Maya climbed the familiar stairs to Logan's apartment. Her knuckles trembled with anticipation, with dread, with the chaos of everything that had happened. She hadn't heard from him. Logan neither called or texted. It was like Logan had gone silent and decided to disappear off the face of the earth and that never suited him.
She knocked once, then again. When the door clicked open, she couldn't believe the snake that stood before her..
It wasn't Logan who stood on the other side. It was Damian.
The moment her eyes registered his face, her soul ignited in a rage so pure, it eclipsed grief. His posture was casual, like he belonged there, like he owned the space where she and Logan had once laughed, kissed, made promises with their eyes and lips.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Her voice was a flame. "Where's Logan?"
Damian's smug smile unfurled slowly, like a secret peeling open. "He's not here."
"No kidding." She stepped inside despite herself, her fists clenching. "Where is he?"
"Gone," Damian said, closing the door behind her. "And he's not coming back."
That was when her hand flew before her mind could stop it, the sound of the slap cracking like a gunshot in the still room.
"You manipulative, lying bitch" she started, but Damian only rubbed his cheek, with a wicked grin intact, eyes glittering with something far more venomous than guilt.
"Oh, honey," he chuckled darkly. "You still don't get it, do you? Logan was mine long before he was yours. And he'll always be. That little coffee date ruse? That wasn't to see you. That was to learn how much of a delusional little bitch you really were."
Maya's whole body reeled like it had been struck. Her hands shook at her sides. She wanted to scream, to hit him again, to burn the whole damn place down. But all she said after, came with ease that even surprised herself, was:
"I'm not here to argue with you."
Damian raised a brow. "Then why are you here, sweetheart?"
"I came for Logan." Her voice cracked on his name, and God, that hurt more than anything. "I came to make sure he was okay. Because I care. I loved him. Whatever sick game you were playing—he was a part of me."
Something flickered in Damian's expression, but it vanished quickly, replaced by that same cruel satisfaction.
"You won't find him," he said. "He's gone, Maya. You drove him away. You all did."
She stared at him, blinking past the blur of tears that burned behind her eyes. Then, quietly, she turned and walked out, closing the door behind her with more dignity than her crumbling heart could afford.
The street outside felt colder than it should have. Her steps were slow, but steady. She refused to let Damian's words be truth. She refused to let that be the end of Logan Hayes.
Even as the night swallowed her, Maya held onto one ember of hope:
She would find him. No matter what.
---
It was now April, and the breeze was cold, along the rows of city buildings that pulsed with everyday life. Maya moved among them, her leather folder hugged close to her chest, her heels clacking with determined rhythm against the concrete. It had been two months—eight long, sleepless weeks—since she last saw Logan. Two months since her world tilted so violently it felt like her heart had been unstitched from her chest.
Sienna had been the voice of reason. "He's not coming back, M. You have to stop looking for him."
But how could she not look?
Every time she turned a corner, passed a familiar coffee shop, or saw the ocean through the glint of passing windows, her heart would leap—hope flickering even when reason begged her to let go.
Finals had come and gone. A hurricane season of caffeine and mental discipline. She'd passed with high marks. One professor even left a handwritten note on her essay: "Exceptional clarity of emotion."
If only they knew.
Now, with school partially behind her, Maya stepped into another rhythm—one of suits and reception desks and scheduled interviews in offices that smelled like lemon polish and ambition. Her days were filled with polite smiles, scanned résumés, and elevator rides with strangers in tailored coats.
But her nights belonged to something else.
Each evening, she would curl up in the corner of the little balcony she and Sienna shared—just her, a blanket, a mug of peppermint tea, and her journal. The pages had become her sanctuary. She poured into them the aches she no longer spoke out loud. Her longing, her growth and her anger. Her hope. Her shame. And—on some nights when she could barely help it—her memories of Logan.
She wrote about the way his fingers felt tangled in her hair.
The way he had once whispered 'mine' in the dark.
The way his eyes turned to fire when he looked at her like she was his anchor and undoing all at once.
Sometimes, the journal stayed open for hours, half-filled pages fluttering in the wind while she stared at the horizon—wondering where he was. If he missed her. If he was safe. If he ever thought of her at all.
One evening, as she wrote under a sky splashed in violet and gold, she paused mid-sentence. Her pen hovered over the page. A gust of wind lifted a loose strand of hair and brushed it across her cheek.
She looked up, suddenly, as though someone had called her name.
But no one was there.
Only the quiet and the soft sound of her own healing.
Because maybe he really was gone.
And maybe, she was learning how to live without him.
Not because she stopped loving him.
But because she was learning to love herself more.