Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 54110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 216(@250wpm)___ 180(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54110 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 271(@200wpm)___ 216(@250wpm)___ 180(@300wpm)
Logan raised his eyebrows. “Someone you don’t want to talk to?”
Andrew’s face did something weird. “It’s my aunt. She raised me.”
It hadn’t escaped Logan’s notice that it wasn’t a no.
None of your damn business, he told himself and returned his gaze to his food. He pretended to be engrossed in it as Andrew answered the phone.
“…no, Auntie, I swear I didn’t forget… I know I promised to visit you today, and I will, I promise… I had no idea you were expecting me this early—”
The woman on the other end of the line seemed to launch into a tirade. Andrew listened to it with a resigned, pinched look on his face, his shoulders growing tenser with every moment. He looked… small. Andrew wasn’t a small man, but right now “small” was a good word to describe him. He looked small. Like anything could break him. Or something already had.
Logan frowned.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be heading out right now,” Andrew said at last before ending the call.
He stared at his phone for a moment, a blank look on his face, before springing to his feet. “I have to go,” he said, without looking at Logan. “I promised my aunt that I’d visit her today, and apparently she’s been expecting me for hours.”
“You need a ride?” Logan said before he could stop himself.
Andrew’s brows furrowed. “Do you have a car? I thought you lived in New York?”
Logan looked away. “I drove here,” he said curtly. Andrew didn’t need to know that he couldn’t sleep after hearing his voice, thinking about him and obsessing. He hadn’t even noticed at first that he was driving toward Boston, and then it was too late to turn back. Or so he had told himself.
“Oh,” Andrew said. “Okay, then.”
“Go take a shower and get dressed.”
Andrew rolled his eyes with a long-suffering look. “Fuck you. I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I’m capable of functioning on my own, you know.”
“Are you?” Logan said quietly. “Are you okay, Drew?”
Andrew’s jaw clenched, something almost fragile in his eyes. He looked at Logan uncertainly and said nothing.
Logan’s hands twitched toward him, but his ill-advised urge to comfort was interrupted by the knock on the door. Good timing.
Logan went to open it and thanked the maid for bringing him some clothes. He dropped the towel and started dressing unhurriedly as Andrew disappeared into the ensuite.
He was checking his emails on his phone when Andrew finally emerged from the bathroom, already dressed. He went still, looking at Logan with a strange expression on his face.
“What?” Logan said.
Andrew shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nothing,” he said, his lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I’m still not used to you being all…”
“Dressed?” Logan said with a snort.
“Yeah,” Andrew said, laughing a little. “It’s really throwing me off.”
They left the room together.
Logan ignored the curious looks that followed them everywhere, forcing himself to relax. After the solitude of the island, he was still struggling to adjust to having so many people stare at him all the time. A sideways glance at Andrew confirmed that the other man was faring much worse: there was so much tension in the way Andrew was carrying himself it looked like he might snap any moment, his eyes darting around nervously.
Frowning, Logan laid a hand on Andrew’s back. He’d half-expected Andrew to jump away from him skittishly, but instead, some of the tension seemed to bleed out of Andrew’s body. Andrew moved closer to him, walking so close that their shoulders bumped.
Logan’s frown deepened. He glanced down at Andrew’s hand. His fingers were clenching and unclenching.
It was a relief to finally reach the car.
Andrew sagged back into the passenger seat, running a hand over his face with a sigh. “Fuck.”
Fuck indeed. Logan hadn’t thought it was this bad.
He started the car, considering how to broach the subject while Andrew was putting his aunt’s address into his GPS.
“All these people… it seems a little too much sometimes, doesn’t it?” he said at last.
“Don’t patronize me,” Andrew said without much heat in his voice.
“I’m not patronizing you. You think it’s easy for me?”
Andrew shot him a sour look, his full lips pursing.
Logan fixed his gaze on the road.
“You’re not a mess,” Andrew said. “Not like me.”
“I feel uncomfortable around people, too.”
“But it isn’t as hard for you,” Andrew stated.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Why?” Andrew said, his voice full of bewilderment and misery.
Logan had to choose his words carefully. “I’ve gotten the impression that you always relied on your wife to be a steady presence for you. Your rock. You relied on her support a lot. Is that correct?”
Andrew didn’t answer immediately.
“Maybe,” he said at last.
“And then on the island…” Logan trailed off, unsure how to put it in a way that wouldn’t offend him.
Andrew snorted. “I used you like my comfort blanket.”