If at first you don't succeed, then level the playing field and take a second chance.
Two years ago, Ellie Harrison collapsed under the weight of her past and the fallout that caught up with her. Like a shell of her former self, she retreated away f...
"I'm so sorry about your bed, I washed everything -" I started when both his hands grabbed his head.
"Give me a minute," he half-groaned, half-whispered, a noise I'd never heard from him before.
My eyes fixed on his face, eyes squeezed shut and mouth wrenched in tension, and the way his finger pressed tightly into his skull. After a few silent moments, he added in some slow, deep breaths that frankly sounded like the man was in labor.
"Sorry..." Once Logan lowered his hands off his face, I took in the pale cast over his skin and weighted humility that hung in his eyes. "Got a little light-headed. Are you... okay?"
"I'm fine," I deadpanned. "Do you need to go to the health clinic?"
"No." His long legs swung over the side of the sofa and he exhaled what sounded like his entire body's worth of air through puffed out cheeks.
The painful twists and clenches of my uterus sparked flickers of irritation in me. I pressed my hands into my lap, stood up, then grabbed my computer. "If you're done being more than overdramatic, I'm going to shower and get ready for class."
"Class, right." He shook his head like his thoughts distracted him, then gave me the most pathetic looking smile I'd ever seen. His mouth wavered like he'd eaten bad-tasting food but avoided insulting the cook, then actually swallowed.
I had no answer other than rolled my eyes up to the ceiling, so that's all I gave him.
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After whatever the hell last night had been and an uncomfortably silent breakfast where Logan side-eyed me with a scientific level of scrutiny, he still walked me to class but kept a definite airspace between us. He stayed largely silent, his eyes tracked the sidewalks beneath our feet, but every few steps I felt his gaze on me.
"It's not contagious, you know," I teased him once we got to the bottom steps of PCar Hall, home of my first class like always.
Logan blinked a few times until my words registered. Even once they had, he only replied, "Huh?"
"Periods," I spat out the irritation that pent up with each uncomfortable step we'd taken over here and couldn't have cared less about the curious looks that word drew towards me. "You know, a completely natural, biophysical response a woman goes through every month."
One of his hands clutched onto the black metal railing until his knuckles whitened. The color slowly drained out of his cheeks again, which hallowed when he spoke in a strained and broken voice, "It's like this... every month?"
He's a biology major, right? And he was awake and coherent during Anatomy lectures.
"For fuck's sake," I spat back at him, which prompted a mix of surprised and sympathetic glances of students that passed us up and down the steps. "Do I usually bleed out of my clothes? No. Is it messy and bloody, yes, but I refuse to apologize for something I'm trying to control the best I can."
