My heart thuds the entire elevator ride up to Logan’s apartment. It’s so loud that I swear he can hear it. It echoes off the mirrored walls of the lift, a persistent, hollow percussion, like a marching band. What did he mean when he said he wanted to talk to me? Does he want to fire me? Tell me that our relationship has to remain strictly professional? I don’t know which would be worse right now. 

I try to keep my anxiety under control, but by the time the elevator doors open into the luxurious foyer of his penthouse, there are tears stinging my eyes again. Damn hormones. 

Logan leads me into the living area and gestures to the couch for me to sit. “Would you like a drink?” 

“Just water, please.” 

“Sure you don’t want anything stronger?” 

I shake my head sadly. I’d actually kill for something stronger right about now, but I can’t tell him that. 

“Do you mind if I have a scotch, then?” He smiles, sort of, and those tears that were pricking my eyes threaten to spill over. God, he has a beautiful smile. It’s so rare, but every time I see it, it stops me cold. It’s like the Northern Lights — precious and majestic, a natural wonder that only a few are lucky enough to ever experience. 

Now his smile disappears, replaced by a frown of concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?” 

“I will be.” I think. 

Logan disappears into the kitchen — the same kitchen where he made me come last time, I remember with a flush. Part of me wants to follow him in there, to beg him to lift me up onto the marble countertop again, to bury his face between my legs again, to work that magic tongue that he uses so well. Anything to avoid thinking about the real reason I’m here.

But I can’t. Because if I go down that road, I won’t want to tell him about the baby, and if I don’t tell him now ... Well, I’m afraid I won’t get the courage ever again. 

Logan reappears a couple of minutes later. In his hand is a crystal tumbler, filled with about an inch of amber. When he passes by, I get a whiff of the peaty, aromatic scent of the scotch. God, I’d kill for some liquid courage right about now. 

I’m hoping that Logan will sit down on the couch beside me, but instead he sinks into the leather wingback chair across from me. Even though he’s less than eight feet away, it feels like a thousand miles. The cavern between us stretches out to impossible lengths. 

“I forgot your water,” he says suddenly, jumping up. 

“It’s okay.” 

“No, I’ll be right back.” Is it just me, or does he look nervous? Logan disappears into the kitchen again and returns a moment later with a bottle of water. He twists off the cap and hands it to me. He looks so helpless, so eager to please, that I find myself smiling encouragingly at him. 

“Thank you.” I take a long swallow while Logan slips back into the chair across from me. There’s a moment of silence, and then I take a deep breath to steady my nerves. “I wanted to talk to you tonight because—” 

“Blake, is it okay if I go first?” 

I blink in surprise. “Um, sure. But this is pretty important.” 

“So is this,” he says with a sigh. 

“Okay, then.” Maybe a five minute reprieve isn’t such a bad thing. Plus, I have to admit that I’m dying of curiosity. 

“You asked me the other day who broke my heart.” Logan takes a slow sip of scotch and then sets his glass down on the table next to him. The crystal makes a gentle clinking noise against the wood. “The truth is, I used to be engaged.”

“Oh.” I blink in surprise. I’m not sure what I was expecting him to tell me, but it wasn’t that. “Okay.” 

“She died.” 

For a second, my heart seems to stop entirely. Just completely stops beating. Everything in the room is still, like we’re inside a black hole. A vacuum. “Oh.” It’s about the only word I can manage. 

“Yeah.” 

“What ... happened?” I twist the top of the water bottle, forgetting that the cap is already off. I stare at it in confusion, while Logan gathers his thoughts, his words. 

“Ovarian cancer. One day, she had an abnormal pap smear, and a biopsy later, she had cancer. Eight months later, she was gone.”

My hand flies to my mouth. The sudden shock of what he’s telling me hits me like a punch to the gut. His fiancee ... died. I know people who’ve died, of course. Our grandmother died when I was seven — that was my first time going to a funeral. And when I was in high school, a guy in the year above me — a guy named Aaron, who played basketball and was in a band — got hit by a train and died. It was sad, of course, and the guidance counsellors came to our school every day for a week and all the popular girls would run to the bathroom to cry and touch up their lip gloss. And of course, working at a flower shop, we do tons of funeral arrangements and see death in all its shapes and flavors.

But for Logan to lose his fiancee — that just feels like a whole other level of grief. One I could never even begin to touch the edges of, never mind grasp completely.

Logan is watching me, and I clench my hands in my lap so that they won’t go to my mouth the way they want to. Tears are threatening to burst from my eyes, and this time it’s definitely not the hormones.

“Logan, I’m so sorry,” I finally manage, even though sorry doesn’t even come close. I wish there was something I could say or do that would magically heal the hole in his heart, but words seem so trivial. “But thank you for telling me.”

He doesn’t say anything, just takes a swallow of scotch. He’s slumped in that chair now, and even though he’s in a nice jacket and a crisp shirt, he looks nothing like the imposing man I see at the office every day. He looks like a man who’s been through something and hasn’t yet figured out a way to come out the other side.

“What was her name?” I ask, because I’m suddenly intensely curious about the kind of woman who could have this effect on a man like Logan.

“Laura. Laura Echolls. We met at Yale.”

“How long were you together?”

“Four years. Three years together and then a year engaged. She had just started planning for the wedding when the diagnosis came, and then we put everything on hold while she tried to fight it. For whatever that was worth. Sometimes I think we should have gotten married right away, as soon as we found out. Then at least I’d have been a widower instead of ... this. There’s no name for it when you lose a fiancee, you know. There aren’t any books. No greeting cards.”

He looks surprised at the words coming out of his mouth, and then immediately picks up his glass again and drinks from it. I get the feeling he doesn’t talk about this very much, and now the words that he’s held back for so long want to come pouring out. As much as it’s hard to hear about this, part of me is honored that he would trust me with it.

“Thank you for telling me,” I say again, twisting the water bottle in my hands. I wish I had a scotch to sip, too. It might make this moment easier. Then again, is there really anything that would make this moment easier? A time machine?

“I wanted you to know because ...” Logan stops. His face looks hollow, thinner than it usually does. I realize he looks ... scared. Or maybe not scared, exactly, but nervous? Tense? Like a man who’s driving along the sharp edge of a cliff and is incredibly focused on just making sure he doesn’t go over the brink.

He sets his crystal glass down. “I wanted you to know because ... I’ve come to care about you very much, Blake. Since Laura died, I’ve filled my days and nights with women who mean nothing to me. Now, there’s someone who means something to me, and it’s ... all a little new.” He sighs deeply. He doesn’t look any less nervous now that he’s said all that. “I’m not really sure what I’m doing.”

The silence fills the room again, with only the hum of the central air. He looks so alone sitting there, and suddenly I can’t stand having all of this distance between us. I set my water bottle down on the stone coffee table and cross the room. Logan’s eyebrows raise a fraction as he watches me, but that’s the only reaction he gives.

When I get to his chair, I straddle his thighs and crawl into his lap. I run my hands through his thick blond hair, trace my fingers along his jaw, his treacherous cheekbones. His face is beautiful, like a stone sculpture, like something out of a Greek mythology textbook. To see him hurting like this is killing me. All I want to do is make him feel better, and there’s only one way I know how to do that. I lean in and let my lips graze his.

For a second, he doesn’t return the kiss. My heart thuds in my chest, but I keep kissing him, moving my lips against his and tasting the essence of him, mixed with the sweet peatyness of the scotch. His body is tense under mine, but then I feel him shift, his hips moving to accommodate me better, his hands sliding up around my ribs.

I push my tongue past his lips and explore the shape of him, the taste. He moves against me now, finally, kissing me back, letting his lips work against mine, finding my tongue with his own. It’s everything, this kiss — precious and sweet and fiery and life-giving.

His hands move from my ribs to my breasts, massaging them through the t-shirt I’m wearing. It feels like ages ago I was at home with Lucy, agonizing over what to wear to that bar with my sisters. Now, in Logan’s lap, what I’m wearing doesn’t seem to matter at all — only that I can remove it as quickly as possible.

I lift my hands away from Logan’s face long enough to hold them up over my head, so that he can strip away the t-shirt. Then I’m on him again, holding his face between my hands, leaning in to kiss him, to try to take his pain away.

He unhooks my bra and lets that fall to the floor, too, and then he’s pulling me to him, crushing my breasts against his chest.

“Blake,” he says, into my hair, as he kisses the side of my neck. “How do you do this?”

“Do what?” I ask, breathless.

“Be so amazing.”

I laugh lightly, but I don’t answer, because answering means talking, and talking means not kissing. And I don’t want to do anything that’s not kissing right now.

I lose track of how long we stay there for, but it’s a long time. Hours, maybe. Years. I would stay there forever, if given a choice, but eventually Logan stands, lifting me with him. I wrap my legs around his waist and let him carry me to his bedroom.