doing something so obviously romantic with Logan makes me sick to my stomach, and yet it’s a feeling I invite often. I’ve seen him in that light for almost my entire life, and when moments like that happen, I’m taken aback . Every. Single. Time .

Then, right as I wipe my mouth off with the towel next to the sink, Logan drunkenly asks, “Do you sleep on the left or the right side of the bed?”

I don’t know if it matters. I have a feeling no matter what side of the bed I’m on, I won’t sleep comfortably unless it’s also the side Logan’s on.

Still, I say, “Right.” And still, he untucks the covers and climbs in on the left.

I wake up to the smell of tequila-tainted morning breath and the feeling of being completely enclosed.

When I roll over, I’m pressed completely chest-to-chest with Logan. Our legs are intertwined, and his arms are wrapped around my waist.

“Are you awake?” I whisper when I feel his arms tighten the slightest.

“Yeah,” he says. When I try to pull away, he only holds me closer. “Don’t get up, I’m comfortable.”

This seems wrong, and yet I can’t help but sink back into the feeling of Logan’s hard chest behind me.

“How’s your hand?” I ask, lifting it up to my face to get a better look.

“Bruised, but not too bad.” He only winces when I press down too hard on his swollen knuckles.

“I can’t believe you punched him,” I say, laughing. He laughs, too.

“I can. He was a dick.”

There’s an odd feeling surrounding us, and I’m certain Logan notices it, too. If there was a white dotted line marking where friendship moved to more-than-friends, Logan and I have been bound to the friendship side for as long as we’ve been alive, only slipping over it one time three years ago.

Right now, though, we’re walking that line.

I keep my eyes on the clock on my bedside table, watching as the minutes turn over themselves. What feels like seconds turns into minutes, and what feels like minutes turns into an hour.

I see the eight turn to a nine, and realize maybe basking in this feeling for as long as we have isn’t the best idea.

“We should get up. You definitely need to shower.” I joke, to which he pinches my hip bone.

“I could get used to waking up like this,” he says, burying his head into my hair.

“We can’t,” I sigh, hoping he can’t hear the hurt in my voice. The truth is, I don’t even know why we can’t. It’s just my gut reaction.

“I know.” His voice sounds just as tormented.

Without saying anything else, we both sit up, making our way into the bathroom.

“You can take a shower in here. Do you care if I brush my teeth once you’re in?”

“No, of course not,” he replies as I turn on the shower.

“Turn it right to make it warmer, left for colder,” I say, stepping out of the bathroom. “Just let me know when I can come back in.”

He nods. I hate this.

When he calls through the door that I’m okay to come in, I make quick work of brushing my teeth and combing through my hair.

“Winnie?” I hear a knock on the door, which makes me freeze like a deer in headlights. “Are you showering?”

“Weston?” I call, confused. My brother’s not even supposed to be here. The last I knew, he was hiking in Montana.

Logan pokes his head out of the shower curtain, and I put my finger over my lips, silently begging him to stay silent while I figure out what I’m going to do.

“I need to grab something I left in your cabinet. Is it okay if I come in?” Shit. Shit. Shit!

I start balling up Logan’s clothes and stashing them under the sink.

“Yeah, one second!” I look around the bathroom as if a new closet will magically appear for me to hide in, and because I’m not in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , I fall short.

There’s only one option left, which makes me cringe, but I don’t have a choice once I hear the door handle start turning.

Before I can contemplate anymore about the decision, I pull the shower curtain back and step inside, making direct eye contact with a soaked, very naked Logan.

He goes to say something, probably “What the fuck are you doing?” but I cover his mouth with my hand.

“Okay, you can come in!” I shout to my brother, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment as the water from the shower runs down my face.

The bathroom door opens, and I keep my hand suctioned to Logan’s face as I hear Weston shuffling through the drawers.

Logan’s eyes are wide and he’s still, like he’s trying not to move a muscle.

“Did you have someone over last night?” Weston asks.

“Huh?”

“Your bed is unmade on both sides,” he continues. “Usually, it’s not that messy in the morning.”

“No one else was here. I must not have had a great sleep, I guess.”

“Alright, well, I have to leave, so I’ll see you later.” One last drawer shuts. “Sorry for interrupting your shower.”

The door clicks shut, and I let out a sigh of relief, letting my hand fall from Logan’s mouth. I’m soaked from head to toe, clothes and all, and even with the uncomfortable feeling of my leggings sticking to my skin, I can’t get myself to get out of the shower.

“That was really the best idea you could come up with?” Logan asks, a smile encroaching on his face.

“I didn’t know what else to do!”

“Winnie,” he sighs. “I’m naked right now.” As if that wasn’t obvious.

My eyes scan down his body unintentionally, which makes Logan grab my jaw and pull my head back up to meet his eyes.

“Sorry, sorry.” I flinch, embarrassed that I tried to catch a glimpse of my best friend’s penis.

“It’s okay,” he replies. “I don’t even want to imagine how I would respond if you were the one naked.”

We both start laughing, the tension from moments before finally breaking. But then, as the laughter fades, we’re left standing there, inches apart in the cramped shower, the sound of the water the only thing filling the space between us.

His smile softens, and I feel the air shift as his gaze drops to my lips, just for a second. My heart pounds so loudly that I’m sure he can hear it over the running water. Without thinking, I find myself leaning in, drawn to the warmth of his body, the intensity of the moment.

Logan’s breath hitches, and for a moment, it feels like time stops. Our faces are so close now that I can feel the heat of his skin, the way his chest rises and falls with each breath.

But just as our lips are about to meet, he pulls back ever so slightly, his hand gently catching my arm. “Winnie...” he whispers, the sound of my name on his lips enough to send a shiver down my spine.

Reality crashes back, the closeness of our bodies, the fact that we’re in this tiny shower, the mess we’ve just narrowly avoided with Weston. It’s enough to make me take a shaky step back, the almost-kiss leaving an undeniable tension in the air.

“Sorry,” I mumble, not entirely sure what I’m apologizing for.

“Don’t be,” he says softly, his eyes lingering on me for a moment longer before he turns back toward the wall.

“Okay, I’m getting out now.” I step out of the shower, grabbing a towel from the rack and trying to dry myself to some degree.

“Hey, Win?” Logan asks.

“Yeah?”

There’s a moment of silence, where everything in the bathroom is silent besides the sound of the water running cold.

“Do you think there’s a possibility for us to ever be something more?”

The moment of silence comes crashing down, and the only things I can hear are the thoughts swirling through my head, thinking of every time I envisioned Logan and I long term, or tried to tell him how I felt, or wondered if he felt the same way.

If anyone wanted to see the extent of how much I imagined everything happening between us, they could open up the scrapbook of our childhoods to any page and see it written all over my face.

“Logan,” I sigh.

“If you need to lie, you can,” he says, and I know the only reason I don’t burst into tears is because I can’t see the look on his face.

Part of me feels like I should lie. That’s also the part of me that likes to believe that if something were to happen between us, it would have already.

Should I really risk something becoming forced by saying it’s all I think about?

Instead, I say, “I’ve spent my entire life adoring you, Logan.” It’s not a direct answer, but it’s inclination enough.

“I still remember promising you I’d marry you when we were seven.” It’s Logan’s way of answering the question without really answering it. In fact, it’s all he has to say.

“I do, too.” A tear slips down my cheek.

I also remember being in kindergarten, telling everyone that Logan was my husband. I’m not sure if he ever heard about that.

Logan turns the shower off, and I grab a towel, throwing it over the curtain at him before turning to the sink and splashing water in my face. I can’t let Logan see my face when he gets out.

He slides the curtain open, the towel wrapped around his waist. “And now you’ve almost seen my dick, so we must be getting somewhere,” he jokes, which makes me cringe.

“I didn’t see anything,” I tell him honestly.

His hands grab my shoulders from where he stands, towering behind me. “Are you just saying that because you’re embarrassed?”

“No, really, I didn’t see anything.”

He smirks. “Only because I stopped you.”

My cheeks flame and I can see how pink they turn in the mirror, but I don’t say anything. I’d rather we both forget this ever happened. My hands intertwine themselves around my back and then move back up to the hem of the towel I’m holding against my soaking clothes.

Logan immediately picks up on my anxious habits. “Everything’s fine, Win. I’m not mad.” Sincerity pours from him like a leaky faucet, and I’m the bowl it’s dropping into.

“I know.” It’s the word that constantly rings through me.

I know he wants what’s best for me.

I know he doesn’t look into things like I do.

I know this hurts him just as much as it hurts me, and yet there’s nothing either of us are going to do about it.

I know, I know, I know.