Page 122 of Ice Dance Hockey

I made sure our table was stocked with food that Logan might eat and ordered more coffee. I loaded his plate. I expected complaints, but I’m sure my mood is plain on my face and so he hasn’t protested. I’m not to be trifled with.

“For the record, I thought what you did was rad, baby. That was shitty of them to hide that from you. I would have thrown a fit.”

I smile on the inside, imagining the fit he would have thrown.

“Can you please eat, Logan? I can’t handle that today on top of everything else.” I know it’s the wrong thing to say even before I say it, but it’s obvious that his attempt to skip breakfast was Scott-related. My need to grind Scott into dust has increased by tenfold.

Logan doesn’t argue. He stabs a raw bell pepper with his fork and sinks his teeth into it. Great. He’s eating because I demanded it. The crater in my stomach breaks open. “Vegetables don’t have many calories,” I say because I don’t want him to stop eating no matter how I went about getting him to eat. “Okay, fine. Forget what I said.”

“Eat, Logan. Don’t eat, Logan. Make up your mind.” He smiles. At least there’s his smile. “What would you rather that I do?”

“Obviously, eat.”

“Then I will.”

“It’s easy as that?”

“For you it is,” he says.

I like that. I join him, slicing into the mango pancakes I’m about to indulge in.

“We’re a fucking pair today,” he says.

“Bet you wish you were on that camping trip with your family.”

“Nah. Jack and Merc are due for a massive blowout. It’s been building. Let’s hope they have it before we get there.”

“Them? Mr. and Mr. perfect?”

“They’ve been bickering so much, I’ve accused them of being a couple of alley cats.”

“They don’t bicker that much when I’ve been there.”

He laughs. “Merc’s on his best behavior. He doesn’t want you to know how much they bicker. He wants you to think they’re perfect.”

“Do we bicker as much as they do?”

Crunching on his bell pepper, he considers me. “Nearly. We don’t agree on much.”

Why is that a knife to my gut? Everything is a knife to my gut after the news I just heard. I always thought about my parents as the perfect couple. We were the perfect family.

“Hey, gorilla. I said that so you’d argue with me. It’s our thing … right, not today. Bad timing.”

My eyes focus on the pancakes I’m slowly losing my appetite for, and I drift away to the sound of the crashing waves. My cheeks stain with wetness. A fork clatters against a plate. Logan climbs into my lap, not giving a fuck where we are and who might see us. We’re not just famous in Vancouver, but everywhere.

I don’t give a fuck how we look, either.

Slanting my head back, I gaze up. The sun shines heavily, blocking out half of his face.

“We agree that we’re real,” he says. “At least, we’re becoming real. It doesn’t happen for everyone, but it’s happening for us.”

“Yeah? How do you know?” Reaching up, I push the hair from his face.

“Because both of us are changing. Breaking down and building into something new. Our old lives are asking us to let go of big things, to make room for new and bigger things. We won’t be the same, and I’m okay with that.”

The ache in my heart eases. “You’re not allowed to leave me.”

He laughs. “We’re not breaking up, baby.”

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