LOGAN’S BEDSIDE LAMP was the only source of illumination in the room as he toed off his shoes and looked across the bed to where Tate sat with his back to him.

Not much had been said on the drive home, and though Tate had insisted he was fine, Logan was under no delusions that the man currently seated on the edge of their mattress staring at his feet was fine.

The night had been a rollercoaster of emotions for everyone involved. But for most of the evening, Tate had handled things with a kind of composure Logan was in awe of. He’d been solid and steady, right up until the last hour.

Logan had racked his brain trying to pinpoint the precise moment the tables had turned for Tate. The obvious conclusion was the mention of his nephews’ names. But no, Logan thought, as he took off his shirt and pants and folded them over the chair in their room, there was something before that.

The names—they had been the knife twisting in the wound. But when was the moment it had first been thrust in? He wanted to know. Needed to know what had caused his man such pain.

Logan walked around the end of the bed, and as he came up along Tate’s side, he raised his head and offered a dejected smile.

“Hey. Sorry,” Tate said. “Got lost in my own head there for a minute. Let me get undressed so we can get in bed.”

As Tate went to stand, Logan shook his head and reached out to trace the line of his jaw, stopping him. “You want to maybe tell me what’s going on in your head?”

Tate shut his eyes, and when his thick lashes swept across his cheekbones, Logan couldn’t help but brush his thumbs under them.

“Hey?” Logan said, keeping his voice low. “You can talk to me about anything. You know that, don’t you?”

Tate didn’t look at him, but Logan saw his shoulders rise and then fall as he took in a breath and then let it out. He’d only ever seen Tate like this once before, and it wasn’t lost on Logan that it had been in direct relation to his family both times.

It was unnerving. Tate was the steady one between the two of them. The levelheaded one. And to see him so crushed, so unsteady, broke Logan’s heart.

Going down to his knees between Tate’s feet, Logan sat back on his heels and waited. When Tate finally opened his eyes and Logan saw tears blurring his usually bold gaze, he rose and wrapped his arms around Tate’s neck.

“Oh, Tate,” he whispered into his hair, and Tate wound his arms around Logan’s back and held on as though he were the only thing keeping him grounded. A shudder racked Tate’s body, and Logan pressed his lips to his temple, letting him know he was right there and to just let it out.

After the initial wave passed and Tate’s fingers loosened, Logan shifted so he could cup either side of Tate’s neck and rest their foreheads together. “Feel better?”

Tate nodded and then brought a hand up to swipe his fingers across his wet cheek, and Logan did the same to his other one.

“Want to tell me what that was about?”

“Yeah,” Tate finally said. “Just let me go wash my face and get undressed, then we can talk.”

“Okay,” Logan said, and gently kissed Tate’s lips. Then he watched from where he still knelt as Tate got to his feet, stepped around him, and headed into the bathroom, shutting the door in his wake.

* * *

TATE LEANED HIS back against the bathroom door and scrubbed his hands over his face. Shit. I’m a fucking mess, he thought, as he pictured Logan’s face back there in the bedroom. There’d been a mix of concern and worry swirling in Logan’s eyes as he’d looked up at him. And that, on top of everything else he’d been feeling, had become too much.

Tate shoved away from the door and pulled his shirt off, tossing it on the floor as he headed to the sink to splash water on his face. And when he looked at his reflection, the red, swollen eyes were such a foreign sight that he barely recognized himself. Then again, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d broken down quite so spectacularly.

He turned the water off and reached for a towel, and once he wiped his face down, he ran a hand through his hair and sighed. Wasn’t going to get much better than that tonight, and honestly, he didn’t have the energy to care at this point.

Ditching his jeans, he switched off the lights and walked across the bedroom to his side of the bed.

Logan had thankfully turned the lamp off, but with the curtains open, the lights from the surrounding buildings allowed Tate to see the man waiting for him beneath the sheets.

He pulled back the covers, and once he slipped between them, Logan raised an arm, and Tate scooted over until his side was intimately aligned along the length of his. Tate then wrapped an arm across Logan’s waist and traced his fingers along the edge of his boxer briefs, and once he rested his head on Logan’s chest, he said, “I feel a bit…I don’t know, stupid right now.”

Logan took his chin in a firm hold and angled his face so he was looking up at him. “Don’t you dare feel stupid for how you feel. Not ever.”

Tate’s lips quirked, and Logan gave him such a stern look that he chuckled. “Okay.”

“Good.”

“I can’t remember the last time I cried this much. My head hurts.”

Logan ran a palm over the back of his curls, and Tate nuzzled into the light smattering of hair on Logan’s chest.

“It was an intense night,” Logan said.

“Now there’s an understatement.” Tate let his mind drift to the last part of the evening. The part that had set him off. And he knew that Logan was waiting for him to explain. He wanted to. He was just trying to work out how to say it in a way that wouldn’t hurt the man currently wrapped around him. Because how can it not?

“Tate?”

“Sorry—”

“Hey, stop apologizing to me. And stop worrying about whatever it is that’s keeping you from talking.”

Wow. How is it he knows me even better than I know myself?

“Talk to me. Trust me.”

“I do,” Tate said, and licked his lips. “Okay. I guess you’re probably wondering what set me off… I mean, everything was going pretty good for the most part.”

“Right. Things at the beginning were a little awkward, but I thought you handled them great. Not only me, but your father and your sister. You were…remarkable, given the circumstances.”

“I didn’t feel remarkable.”

“Are you kidding me? There’s no way I could’ve acted with half the levelheadedness you did under the same circumstances.” Logan reached for the fingers Tate had on his waist and interlaced them with his own. Then he brought them to his lips to kiss them. “But then something happened. What was it?”

Tate swallowed as Logan lowered their hands to his chest and waited, and then Tate said, “It was when Jill started talking about her house.”

Silence settled in the room. All Tate could hear was the steady thump thump thump of Logan’s heart, and he knew he needed to give Logan more than that.

“I started thinking about how everything in her life was exactly the same as it was four years ago, you know. Her and Sam. The kids. The house I helped her talk him into buying, even though it was a renovation nightmare. And then I thought about my life and how it’s totally—” Tate stopped abruptly, not actually understanding his own thoughts, let alone being able to say them out loud. But Logan, being as intuitive as he was, finished for him.

“Different? Your life is totally different to what it was.”

Tate quickly looked up at him to check what Logan’s reaction was to that, and when all he saw was a curious expression, he nodded. “Yes. But not in a bad way.”

“Okay.”

“I told you it was stupid. I can’t explain it, because it doesn’t even make sense to me. But all I could think about was how unfair it was that her life had just gone along the same way it always had, and mine, it just…it just…blew the fuck up.”

Tate pushed up on his arm then and looked down at Logan, who was still watching him with a pensive expression.

“Did you know she told the kids I moved overseas for work? Overseas. That was how she explained I was gone. What would she have told them if she never ran into me again? That I never came back? That I died there?” Tate ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I wanted to be cool with her coming back into our lives, and I was. I am. But when she started talking about all that shit, my head started spinning, and all I could think about was how unfair it was that my life was the one that had to change. That I was the one who lost fucking everything. And I guess I just hadn’t allowed myself to really think about it until then.”

* * *

WOW…

LOGAN WASN’T sure what he’d expected to hear when Tate had started talking, but that had certainly not been it. And he wasn’t quite sure how to take Tate’s words in and process them.

He knew how he should take them. This wasn’t about him. It was about Tate and the family he’d left behind. But it still hurt to hear him talk about all that he’d lost, when Logan had always assumed Tate was happy and fulfilled with the family they had created between them. Another good reason to make it formal. Official.

But first things first. He wanted to talk this out with Tate. He was obviously still reeling from the onslaught of memories that had inundated him tonight.

Spinning. That was the word Tate had used. And why wouldn’t he be?

Over the past years, Tate had perfectly adapted to the new life he’d chosen to live. But in one night he’d been yanked out of that world and been reminded of the one he’d left behind, and Logan would do anything in his power to help him get through the heartache he was so clearly experiencing right now.

“I didn’t know that about Cooper and Jonathon. On one hand, at least Jill had the good sense not to poison them against you because of her own prejudices,” Logan said, and traced a finger down Tate’s jawline. “But on the other, I understand your reaction now that I know what you were thinking.”

Tate lowered his eyes, but Logan tilted his chin up, not allowing him to hide. “It’s okay to feel what you’re feeling, Tate. It doesn’t lessen what we have that you miss your old life, your family. That you mourn the loss of it.”

“Then why does it make me feel so fucking shitty?”

Logan was about to tell him it was because he was a good guy, but Tate took his ability to speak from him with a single sentence.

“I feel like I’m betraying you by feeling this way.”

Before he even consciously thought it, Logan was moving. He pushed up from the bed and gently rolled Tate to his back. With a hand on each of Tate’s wrists, Logan pinned them by his head as he stared down at the serious expression now etched into every line of Tate’s solemn face. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that to me again.”

“But—”

“You are not betraying me. If anything, you’d be betraying yourself if you didn’t allow yourself to experience what you’re feeling. You’ve been holding on to this for too damn long, Tate.” When Tate’s Adam’s apple bobbed, Logan released one of his wrists and drew his fingertips over it. “And I feel guilty for letting you.” As Tate’s eyes narrowed, Logan nodded. “That’s right. You don’t get to corner the market on feeling shitty tonight. How did I miss this with you?”

“You didn’t—”

“I did,” Logan said. “Just because you didn’t talk about it, about them, didn’t mean I shouldn’t have asked more questions.” He stroked his fingers across the curls sweeping Tate’s forehead. “I hate that I didn’t.”

“Logan. Stop.” Tate stroked his free hand along the stubble of Logan’s cheek. “We’re talking about it now. I obviously wasn’t ready before anyway.”

“And are you now?”

Tate swept his thumb over Logan’s lower lip. “Honestly? I don’t know. She asked me if we want to go to a get-together at their house next weekend with a small group of my old friends. The kids would be there too, but…”

But you’re scared, Logan wanted to say, and understood the trepidation he could see in Tate’s eyes. He was terrified of once again being rejected by his family. But Logan wasn’t going to put words in Tate’s mouth.

“I guess I’m just worried about how they’ll react to me. To us. My nephews, that is. I hate that I even said that.”

And I love it, Logan thought. Because you’re always honest with me. Even when it’s the hardest thing to say. “Then how about you just think on it? Let it sit with you and then make a decision. There’s no rush. It’s entirely up to you.”

When Logan released Tate’s other wrist so he could take either side of his face and kiss him, Tate lowered his arms and wrapped them around his waist.

Logan closed his eyes and lost himself in the purity of the moment, and when it was over, he raised his head, fully planning to say goodnight so Tate could get some rest. But Tate’s fingers slid to his lower back, and he whispered, “Make love to me.”

And there was no way Logan would deny such a heartfelt request.