“Almost dying will do that to a person,” Natalie says.
The room goes quiet for a second. We all went through it. Twenty minutes of not knowing whether the men we love were alive or dead. Nobody says that out loud, but it's in the room with us.
“Okay, enough heavy,” Avery says. She turns to me and tilts her head. “Jasmine Bennett.”
“Avery Carter.”
Her mouth curves with a smirk. “You’re glowing.”
“I'm not glowing. I moisturize,” I quip, but I can already see where this is going.
“You're glowing, and it has nothing to do with skincare and everything to do with a certain alternate captain. Spill.”
My face gets hot. I take a sip of wine to buy myself a second. Harper is looking at me over the rim of her glass with an amused expression.
“After the plane thing,” I start. “Logan called me from the tarmac in Pittsburgh.”
“We know that part,” Natalie says gently. “You told us.”
“I didn't tell you everything.” I set my glass down on the coffee table. “He said he never stopped loving me and that if the plane had gone down, he would never have forgiven himself for not telling me.”
The room is silent.
“And I told him I loved him too,” I shrug. “I have for ten years, and I was too stubborn and too scared to admit it.”
Avery puts her hand on my arm. “That is so romantic.”
“When he got back to New York, he came straight to my apartment, and we've been together since.”
“Together together?” Olivia asks.
I grin. “Together together,” I say with a laugh.
The last few days have been surreal. Logan has barely left my apartment since he got back from Chicago. We've fallen into a rhythm that feels both brand new and completely familiar.
I go to work in the morning, and when I come home, Logan is there, or on his way, or texting me to ask where I want to eat. We've had dinner together every night this week. Monday was Thai food on my couch. Tuesday, he cooked grilled salmon and roasted vegetables.
The man learned to cook in the last ten years. At least one of us can, seeing as I’m shit in the kitchen.
Last night we walked to a small Italian place near my apartment and talked until they started putting chairs on tables around us.
Avery screams, jerking me from my thoughts. “I knew it! I knew it as soon as I found out you two had history, and I knew it at Gordy's. The eye contact across the bar and the chemistry between you two was out of this world.”
“We all knew it,” Harper says, dabbing at her jeans with a napkin. “Some of us were just polite enough not to scream about it.”
“I'm sorry, but when was politeness ever the appropriate response to love?” Avery says. “This calls for screaming.”
“Keep your voice down,” Olivia says. “Maya is sleeping.”
Natalie smiles at me from the armchair. “It took the plane scare?”
“It took the plane scare.”
“Same thing happened with Ethan and me after his injury,” she says. “Sometimes you need the world to shake you before you stop overthinking and just feel what you feel.”
Olivia nods. “When the news broke about the plane, all I could think about was the things I hadn’t told Theo.”
“Cole called me, and I couldn't speak for five minutes,” Harper says. “He just stayed on the line and waited.”
